Rising to meet an infinite need – Partners in Health, long a force in Haiti, vaults into central role
By Stephen Smith and James F. Smith – Globe Staff / January 24, 2010
CANGE, Haiti – His hometown in ruins, his right arm broken, Frantz Verdieu knew he had to escape the acrid air and rubble-strewn streets of Port-au-Prince.
There was, he decided in the desperate hours after the earthquake that sundered the capital city, only one place to seek safe harbor and medical care: Cange, a town of about 30,000 in Haiti’s Central Plateau, and the birthplace of Partners in Health.
So he traversed mountain roads – rough as a washboard in patches – along with hundreds of others who fled here by auto, truck, and bus. Overnight, they crowded Cange with their needs, and transformed the mission of an organization that for 25 years has built a worldwide reputation by treating tuberculosis, AIDS, and other chronic diseases that flourish among Haiti’s poor.
“I took four cars to get here,’’ the 34-year-old teacher said, sitting inside a chapel converted into a ward for the injured on the organization’s bucolic but overrun campus. “I heard about the name before, and I knew I needed to get here.’’
With 10 hospitals and deep roots in Haiti, Boston-based Partners in Health has became one of the pillars of the worldwide response to the Jan. 12 earthquake.
[Partners in Health has offices at 888 Commonwealth Ave.]
Startling ‘Treasures’ to behold at Boston Public Library
By Tenley Woodman/Boston Herald – January 24, 2010
There’s only one place you can leaf through a copy of William Shakespeare’s “First Folio” from 1623 and also touch President John Adams’ personal copy of “Common Sense” – and do it for free.
The Boston Public Library in Copley Square.
“We are a public library and we really take our public mission very seriously,” said Susan Glover, keeper of the BPL’s special collections.
There are nearly five million items stored in the library’s special collections, ranging in age and scope from medieval manuscripts to photographs of first lady Eleanor Roosevelt performing with the Boston Symphony Orchestra.
Support for president holds in MIT group
By Ira Kantor/Boston Herald – January 24, 2010
President Obama capped off his first 12 months with a job-approval rating that has dipped by a dozen percentage points since he got to work in Washington last Jan. 20.
One group Obama has not lost favor with is Chocolate City, a 28-member black organization at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Members say the president “hit the ground running” by taking on problems left by the Bush administration.
“Just because of the climate of what he inherited, you would need almost a superhuman to be able to tackle it,” said Howard Liles, 22, a mechanical engineering major and Chocolate City’s co-chairman.
“I mean he believed in change and that doesn’t mean you’re not going to make mistakes,” he said. “But the fact is he was doing his best efforts, and I feel that’s all you can really ask of an individual.”
Obama’s job-approval rating, according to a Gallup poll released Jan. 18, is at 51 percent, a 12 percent decrease from a year ago. Chocolate City, which takes its name from a 1975 song by funk band Parliament about blacks rising to the White House, said much of Obama’s performance was “motivating,” including his efforts to bridge diplomacy between foreign nations.
Gardner design in tune
By Carley Thornell/Boston herald – January 24, 2010
It must have been destiny for a man with the name Renzo Piano to design a new performance hall.
“Music is my beloved art,” the architect of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum’s expansion said. “It is what I wanted to be myself.”
That appreciation gave the prize-winning architect a touch for performance-hall design, and the Gardner project marks his 14th such undertaking. The 296-seat venue is to be the capstone in his cantilevered, modular, glass- and light-filled new building, next to the old museum in the Fenway.
It is a striking juxtaposition to the 1903 Italian-style palace that for a century has enchanted visitors who stumble upon its Venetian-inspired courtyard. But the buildings are of a piece, said Piano.
Isabella Gardner “tried building a modern Venetian palace. It does capture the magic of Venice,” he said. “You enter this space that is timeless. That’s Venice. It’s not about tourists, it’s not about food, it’s about the light made by the water, and water makes things beautiful.” Sound and light are the two cornerstones of the new “music box,” he said, as the hall will have a glass ceiling to let in sun.
