Jack Kerouac in the 1938 Lowell-Lawrence football game.

Photo by Tony Sampas

According to Interior Secretary Ken Salazar the Civilian Conservation Corps - established by President Franklin D. Roosevelt during the Depression to put hundreds of thousands of the unemployed to work on projects in government parks and lands - serves as a “very good indicator” of what the administration hopes to accomplish with the Veterans Job Corps.

Read more here at the washingtonpost.com.

Read the White House press statement “President Obama’s Plan to Put Veterans Back to Work” here: http://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room

The New England Aquarium plans a $15 million facelift, including renovation of its Giant Ocean Tank and surrounding exhibit spaces plus opening a new ground-floor center focused on conservation and research efforts. Scheduled for completion in July 2013, it marks the final phase of a five-year, $42.5 million expansion and renovation program for the Boston aquarium, which opened on the city’s waterfront in 1969. (from www.boston.com and Boston Globe)

 

Photo by Tony Sampas

Martha’s Vineyard Times

FOUND

Black Helix cash box. Call 508-693-4658.

LOST CAMERA

Canon Elf lost in Gay Head near painted house. 508-274-6312.

LOST BALACLAVA

Black, lightweight, lost January 2 on the yellow trail. Under Armor. If found, please call 508-367-0199.

LOST EYEGLASSES

Ray Ban glasses lost between OB/Island Alpaca and Main Street, V.H., on Friday, January 7. Prescription, thin-frames, tortoise shell style. Please call Barbara, 508-423-1443. Thank you!

FOUND

Stuffed lamb chop found in icy parking lot in Edgartown. 508-494-8700.

LOST iPHONE

White iPhone with yellow case lost on Simpson’s Lane, Edgartown, about 8:00 pm on January 2. 508-627-4210.

LOST SOU’WESTER

Black Diamond sou’wester lost on Main Street, Edgartown, on Monday, January 23. Sentimental value. REWARD. 508-627-6160.

FOUND BIKE REPAIR KIT

Tradewinds field area. 508-687-9318.

LOST KEY

Single black car key on a Brighton Academy lanyard. Please call 508-693-2105

LOST-CHILD’S HAT

Black and white knit, jester style with black pom-poms. Lost January 9 on Circuit Ave. near Black Dog store. Sentimental-has other pieces to match. Please call 508-693-3128 or 508-693-1115.

FOUND KEYS

Toyota key, post office key, and house key on ring found on Frisbee Golf course. 774-563-0682.

LOST SCHOOL BACKPACK

I am eight years old and I lost a brown and orange backpack near Gannon and Benjamin last week. It has my favorite stuffed kitty inside! REWARD. Call 920-410-4588.

LOST DERBY PIN

My 2011 Derby pin fell off my coat. It’s silver and round. Please return if found. 508-939-8550.

Which brings me back to Kad Barma’s photo. In a recent post I advocated the widespread use of video cameras as a deterrent or at least as a way of identifying those who misbehave in downtown after dark. Nothing like that happens quickly, however, so why not create a “Ghost Map” equivalent in the meantime. Each morning following a night of street-level carousing, residents could roam around and photograph the damage – the broken glasses, puddles of vomit and all the other leavings of the problem-causers. These photos would then be plotted on a Google map (of the type I created last year for “The Fighter”). Perhaps the Downtown Neighborhood Association or some less formal coalition of residents could create the map and oversee its updating. Such photographic evidence would not only bring more attention to the situation, but the plotting on the map might tend to identify those establishments whose patrons are the biggest offenders.

No matter how much he accomplished, the late Boston Mayor Kevin White always wanted something more. His legacy is huge, from having kept the city from going up in flames following the Martin Luther King assassination, to continuing dramatically the urban renewal started under his predecessor John Collins. Look at the Quincy Market, Copley Place, Park Plaza, the Charlestown Navy Yard and more.

From a journalist’s perspective, he was very good copy, especially because in those days the Boston City Council and its colorful cast of characters were more assertive than today’s lot. And the Council and he were always at odds (except for councilor Larry DiCara.) Orchestrating big events like the Bicentennial, he wanted  people to think of Boston as a world class city, and always saw himself playing on a larger stage.

In 1970, he ran unsuccessfully for governor and stayed on as mayor. He contracted Potomac Fever in July of 1972 when George McGovern toyed with putting White on the ticket as Vice President. While White was kept hanging by a telephone, the idea was scotched by the Massachusetts delegation and Senator Ted Kennedy. Among those denying White the prize were the late Harvard economist J. Kenneth Galbraith and Congressman Bob Drinan, pictured here at the convention, who conveyed to their presidential nominee the strong anti-Kevin White feelings of his home state delegation.

For a while in 1975, White considered running not just as a favorite son in Massachusetts, but as a credible candidate in the New Hampshire primary. He hosted the national media at the Parkman House. He courted the presidential contenders right up to the New York nominating convention. How it must have stuck in his craw that Carter won the nomination and the Presidency!

In a 1976 article written for the Boston Phoenix by Jim Barron and me, a close aide to White observed, “The presidential bug is like syphilis. It’s a social disease. Once you contract it, you can’t get it out of your blood.” After he was passed over for vice president in 1972, and passed up opportunities to organize and run for president in 1976, he still angled for a spot for vice-president. But with Carter the outsider atop the ticket, there was no way that a mayor was going to be selected for number two.

Reporters covering him during the ‘70’s noted his restlessness, his seemingly preferring Parkman House dinners with national figures to meetings in Boston’s troubled neighborhoods. By 1980, they were calling him “Kevin Deluxe” and describing his “Olympian lifestyle.” According to writer Michael Ryan, late City Councilman Fred Langone likened him to Julius Caesar. But, from the Tall Ships to entertainment in neighborhood parks, he made the people dream larger as well and even to feel better about themselves.

In my last formal interview with him, in the plush Oriental-carpeted office at Boston University where BU President John Silber had provided him a post-mayoral home, he was still Hamlet on the Charles. Standing before the window, gazing out at the Charles River, with a furrowed brow, pondering that unnamed something more.

In 1994, at an overflow reception in the Copley Plaza ballroom for the First International Congress on the Atlantic Rim, celebrating Boston’s emerging leadership as an international city, White stood quietly to the side, an attendee, a spiritual father perhaps of the idea, but no longer an active player.

In the end, Kevin Hagan White will be remembered not only by how he changed the physical landscape of downtown Boston but by the generation of young, idealistic activists who worked for him in City Hall and went on to become the next generation of political and business leaders, leaving their own imprint locally and nationally. People like BRA chief Peter Meade, p.r. powerhouses Micho Spring and George Regan, Revenue Commission Ira Jackson (who left his mark on BankBoston and across academia), Congressman Barney Frank, Transportation Secretary and father of The Big Dig Fred Salvucci, Police Commissioner Bill Bratton, Boston Foundation President Paul Grogan and many others. His legacy is huge, even if he never got to move from the Charles to the Potomac.

Please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below.

1972 convention photo by Jim Barron