» Publishers, Monetize your RSS feeds with FeedShow: More infos (Show/Hide Ads)
Scott captured the scene on McGrath Highway in Somerville the other night.
Copyright Scott. Posted in the Universal Hub pool on Flickr.
The Boston Fire Department reports heat from contractors taking apart old pipes in the basement of the Emmanuel College administration building traveled up five floors and set wooden flooring on fire around 2 p.m. today.
Nobody was injured in the fire in the 400 Fenway building, undergoing renovations, the department says, adding damage was estimated at $50,000.
Chinatown Blogger recalls Ngau Ming, or, in English, Crazy Ming, probably one of the neighborhood's top kung-fu fighters - who didn't mind getting into fights at the local bars:
... When I met him I realized more clearly why it was easy for him to get into a fight. He had a crazy stare that just looked off and made you nervous even if you were his friend. Whether he was born like that or became like that over a lifetime or a combination of both is unknown to me. ...
Boston Police report a man pumping gas at the Sunoco station at 895 Mass. Ave. got into an argument with two other men that ended with one of them stabbing him, around 12:30 a.m. on Friday.
The victim was taken to nearby Boston Medical Center with injuries not considered life threatening.
The Patriot Ledger reports.
Ross Levanto notes he can now sleep in on Saturdays if he'd parked his car on Beacon Street the night before, thanks to a change in the city's parking rules for the street. It's no small thing in the over-parked neighborhood:
... The local Beacon Hill Civic Association has a parking committee, with a charter that basically boils down to preservation of the precious parking spaces. Generally speaking, if you find an open parking spot on Beacon Hill, the driver has to assume there is something wrong with it. After deftly performing a parallel park into an open space, I get out of the car and spend a few minutes investigating the spot. I generally follow a mental checklist ...
So thanks to readers and the local paper for informing me of all the happenings this month. I really feel like the Dedham art scene is alive and thriving and the activities this month prove that.
Last Sunday I spent my afternoon with the kids at St. Susanna's to hear the incredible Parkway Concert Orchestra to benefit the Dedham Music Association. They are the group that keeps the arts and music alive in the Dedham Schools. I was able to take my 3 kids to a Boston Pops quality show for $10 and not have to worry about finding parking or that my kids would wreak havoc. We sat in the back pew and had a ball. My two older ones were standing on the kneeler(probably a faux pas) and imitating the conductor while the little one was snug in the sling enjoying the music.
Coming up there is a theater production of Guys and Dolls at the First Church on Friday and Saturday, March 19th and 20th, Zombie Prom at Dedham High School, March 11 and 12th, an adult writing workshop class at Blue Bunny on March 12, and oil painting workshop on March 15th at Endicott Estate at 7pm. If arts aren't your thing, but spelling is, join the Dedham Education's Foundation annual Spelling Bee on March 19th at 7pm at the Dedham Middle School.
Down with the March blahs! Bring on the March ahhhs!
I took a trip out to one of the Boston Harbor Islands one day last summer. It was a bit overcast, and few were there that day. Walking down along the beach, there was no one around, and there were no boats in the water in view. I heard a tinkling sound, like glass chimes. It continued, and I could see no building with chimes or boat or person that could be making the sound.....That day, I was also feeling a strong connection to my dad, who was born in East Boston back in 1905. I imagined him as a boy down at the East Boston waterfront throwing bottles into the water..... Then all of a sudden I realized where the sounds were coming from. It was all the many broken pieces of "seaglass" chiming against each other in the lapping waves hitting the shore. I wondered, then, if the bottles my dad threw into the water about 100 years ago were now chiming to me as their broken pieces washed up on the shore.
Matthew Cote snapped this photo of I-93 southbound by the Garden around 4:21 p.m. today - showing the bus that had just rear-ended a car, causing some serious stall-and-crawl activity.
Ramshackle Salvation Army building: To become sparkly new corporate headquarters?
Boston city councilors today generally backed a proposed city/state deal to grant Liberty Mutual 20 years' of tax breaks to build a new headquarters in the Back Bay, but said the insurer's CEO really should take his foot out of his mouth and stop comparing Boston to Venezuela (assuming the Herald quoted him accurately, which councilors Feeney and Linehan doubted). Residents, however, objected to giving a very profitable company money for building on a "blighted" property. The company itself said it has no plans to move out of Boston no matter what happens - but might not expand without the tax break.
<!--break-->
The insurer - the only Fortune 100 company left in Boston - last year bought two unoccupied buildings and a parking lot at Columbus Avenue and Berkeley Street, with plans to spend $300 million to build a new corporate headquarters there.
