Tuesday, May 14, 2013
Jake O'Donnell has taken over local editor duties for Beacon Hill and Back Bay Patch.
Dear Patch readers, You've probably noticed a new name adorning many of the articles you've seen here on Beacon Hill Patch. That name is mine, Jake O'Donnell, and I could not be more excited to be your new local editor. I come to you as I approach my two-year anniversary with Patch. I was originally hired in May 2011 to launch our site in Salem, N.H., where I lived and worked for the next year and a half. Feeling the desire to experience something new after spending my entire life in New Hampshire, I moved to Cambridge on Jan. 1 and took over as local editor of Medford Patch. My wish had long been to work in the city, and when the opportunity arrived to become the editor of both Beacon Hill Patch and Back Bay Patch, it was a chance I could…
Thursday, May 2, 2013
Can't work your way out of a problem? Here are some fresh ways to find new perspective.
We’ve all experienced times where we feel stuck. We struggle to find a new way to approach a problem. It could be about money, relationships, career, family or even our schedule. In situations like this, we need an infusion of fresh energy around the issue as well as a new way of thinking. There is no way out of approaching a problem from the same perspective unless something shifts. Einstein said that the definition of insanity is “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” So, how do we find this new way of thinking? 1. Exercise. When we feel stuck, we need to refresh our brain and move the stuck energy of feeling defeated through the body. The best way to do that is to move. Walk, run, practice yoga, hike…
Wednesday, April 10, 2013
Research published this month by the Journal of Pediatrics found no relationship between autism and the increasing number of recommended vaccines. But skeptics still aren't buying it.
For parents concerned about vaccines and the possibility of harm they may do, the newest research tests the "too many, too soon" theory, and encourages us to put it to rest. Today the central worry questions the large number of vaccines given, and how many are given at one time, especially when they’re being administered to the vulnerable bodies of very young children. The new study, published online April 1 in the Journal of Pediatrics, found no relationship between the increased exposure to vaccines and autism. As the number of recommended childhood vaccinations has grown over the decades, so have autism spectrum disorder (ASD) diagnoses – and in the public mind, the two have been difficult to separate. Fifteen years ago, a now-…
Monday, March 25, 2013
Even with the North End's promised new school, some Boston neighborhoods still won't have good access to Boston Public Schools: There's more work to be done.
Students from the Eliot K-8 Innovation School sat in an empty office building on March 14, waiting for the arrival of Mayor Thomas Menino and for the cameras to roll. Bouquets of colorful helium balloons livened up the space, which was also filling with expectant adults and news media assembling for an announcement: This North End waterfront building will become the city’s newest Boston Public School. The happy atmosphere was appropriate to an undeniably positive development for families in the northern reaches of Boston. While the city says the new school should open in 2016 to serve about 500 children, Eliot students will be its first beneficiaries, with 585 Commercial Street serving as temporary classrooms during the Eliot’s expansion …
A Boston judge ordered one company to remove signs from a building on Bowdoin Street because it didn't have the appropriate permit, and the city's Zoning Board recently banned new boards in certain neighborhoods.
A Boston judge last week ordered a local billboard company to remove two signs hanging on a Bowdoin Street building. According to a Boston Herald report, the Massachusetts Department of Transportation had filed a lawsuit in February against Sponsor Co., seeking to force the company to remove two 25-by-40-foot signs facing Cambridge Street and to pay a $1,000-a-day fine since Nov. 30, when the company was warned that the signs were illegal because the company lacked the required permits. In her decision, the Suffolk Superior Court judge wrote that, “Erecting or maintaining outdoor advertising in violation of any provision of [state law] is considered a nuisance” and that violating the law “adversely affects the public,” the Herald reported…
Friday, March 22, 2013
Do you drag yourself out of bed each day? Read on and take these tips to heart to make your mornings better!
Over the years as a yoga teacher, I’ve had (and currently have) early morning classes that require me to get up before 6 am. This never gets easy. The funny irony about it is that I am not a morning person but yet I teach several early morning yoga classes. When I was growing up, my father would call me “Lucy” (from the Peanuts comic strip) because I was so grouchy at breakfast. I was thinking today as I checked in students for the 6:30 am class about how we motivate our body and mind to get up early. There are certainly better ways to do it than others. I see people on their way to work pounding energy drinks, while running to the bus. This is, of course, an awful way to start the day. So what are the best ways to ensure you’ll get up on …
Monday, March 11, 2013
In the family-friendly South End, the owners of the children's store, Tadpole, are thriving as a family and as business owners in one neighborhood.
If your image of a mom-and-pop shop doesn’t quite match Tadpole, then you and David Hauck are of the same mind. Mr. Hauck is half of the husband-and-wife team that owns the “modern children’s store” on Clarendon Street. But he’s not exactly the little old guy manning the register, and his business is no crowded hole in the wall. Yet as longtime transplants to Boston who feel grounded in a neighborhood they love, and have built both successful work and home lives around it, this mom and pop – Storey Hieronymus Hauck and David Hauck – have created a version of the American dream here, right in the South End. Neither of the Haucks set out to be brick-and-mortar business owners, much less Internet merchants. When Ms. Hieronymus Hauck’s high-…
Monday, March 4, 2013
Practicing yoga is great but how can we bring the lessons of yoga off the mat into our relationships to strengthen them too?
Yoga as a practice is a way to strengthen, stretch, balance and relax in our bodies. But there are many benefits of a yoga practice that can apply off the mat as well. One of the areas where yoga can be helpful is in relationships. Not just the romantic kind, but all relationships: those we have at work, with friends, with family and of course, with our romantic partners. What are some of these lessons and how do you relate each to yoga? Build a strong foundation. Every yoga pose starts with the foundation. If the foundation is unsteady, the whole pose falls apart. “Foundation” also refers to what is at the floor, so it speaks to things like “feet” in standing postures and the chest, or the shoulders, perhaps, in a pose on the floor. In …
Monday, February 25, 2013
Boston City Councilor Connolly says the student assignment plans for Boston still fall short in several important areas.
On Monday night the External Advisory Committee on Student Assignment is slated to recommend a new assignment model to the Superintendent and School Committee. After nearly a year of work, the models put forth by the district for the EAC's consideration still fall short in a several areas. In October, a coalition of six elected officials put forth the Quality Choice Plan as a comprehensive model that addresses the issue of uneven quality across the city as an integral part of the creation of a new assignment model. Over 7,000 Bostonians signed onto the plan and, as this process comes to a conclusion, their voices must be heard. There are a few key elements that should be included in the final recommendation to the School Committee. A long…
In a tribute to everyday kids and teachers, Amika Kemmler-Ernst takes her camera into Boston's classrooms to make images of kids hard at work.
“A student has to be a valedictorian – or bring a gun to school – in order to be considered newsworthy,” says Amika Kemmler-Ernst. An educator for more than 40 years, she’s talking about our tendency to focus on either the great or the horrible, while paying less attention to everything in between. A teacher of children and a mentor to teachers, Dr. Kemmler-Ernst is now officially retired. But in an ongoing visual ethnography project, she’s been visiting Boston Public Schools (BPS) and taking pictures of normal kids in action, learning at school. It’s a passion she’s indulged in throughout a career teaching in Brookline, Boston, around Africa, and in Italy. Shelved at her Jamaica Plain home, bulging albums hold photos of kids at work, …
C.N.
5:31 pm on Tuesday, March 26, 2013
Dog walkers are the real nuisance. more ›