My daughter Vitoria and I decided to have an adventure as we often do. We spent far too long looking at Google Maps, scouring Boston Central and The Globe for something interesting to do on a recent sunny day. Then I remembered my friend and fellow Realtor, David Hannon at Prudential recently reminded me about The Mapparium at the Christian Science Mother Church near the Boston Symphony Hall on Massachusetts Ave. In the 17 plus years I have lived in Jamaica Plain, I have for some unexplained reason, never been there.
Christian Science Mother Church
If you haven’t had the pleasure, I would strongly recommend it. To be frank, it’s a little intimidating. I know the church well as it is quite imposing and impossible to miss as you traverse Mass Ave. I think the lack of adornment, grass, fences or much of anything until you reach the front door helps accentuate the sheer mass of the building.
Our goal was a huge globe in which you are allowed passage through the center! We excitedly marched up to the front door and a man with a beautiful smile and outstretched arm greeted us. He told us there was a service going on but we could take an elevator up and catch the end of it. I was worried he would think I was some wacko because I was wearing a green army jacket, fur-lined Elmer Fudd hat and carrying a huge camera. Frankly I was expecting two men in black suits, wearing wires to grab my arms and usher me out.
I was curious about the interior architecture so I said, “what the heck.” The elevator doors opened to a mezzanine and the sun poured in, was funneled down to nearly nothing as it was pinched through a few portals to the interior. As soon as you pass the first few pews the space opens up again to a breath-taking room. This would be about where the railing is above the columns in the picture to the right. A woman kindly, but with intent thrust a hymn book into my hands and motioned to an empty seat. I have to be honest, that I have heard better singing but that wasn’t why I was there.
I’ve been to churches, cathedrals and basilicas all over the world and this is my favorite. Not unadorned by any means but intentional. I must admit I was drawn to the powerful architecture. A stark contrast to the interior of the Trinity Episcopal Church on Copley Plaza for example. This was brilliant but focused. Dare I say “American” if there is such a thing?
As soon as there was a pause in the music we took our leave and sought out to find the Mapparium. You’ll find the giant globe more directly by entering the wing to the left of the church (standing in front facing it) where you are greeted by a reception desk. Tours head out every 15 minutes or so. Buy your ticket and head around the corner the lobby to meet your guide. I’m not sure if all the guides are lacking enthusiasm, but ours certainly was. No matter, show us the map young lady. A solid looking door opens and you are lead into the middle of the Mapparium. A long gangway bisects the globe apparently suspended by nothing but it’s attachment points at either end. A light and sound
The interior of the Mapparium at the Christian Science Mother Church
show commence impressing upon the viewer just how big (or small) our planet is. The experience is pleasantly disorienting. When the show is over in a few minutes, you are allowed to discuss whatever nonsense you like with your comrades to test out the “surround sound” qualities of the globe when standing directly in the center. Your voice comes back you with more vigor than it left I attest! The glass panels seemingly reverberate it back at your chest and you feel as if speaking has become an out of body experience. The whole experience was over far sooner than I’d hoped – but I’ll be back. Probably with the next out-of-town-visitors that I must entertain.
Just another wonderful treasure we have in Boston. I feel very lucky to be able to roll out of my front door, walk a couple blocks to the Forest Hills T and within 15 minutes from Jamaica Plain, all of Boston is at my finger tips. I would have gotten better pictures (sorry) but it was absolutely freezing! I couldn’t stay outdoors for more than a few minutes. The wind through this corridor is very strong and will push you right over.
I’d really like to go back to the church at some point when it is not in use. I really didn’t explore it at all for obvious reasons but it deserves it’s own trip. I did my best to read and listen to all of the material they had but to be honest, I’m still not really sure what Christian Science is all about. No, I did not see Tom Cruise, but yes, I was watching for him.
The Mother Church with the Boston skyline in the background
Reuse, Recycle, Reclaim - Starbucks finds a new home.
