By Lew Finfer
Last week, the University of Massachusetts confirmed what has been clear for several years now: They are moving ahead with a plan to build a 1,000 bed dormitory complex on the Dorchester campus of UMass Boston. The Columbia Point... Read more
Do you know what a “middle-skill job” is? It is any aspect of work that requires some type of training or education beyond high school, but not a four-year college degree.
Do you know which country is having the most difficulty placing... Read more
No matter how hard we try, the Bowdoin/Geneva (B/G) neighborhood in Dorchester can’t seem to get ahead. Whether it’s the business district or the residential area, it seems that what is the norm elsewhere does not hold true here. For this article, I... Read more
Sometimes I think I need a girlfriend; not a new wife, just a companion, a friend with whom to share the lonely hours. At other times, I think that would be disloyal. It would suggest that someone could replace my late wife. I don’t want to convey the... Read more
Last year in Boston, 25.4 percent of eligible parents made no choice at all when it came to selecting a public school for their kids entering sixth grade for the critical middle school years.
That’s not a good thing; those students ended up... Read more
Without pain you do not legally get access to narcotic pain medication. For those predisposed to addiction, a complaint of severe pain is often enough. Maintaining a continuing supply or getting off the medication is more difficult. Drug companies and... Read more
The Massachusetts Commissioner of Education, Mitchell Chester, has recommended closing Dorchester Collegiate Academy (DCA) based on his assessment that DCA did not make “significant and sustained academic improvement” on English Language Arts (ELA) and... Read more
Facing a possibly dangerous situation when I was still young, I wrote a letter to my parents to be read posthumously. (How the young are attracted to drama!) In that letter I explained to my parents that I was going to an event where I might die and... Read more
I was out to dinner recently with a friend who said he agreed with Donald Trump’s views but was uncomfortable with the way he expressed them. Perhaps what he should have said is: “I used to agree with his views until I heard them expressed.” To harbor... Read more
Current events don’t seem as interesting after the death of a loved one. Much of the news of the day, viewed in the broader perspective of life’s fragility, seem trivial and inconsequential. The larger issues of the how and why of existence tend to get... Read more
The very first scene in “Spotlight,” the new movie detailing how The Boston Globe exposed the pedophile priest scandal, is set at the Area C-11 police station in Dorchester. It’s the mid-1970s. In one room, a priest sits alone; in a second room,... Read more
In Massachusetts, we imagine ourselves as a place where anyone – regardless of his or her race, zip code, income, or the language spoken at home – can succeed. Nowhere is this vision stronger than here in Dorchester, where families from every walk of... Read more
Apology is defined as “a regretful acknowledgment of an offense or failure.” In mid-September, in an appearance at the West End Museum, Brian Golden, director of the Boston Redevelopment Authority (BRA) apologized to those who were driven out of the... Read more
