Outgrowing Juvenile Justice

By Michael Jonas 0 Comments Jan 1, 2001

I WAS LOOKING at 10 to 15 years,” says Jamal Vick, in the streetwise way of somebody who’s well-acquainted with the criminal justice system. The bulky 18-year-old dreams of one day running his own restaurant, but right now he’s explaining how he was nearly run into state prison. Some might say that’s exactly where he(...)

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In Athol school committee follies reveal community division

By Mary Carey 0 Comments Jan 1, 2001

ATHOL–Cable-access television broadcasts of town meetings, board of selectmen sessions, and other municipal gatherings usually attract few viewers, even when they are repeated endlessly at all hours of the day and night. But on occasion, the performance of municipal duties takes a riveting turn, presenting to citizen-viewers high drama, if not low comedy. North of(...)

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Wellfleet discovers that good help is hard to find

By Andrew Nelson 0 Comments Jan 1, 2001

WELLFLEET–The tourists may leave each fall, but Wellfleet’s 3,100 year-round residents lend character to a town already rich with shops, restaurants, and spectacular seaside vistas. This Lower Cape community brings together artists, shellfishermen, retirees, and Yankee traditionalists. Yet some say the town’s very diversity has contributed to its difficulties finding the right person to run(...)

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Playing their cards rightmdashAn unlikely return to the White House for Bay State Republicans

By Michael Crowley 0 Comments Jan 1, 2001

WASHINGTON–The ouster of the last Republican presidential administration in 1992 brought an end to the special influence a small group of Massachusetts Republicans enjoyed within the inner sanctums of the White House. That influence dated back to 1979, when a handful of ambitious young Bay State politicos placed their bets on a long-shot presidential candidate(...)

Economy/ Housing

The death and life of American cities

By Carter Wilkie 0 Comments Jan 1, 2001

The Boston Renaissance: Race, Space and Economic Change in an American Metropolis By Barry Bluestone and Mary Huff Stevenson Russell Sage Foundation, New York, 2000, 461 pages Comeback Cities: A Blueprint for Urban Neighborhood Revival By Paul S. Grogan and Tony Proscio Westview Press, Boulder, 2000, 285 pages OVER THE PAST half-century, America grew into(...)

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Starr power at the Springfield UnionNews

By B.J. Roche 0 Comments Jan 1, 2001

For a bunch of upstarts taking on the mayor, Springfield resident Karen Powell and her group, the Citizens Action Network (CANE), haven’t done too badly. They had already stopped a needle-exchange program in the city when they found a new cause: Mayor Michael J. Albano’s plan to build a $21.3 million minor-league baseball stadium downtown.(...)

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Charitable Giving

By CommonWealth Staff 0 Comments Jan 1, 2001

Residents of Massachusetts, like New Englanders in general, are seen as notoriously stingy when it comes to sharing their shekels. But just how stingy has been hard to say. CommonWealth took a look at two oft-cited state-by-state comparisons of philanthropic benevolence and found that neither of them stands up to scrutiny. So we decided to(...)

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Hanging Tough

By Robert Keough 0 Comments Jan 1, 2001

It’s not easy to take the pulse of somebody who won’t sit still. And that’s the problem with trying to take stock of the Cellucci-Swift administration at mid-term. Of course, if you ask Gov. Paul Cellucci and Lt. Gov. Jane Swift, they’ll tell you they’re not going anywhere, apart from the trade missions that regularly–some(...)

Economy

New Economy New Philanthropy

By Millicent Lawton 0 Comments Jan 1, 2001

Not long ago, at an estate-planning seminar, a Boston money manager told this story: He paid a call on an older couple who lived on Cape Cod. They had a modest home and kept the heat too low for his taste. But in their bank account, the money manager discovered, they were sitting on several(...)

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Bocce alone

By Neal Dolan 0 Comments Jan 1, 2001

In the North End, community grows by itself–but for how long? Five years ago, when I first told my Cambridge friends I was moving to Boston’s North End, they said I would be disappointed. My Italian grandmother notwithstanding, I wouldn’t find the sense of community and civic life I was looking for, they said, because(...)

Winter 2001