Read about it in the Boston/Fenway areas here  and read in more detail about the virus here 

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Tonight’s Tickets Good For 1:05 p.m. Game Tomorrow

BOSTON, MA – Tonight’s Red Sox-White Sox game at Fenway Park has been postponed due to this evening’s weather forecast for heavy rain and strong winds associated with Hurricane Earl.

Tonight’s game has been rescheduled as the first game of a day-night doubleheader, tomorrow, Saturday, September 4, beginning at 1:05 p.m. The regularly scheduled game between the Red Sox and White Sox will be played at 7:10 p.m. Saturday evening.

Tickets for tonight’s game will be good for admission to Saturday’s 1:05 p.m. game between the Red Sox and White Sox.

The decision to postpone tonight’s game was made in consultation with Major League Baseball and in consideration of the Governor’s state of emergency declaration.  The Red Sox and Major League Baseball feel it is better to err on the side of public safety even if the current weather forecast dramatically changes its course.

— RED SOX —

Multiple positive mosquito pools indicate that WNV is present throughout the city and residents are urged to take precautions to limit their exposure to mosquitoes. There has been one human case of WNV in Boston: a 46-year-old woman whose case was confirmed Aug. 27. She has since recovered.

Since June, larvicide has been placed into city catch basins designed to reduce the number of mosquitoes in the city. Spraying has been done for mosquito nuisance control in parts of some neighborhoods, but there are currently no plans to expand spraying throughout the city.

WNV is most commonly transmitted to humans by the bite of a mosquito infected with the virus, said Dr. Anita Barry, director of the Infectious Disease Bureau at the Public Health Commission.  She said it is very important for people to take precautions to reduce the risk of being bitten by an infected mosquito.  She urges that they take a few simple steps that include:

• Use insect repellant when outdoors, especially from dusk to dawn when mosquitoes are more likely to be biting and, when possible, wear clothing with long sleeves and pants.
• Mosquito-proof your home by making sure that window and door screens are in good repair to prevent mosquitoes from getting into your house.
• Prevent mosquitoes from breeding by turning over unused flower pots, buckets, wheelbarrows, and garbage cans; removing leaves and other debris that can clog gutters and trap water; disposing of or covering old tires; and covering swimming pools and kiddie pools when not in use.

For more information on WNV, call the Boston Public Health Commission at 617-534-5611 begin_of_the_skype_highlig or visit www.bphc.org.

The Fenway News started back in 1974 as part of the community’s response to a form of destruction known as “urban renewal.” Back then the Boston Redevelopment Authority would huddle with the biggest institutions to plan for the “improvement” of the neighborhood, and input from the people who actually lived here was neither solicited nor listened to.

Given the David-and-Goliath nature of the struggle, it made a certain emotional sense for the nascent paper to adopt the motto “comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable” as an all-purpose statement of principle. But that motto does not really fit the situation we are in now or the different way we are trying to work for our community. So as of this issue you will no longer find it on our nameplate. We have moved it to this page and may decide to permanently drop it. What do you think?

The phrase has an interesting history. It apparently traces to a 19th-century Chicago newspaper columnist, Finley Peter Dunne. He wrote: “Th newspaper does ivrything f’r us. It runs th’ polis foorce an’ th’ banks, commands th’ milishy, controls th’ ligislachure, baptizes th’ young, marries th’ foolish, comforts th’ afflicted, afflicts th’ comfortable, buries th’ dead an’ roasts thim aftherward.” It’s pretty obvious that Dunne had satirical intent here, and that he was satirizing the inflated self-assessment of his fellow journalists.  Later newspaper people, like H. L. Mencken, took the slogan as a serious mission statement.

Our situation as residents of a city dealing with the government and our neighboring institutions has changed quite a bit since the 1970s. We have a lot more opportunity to participate in the decisions made about our surroundings. (There is, of course, always room for improvement.) And we have several decades of history of working with the leaders of the institutions around us to fashion solutions to problems that allow both sides to benefit. Back in the day the other side had to lose for us to win, but that’s no longer the case.

We will still speak up whenever we hear about powerful people trying to put something over on those who have less power. See, for example, our page 1 article about the threat to affordable housing subsidies on Burbank Street. But we also work hard to be a newspaper/website that allows all the voices in the neighborhood to be heard.

Nearly all of our content is generated by volunteers, writing about things that interest or affect them. You can also expect to see articles about what’s going on at Northeastern or MassArt or the Christian Science Church that are written by representatives of those organizations, like the Berklee scholarships article, also on page 1. Expect also, from time to time, to see other articles that disagree with them. We are all neighbors hoping to maximize our use and enjoyment of the community we share. We will disagree often, but we will try to minimize the afflicting of one side by the other, and aim for the comfort of all.