I happened to notice an article while surfing inexpensive ways to build my dream home and came across this little diddy. Apparently Starbucks is getting wiser on all fronts. The idea of re-purposing shipping containers has been around a long time – my favorite website for this type of design is www.fabprefab.com. They have a whole section devoted to shipping containers here. Be prepared to lose 2 hours of your life if you visit that website.
Anyway, Starbucks, great idea. Now how am I going to find a client who needs a Buyer’s Agent to build one of these fantastical dwellings in Jamaica Plain?
I’m very excited about the “open house” I’ll be attending tomorrow on New York City’s Lower East Side. Im a bit bummed they don’t allow photography but regardless I’m very excited about the opportunity to see how people lived during this era. Supposedly the Tenement Museum is basically a time capsule of the early 20th century home.
The 15-person ad-hoc committee meanwhile is a mix of five of the JPNC’s current elected membership and 10 neighborhood residents who are not on the elected council but were selected specifically for the ad-hoc group. Three of the 10 resident members of the ad-hoc group resigned during the process of creating the report.
Hello, I am Jamey Lionette and I am one of the organizers of the Egleston square Farmer’s Market. Be warned, I am asking you for money, not too much, $75 bucks.
What are we up to? The Egleston Square Farmer Market will be from 4-7 on Thursdays in the Peace Garden (corner of School and Washington in Egleston) from July through November. This is part of the ongoing effort to bring affordable, sustainable local food into the neighborhood. Our farmer’s market will be in three languages, English, Somali, and Spanish in an effort to be inclusive and relevant to the various communities living in and around Egleston Square. The market is, of course, open to all, but we are focusing most of our effort on the low-income residents in the area. We are creating discount cards for low income residents which we plan to distribute through clinics, food pantries and other social organizations in the community who engage low-income residents. These cards will bring a 25% discount (on top of any food-stamps benefits) off produce from the farms at the market.
The market will be comprised of Heaven’s Organic Farm (who drop off a CSA at Plaza Meat Market on Boylston and sell organic/local produce to Harry at the Plaza too.); City Growers Farm, a for-profit urban farm which takes over idle land in Roxbury, Mattapan and Dorchester, and hires area residents to farm the land; Singh’s Roti (Uphams’ Corner) will be showing up with his amazing West Indian sauces which include many locally grown ingredients (Hot peppers harvested in Roxbury); and a group of Somali women will be making fresh Somali bread. Not only will the food be amazing, we feel this will make the market culturally relevant and embrace the rich diversity of the area.
We will be taking on two assistants to train them to run a farmer’s market In hopes that next year they can operate markets in other neighborhoods. These assistants will also be bi-lingual in English and either Spanish or Somali, and we hope to provide job and skill training to these assistants which we hope will enable them to find full time employment.
And this Farmer’s Market is part of a larger concept of promoting Egleston Square as a destination for retail food on Thursday Nights. We will have the Farmer’s Market in the Peace Garden, and promote Plaza Meat Market and Starfish. Plaza Meat Market gets their whole local hogs every Thursday, as well as local beef and dairy. There is really no one in Boston doing what Harry is at the Plaza with local meat. And Starfish is one of the few remaining fish mongers in the city, stop in and get fish whole, or custom cut for you.
Now for the money. To accept food stamps and other food assistance programs (SNAP, EBT, WIC, Bounty Bucks) we must have a credit card processing machine, this will cost us about $800 a year . MDAR (Mass. Dept. Of Agriculture) does have a grant for famer’s markets to offset these costs and for finances to promote the market in low-income neighborhoods where SNAP recipients live, but we were denied the grant money. So we have no money to accept food stamps or promote the market.
I can handle the litany of city fees to run the market, but we need to raise money to pay a credit card processor, and to make posters and banners. The farms are going to take on the rent and insurance, we cannot ask them for more money. The promotional materials will be in English, Spanish and Somali. We have translators willing to work for free, but we must pay for the printing.
