A major difference between cities and towns is the level of activity found within their borders. Generally, cities are the busier, with the hustle and bustle of millions of people making their way to and through, the hum of business engines engaging in commerce and employing people, the arrival of new waves of immigrants from near and far, and the influence that more active local governments exert on them all – making it seem like there is always something happening in cities. Like it or not, Chelsea is a busy city that generates plenty of news to cover. As the page turns on another year, a review of the top 12 stories from ’12 certainly reveals that Chelsea continues to be a city in transition. Here’s a look at what people were talking about locally over the last 12 months.
A new $125 million bridge on Chelsea Street replaced the aging and, at times, unreliable former bridge that was built in the 1930s. Closed for more than a year and with lane restrictions prior to that, the construction activity disrupted commutes and commerce. Eighty-percent of the project was paid for by federal grants, with the State ponying up the other 20 percent and undertaking the project.
The new bridge is now open and has restored order to local traffic patterns. At more than 200 feet tall, the bridge has become a landmark that can be seen from office buildings and other higher elevation points for miles around. The new bridge also spans a wider channel, both horizontally and in depth, making it easier and safer for today’s larger shipping vessels to carry their products in and out of the Chelsea River.
What’s next: The reliability of the old bridge, which once was stuck up in the open position for several years during the 1970s, created a major psychological barrier that had inhibited development along Eastern Avenue and Marginal Street. City development officials believe the elimination of that barrier will help unlock the fullest potential for the conversion of the heavy industrial uses to higher and better development along that portion of the city’s waterfront.
What you may not have known: The Chelsea Street Bridge is the largest lift bridge of its kind in Massachusetts. Control of the bridge has been transferred from the City of Boston to the State Department of Transportation. A companion project, undertaken jointly by Massport and MassDOT, has opened up a haul road on the East Boston side of the bridge. The Marty Coughlin Haul Road will make it more convenient for commercial activity, including heavy trucking, to get directly in and out of Logan Airport.
Gary Martel was a relatively new resident who had become entrenched in civic activities. He was a central figure in the Governor Bellingham Cary House Association, a founding member of the Washington Avenue Gateway Association, a member of the City’s Planning Board and a frequent host of meetings and a widely attended holiday party at his beautiful Victorian home that was under painstaking renovation on Washington Avenue. All of that came crashing down on Martel, as he was arrested on securities fraud, accused of bilking clients of his various financial businesses out of more than $3 million dollars.
A collaboration led by The Neighborhood Developers and including Centro Latino, Bunker Hill Community College, Career Source, Metropolitan Boston Housing Partnership and Metropolitan Credit Union launched CONNECT, a co-located bundling of programs aimed at improving skills and financial security of local residents. The Chelsea Collaborative made headlines outside of the city for returning financial support from a funder who may have sought to restrict the grassroots advocacy group’s efforts to support gay rights. Roca, a youth development organization that focuses on proven risk young men, was one of three selected by the State to lead a groundbreaking “pay for success” initiative. Instead of funding an agency and hoping for performance, the initiative rewards agencies for success by using a portion of the money otherwise saved through averting incarceration or other negative outcomes.
S Senator John Kerry brought US Drug Czar Gil Kerlikowske to Chelsea for a drug discussion with City Manager Jay Ash, Police Chief Brian Kyes and their peers from surrounding communities. U.S. Labor Secretary Hilda Solis was at The Neighborhood Developers to learn more about CONNECT and to address national labor issues. U.S. Department of Justice’s Office on Violence Against Women Acting Director Bea Hanson visited HarborCOV to share information on federal and local efforts to combat domestic violence.
The City is considering a follow-up public relations campaign to build upon the positive coverage by those two highly regarded programs.
What you may not have known: Chelsea was once the feature of a less than flattering “60 Minutes” segment the dealt with the City going into State receivership in 1991. One can still catch that segment on the Internet’s YouTube website. The Chelsea Record and its editor Joshua Resnek is also featured in that segment as well.
The Chelsea Police Patrolman’s Union took its contract battle with the City public, writing letters to the editor, testifying before City Council meetings, dropping informational “tickets” on car windshields and even holding protest signs at the Zip Trip airing. The union, which is separate from the Police Superior Officer’s Union, even went as far as to issue a report that Chelsea was among, if not the most crime-riddled community in the country.
Global Oil proposed to deliver ethanol to its Revere facility via train. To do so, train cars, as many as 60 at a time, would travel through numerous communities, including Chelsea. The Chelsea Collaborative and City officials partnered to fight the proposal, citing safety concerns about the extremely volatile, alcohol-based product travelling through densely populated areas.