In March, tenants of Burbank Apartments received a letter from their landlord calling a meeting to talk about the future of the affordable housing subsidies that many of them depend on to help pay their rent. These subsidies are due to expire next April. About 50 tenants went to the meeting, and learned that the owners wanted to phase out the subsidies that were attached to specific units and help the current tenants of those units who qualify move into a different subsidy program involving vouchers.

Some of the tenants felt unthreatened by this news; others were concerned about the future of subsidized housing in their particular residence and in the rest of the country. These latter formed the Burbank Apartments Tenant Association. and are now preparing to negotiate with the owners, Burbank Apartments Company. It owns seven East Fens buildings—48, 49, and 52 Burbank St., 15, 25, and 33 Edgerly Road, and 18 Haviland St.—that contain roughly 170 units of subsidized housing, or about 8.5% of the total in the Fenway.

In the Section 8 program, the U.S Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) contracts with owners to offer affordable housing by paying a portion of the rent of low-income tenants. These tenants typically pay about 30% of their gross monthly income to rent, and HUD picks up the rest. Through the 221d Below-Market Interest Rate program, HUD contracts with owners to subsidize their mortgages and offer subsidies to low-/moderate-income tenants.

Patrick Murphy, one of the members of the tenant group, characterized the reaction of people at the original meeting as “subdued, with some confusion among some of the tenants.” He got involved after a leaflet was slipped under his door announcing a meeting at the Fenway Community Development Corporation (FCDC) for tenants to consider their options. “After that meeting, the core group of about a dozen tenants started meeting regularly, sometimes weekly. A number of others attend more sporadically, as their schedules permit.”

Murphy, who spoke with The Fenway News by telephone, said that the main concern of the tenants was “that subsidized housing would eventually disappear from the neighborhood, leading to a long-term gentrification of the Fenway.” He says that many of the tenants feel quite a bit of loyalty to the current management “because this is a really nice place to live, and a lot of people don’t want to rock the boat.”

William Kargman, one of the owners, told The Fenway News by telephone that “what we are trying to do is provide a subsidy to everyone that is eligible. We’ve done this in other properties and have had good results. We feel that we are protecting all of our tenants in this process.” He said that the owners have worked with HUD to provide housing to people with subsidies since 1971, and will continue to do so. “We prefer to work with vouchers for current tenants because we think owners should have a right to choose what to do in the future, once a tenant with a portable voucher has moved on.”

Another tenant, who prefers to remain anonymous, says that many people are alarmed by the change. “Some worry about changes in eligibility from one program to another. Others are concerned about the long term affordability of housing in the Fenway.” This tenant argues that “we would like the owner to renew the Section 8 subsidies for at least 20 more years, and to extend the regulation of rents for non-Section 8 apartments.”

The tenant also asserts that “basically in the current state of the economy—employment issues, lower wages—now is not the time to reduce the quantity of affordable housing. People are already suffering, so loss at this time will be devastating to the community and the economy overall.”

Dharmena Downey, the executive director of the FCDC, believes that “The need to produce and preserve affordable housing has never been greater. Twenty-five percent, or 30 million, American households face severe housing challenges, including insufficient funds for monthly rent or mortgage payments, maintenance, and repairs; overcrowding, both within in dwellings and in high-density multifamily developments; and structural deficiencies. We’re not talking only about the poorest among us or those without jobs, but also teachers, clergy, librarians, firefighters, health-care workers, and many others who make significant contributions to our communities.

“Preserving affordable housing,” she said, “is critical for improving the life chances of low- and moderate- income families. In the Fenway, we need to be clear about what the loss of the Burbank Apartments means for the tenants it displaces and for the gentrification of the neighborhood.”

