Month / January 2014

by hereandsphere

#MAGOV : AS THE CAUCUSES APPROACH, WHO’S HOT AND WHO’S NOT ?

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Today, January 11th, Democratic governor hopeful Don Berwick tours the West. His day begins in Athol, moves to Orange, then over the mountains to Williamstown; the afternoon and evening find him in Springfield, Chicopee, and Palmer. That is a lot of driving, but how else is a statewide candidate to reach out to activists spread across three counties that, combined, comprise about 20 % of Massachusetts’s population ? You can’t helicopter it; trains don ‘t carry people any more; taking the bus seems just a bit wack. So you drive. Berwick has been driving a lot lately. Cape Cod has seen him quite often, the Merrimack valley, even Tea party-laden Worcester County. Tireless he is, this medical man who has a bedside physician’s touch for people he meets.

Peripatetics alone should earn Berwick a high place in the list of hot political properties. Berwick has also attracted solid money this month : $ 62,849 since January 5th. Yet a fourth place man he seems. Attorney General Martha Coakley has twenty times the state-wide clout, as she wields the investigatory poewers of her office. State Treasurer Steve Grossman has the big bucks — don’t be fooled by his raising only $ 13,122.96 this past week; his mid-month report is likely to show a solid dollar haul.. Whoever you talk to, they’ll tell you that Grossman and Coakley own the top two spots in the Democratic part of the governor race. Then there’s Juliette Kayyem. She hasn’t raised as many shekels even as Berwick, much less Coakley or Grossman — though her last week’s $ 39,115.68 merits notice — but on social media she’s the champion of charisma — has more followers than anyone but the seasoned Coakley and, if current tends continue much, will soon pass her too. Kayyem is a physical presence too : eye-catchingly fashionable, and willing to push the style envelope, she could easily be an Oscar actress. She’s the female version of Scott Brown — and a policy wonk besides.

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If all else were equal, Kayyem would easily grab the largest number of Democratic delegates at the upcoming caucuses and go on to face Charlie Baker — no slouch in the charisma department himself. But Democratic activists run Masachusetts; they are not amateurs, and no matter how strongly Kayyem may appeal to their idealistic paint, many — probably most — listen not to their paint but to their posts and beams, the basic structure that is the State government which they build and maintain. The carpenter in them knows that Coakley or Grossman already occupy the building and know where its doors and stairways turn up.

Dr. Berwick at least has the health care constituencies to himself. They’ve been his go-to all his adult life and into his government career. They know him, and he knows them. Who does Kayyem have to compare ? I suppose that social media is in itself an interest group these days; and very much a Democratic-leaning one; and them, she has. I run into Kayyem supporters when I’m online far more frequently than supporters of Berwick, Grossman , and Coakley combinbed. But social media people do not overlap very well with caucus goers, many of whom are elderly or professorial and temperamentally at odds with social-speak. Thus both Kayyem and Berwick are toughing it out speaking to 50 people at a gathering or even just 20. It’s like building a sand castle one grain at a time, but there’s no other way for them to climb the castle wall within which lurk Grossman and Coakley.

The caucuses lead to the Democratic convention, at which a candidate must win 15 % at least of the voting delegates. If not, their names won’t be on the Primary ballot. Important to caucus goers are the policy plans, articulated at length, that both Berwick and Kayyem are issuing on their websites. (Grossman too.) A delegate may or may not give kudos to any of these plans; but their issuance at least assures a potential delegate that the candidate offering them is ready — maybe — to govern on Day One. But who to commit to ? We will soon know.

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I mentioned Charlie Baker. How is he doing, you ask ? From where I sit typing, he looks doing quite well. He and his running mate Karyn Polito have raised as much money as the Democratic money champ, Steve Grossman. Baker even has a primary cahllenger, a Tea party true believer — “gun rights,’ anti-immigrant, “voter ID,” blame-the-poor : the whole Tea-angry talk show — whose presence in the Republican race frees up Baker to be the moderate problem-solver that Massachusetts voters like.

Baker has given us much more lollipop than the chippy curve he pitched at folks four years ago. He presses the flesh and seems to like it. He mixes with people. He visits cities, even Boston, and talks city issues almost like a Mayor. He has begun to offer policy papers as worthy as, or better, than those of Kayyem, Berwick, and Grossman. He is running almost as if he were competing right now with all four potential democratic winners; and in fact he is competing with them right now. The Tea party, which will, hopefully, split off to one of the several protest candidates on the November ballot, represents about one third of Republican voters. The other two thirds, who form Baker’s core, amount to no more than eight percent of those who will vote for Governor in November. He’ll need to convince plenty of Democrats that he is a better choice than Grossman, Coakley, Kayyem, or Berwick; and the surest way to do that is to do it now, when all four are in the field.

Massachusetts voters often choose Republican governors as a check on our one-party legislature. The four governors prior to Deval Patrick were all GOP. Baker has history on his side. Yet it still might not be enough. Grossman and Kayyem look very strong to me at this time, as strong as Baker; and Berwick stands not far behind them.

—- Mike Freedberg / Here and Sphere

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MEEK AT THE MOVIES : AUGUST : OSAGE COUNTRY ( 2.5 stars )

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^ a deep dark closet of skeletons at the Weston family table in “August : Osage Country”

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There’s plenty of thespian timber and uncorked rage in this austere melodrama about familial dysfunction and reckoning out on the plains of Oklahoma. The emotional turbulence in “August: Osage County” is devastating, so much so, you could think of it as an angry twister wrecking havoc across the sleepy farm land, or as the evil step-sister to “Steel Magnolias,” appropriately shamed and exiled to the prairie for bad behavior.

