Hubway Relaunch

Active Transportation

Boston cyclists have taken 15,000 rides since Boston’s bike share system, Hubway, soft-relaunched in early March. Memberships have grown to over 5,000. Today at noon, Mayor Menino and bike czar Nicole Friedman officially reopened the Hubway at a short ceremony/event in front of the Boston Public Library.

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The Inescapable Logic of Liberalism

Politics

What happens if “Obamacare” gets shot down by the Supreme Court? The most troubling part of the law, even from a Liberal’s perspective, is the individual mandate–the deal “we” cut with the insurance industry to buy their support for a system of increased regulation. It has always seemed wrong that the government could require individuals [...]

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Community Norms Alive and Well on Public Transit

Local to Boston

We had a moment on the bus yesterday. As I sat holding Marshall on my lap, on a very crowded 36 bus leaving Forest Hills, the woman sitting in front of me started confronting a girl with her young child: “Did you just say you was going to hit him?” The girl shot back, “Did [...]

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I “hit the nail upon the top…without having side effect.”

Humor

I am increasingly entertained by blog spam. Since I started reposting (from my phone, no less), I must concede the quality of my writing has declined and yet the quality of spam improves daily. What was once gibberish and quotes copied and pasted from somewhere else has become obsequious pidgin prose. [update: I'm not the [...]

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Can’t We All Just Get Along?

Essay

I let myself get into an irritating conversation last night, and it left me wondering what the endgame of our dysfunctional political system will be. The guy next to me started up, complaining about Rick Santorum and Mitt Romney, but I could tell Obama was probably so disgusting to him it wasn’t worth talking about. [...]

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Boston March

Local to Boston

Last year, we gathered the children together and braved the freezing cold of May and June to play Tee Ball at Pine Bank just up the hill from Jamaica Pond. Popsicles seemed a cruel irony to close the games we did play while rain and sleet cancelled others. But this week in Boston has been [...]

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Time to Ride

Active Transportation

Hubway is back in Boston. After the mildest winter I can remember, with barely any snow, the paths are clear and, as the mercury passed 81 degrees today, I found myself breaking a sweat. I leisurely rode from my job near North Station, along the Esplanade to the new bike lanes on Mass. Ave to [...]

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Everyday on the MBTA

Active Transportation

Marshall is set to be a “T”-pro by the time he goes to high school. This year, he’s attending a preschool in Jamaica Plain (the next neighborhood up from where we live in Roslindale) and most mornings, I drop him off on the way to work. It’s much easier than driving and it makes each [...]

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Magic of Youth

Creative Life

Four-leaf clovers are not so incredibly rare, but they sure are hard to find. Probably a few years ago now, I started to pay attention a bit more and I remembered how, as kids, we would sit on the ground and search for four-leaf clovers. Somebody always found one and at the time, I didn’t [...]

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Boston School Assignment Process Review Carefully Orchestrated to What End?

Education

After I suggested a way to fix the Boston Public School lottery process here, I attended the first of a series of community meetings in Boston designed to make good on Mayor Menino’s promise to “[adopt] a radically different student assignment plan – one that puts a priority on children attending schools closer to their [...]

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