Following the film, there will be a Q&A session with director Rebecca Messner and several Olmsted experts featured in the documentary: Alan Banks of the Frederick Law Olmsted National Historic Site; Margaret Dyson, director of historic parks at the Boston Parks Department; and Betsy Shure Gross, board member of the City Parks Alliance.
Olmsted and his landscape design practice created nearly 100 public parks across the United States, among more than 500 landscape commissions. Most famously, beginning in the late 1850s, he and architect Calvert Vaux designed and supervised creation of New York’s Central Park.
In Boston, Olmsted is best known for creating the Emerald Necklace of parks that includes the Fens, the Riverway, Olmsted Park, Jamaica Pond, Arnold Arboretum and Franklin Park. He designed them to extend the corridor established by the Boston Common, Public Garden and Commonwealth Avenue Mall. “Frankly, he gave the city of Boston its aesthetic shape,” says Olmsted historian Arleyn Levee, who appears in the film.
The documentary shows that the road to becoming America’s premier landscape architect was not smooth. Olmsted and Vaux battled rigidity and corruption as they shaped Central Park. For a time, a discouraged Olmsted did other things, like manage a California gold mine. But Vaux encouraged him to return to New York to help design Brooklyn’s monumental Prospect Park, after which Olmsted settled into the role he would be known for—carving out parks in growing American cities.
Director Messner sees Olmsted as “someone who [ultimately] devoted his life to creating these green spaces of refuge for the city dweller. He thought that every citizen, no matter of what background [deserved to enjoy these parks].”
Alan Banks, supervisory park ranger for the Olmsted National Historic Site in Brookline, says that what is remarkable about Olmsted is that 130 years ago, when circumstances were far different, he recognized that “people needed to have nature in their lives, they needed to have an escape from city living, a space where they could gather as a community.”
Olmsted began in Boston with the task of cleaning up filthy waterways. In the documentary, the Parks Department’s Margaret Dyson notes that his first assignments, the Fens and the Riverway, were “engineering projects as well as parkland.”
In 1883, while working on the Emerald Necklace, Olmsted himself moved to the Boston area to a home he called Fairsted, in Brookline.
The program, co-hosted by the Emerald Necklace Conservancy and the MFA, will begin at 7 p.m. Tickets are $10 ($8 for seniors, students, and MFA members). Tickets may be purchased by phone at 1-800-440-6975 or online at www.mfa.org/tickets, or at MFA ticket desks. The film was funded by The Speedwell Foundation, which is supporting its presentation in Boston.
David Hugh Smith is a volunteer for the Emerald Necklace Conservancy.  Image from Wikimedia Commons.

Cassandria Campbell - image by Valarie Seabrook

The Fenway Community Development Corporation (FCDC) has had an outstanding intern working for it this summer. Cassandria Campbell came to the organization through MIT’s Department of Urban Studies and Planning, where she is a graduate student, and feels that she has learned a lot from her experience.
At the FCDC, Campbell has worked both in housing development and community planning and organizing. In the former she was most involved in helping Director of Housing Lisa Soli prepare for the refinancing and renovation of two FCDC properties—a process that involves filing many applications with city and state agencies, and talking with tenants about the renovation process.
Her more visible work was with Sarah Horsley, the CDC’s director of civic engagement, for whom she spent the summer laying the ground work for expanding spaces for community activities in the Fenway. Calling their effort the Common Ground campaign, Horsley and Campbell have conducted a community-needs assessment, which organizing involved focus groups with specific communities (such as seniors, Chinese speakers, disabled residents, families); a survey (translated into Spanish, Russian, and Mandarin Chinese); and interviewing various service providers and local leaders. The duo also organized the popular Starlight Movies in the old McDonalds’ parking lot in the West Fens last month.
The goals of this work are to find out what services are lacking in the community and what organized activities residents would like to see, to determine how a community center could be most valuable to the neighborhood and to create the argument for it that leads ultimately to funding for a center.
Born and raised in Roxbury, Campbell currently lives on Mission Hill. A graduate of O’Bryant High School, she went on to Swarthmore College before enrolling at MIT. In between she spent time in Ecuador, teaching English to students and professors at the Universidad de Loja. She feels that her time at FCDC has helped her to clarify her plans for the future.
“This summer has reinforced for me that I want to continue to work in housing and community economic development,” she told The Fenway News recently, in an interview conducted at her FCDC office. “I have come to appreciate more fully how difficult community organizing can be—how many different people have to be pulled together, and how complicated the process is.
“Also, working with Lisa has got me more interested in community development finance—I was an cconomics major at Swarthmore, so this kind of work is really appealing.
“Working in the Fenway has changed the way I see communities working. I always had the view that some places were for people with high incomes, and others for low-income folks. If you have resources you have opportunity, and I never questioned that people should try to go against this. I’ve been very interested to see how a community can be so diverse in terms of race and class and sexual orientation, and still be stable. I appreciate the opportunity I’ve had to work with FCDC because I also see how much is involved in maintaining a stable community.”
Dharmena Downey, FCDC executive director, says that “The CDC was lucky to have Cassandria serve as an intern with us to substantially advance our work. She exemplifies what’s inspiring about the symbiotic relationship that happens when students apply their energy, time and talents to advance the cause of community development. In the process she gained valuable real life work experience and we [the Fenway] benefited from her talent, work ethic, intelligence and grace. With our work it is always about the connections we make with each other to advance a shared agenda. Cassandria was able to connect with people on a very deep level and make a significant contribution to both FCDC and the people of the Fenway.”
Campbell assures the many friends she’s made this summer that she is not going away just because her internship is over. “People will still see me around. I’ll be at the Senior Center fundraiser at the Baseball Tavern on September 26, for instance.”