If there’s any calm in the film, it’s the one that comes before the storm, and even that’s not so pretty. It all begins serenely enough as Beverly (Sam Shepherd) delivers an introspect confessional to Johnna (Misty Upham as the newly hired house help, who is Native American and has to, by job description, endure the oncoming onslaught passively) that he drinks too much — but that, at this later stage, it’s now tolerated by his wife because he puts up with her incessant pill popping. Beverly’s a dapper guy with a slight twang and a love for books. No sooner has he presented Johnna with a personal selection (TS Eliot) for her to read, that his wife, Violet (Meryl Streep) lopes through the door, red-eyed, in a bathrobe and hopped-up on something. Her hair’s short, matted and falling out. She looks like an extra from a film exposing Nazi atrocities.

We learn quickly enough that Violet has mouth cancer, which is both a touch poetic and ironic because what comes out of her mouth is nothing but cancerous. Point and case when she judgmentally asks Johnna if she’s an ‘Injun’ and what kind, and then proceeds to tear into Beverly for being a boozing philanderer and a do-nothing. Is it the pills or something more deep-seated? For a woman on death’s door and flying high, Violet has all the reserves of a Navy SEAL Team.

Soon, two of the three Weston daughters descend on the house, Iris (Julianne Nicholson) and Barbra (Julian Roberts) with her estranged husband (Ewan McGregor) and their precocious daughter, Jean (Abigail Breslin changing it up impressively from her turn in “Little Miss Sunshine”). But Bev is missing, and oddly, no one seems too concerned. He’s subsequently found drunk and drowned, and it’s the funeral that summons in the third daughter, Karen (Juliet Lewis) and her Ferrari revving beau (Dermot Mulroney), as well as Violet’s controlling sister, Mattie Fae (Margo Martindale) and her introspective husband, Charles (Chris Cooper).

If the reveal about Bev’s demise seems a spoiler, just know that it comes in the opening few moments, and serves as the plot’s lynchpin for the potpourri of combative personalities to assemble and take off the gloves–if they were ever even on. I’ve been told that Tacy Letts’s Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize winning play that the film’s based on, runs well beyond three hours on stage and that it’s also a touch more subtle and nuanced than John Wells’s screen adaptation. Letts’s works in general are angry and often violent compositions. If you need a reference, just check out the 2011 screen rendering of Letts’s “Killer Joe,” and you’ll know what I mean hook, line and grim sinker.

The cast of “Osage” features no less than five best acting Oscars among them (three of which are Streep’s), and Wells, either by design or timid admiration, throws open the barn door and lets the actors loose to steer themselves. The result is both impressive and muddled. Each hits notes with aplomb, but few seem to bounce off each other with any heartfelt synergy. Wells, who has worked well with a diverse and ranging ensemble before (including Cooper) in “Company Men,” tries to condense too much meanness into the lean two-hour time-frame; and, perhaps, the more grounded medium of the screen alleviates the inherent suspension of disbelief that comes with the stage.

It’s not until the post-funeral feast that the Westons’ deep, dark closet of skeletons, hinted at for so long, finally gets opened. Incest, childhood abuse, tough times and infidelity get trotted out with vitriolic accusation. Cancer and the recently passed loved one seem to be the furthest thing from anyone’s mind, and the men sit by emasculated and soak it all up silently like cornbread in curdled gravy. Barbra, as tart tongued as she is, garners some degree of sympathy; she’s trying to be a good mother and repair her marriage after her husband has stepped out with a coed under his tutelage. The most endearing of the Weston clan, however, are Nicholson’s Iris, a branded spinster who’s never left the Dust Bowl, and Mattie Fae’s meek son, Little Charles (Benedict Cumberbatch in an intriguing juxtaposition from his recent turns as Khan and Julian Assange), who’s constantly berated a halfwit by his own mother. Only they harbor any hope or optimism despite their limited possibilities–a notion that becomes even more isolated and embossed by the hate and vitriol raging around them.

With a less competent ensemble “Osage” might have been just a disturbing, forgettable go. Even with A-listers, the pecking and picking rages on far too long with scant few moments of reflection or atonement. It’s the somber quiet ones like Charles Sr., and Iris and Charles Jr. who give life to the Weston’s big house of pain on the prairie.

— Tom Meek / Meek at the Movies

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ANNALS OF MURDER : HERNANDEZ FROM THE INSIDE

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^ slain because he refused to let a stranger — who turned out to be Aaron Hernandez, big shot — get in front of him in line ? Daniel Abreu

below : Safiro Furtado, who evidently also refused to let the large stranger get in front of him in that Cure line

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Of all the murders now on prosecutors’ table in Massachusetts, none puzzle me more than those allegedly committed by ex-football star Aaron Hernandez. Underworld murders one grasps; they’re part of the business, and all who enter the criominal life understand that. Terrorist murders, though truly nutty, at least profess a larger purpose. But what the blazes were the murders about that Hernandez is accused of doing ?

Though nothing at all has yet been proved, and we should keep that strongly in mind, the events now outlined by various police investigations tell us a whole lot. But first let’s look at what is alleged to have happened :

1.Hernandez and a friend (said to be Alexander Bradley) are standing in line outside Cure Lounge on Tremont Street, waiting to be let in. It is midnight. There is often a line outside Cure at that time — I’ve seen them. Directly ahead of them in line are two men, who we later learn are Daniel Abreu and Safiro Furtado. Anyway, Hernandez and friend finally enter Cure directly after Abreu and Furtado.

2.Hernandez downs two drinks — the Herald says that he “slammed” them — and then leaves, with Bradley in tow.

3.The two immediately get their car, the now infamous silver SUV with Rhode island license plates, and circle the block waiting for Abreu and Furtado to leave.

4.Two hours later (!!) they’re still circling ! Now Abreu and Furtado leave, with three other people. (Q : If Bradley was in the car with Hernandez, didn’t he say something like “it ain’t worth it, man. Forget about it”? If he did not say thus,why didn’t he ? More on this below.)