Although just outside the municipal borders, the official filing by Suffolk Downs for a full casino license could have a dramatic impact on Chelsea. That is, if Suffolk secures the license. One license can be issued in the eastern region of the state. While Suffolk has long been known to be interested in securing the license from the Massachusetts Gaming Commission to build a $1 billion resort-style casino at the race track that has hosted legalized gambling on Route 1A for the last 75 years, others are looking elsewhere in Eastern Massachusetts for rival locations. Most recently, such a site was identified in Everett, although the potential proponent of that location, casino-mogul Steve Wynn, has yet to formally file a pre-application.
2013年1月4日星期五
2011年11月3日星期四
Rubik's Cube is no toy in this Morningside Elementary classroom
When it comes to solving a Rubik's Cube, chances are you are not smarter than these fifth-graders.
All but five of the 24 students in Brad Culbertson's class at Morningside Elementary can conquer the 31-year-old puzzle. One of them can solve it in less than a minute, and some of the students are so fast, they beat their own teacher's record.
Culbertson is one of a handful of teachers in Florida who are using the popular toy to teach his gifted class problem solving and math skills. The class has its own set of cubes, and students are given time to play with them daily.
"They learned through the process of accepting the fact that not everything is going to be easy in life," said Culbertson, who was featured in an Oct. 27 article in U.S. News & World Report for teaching with the cube. "Despite being gifted students, they had to persevere through some adversity with the cubes."
The cube is the creation of Erno Rubik, a Hungarian professor of architecture who made the first version in 1974 to help students better understand three-dimensional objects. Rubik also sold his "Magic Cubes" at local toy shops, but the device really hit it big in 1980 when an American toy company introduced the renamed puzzle to the rest of the world.
Culbertson has been using Rubik's Cubes and its "You CAN Do the Rubik's Cube!" program with his Morningside students for two years. According to the educational program, Culbertson is one of 11 teachers using it in the state and the only Treasure Coast teacher it.
Besides teaching geometry topics, such as edges, faces and vertices, Culbertson said there are some unattended consequences too.
"If the kids have the cubes by their desk, they work faster and harder on their work so they can get more time on the cube," Culbertson said. "They're focused during class time and then they're automatically using something that is quiet and directed."
His students say they've learned skills like discipline.
With a time of 53 seconds, 10-year-old Rylee Nelson is currently the fastest in the class at solving the puzzle.
"I think it helps you learn hand-eye coordination and patience," Rylee said. "It teaches you patience because you can't get it right away and you have to wait before you can do some steps and it can take quite a while before you can solve it."
Even though Winter Pepitone, also 10, can solve the cube in two minutes and four seconds, she said she keeps playing with it over and over again, sometimes in car rides and even at the dinner table.
"I keep doing it over and over again because it's so fun. I never get bored of it," Winter said. "You have to have a lot of patience. I got frustrated at times."
Co-teacher Mary Masciello also notices a difference in the students.
"It teaches them to plan ahead for their next move, it teaches them the patience to wait until they learn the next step and committing it to memory," Masciello said. "I tell them 'the way there's tricks and patterns in the cube, there's tricks and patterns to remember your science facts, your reading comprehension. Put it together as a pattern.'"
All but five of the 24 students in Brad Culbertson's class at Morningside Elementary can conquer the 31-year-old puzzle. One of them can solve it in less than a minute, and some of the students are so fast, they beat their own teacher's record.
Culbertson is one of a handful of teachers in Florida who are using the popular toy to teach his gifted class problem solving and math skills. The class has its own set of cubes, and students are given time to play with them daily.
"They learned through the process of accepting the fact that not everything is going to be easy in life," said Culbertson, who was featured in an Oct. 27 article in U.S. News & World Report for teaching with the cube. "Despite being gifted students, they had to persevere through some adversity with the cubes."
The cube is the creation of Erno Rubik, a Hungarian professor of architecture who made the first version in 1974 to help students better understand three-dimensional objects. Rubik also sold his "Magic Cubes" at local toy shops, but the device really hit it big in 1980 when an American toy company introduced the renamed puzzle to the rest of the world.
Culbertson has been using Rubik's Cubes and its "You CAN Do the Rubik's Cube!" program with his Morningside students for two years. According to the educational program, Culbertson is one of 11 teachers using it in the state and the only Treasure Coast teacher it.
Besides teaching geometry topics, such as edges, faces and vertices, Culbertson said there are some unattended consequences too.
"If the kids have the cubes by their desk, they work faster and harder on their work so they can get more time on the cube," Culbertson said. "They're focused during class time and then they're automatically using something that is quiet and directed."
His students say they've learned skills like discipline.
With a time of 53 seconds, 10-year-old Rylee Nelson is currently the fastest in the class at solving the puzzle.
"I think it helps you learn hand-eye coordination and patience," Rylee said. "It teaches you patience because you can't get it right away and you have to wait before you can do some steps and it can take quite a while before you can solve it."