This summer the Boston University trustees quietly green-lit the university’s first-ever, big-time fund-raising campaign. It sounds like a small thing, but it is a big thing. Unlike almost every other university its size, BU has never clamped a full-court press on all of its alumni for a billion-dollar capital campaign.

Why not? For decades, John Silber or a Silberite ruled BU. Silber hated fund-raising and wasn’t particularly good at it. In 2002 donor David Mugar of July Fourth fireworks fame threatened to sue Silber and the university unless they agreed to return a $3 million gift that Mugar claimed had been misappropriated. BU returned the money.

To BU’s vast alumni networks, Silber was a polarizing figure, beloved by some for his conservative, principled stands, and despised by others for his fulminous rants. For university fund-raising, bland is better. Think former Harvard president Neil Rudenstine, not the more dynamic — and off-putting — Larry Summers.

John Simpson, 85, a legend as athletic director at BU
By Marvin Pave – Globe Correspondent / September 3, 2010

As athletic director at Boston University from 1975 to ’84, John Simpson, a former BU football lineman, hired some of the most successful and colorful coaches in school history.

One was a 26-year-old assistant at Syracuse University named Rick Pitino, later coach of the Boston Celtics and now head coach at the University of Louisville, who recalled his 1978 interview with Mr. Simpson nine years later at a BU basketball tip-off dinner.

“John Simpson said something so honest, I’ll never forget it. He said, ‘This is a bad job. But I love the school, and it has great potential. You should know that I know nothing about basketball, and the media never comes to our games, and our fans don’t come. So no one can second-guess you,’ ’’ said Pitino, who coached at BU for five seasons. “It turned out to be the greatest move I ever made.’’

Think ink – Check out the artists at the tattoo convention and then sample the squid at nearby restaurants
By Luke O’Neil – Globe Correspondent / September 3, 2010

Now in its ninth year, this weekend’s Boston Tattoo Convention marks its first move outside of the Boston Center for the Arts. A new location at the Sheraton Boston Hotel will give the annual celebration of everything inked-up more space, says convention manager Micah R.O. Litant of Witch City Ink in Salem. “Hotel shows are more centralized. It’s much better having everything, and everyone, in one place.’’

That means easier access to parties, artists’ galleries, and performances like collaborative live painting exhibitions, mixed martial arts fighting demonstrations, burlesque performers, and a Ms. Boston Tattoo contest. Throughout the weekend participants can also enter themselves and their tattoos in categories like best of show and best portrait. The main draw will be the hundreds of artists on hand practicing their work on conventiongoers.

Boston Tattoo Convention, Sept. 3-6. $20-$70. Sheraton Boston Hotel, 39 Dalton St., Boston. www.bostontattooconvention.com

1838 – Dressed in a sailor’s uniform and carrying identification papers provided by a Free Black seaman, future abolitionist Frederick Douglass boards a train in Maryland on his way to freedom from slavery.  More anniversaries.

When possible avoid walking alone, especially at night. Your vulnerability to street crime is reduced as much as 70 percent by simply being in a group.

Before exiting the train station, put your keys in your hand or keep them in your pocket.

Keep a safety whistle on your key chain to scare away a potential criminal and summon help.

Carry a cell phone.  This is the fastest way to get help in an emergency.

Walk with confidence, be aware of you surroundings and avoid bushes and poorly lit areas.

If walking alone, walk in the street as opposed to the sidewalk, or walk as close as possible to the curb.  

If you are forced into a physical confrontation, remember blow your whistle, scream or do whatever is necessary to draw attention to yourself.  Scream “Fire,” “Help.”    

If you are being followed, stay in a well lit area, seek safety in a public place and call 911 for help. Give the operator your location quickly so they can help you as fast as possible.

Carry a little flashlight to use when walking in dark places.

Consider taking a taxi or asking a friend for a ride if it’s late at night.

Avoid dark alleys, short cuts and vacant lots, particularly at night.

Don’t wear headphones or talk on your cell phone when walking or jogging alone.

Use a purse with a zipper or a flap that fastens, and carry it close to your body on inside your jacket.

Trust your instincts. If you see someone that makes you uncomfortable, try to walk away and get help or call the police. If you are unable to run, consider walking up a nearby set of steps, and repeatedly ringing the doorbell, regardless of the time of night. The residents can call the police for you, and the person following you will likely run away.

Always report suspicious people and any crimes by calling the police at 911. No call is too small. Read more about safety here