5.Hernandez and Bradley follow them, circle a block, then pull up alongside the Abreu & Furtado car at a stoplight.

6.Someone fires five shots, killing Abreu and Furtado and injuring others in that car.

The question immediately comes to mind : huh ? What happened here ?

What indeed. There’s no indication that Hernandez knew the two men, nor was there any report of any altercation between him and them inside Cure. What the blazes got Hernandez so ticked off that he went out, waited two hours for the men to leave, and then shot them ?

Only one explanation makes any sense at all :  Is it not likely that he asked the two men to let him get in line ahead of them — and they refused ?

This was enough, it would seem, to violate the ego of a man to whom being a big shot was everything in a life otherwise filled with danger, hangers-on, and living for the moment.

It seems small. It’s also completely ordinary. Stuff like what happened to Hernandez in that Cure line happens to lots of people. You get refused like that, you get angry you want to kill the people who take you down, ka-bang. That’s human nature for many. But then life goes on, and you forget about it. Hernandez couldn’t forget about it. He was with his friend. His friend saw it go down. Hernandez the big shot, the star Patriot tight end, could not be seen being taken down. His front had been pied. And so the waiting and the killing. To wipe the pie off his front.

And that is why Bradley probably did not say “it ain’t worth it” to Hernandez. He either said nothing or perhaps he even encouraged Hernandez. Not because he wanted the two men to die but because he did not want HIMSELF to die. He knew his man. In  fact, about eight months later, so it is reported, Hernandez did try to kill Bradley.

Killings like this happen all the time in the criminal underworld. Front is the only shield that criminals have against being killed themselves. They need to be feared. Especially they need to look tough to their crew. Not fearful, no crew. No crew, dead man. This, we understand. But how to understand it of a $ 40 million football star ? In his life it was murder for murder’s sake.

Out of the ego killing that night arose the next murder, the one for which Hernandez now faces trial as the accused. It seems equally senseless.

1.Hernandez and Odin Lloyd go to Rumor, another nightclub not far from Cure.

2.At Rumor, Lloyd talks to someone who, Hernandez says, he has “had trouble with.”

3.Two nights later, Hernandez calls two Bristol, Connecticut buddies to come join him. The two men dash up — after all, when a $ 40 million football star calls you, and you’re basically about nothing, you are thrilled that he called you. It makes you somebody.

4.At about 12.30 am the three men go to Lloyd’s house and he joins them in their car. (Question : did he not sense danger ? He surely did, but what choice did he have ? If he had refused to join them, he was a dead man, and he knew it, because he KNEW Hernandez. Heck, he was dating the sister of Hernandez’s financee. So into the car he went.)

5.At about 1.30 AM Lloyd texts his sister a couple times, the last one being to tell her “I’m with HIM. Just so you know.” (Q : the three guys LET Lloyd keep his cell phone and send texts ?)

6.About fifteen minutes later Lloyd is ouside the car and is shot dead.

The police report says that Lloyd was killed because “possibly he had information about the killing of Abreu and Furtado” and that that is why he was killed. This made no sense.

But now we find out things that do make sense. We learn that a security staffer at Rumor — a man known to me, as much more at Rumor than just a staffer — told police that “someone spilled the beans” about the 2012 killing “right in front of me.”

Could this “security staffer” be the person whom Hernandez had “had trouble with” ? Could it be that that “staffer’ had been working as such at Cure on the 2012 night in question, and that at Rumor, Lloyd had said hello to him, as somebody he, Lloyd, knew, and that conversation had then ensued ? And which Hernandez saw and heard, remembering very well who the “staffer” was ?

In this case, Hernandez waited not two hours but two nights to make his move. He had been seen packing heat at Rumor before; but evidently not on the night in question. Besides, at Rumor it was only him and Lloyd. He needed backup.

All of this is standard issue in the criminal underworld. People with information get killed all the time. By their close friends ? Of course ; who better to get inside a man’s guard than a close friend ? What is NOT standard issue is to see this sort of thuggery in the daily calendar of a $ 40 million football star. But that — big time football star — is how WE see Hernandez. He evidently saw himself differently. VERY differently — from inside himself.

One last time I caution you that none of the criminal acts narrated by me have yet been offered as evidence, much less proved. The Hernandez trial has yet to begin; the indictment is still in the pre-trial, procedural stage. But the narration is a common one in a world in which fear rules everyone every minute of every day and every word one says, even every item of clothing one wears; fear, worry, anger, and living — regardless of what the side doors of one’s life open onto, stardom included — entirely by the sneer and bad-ass of one’s paper-thin front page.

For the thinness of that paper front, folks have to die.

—- Mike Freedberg / Here and Sphere

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BOSTON MAYOR : TRIUMPH OF THE OLD OLD

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^ the old ways first, then the new, maybe : Trin Nuguyen, Alejandra St. Guillen, Joyce Linehan, Joe Rull, Keith Williams, Eugene O’Flaherty

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Mayor Walsh’s first list of appointments has already generated much controversy. I find a lot of the talk otiose. A new Mayor will make new appointments. Who knows if all will last ? Abraham Lincoln, newly at war, made many appointments of generals, but not for two to three years did he identify a team who would and could do the job. It would not surprise if Walsh’s appointments follow a like course.

That said, the current appointments do accord us a look at how Walsh thinks. In the campaign he promised to create a cabinet of adminstratiors that would reflect the cultural diversity of today’s Boston. This he appears to be doing. The appointment of William Gross as deputy Police Commissioner fulfills a commitment in particular to apppoint a person of color to a Police leadership position. His cabinet also now includes Alejandra St. Guillen of Oiste, Felix G. Arroyo (as Chief of Health and human Services), Keith Williams, and Trinh T. Nguyen. St. Guillen will interim direct the Office of New Bostonians; Nguyen, the Office of Jobs and Community Service. Williams, who served Mayor Menino as deputy director of Neighborhood Services, will interim manage the Office of Small Business. These appointments stand; yet all, except Arroyo, are positions of deputy level. The top positions in the new Mayor’s adminstration have gone almost all to people who to Walsh are long-established, close associates and friends. The only exception so far is new police Commissioner William Evans; and even he is a man of tradition.