So I am asking you for $75. We will happily accept more, and even take less if $75 is too much for you. Be warned, even though we are technically a non-profit, we are not doing any paperwork for tax-write offs. All you get for $75 is a Farmer’s Market in Egleston Square, and the Thursday night promotion of the Square. Also, if we make a website we will be happy to give you (or your business) a sincere thank you and shout out on the website. We would also be open to a title sponsor for any person or LOCAL business who wanted to cover most or all of the costs. None of us who are organizing get paid for this either, we do this because we live in the neighborhood.
We have one other request. We need to come up with a catchy name for the Thursday night promotion of the Market and amazing local butcher shop and fish monger in Egleston. Please put your creative cap on and send us a name suggestion. The winner will get the honor of having named the Thursday night event in Egleston Square.
Please feel free to ask me any questions, and we appreciate any help at all,
Walter Gropius, founder of the German design school known as the Bauhaus, was one of the most influential architects of the twentieth century. He designed the Gropius House as his family home when he came to Massachusetts to teach architecture at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design.
Walter Gropius
Modest in scale, the house was revolutionary in impact. It combined the traditional elements of New England architecture—wood, brick, and fieldstone—with innovative materials rarely used in domestic settings at that time, including glass block, acoustical plaster, chrome banisters, and the latest technology in fixtures. In keeping with Bauhaus philosophy, every aspect of the house and its surrounding landscape was planned for maximum efficiency and simplicity of design. The house contains a significant collection of furniture designed by Marcel Breuer and fabricated in the Bauhaus workshops. With the family’s possessions still in place, the Gropius House has a sense of immediacy and intimacy.
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Six Moon Hill is a residential community dwelling that was designed by The Architects’ Collaborative (TAC) and is located in Lexington, Massachusetts.
Originally conceived in 1947 to house the young architects of TAC, Six Moon Hill has now grown to 29 housing lots, the most recent of which was completed in 2004. To build the community, TAC established a nonprofit corporation and bought 20 acres (81,000 m2) on which to build. It took the name from the six antique Moon Motor Car automobiles the previous owner had stored on the property.
The first houses were designed and built in a modernistic way. The method of design was rectangular, flat-roofed, timber-sided homes, which was typical for residences designed by TAC. The houses are situated on a sloping hill lining a small road that forms a cul-de-sac.
The Big Dig House at Six Moon Hill
Six Moon Hill runs as a consensus-based, collective community in which each member family pays dues and is concerned with community issues. Among the original architects (and residents) were Benjamin C. Thompson, Norman C. Fletcher, Jean B. Fletcher, John C. Harkness, Sarah P. Harkness, Robert S. McMillan, Louis A. McMillen and Richard S. Morehouse. Other notable residents include Nobel chemist Konrad Bloch, Nobel physicist Samuel C.C. Ting, Dr. Thomas C. Chalmers (past president of the Mount Sinai Medical Center), Wallace E. Howell (New York City’s first official rainmaker), Robert Newman (co-founder of Bolt Beranek and Newman) and John C. Sheehan, the first chemist to synthesize penicillin.
The Ford House
Art historian Simon Schama lived on Moon Hill between 1981 and 1993 and described it as “a great place for kids and historians” in a 2010 interview with the Times of London.
Noise pollution is a nuisance as described by Wikipedia:
Under the common law, persons in possession of real property (land owners, lease holders etc.) are entitled to the quiet enjoyment of their lands. However this doesn’t include visitors or those who aren’t considered to have an interest in the land. If a neighbour interferes with that quiet enjoyment, either by creating smells, sounds, pollution or any other hazard that extends past the boundaries of the property, the affected party may make a claim in nuisance.