Even though Winter Pepitone, also 10, can solve the cube in two minutes and four seconds, she said she keeps playing with it over and over again, sometimes in car rides and even at the dinner table.
"I keep doing it over and over again because it's so fun. I never get bored of it," Winter said. "You have to have a lot of patience. I got frustrated at times."
Co-teacher Mary Masciello also notices a difference in the students.
"It teaches them to plan ahead for their next move, it teaches them the patience to wait until they learn the next step and committing it to memory," Masciello said. "I tell them 'the way there's tricks and patterns in the cube, there's tricks and patterns to remember your science facts, your reading comprehension. Put it together as a pattern.'"
2011年9月15日星期四
Koffee kommissar
Scores of new eateries have opened over the last couple of years on the east side of the Mile End, and many of them are oriented towards the lunch crowd. That crowd originates in the small but dense industrial district that stretches between St-Laurent and St-Denis, above Maguire. Whereas most of these new establishments are along St-Laurent, Café Falco is within the garment district itself, at the base of a 12-story, Borg cube-like industrial building on de Gaspé.
True to the first half of its name, Café Falco is foremost a coffeehouse. But it is no ordinary coffeehouse; it uses the eccentric (read: fad du jour) siphon process to brew the brown waters. It also has a fairly unusual setup. There are just a couple of two- or three-person tables in this bright, amply fenestrated and artfully decorated space; most patrons have to enjoy (or contend with) sitting on high stools at a large communal table, with carefully selected art and design books piled in the centre.
The siphon coffee-making equipment is fascinating to look at—like something out of a 19th-century chemistry lab. It’s like a huge hourglass: two bulbous glass vessels, one on top of the other, connected via a narrow glass tube. The water is poured into the lower glass vessel and the coffee grounds are put into the one on top.
Initially, the siphon coffee process is functionally similar to a stovetop coffeemaker. You heat the lower vessel (with something like a Bunsen burner), and the resulting steam pushes the remaining water up to the top vessel, where it encounters the coffee grounds. When the bottom vessel is empty, or nearly so, the heat is turned off. As the lower vessel cools down, the pressure inside it drops, creating a vacuum. It sucks the coffee in the upper vessel down through a filter in the interconnecting glass tube, which captures the grounds. So, the water ends up where it started, in the lower vessel, albeit now infused with that brown magic.
Is it worth all the fuss? I’m not sure. The resulting brew is undeniably velvety smooth, certainly much better than your typical drip coffee. It doesn’t hurt that Falco uses beans from award winning Wisconsin-based roaster Kickapoo. Personally, however, I think I might’ve preferred that those excellent beans be extracted into an espresso.
Coffee isn’t the only thing on offer at Falco. There are other beverages, caffeinated and otherwise, plus various light snacks and complete weekday lunches and Saturday brunches, both of a Japanese nature.
The miso was the only element of our meal that was served hot. It was light beige and quite cloudy, thicker and more substantial than the rather broth-like miso afterthoughts you might encounter at some nominally Japanese places. Taste-wise, it was well balanced: slightly sour, not too salty and rich in umami, as miso should be.
The cool cucumber salad made for a nice, refreshing contrast. It was flavoured with a light, ginger-accented rice vinegar dressing and had a pleasant crunch to it.
True to the first half of its name, Café Falco is foremost a coffeehouse. But it is no ordinary coffeehouse; it uses the eccentric (read: fad du jour) siphon process to brew the brown waters. It also has a fairly unusual setup. There are just a couple of two- or three-person tables in this bright, amply fenestrated and artfully decorated space; most patrons have to enjoy (or contend with) sitting on high stools at a large communal table, with carefully selected art and design books piled in the centre.
The siphon coffee-making equipment is fascinating to look at—like something out of a 19th-century chemistry lab. It’s like a huge hourglass: two bulbous glass vessels, one on top of the other, connected via a narrow glass tube. The water is poured into the lower glass vessel and the coffee grounds are put into the one on top.
Initially, the siphon coffee process is functionally similar to a stovetop coffeemaker. You heat the lower vessel (with something like a Bunsen burner), and the resulting steam pushes the remaining water up to the top vessel, where it encounters the coffee grounds. When the bottom vessel is empty, or nearly so, the heat is turned off. As the lower vessel cools down, the pressure inside it drops, creating a vacuum. It sucks the coffee in the upper vessel down through a filter in the interconnecting glass tube, which captures the grounds. So, the water ends up where it started, in the lower vessel, albeit now infused with that brown magic.
Is it worth all the fuss? I’m not sure. The resulting brew is undeniably velvety smooth, certainly much better than your typical drip coffee. It doesn’t hurt that Falco uses beans from award winning Wisconsin-based roaster Kickapoo. Personally, however, I think I might’ve preferred that those excellent beans be extracted into an espresso.
