Domestic service as upward mobility

By Michael Jonas 0 Comments Aug 1, 2001

There’s been no shortage of talk about the new work skills needed to make it in the 21st century workplace. But who knew the proper care of crystal and stemware or the dos and don’ts of formal dining would be among them? It turns out that the economic boom of the go-go ’90s has spawned(...)

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Roads and Bridges

By CommonWealth Staff 0 Comments Aug 1, 2001

With nearly half the bridges in the Commonwealth rated as deficient and 42 percent of roads poor or mediocre, it’s not just Massachusetts drivers that make motoring here a challenge. Of the 4,976 bridges in the state, 668 are structurally defiecient, according to the American Society of Civil Engineers and The Road Information Program (TRIP),(...)

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Hancock defends its civic honor

By Mary Carey 0 Comments Aug 1, 2001

Pittsfield is often considered the farthest-flung outpost from Boston in the state, but the Berkshire County seat has nothing on its tiny neighbor to the west. Indeed, the only way to get to Hancock town center from Pittsfield is to drive west into New York State, winding around some mountains, then head back east into(...)

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Kerrys lean and hungry look

By Michael Crowley 0 Comments Aug 1, 2001

Summer is here, and Democrats in Washington are smiling again. In the bleak days of late winter and early spring, many a dispirited Dem felt overwhelmed by an unexpectedly nimble Bush administration. Predictions that the quirky election that put him into office would make Bush an impotent leader fizzled fast. In his first 100 days,(...)

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Home alone

By Caryl Rivers 0 Comments Aug 1, 2001

The Connection Gap: Why Americans Feel So AloneBy Laura PappanoRutgers University Press, New Brunswick, NJ, 224 pages It’s as American as apple pie to fret over the state of the national psyche. When the frontier closed down, Americans worried about the demise of the independent man who could pull up stakes anytime he wanted and(...)

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The other founding father

By Michael Kenney 0 Comments Aug 1, 2001

John AdamsBy David McCulloughSimon & Schuster, New York, 736 pages As the host of the PBS American Experience documentaries, David McCullough is the closest thing America has to a public historian. And it is as our public historian that McCullough has written a biography of John Adams, the least understood and least appreciated of the(...)

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Aspiring principals get onthejob training

By Carol Gerwin 0 Comments Aug 1, 2001

It’s just after 11 on a steamy spring morning and principal-in-training Benadette Manning races from a difficult meeting at Cambridge Rindge and Latin School to her office down the hall. She’s hungry. She’s cranky. And the hook on the back of her blouse keeps coming undone. She’d like to sit and think about the emotional(...)

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Brothers Behind Bars

By Neil Miller 0 Comments Aug 1, 2001

They are 45 of the roughest and toughest inmates at the Hampden County Jail and House of Correction just outside Springfield, the sullen slackers who sleep through the bells and skip GED classes and AA meetings. But on this afternoon they are quiet and attentive. The inmates are sitting in rows in the cavernous day(...)

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Whats new Democrat

By Michael Jonas 0 Comments Aug 1, 2001

With his White House days winding down, President Bill Clinton journeyed to upstate New York last year to deliver his swan song address to the Democratic Leadership Council, the centrist group whose “Third Way” approach to politics carried him to two terms in office. Reaching for a rhetorical device that has become a fixture of(...)

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Campus activism makes a comeback

By Michael Jonas 0 Comments Aug 1, 2001

Student activist Susan Misra was in a pickle. Thousands of anti-globalization protesters were about to converge on Quebec City to protest the trade agreement being ratified at the Summit of the Americas. But that very week in mid-April, her fellow Harvard students were poised to begin a sit-in at the school’s main administration building, demanding(...)

Summer 2001