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^ campaign commitment honored : new Deputy Police Commissioner Bill Gross

The two-level division of Walsh appointments mirrors how the Mayor campaign played out. First aboard were Walsh’s core supporters, those who were wth him before the 12-candidate primary. From them has Walsh called upon Joyce Linehan, his new director of policy; Joe Rull, his chief of Operations; Chelsea-Charlestown State Represenative Eugene O’Flaherty, who will be his Corporations Counsel; and — reportedly — former State Representative Brian Golden, of Brighton, as interim director of the BRA. At second remove come those who Walsh added to his support vote after the primary — including Felix G. Arroyo, who alone among second-wavers has earned a first level position in the Walsh administration. One is led to believe that Walsh has said, “First group, I trust. Second group, I will see if I can trust.”

That Walsh seems to value long time relationship so highly isn’t unusual at all in local politics. It’s the norm. It’s how Boston voters vote, and it’s why Boston politics changes hardly at all, especially compared to Boston commerce, Boston residence, Boston fashion and social life. Being a “new” Bostonian is a disadvantage in city governance. It was both the great strength of John Connolly’s campaign — because “new” Boston is so dynamic a presence now, and quite numerous — but it was also that campaign’s big weakness. The old knew its opponent very well, identified it very specifically both geographically and in lifestyle. Walsh has made the very practical decision to emphasize the old and the long-time — shrewdly, if ruthlessly — and to accord the new and the briefly recognized an entry, yes : but not the big prizes. Incremental change it is. We know the drill.

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^ George W. Bush favorited : former St. Rep Brian Golden of Brighton may be directing Mayor Walsh’s BRA

It’s also fascinating to see how many of Walsh’s long-timers now live outside the city and will have to move back into it in order to take positions in his administration. Can I also note that many of these long-timers are politicians of very conservative views ? Brian Golden endorsed George W. Bush in 2004. Eugene O’Flaherty is one of the most socially conservative Democrats in the Legislature. I don’t know Joe Rull’s political opinions, but he is a South Boston native — and Southie is right now by far the most Republican-voting neighborhood in the City. Doubtless all three men will accomodate their views to Walsh’s Left-tinged labor traditionalism — because when you take a job with the boss, you do so knowing what he wants of you. But the appointment to high City office of political people much, much more conservative “at heart” (as most will tell you privately) than the brief they are given has been a fact of Boston city governance as long as I can remember. There hasn’t been a Mayor administered by operatives of reformist mind since Kevin White’s first two terms.

No wonder that Michelle Wu voted for Bill Linehan for Council President. She gets the message coming from the corner office — and from 40 years before it, of governance by very conservative folks. The theme is clear.

—- Mke Freedberg / Here and Sphere

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THE TRI-TOWN REPORT : WINTER SPORTS AND A MOUSE TRACK

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Here in North Worcester County, the land of the frozen chosen, January can (seem to) last several months. And so, if you have your wits about you, you’ll take up a winter sport. My husband and son ski at Mt. Wachusett, and I cross-country, when the snow is fine. And my daughter, age 4.5 (or, as she says Four and a half and three quarters) would happily ski down our front yard over and over. You know who we are? We’re the part of Massachusetts that receive a foot of snow, when those in Boston are quivering about an anticipated six inches. And then reality hits, which is that the nor’easter bypasses Boston and heads straight for the middle part of the state, and we end up getting 18 inches.

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You know what that looks like? Curved forms, verses liner. Henry Moore sculpture that’s constantly changing. I’m writing this now, in the middle of the “Polar Vortex” (which, frankly, sounds like a hair metal band I might have seen at Bunratty’s way back when) and noticing all the snow on the trees is gone.

So what we do is head to The Finnish Center at Saima Park http://www.saima-park.org/index.html to go through the trails. They’re cool with snowshoers as well. Or stay indoors and work on textile projects (e.g., quilting, which seems to have a huge following out here). When I was growing up there were several stores devoted exclusively to fabric. In the era of the mighty-mall, you can find remnants at Michael’s and Joanne’s, but my preference is getting those shrunken wool sweaters at Goodwill and making stuffed animals.

And if you want to go out, come to Fitchburg Public Library on January 25, 4:15 pm for “Stories and Shelter Cats.” This is produced by ACE, Animal Care and Education, the group I founded to help look out for stray and homeless animals and educate school kids (ace4animals.org). We have information on how to adopt a dog or cat. Visit ace-central ma on Facebook — excellent pet advice and sharing.

Speaking of animals — you see that picture? You see that picture? It shows a winding trail that was all that remained after the sun melted the first six inches of snow. That’s a mouse-track, heading straight to our compost heap. The shadowy form underneath? That’s a moose track. I have no idea when these two paths intersected, but I’m very, very sorry to have missed this.

— Sally Cragin / The Tri-Town Reprt

Sally Cragin writes the astrology column “Moon Signs” for the Portland and Providence Phoenix newspapers and is reachable at moonsigns.net

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“A KID FROM TAFT STREET IS NOW MAYOR OF BOSTON !”

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^ taking the three-part oath as Boston’s 48th Mayor :Martin Joseph Walsh of District 3

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So said Marty Walsh after being sworn in as Boston’s 48th Mayor. Chief Justice Roderick Ireland swore Walsh in. Walsh’s Mom and brother and his gal-pal Lorrie Higgins stood by to watch the “kid from Taft Street” official become His Honor. It was a moving moment no matter which of the 12 Mayoral candidates you wanted. Walsh grew up without a big name, on a three-decker street, surrounded by temptations, some of which befell him. And now here he was, the City’s leader, holder of perhaps the most powerful elected office in Massachusetts.