Legally, the term nuisance is traditionally used in three ways:
to describe an activity or condition that is harmful or annoying to others (e.g., indecent conduct, a rubbish heap or a smoking chimney)
to describe the harm caused by the before-mentioned activity or condition (e.g., loud noises or objectionable odors)
to describe a legal liability that arises from the combination of the two.[2] However, the “interference” was not the result of a neighbor stealing land or trespassing on the land. Instead, it arose from activities taking place on another person’s land that affected the enjoyment of that land.[3]
As a Jamaica Plain business owner I am always a bit cautious to vocalize my opinions on issues pertaining to the neighborhood. I am a very opinionated person so this isn’t the most cathartic scenario imaginable. I have lived in Jamaica Plain for well over 15 years, originally on Sheridan Street and now I own a two-family in the Brewery District which has been beset by the booming bass of powerful car stereos.
I suppose we all have our pet peeves – and living in the city requires compromise. It’s a trade off. In exchange for culture, excitement, varied culinary adventures, etc. you have to put up with queues, traffic, noise, less space and of course personalities. Sometimes the social contract gets tested and the balance gets upset. Conflict arises. Government must step in. Laws are made. Riddle me this though, here in Boston, the ordinances that control noise pollution are completely ignored. No enforcement whatsoever.
Is this really necessary?
Traffic noise is just a fact of life when you live in the city. However, as the global population rises and population density becomes such that we are living in closer proximity to each other - we will have to build a consensus as to what is socially acceptable. I’ve been pretty annoyed by this behavior for a long time but until I did a bit of research for this post I wasn’t aware it was an international issue. It appears to be an issue from Gainsville to Glasgow. Communities are taking action to stop the noise. The solutions vary but I think we can learn a lot from their experience. It seems that just fining the perpetrators is not sufficient. It doesn’t seem to dissuade the behavior. Some communities have employed more drastic measures that seem to be more effective ranging from counting the infraction as a moving violation and adding points to your license all the way to impounding the offending vehicle, a fine and storage fees.
In Gainsville, FL ”currently, state law declares it a non-moving violation, punishable by a $30 fine plus court costs and fees if a vehicle’s stereo system is “plainly audible at a distance of 25 feet or more.”
Senate Bill 886 and House Bill 643 would further lower the boom on booming stereo violations. Under the versions of the bills originally filed, fines would increase: $60 for a first violation, $120 for the second in a period of 12 months and $180 for the third violation in a 12-month span. Each infraction would be considered a moving violation with points assessed on a driver’s license.
On Wednesday, the Senate Transportation Committee unanimously approved an amended version that would keep the first infraction a non-moving violation, as it currently is under state law, with a $30 fine and no points assessed on a driver’s license. For subsequent violations, the remainder of the bill stayed intact.” (from Gainsville.com March 10th, 2011)
Check out this video about the laws in Sarasota, FL:
According to a 1999 U.S. Census report, Americans named noise as the number one problem in neighborhoods.
Of 102.8 million reporting households, 11.6 million (11.3%) stated that street or traffic noise was bothersome, and 4.5 million (4.4%) said it was so bad that they wanted to move. A U.S. Department of Justice report about the boom car problem recognizes the threat that they can “compel people to move out of neighborhoods they otherwise like and thereby depress property values.”
According to noiseoff.org, an organization devoted to fighting noise pollution of all types, “People who drive boom cars consider it their right to play music at any volume they please. They regard their car as an expression of themselves and the louder it is, the bolder the statement that they can make. Boomers are typically lower-middle class males in their teens and twenties with some disposable income. They assume that their car will attract women and improve their social standing among their peers.” Some studies indicate that the driving bass, which creates the “boom” that is so annoying to most people, might raise adrenalin levels and make these young drivers prone to violence.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) estimates that 25 percent of vehicle accidents are caused by driver distraction. Drivers experience reduced reaction times when listening to loud music and adjusting the controls on their car stereo equipment. Another problem is that the pounding bass noise decreases drivers’ ability to hear pedestrians and other vehicles. That also includes emergency vehicles, such as police cars, ambulances and firetrucks.