Both the mayor and the state have said they would forego $16 million in taxes apiece over 20 years to make the deal happen. Ron Rakow, assessing commissioner, said the three parcels at the location only generate $40,000 a year in property-tax revenue now, in part because the Salvation Army is tax exempt. Even with the tax break, Rakow said the project would mean $50 million in new tax revenue over 20 years. Rakow said the city would not lay out any money up front for Liberty Mutual, but would instead discount its taxes over 20 years.
Michael Ross praised the insurer as a good corporate citizen, but blasted CEO Ted Kelly for his complaints about over-paid public employees and how the company has more success working in Venezuela than in Massachusetts. Ross said the comments are untrue, ignore the quality of life in Massachusetts and our highly educated workforce and are just "damaging to our brand, to our city and our state."
He added, "When a CEO says those types of things, it takes a lot for us to recover, especially when they're not true."
Libery Mutual Vice President Paul Mattera suggested Kelly was taken out of context because he was talking about longer-term issues, such as public pension reform.
"Boston has so many wonderful qualities and this commonwealth has so many wonderful qualities, we're not interested in, nor would we consider, moving away," he said. However, without the tax breaks, the company might not expand in Boston, either, he said.
"For $16 million (in tax breaks) for a corporation in excess of $25 billion (in revenue), you're saying this is a significant dealbreaker for you?" City Councilor Charles Yancey asked.
"The way you become successful is you watch every penny," Mattera said.
"If you watch your pennies, then you don't have to worry about your dollars," Councilor Maureen Feeney, agreed.
Nearby residents, however, objected to the proposed tax break. John Keith, who lives on Tremont Street, compared Mattera's comment about not building to Filene's Hole developer Steve Roth's comments about letting a property stay blighted to squeeze more tax incentives out of New York: "And the mayor doesn't like that, but he likes this," he said, adding "There is no blight in that neighborhood."
Larry DiCara, company lawyer (and former city councilor) said the buildings now on the parcel are, in fact, blighted because they're in terrible shape after years of disuse.
Maura Burke, a member of the Neighborhood Association of the Back Bay, asked how the city could give a large company a tax break when it's threatening to shut libraries and schools.
Steve Wintermeier of the Back Bay praised the company as a good neighbor, but told the council needs to consider: "Are we encouraging a project that might possible fail, despite the current financial health of Liberty Mutual?" He said Boston already has a glut of commercial office space and is concerned that adding still more space would wind up hurting residents because of the way it would further depress commercial values and force more of the tax burden onto homeowners.
Ned Flaherty said Liberty Mutual is already taking "tens of millions of dollars" in tax breaks on other nearby properties and giving it a break is unfair to other taxpayers. "The only jobs going to be added by Liberty Mutual are the ones they are going to add automatically because they have a business need."
Meg Mainzer-Cohen of the Back Bay Association, however, compared the tax break to coupons supermarkets hand out. In the end, they win, by drumming up new business - and in this case, the city wins, by ultimately bringing in more tax revenue.
The Globe reports the Suffolk County District Attorney's office today dropped its case against Miguel Vargas, 24, of Brighton, on charges he held up the same convenience store twice in December and was involved in planning a third robbery.
But the Globe says the DA's office could re-charge Vargas, against whom it still harbors strong suspicion of involvement in the heists. As a result of his arrest, Vargas lost his job with the DPW when he failed to show up for work, because he was in jail.
Innocent, etc.<!--break-->
Look! Another reality show seeking Bostonians:
Are you fabulous, with a wicked crazy social life and a tendency to tell it like it is? Do you believe Massachusetts beats the hell out of New York? Are your priorities workouts, hair and friends? A TV production company is seeking cast members for a new reality show set near Boston. The show will feature attractive, charismatic men and women, between the ages of 25 and 40.
Translation: We wanna do Jersey Shore, only we'll call it Reveah Beach, cuz it'll be wicked pissa.
Via John Keith.
The state Department of Transportation has set up a Web site with info on its $15.6-million, two-year intersection project along the busy road.
Matt Conti posts a copy of a letter from Segway, Inc., to the North End/Waterfront Neighborhood Council, in which the company disavows any ties to the "irresponsible" Boston Gliders, which leads Segway tours of Boston from Commercial Street.
On March 23, the city council holds a hearing on a proposal by Councilor Sal LaMattina - the only city official to admit having somebody hit him with a Segway on purpose just to see what would happen - to ban Segways from certain busy sidewalks, such as those on Hanover and Newbury streets.
MassBeacon.com reports everybody's favorite perennial candidate has decided to run for something this year, after all: Attorney general.