Other men have traced the same kind of path from bottom to top. One thinks of Diocletian, Roman Emperor, yet born a slave, who rose, who educated himself. Or of Abraham Lincoln. Or Fiorello LaGuardia and Al Smith. It is, in fact, a commonplace of politics, that those on the bottom often believe in the system more truly than many on the top and who, aspiring, steel themselves to rise within it, no matter how long or painful the climb, and to become the steward of it and of all it represents. There have been innumerable Marty Walshes in history. And yet…it is still moving to see an actual Marty Walsh actually become Boston’s Mayor and to see the gathered thousands of Boston’s elite and non-elite actually there, in Conte Forum, to witness his becoming Mayor and to cheer it.

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^ Senator Elizabeth Warren delivering her remarks to “my friend Marty”

The powerful did not hang back. Senator Elizabeth Warren spoke eloquently about the passion that she and Walsh, so she said, share for alleviating inequality and the achievement gap. Governor Deval Patrick, choosing a light comic note, told Walsh that he would wake up from “a day of blur” but to savor the moment anyway. Cardinal Sean O’Malley of Boston also sat on stage. Yo Yo Ma performed the “Danny Boy Serenade” with dominant intensity and equally masterful delicacy. The entire City Council, all 13 members, sat on the other side of the podium and took its own oath. The front rows of the Forum found a seated multitude of descendants of former Mayors : Flynns, Whites, Fitzgeralds, Hyneses, Collinses — lending depth to the occasion’s topside.

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^ the gathered thousands included a huge segment from Dorchester, all of whom cheered loudly when their Councillor, Frank Baker, was sworn in.

Walsh then delivered an inaugural address sturdy and point by point clear. All the themes of his campaign took a turn : collaboration, diversity in staffing, improving education, ending the achievement gap, attacking violent crime, and assuring full equality to all Bostonians no matter what their sexual orientation, lifestyle or origin. He thanked “,my sisters and brothers in labor” — was roundly cheered — and almost in the next sentence said “let it be known that Boston is open for business.” Here he spoke of “innovation in every neighborhood, not just downtown” and of small business, start-ups, and businesses big.

It was a firm speech, confidently delivered, steady as she goes. Which may well be the defining tenor of Walsh’s administration.

And so you have it. Marty Walsh is your Mayor. Yep.

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^ from Chelsea, with what mission ? new corporations counsel Eugene O’Flaherty, currently chairman of the State’s House Judiciary Committee

Hardly two hours had elapsed after that “yep” when an announcement was made at least as portentous as the inauguration itself : State Representative Eugene O’Flaherty, of Chelsea, is giving up his House seat and his House Judiciary Committee chairmanship, moving from Chelsea to Boston, and becoming Walsh’s chief corporations counsel : the city;s top lawyer. I admit that this choice surprised me completely. It was easy enough to believe that Walsh wanted O’Flaherty, who was first elected to the House in the same year as he (1996). The two men share much heritage. The difficult part for me was, why would O’Flaherty take the job ? He isn’t just a State Representative, he is one of the chamber’s key leaders. And also have to move house. There has to be a big story going on, and what it is, I can only speculate. It may involve the Steve Wynn casino project : O’Flaherty represents Charlestown, which Walsh did not come close to winning on election day and which will; be heavily impacted. Is O’Flaherty being asked to use his particular knowledge of the area to win the best mitigation package possible from Wynn, including — a top Walsh priority — construction jobs ? or perhaps to sue the Wynn project, or the Suffolk Downs Revere-only casino project if needed ?

We will soon find out.

We will also find out who Walsh chooses to head the other City departments. Of only one such did he say there would be a “nationwide search” : schools superintendent. Of course so. No Bostonian would want the thankless, frustrating job. (One of his two school committee appointments has already caused comment : replacing charter school principal Mary Tamer with labor lawyer Michael Loconto.) As the school committee appointment shows, not many Bostonians Walsh might name as superintendent would avoid raising an outcry from one interest group or another. Compared to schools superintendent, it’ll be easy to pick a Police Commissioner and one for the Fire Department. No nationwide search needed there.

—- Mike Freedberg / Here and Sphere

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BOSTON MAYOR : MANAGEMENT IS THE MESSAGE

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^ probably the most-viewed face in Boston today : 29-year old Daniel Koh, who will be Mayor-elect Marty Walsh’s Chief of staff

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“Management” is the message that Mayor-elect Walsh is sending so far. Changes in polkicy may be coming; certainly his core supporters insist on it; but for now, the prioority is to manage better what already is.

We saw the message previewed at the Transition Team Hearings, in which each Task Force found its suggestions divided into “keep,” “implenent,” and “dream” components. Categorization helped task force participants to appraise the impact of their ideas — and to traffic-cop the discussion toward flow, not tie-ups. Still, it wasn’t clear then that traffic-copping would become a policy in itself; but it looks that that is what has happened.

The selction of Huffington Post chief staff manager Daniel Koh to be Walsh’s chief of staff confirms it. Koh is a manager, not a politician. He holds an advanced degree in management; method is his milieu, application his brief. Havard; Phillips Andover (disclosure : my school too). He worked in Mayor Menino’s administration prior to joining Huff post. His selection assures that the policies will be Walsh’s, the implementation, Koh’s. Sometimes chiefs of politicians’ staffs inject policy ideas of their own. It’s all too easy for an office holder’s office manager to control the action. Koh will not — probably can not — do that to Walsh : or maybe I should say, he and Walsh agree completely, that management will be the policy and thus Koh will have free rein to make it happen as he deems best.