Coffee isn’t the only thing on offer at Falco. There are other beverages, caffeinated and otherwise, plus various light snacks and complete weekday lunches and Saturday brunches, both of a Japanese nature.
The miso was the only element of our meal that was served hot. It was light beige and quite cloudy, thicker and more substantial than the rather broth-like miso afterthoughts you might encounter at some nominally Japanese places. Taste-wise, it was well balanced: slightly sour, not too salty and rich in umami, as miso should be.
The cool cucumber salad made for a nice, refreshing contrast. It was flavoured with a light, ginger-accented rice vinegar dressing and had a pleasant crunch to it.
2011年6月6日星期一
Juvenile, Mystikal to perform at Gathering of the Juggalos
In what may be Psychopathic Records' biggest budget infomercial yet, here's the latest 30-minute video for the annual Gathering of the Juggalos — a weekend-long music festival in August helmed by earnest magic fans and self-described "most hated band in the world," the Insane Clown Posse, in nowhere Illinois.
Joining the dozens of acts performing — from Juggalo favorites Psychopathic Rydas and Blaze Ya Dead Homie, as well as Vanilla Ice and M.C. Hammer — are New Orleans rappers Juvenile ("Don't miss his monstrous debut," says Vanilla Ice in the video, as his sci-fi alter-ego Vanilla Zerg — and I must warn I am absolutely not making any of this up) and Mystikal, a "real-ass Juggalo homie."
Nathan Rabin at the Onion's AV Club suffered through last year's Gathering, when reality TV's anthropomorphic lipgloss Tila Tequila endured bottles of urine and feces thrown at her. The essence of the Juggalo:
I had come to think, incorrectly as it turns out, of the Juggalos as an essentially harmless tribe, a group of misunderstood, heavily tattooed young people from what my girlfriend calls under-resourced neighborhoods who get together every year to smoke weed, drink cheap beer and cocktails of Faygo and grain alcohol, and live for four days and nights in an upside-down universe where Insane Clown Posse is the most popular band in the world.
So, sleeveless T- and gold chain-wearing sweaty white dudes and their "ninjas," camping out and experiencing "family luv" over a long weekend. (If you've seen the Saturday Night Live parodies, you get the idea.)
There's also actual music listened to by real human beings, like George Clinton, Tech N9ne, E40, Busta Rhymes, Ice Cube and Xzibit. And for some reason, "Juggalo favorite" Jimmie "J.J." Walker will be there.
Other highlights: "wrestler night", forgotten The Box regulars like Dope, Kottonmouth Kings and Saliva, karaoke parties, "endless flava" and a "candle-lit seminar" on ghost hunting, as well as "games run by real low-life carni scrubs who just want your cash" and "dangerous and terrifying helicopter rides with a presumably drunk pilot."
So, if that sounds like fun, head over here. Tickets are $175 — parking starts at $100, so.
Joining the dozens of acts performing — from Juggalo favorites Psychopathic Rydas and Blaze Ya Dead Homie, as well as Vanilla Ice and M.C. Hammer — are New Orleans rappers Juvenile ("Don't miss his monstrous debut," says Vanilla Ice in the video, as his sci-fi alter-ego Vanilla Zerg — and I must warn I am absolutely not making any of this up) and Mystikal, a "real-ass Juggalo homie."
Nathan Rabin at the Onion's AV Club suffered through last year's Gathering, when reality TV's anthropomorphic lipgloss Tila Tequila endured bottles of urine and feces thrown at her. The essence of the Juggalo:
I had come to think, incorrectly as it turns out, of the Juggalos as an essentially harmless tribe, a group of misunderstood, heavily tattooed young people from what my girlfriend calls under-resourced neighborhoods who get together every year to smoke weed, drink cheap beer and cocktails of Faygo and grain alcohol, and live for four days and nights in an upside-down universe where Insane Clown Posse is the most popular band in the world.
So, sleeveless T- and gold chain-wearing sweaty white dudes and their "ninjas," camping out and experiencing "family luv" over a long weekend. (If you've seen the Saturday Night Live parodies, you get the idea.)
There's also actual music listened to by real human beings, like George Clinton, Tech N9ne, E40, Busta Rhymes, Ice Cube and Xzibit. And for some reason, "Juggalo favorite" Jimmie "J.J." Walker will be there.
Other highlights: "wrestler night", forgotten The Box regulars like Dope, Kottonmouth Kings and Saliva, karaoke parties, "endless flava" and a "candle-lit seminar" on ghost hunting, as well as "games run by real low-life carni scrubs who just want your cash" and "dangerous and terrifying helicopter rides with a presumably drunk pilot."
So, if that sounds like fun, head over here. Tickets are $175 — parking starts at $100, so.
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