District E-18 reports the fake water workers who'd been knocking on doors in Roslindale have moved south, getting themselves invited into homes by claiming to be water workers who need to inspect pipes:
While the resident leads one of the team to the basement, the others in the team will go throughout the residence and ransack bedroom areas of valuables. They even sometimes cut the telephone line so the resident cannot access 911 Emergency.
Police advice: Don't let anybody into your house unless you initiated a service call.
Friends of the Friends of the Egleston Square Branch Library will hold a rally at noon tomorrow to support the city's branch libraries and demand none be closed as a way to bridge the $3.6-million budget deficit BPL officials say they face.
The Supreme Judicial Court ruled today the legislature has the right to let the developers of the massive NorthPoint project build on what were once tidal marshes.
In practical terms, the decision on a lawsuit brought by John Moot - who died last year - may be moot because the developers of the project are embroiled in other legal wrangling and may never finish the project.
However, it does uphold the legislature's right to reduce requirements for building on "landlocked tidelands," such at NorthPoint, where the tidelands become landlocked in 1962, when the state let the Boston & Maine fill in some of the marshes. In 2007, the SJC agreed with Moot and said the developers had no right to build on the land under state law. In response, the legislature passed a law - signed by Gov. Patrick - that exempted such lands from the state law regulating coastal construction.
The court ruled today the law passes constitutional muster and that while the developers, if they ever get their act together, no longer have to go through licensing, they and the state still have to prove the public good of the work.
A divided Supreme Judicial Court today rejected a Winchester murder suspect's attempt to dismiss statements he made to police at his Boston lawyer's office in 2007, saying the fact he had nearly an hour to talk to the lawyer beforehand was more than enough of safeguard of his federal and state rights against self incrimination and police coercion.
The court, however, also ruled the judge in his trial will have to exclude portions of a 911 call from another alleged victim because the man later died and so cannot testify in court.
Wally Jacques Simon is charged with shooting one man to death during a break-in. The man's brother, whom Simon is also charged with shooting and who called 911 to report the crime and ID Simon, died nine months later of a heart attack - which his family says was brought on by watching his brother get shot and die.
According to the court record, after the shooting, Simon drove to Boston, tailed by police, and pulled into a parking lot across from the office of his lawyer, Daniel Solomon, whom he then dialed up on his cell phone. Solomon whisked him upstairs, after telling police he'd get back to them on whether Simon would talk to them. After an hour, he let police into his office, where after questioning Simon, they arrested him for the two shootings.
Simon sought to have the conversation tossed because police did not read him his Miranda rights until he was being booked at a police station. In its 4-3 ruling, however, the court said the fact he'd spent at least 45 minutes talking to his lawyer was enough to ensure police were not coercing anything from him:
We conclude that the presence of an attorney during questioning, when combined with the opportunity to consult with the attorney beforehand, substitutes adequately for Miranda warnings.
The court added:
In this case, the attorney was present during the entirety of the interrogation, and the defendant had the opportunity to consult with the attorney in private beforehand. Accordingly, the defendant's right against self-incrimination was fully protected even in the absence of Miranda warnings. The motion to suppress the defendant's statements was properly denied.
The court also rejected Simon's effort to suppress the entire 911 call on the grounds he would be unable to confront his accuser because he's now dead - although it did say portions in which the brother IDed Simon as the shooter can be excluded - because most of the call qualified as a "spontaneous utterance" exempt from the Sixth Amendment confrontation clause:
Someone entered the victim's home and shot both the victim and his brother. The victim made his statements to the 911 dispatcher soon thereafter, while he was suffering from a gunshot wound and while he was aware of his brother's life-threatening condition. The content and tone of his statements indicate that the victim was in pain and agitated about his medical state and that of his brother. The shootings were startling events, and the victim's 911 telephone call and his responses to the dispatcher's questions were a spontaneous reaction to those events. ... Accordingly, the victim's statements to the dispatcher are admissible under the spontaneous utterance exception to the hearsay rule.
BOTSFORD, J. (dissenting, with whom Marshall, C.J., and Spina,
Justices Margot Botsford, Margaret Marshall and Francis Spina, dissented, arguing that Article 12 of the Massachusetts constitution grants defendants even broader rights than the Fifth Amendment - among them that only a person under questioning can explicitly waive his rights. In this case, the mere presence of a lawyer was imply not enough, they wrote.
The police have been administering Miranda warnings to suspects for more than forty years; doing so is an integral piece of proper police procedure. Cf. Commonwealth v. Smith, 412 Mass. at 836 ("The failure to administer the Miranda warnings as presently required by Federal law is itself an improper police tactic"). The warnings, and their administration, are clear and straightforward, and this clarity offers essential protection of a suspect's art. 12 rights.