(to learn more about Daniel Koh, follow this link to his Huff post bio : http://www.huffingtonpost.com/daniel-koh/ )

The selection has won almost universal applause. Nearly everyone understands that, despite Tom Menino’s remarkable popularity with voters, his City Hall abounds in seat of the pants. “Temperamental” is its key. Who knows what, or who, will be the priority tomorrow, or the next day, of Menino’s impromptu, grudge-freckled mind ? As for the BRA, the less said the better. Developers either got aboard Mayor Menino’s Indiana Jones-like chase horse or they risked getting poofed, or cornered. Communities into which developments were to be deposited found themselves labyrinthed, door-locked, sweet-and-sour talked. One heard it at all the Mayoral Forums during the campaign, in every part of the city. Heard also was an almost universal demand to simplify the City’s permitting process — or should I call it “permitting adventure” ? Permitting should eanble enterprise,l not discourage it, much less laugh at it.

Nobody much mentioned the taxi scandal during the campaign; it wasn’t laid at Menino’s door; but nowhere in City governance was Menino’s managerial unavilability more on view. For how many years had the City’s taxi drivers been allowed to be cheated, gouged, disrespected by taxi medallion owners, with not a whisper of investigation undertaken, much less corrective action ? It happend on Menino’s watch, and he knows it did. So do we.

Walsh appears determined to not let that sort of sinkhole exist on his watch. This is a good thing, and a wise one. Walsh knows that the City is divided on most of the major policy areas he will eventually have to face. School reform, City unions, staffing diversity, traffic and bikes, poverty and achidvement, public safety — all portend division that Walsh, elected by a coalition internally mjuch at odds, cannot afford to take hold. On management of what the City does already do, however, there is almost no disagreement : it needs dramatic improvement. Order out of anarchy, simplicity from confusion.

Improving City management was the message of two Mayoral campaigns that did not win : Rob Consalvo and Dan Conley. Walsh won almost all the Consalvo votes : voters who don’t like Walsh’s charter schools record and don’t readily comport with his trade union style but who chose him nonetheless. These voters must be happy to see Walsh adopt Consalvo’s signature theme. As for Dan Conley voters, Walsh won hardly any. His emphasis on City administration first can only be a pleasant surprise to voters who did not envision Walsh as an administrator of anything.

You all know that we at Here and Sphere favored John Connolly. But I saw in Dan Conley a very capable second choice. Thus I too find Walsh’s “management first” message a wise one. The policy decisions can wait while he — and we — fix the process by which those policy decisions will be implemented.

Meanwhile, Councillor Ayanna Pressley has announced that she will seek the Council Presidency. She is said to have Matt O’Malley’s vote and Tito Jackson’s. The wheels are turning. Oh yes they are.

—- Mike Freedberg / Here and Sphere

UPDATE : Now I am getting reports that Bill Linehan will have no less than 8 votes out of 13.  Even so, Ayanna Pressley has made her move. And a statement.

by hereandsphere

SNOW AND COLD, COLD AND SNOW

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Outside my front door almost eighteen inches of white chilly dust quilts everything. Car, bushes, porch roof, trash barrels, sidewalk all wear a parka-coated white through which humps and twigs loom or stab, grasping toward the sun. Good luck with that ; the sun wears a shawl of haze, a lace of cloud ice. Tomorrow, maybe, it will shine; today it sports a drowsy eyelid. A half-asleep sun can’t do its job. The temperature as I write sits at 8 degrees of F. At wake-up time it was 4. But that means there’s no melt, none at all. The snow is dry, as sere as a corpse’s spit. I broomed it off, whisk — whoosh — see-ya !

Then the car. That wasn’t as 1-2-3. Last night’s defroster ice bonded to the windshield epoxy-like; it clung to the driver’s side door like a tic. I had to enter from the passenger side — that door not having opened during last night’s drive, no ice crept into its lock — slide across to the driver seat and with shoulder, shove the door open — wham ! It opened, all right — with a crack. Had my shove ripped the door frame from its seams ? With fingers frozen stiff I stumbled the key into the ignition, wanked it with my knuckles, pumped the pedal — the engine turned over, faithful horse that it is. Was there enough antifreeze, or would the block crack ? On mornings like this I ask that question. They don’t happen every year even here on the coast just northeast of Boston, but at 7 AM it’s too late to wish that I had checked the coolant yester-eve. I am in luck. The engine warms up smoothly. Eight minutes and the defroster is melting the windscreen ice. My hands, too.

Five more minutes of melt, and I can see the driveway and the street. Off I go. Easy on the pedal, steady, out the driveway, onto the street — nobody’s coming, nobody at all, there’s not a car anywhere but mine. It’s the kind of selfie that I like. An honest street on an honest day.

Out onto the expanse of road my horse purrs. Piles of snow dust flank the wide street. The plows guys have earned their overtime pay, the main roads are clear as a gallop. To the nearest Starbucks I go, here to assuage my latte addiction, eat a walnut muffin, and write the story that you are reading now.

It’s one helluva winter morning in coastal Massachusetts. Cold and snow, snow and cold. There isn’t even one boat on the harbor, only unused mooring sticks. But the sun is riffling the bay surface into chips of foam, the nor’west wind catches them and rolls the foam up like an ice quiche. Somebody ought to run a trawl right now. When i was a young’un, we’d do just that : run a few traps for lobster — January lobsters are hard-shell like you wouldn’t believe, full of meat and chewy. And fish ? Under surface water this cold entire flocks of fish come out and party like ravers. But I see no trawler, no tuna boat, no lobster dory. Just water wind and haze of sun. It’s a quiet thing, is cold. Not a sound. Dust of snow too has no voice.

But I do.

—- Mike Freedberg / Here and Sphere

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by hereandsphere

LABOR ISSUES AND THE ECONOMY : UNITY IN NEW YORK

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^ center left pact ? unity in New York as Bill Clinton swears in mayor Bill deBlasio

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By asking Bill Clinton to swear him in as New York City’s new Mayor, Bill deBlasio has already made history. On this one move, deBlasio has assured that the Democratic Party will not split between wings “Labor’ and “Centrist.”

This is good news for all Americans who want to see economic progress come to their lives, not just the very favored top earners. Many Americans — myself included — are pushing legislation and referenda to relieve the huge rush of money to the top, money away from everybody else. These moves cannot take the field as an opposition movement within the only political party placed to bring them about. Bill deBlasio and Bill Clinton have signalled that they understand this and will move forward as Democrats together. The initiatives the two men agree on could not be more vital :

1.raise the Federal minimum wage to $ 10.10 n hour and index it to inflation.
2.protect unemployment benefits for long-term unemployed, many of whom have been without work so long that they already require job retraining in order to maintain skills currency
3.commit all the Federal spending needed to repair and improve America’s infrastructure
4.maintain the Federal food stamp program, do not cut funding for it

To which I could add the following :

1.fully staff the National labor relations baord (NLRB) to monitor and protect the organizing and bargaining rights of workers in organizable industries
2.make it an unfair labor practice to (a) reduce workers’ hours to part-time levels so as to avoid paying benefits or providing health insurance (b) make such workers “independent contractors” rather than W-2 employees
3.extend the “earned income” credit to incomes up to 150 % of Federally defined “poverty” level.
4.pass a comprehensive immigration bill that provides all undocumented immigrants other than those with a felony criminal record a pathway to citizenship, and immediately grant social security numbers, access to drivers’ licenses, and access to health care to all such immigrants.

The initiatives that deBlasio and Bill Clinton jointly advocate, and those that I have added to the list, purpose to do the right thing by many millions of our neighbors; they will grow the economy strongly. Did we need Jeb Bush –a Republican — to point out, as he did at last year’s CPAC Conference, that undocumented immigrants are a boon to the economy, in the work that they do and, yes, the taxes that they pay ? That by their young demographic, they help rescue the Social Security fund ? Jeb Bush said that. Why it needed saying, I’ll never understand. It’s common sense ! The economy is ALL of us. If millions cannot participate in it except at the margins, the economy suffers. Time and again I have editorialized that consumer spending = two thirds of our ENTIRE economy. You want jobs created ? Consumer spending creates them. businesses do not hire people because taxes drop. They hire people because demand increases for their products and services.

Why can’t the funders of today’s Republican party get this ? The businesses that have pushed most current Republicans to fight every move that puts more money into more people’s budgets are blind to their own interests. Any business exec with half a brain knows that his or her employees are the strongest asset, that employee turnover is a huge and largely unnecessary expense; that prosperous and loyal employees buy what they make or the services they provide; that they spread the company’s good reputation by word of mouth to everyone they talk to.

May I add, as I’ve said before, that if the Republican-funding business execs don’t like unions, don’t make your workers organize one in order to get paid what they deserve ? Otherwise, expect a union and all the hassle, drama, and — unhappily — oppression and even intimidation that comes with union organizing and job actions.

Granted that almost all of the new job descriptions being formed in the technology world are not union work. They’re as individualistic as innovation in the raw always is. New economy jobs also pay well. There’s no lack of venture funding for innovation work. I also note that many, maybe most, innovation venturists work with the Democratic party now. They’re not the breed of CEO that funds self-defeating money PACs.

In Boston, in our Mayor election, these innovation capitalists and the start-up world that they fund split with union and union-organizing interest groups about which man to support. Nor do we have available a Bill Clinton to swear in Marty Walsh and reunify our state’s Democratic party. But the issue that divided Boston’s Democrats in the mayoral election wasn’t part of the economic progress agenda that Bill Clinton and Mayor deBlasio have shaken hands on. Here the issue was the part that public worker unions should play in the City’s budget and what level of influence they should have on City policy governance. On the economic progress agenda, Walsh and John Connolly fully agreed.

—- Mike Freedberg / Here and Sphere

PS : many of the innovation venturists and execs who supported John Connolly were and are of a mind to support some Republican candidates, at least locally in Massachusetts; possibly even nationally. Why the current Republican consensus cannot connect to these innovation capitalists, I’ll never understand. It would help, of course, if the party could ditch the lifestyle bigotry and lose the opposition to women’s reproductive rights. Fortunately, those obstacles mine no ground in Massachusetts. Charlie Baker, if he hopes to be our Governor, is free to embrace innovation capitalism, discard Scrooge agendas, wave off the anti-immigrant talk, and embrace diversity, economic dispersion, and the future. He might just do that. His excellent plan to end homelessness in Massachusetts is a promising first step.

by hereandsphere

BOSTON SCHOOLS REFORM : THE ROLE OF PEDAGOGY

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^ the teacher overseeing “learning in community”

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In Part I of my look at how Boston should reform its Public Schools mission I focused on curriculum. I asserted that employers and citizenship must be accorded primary status in curriculum, and also must be the decider about competition among teachers and between schools.

Now for Part II, in which I discuss pedagogy — the means and methods by which teaching is done — because pedagogy is the province of teachers and only teachers. It is they who must use them. It is teachers who innovate teaching method. Teachers lead by example. They are the souls in which passion for knowledge lives.

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mathematics pedagogy : Building the Habits (Love) of Learning

As in so much of the world of thought and in the practice and theory education, Augustine (354-430 AD) was the first to write comprehensively about pedagogy. I cannot think of any writer then or since who has contributed more — even as much — to our understanding of what a teacher does, how, and why. It is well worth your time to read the following long passage from Wikipedia’s extensive biography of Augustine, who was a teacher all his adult life, a brilliant thinker, and (if anything) an even more brilliant writer :

“Historian Gary N. McCloskey ( says a passage in Augustine’s Wikipedia biography) finds four “encounters of learning” in Augustine’s approach to education:

1.Through Transforming Experiences;
2.as a Journey in Search of Understanding/Meaning/Truth;
3.Learning with Others in Community; and
4.Building the Habits (Love) of Learning.

“His emphasis on the importance of community as a means of learning distinguishes his pedagogy from some others. Augustine believed that dialogue/dialectic/discussion is the best means for learning, and this method should serve as a model for learning encounters between teachers and students. Saint Augustine’s dialogue writings model the need for lively interactive dialogue among learners.

“He introduced the theory of three different categories of students, and instructed teachers to adapt their teaching styles to each student’s individual learning style.

“The three different kinds of students are:
1. the student who has been well-educated by knowledgeable teachers
2.the student who has had no education; and
3.the student who has had a poor education, but believes himself to be well-educated.

“If a student has been well educated in a wide variety of subjects, the teacher must be careful not to repeat what they have already learned, but to challenge the student with material which they do not yet know thoroughly. With the student who has had no education, the teacher must be patient, willing to repeat things until the student understands, and sympathetic. Perhaps the most difficult student, however, is the one with an inferior education who believes he understands something when he does not. Augustine stressed the importance of showing this type of student the difference between “having words and having understanding,” and of helping the student to remain humble with his acquisition of knowledge.

“Augustine introduced the idea of teachers responding positively to the questions they may receive from their students, no matter if the student interrupted his teacher.

“Augustine also founded the restrained style of teaching. This teaching style ensures the students’ full understanding of a concept because the teacher does not bombard the student with too much material; focuses on one topic at a time; helps them discover what they don’t understand, rather than moving on too quickly; anticipates questions; and helps them learn to solve difficulties and find solutions to problems.

“Yet another of Augustine’s major contributions to education is his study on the styles of teaching. He claimed there are two basic styles a teacher uses when speaking to the students. The mixed style includes complex and sometimes showy language to help students see the beautiful artistry of the subject they are studying. The grand style is not quite as elegant as the mixed style, but is exciting and heartfelt, with the purpose of igniting the same passion in the students’ hearts.”

Augustine knew well what teachers today know and apply every day in the classroom : that different students require different means and methods. Augustine’s insight can thus be extended to Special Education as well. There are only two ways to apply Augustine’s individualized teaching. either you can separate the three categories of students and teach them apart, or you can bring them into the same classroom and work each group as they are. As Augustine counted highly the community setting, he would seem to favor the integrated classroom.

Can this work ? Augustine was the first education theorist to suggest a variety of teaching styles, each geared to a category of student. It must have been an exciting classroom, with Augustine teaching one way to one group of students and another way to another group, and all the students observing — even participating — in the diverse program. But Augustine did not confine his teaching to classrooms. He loved company at meals, and it is not unlikely that he had many of his students to dinner, thereat to instruct them, probably by improvisation upon the various pedagogic styles he wrote about (and certainly used).

I make the following additional observations to this examination of the greatest educational theorist’s pedagogy ;

1.None but a teacher could have conceived the pedagogic challenge as creatively as Augustine did, or as insightfully
2.certainly the employer of that time, the Roman imperial bureaucracy, could not have done it. Nor did it care to try. That was why it hired teachers. It was the teachers’ job to figure out how to educate students to the needs of Imperial administration.
3.assumed in all of Augustine’s education manual is that all teaching must met a standard of effectiveness. In his time, that was determined by the employer. The ineffective teacher lost Imperial favor, or students, or both. It was a self-evaluating system.

What we teach today has changed — though not as hugely as we sometimes assume — and schools now answer to a million employers, not only one. But Augustine’s pedagogic rule remains : that it is teachers, and only teachers, who must devise the means and methods by which will be taught the curriculum that the society and employers pay to have taught.

Teachers in Augustine’s day had no choice but to excel. They were not paid by the state. Their pay came from students’ fees. If a teacher had imperial favor, the fact was known, and he drew students; and these students paid. If he lost favor, the students’ parents saw that and sent their children elsewhere. Tenure ? There was no such thing. Every day, a teacher risked all. While it worked, it was the finest education system our civilization knew until modern times. Of course I do not suggest that we abolish tenure. far from it. That’s too much to ask of teachers who practice under the current system and have career time invested in it. But I do want to assert that tenure comes at a cost. A non-tenure system such as Roman education is self-evaluating. Evaluations in our tenure system depend upon who is doing the evaluating and answering for them to whom. Most of the evaluators are middlemen, not the society — and not the employers. But I suppose that, as in so much, inefficiency is the precious price that democratic government pays to a complex society of human fallibility.

Today we educate every child, not just the next generation of imperial administrators. We teach for a hundred different careers; we teach dozens of subjects. Scientific method was unknown. All students, of whatever  origin, learned in Latin. A unified administration was the rule then; diversity is ours now. Then, the stylus and tablet ruled; today, the digital device. Yet for all the differences between Augustine’s late imperial state and our always changing polity, teaching remains what Augustine knew it to be : teacher and student, teacher and students, learning for a purpose, a career, a better life and — perhaps — the love of learning for its own sake.

For Augustine, teachers ruled. So too for most of the educational theorists whose impact has been paramount since. Some theorists emphasize the school administrator — the principal. Some, the grading system and promotion from grade to grades. All these Augustine’s school took into account as well. The teacher yet ruled.

If the members of teachers unions could only accept their mission, embrace it as their unique contribution, risk all, and apply it within the larger context of society, competition, and employer curriculum, we would move a long way toward deploying education’s variety of means, methods, subjects, and standards in a context of challenge, innovation, and struggle as opposed to job security, curriculum debates, and one size fits all. It doesn’t. If Augustine knew that, why not us ?

—- Michael Freedberg / Here and Sphere

NOTE : You should read Augustine’s Retractiones as well as Peter Brown’s almost on-the-scene biography of Western Civilization’s most insightful social and psychological thinker — not to mention brilliant punster, superb speaker, and dramatic lecturer.