The car audio industry seems to be celebrating and promoting this mentality through their marketing campaigns:
JBL: “Either we love BASS or hate your neighbors.”
JL Audio: “Be Very Afraid.”
Kicker: “You deserve a beating…Kicker’s loudest, meanest subwoofer ever!”
Concept: “When TOO loud…is just right!”
Lightning Audio: “Sonic submission.”
Boss Audio System: “Turn it down? I don’t think so.”
Cerwin-Vega Mobile Audio: “Shake the living, wake the dead.”
Crossfire: “We’re louder…Deal with it!”
Earthquake Sound: “The Meanest, Loudest, Most Powerful, Mother F— Amplifiers Money Can Buy!”
Viper Audio: “Cold Blooded. Violent Fury and Multi-Channel Mayhem.”
Orion High Performance Car Audio: “Be Loud. Be Obnoxious.”
I’ve been joking a bit about making violators listen to Barry Manilow but that’s exactly what this judge is doing:
Mayor Menino has a “broken glass” policy. The theory is that neighbors should sweep up broken glass (presumably from vehicle larceny) as well as trash around their homes – giving the impression that the area is cared for and making it less likely that thieves and vandals will frequent the area. I believe the authorities should treat the Boom Cars with the same logic. If you send the message to these people that there is a grey area in the law it allows them to determine where that grey area begins and ends. If the community complains enough and the police enforce the law it will be better for the whole neighborhood. In researching the issue as it has played out throughout the country I came across an article in which a city councilman voted the law down because he felt it singled out young minorities. My thought is that it’s going to single out whomever is playing loud music.
Organized efforts are making an impact. Noiseoff.org offers some suggestions on how to get action:
* Do not approach or attempt to reason with drivers boom cars. When possible, take down their license plate number and call the police.
* Talk to your neighbors and organize, chances are they are just as frustrated as you are. Most communities have some type of noise ordinance in place and you should know what they are and if they require strengthening. Lobby the city council or the community board in your area to increase police patrols and fines for offenders. I have already spoken to Matt O’Malley on the subject. Basically, nothing is going to happen unless you write city officials and complain. Send your complaints of noise pollution to the mayor’s office and to your councilman. Take 5 minutes and do something for your community.
* If you see a car audio shop opening up in your community, organize with your neighbors and stage a protest. Make picket signs and send a media alert to local newspaper and television news outlets so they can cover the event. (Oops, too late. Boston Electronics opened up despite not having a license to do so and despite opposition from the JPNC. Thanks BRA Board of Appeals. I live directly across from Boston Electronics. Their list of city ordinances and zoning codes are as long as my arm.)
* Make a point: file a civil suit against the offender. Noiseoff.org even offers a package in the form of a PDF file teaching you how to do it and sign the petition at Ban Boom Cars.
I’m really frustrated by the fact that a relatively small group of people are violating the rights of their neighbors. What is the difference between these booming stereos and public smoking for instance? I’ll tell you – when someone drives or walks by smoking I’m not effected by it. I’m not rattled out of bed nor do I have to rewind my movie so I can hear what was just said.
Now that it’s summer forgetaboutit. The need to have the windows open means I get to listen to the noise from boom cars at a level that is completely unacceptable. I’d really like to hear community comments about noise pollution as well as alternate viewpoints feel free to comment.
After temporarily suspending all programming for strategic planning, the Forest Hills Education Trust announced it will hold one of its most popular yearly events, the Lantern Festival.
The annual event at Lake Hibiscus, now in its 13th year, is scheduled for July 14, the organization announced in an e-mail Wednesday. July 21 is scheduled as a rain date.
“A much-loved community event for Jamaica Plain, as well as Greater Boston, the Lantern Festival draws its inspiration from the Japanese [Buddhist] Bon Festival — a celebration each year when a door opens to the world of their ancestors allowing loved ones to send messages to the other side,” the e-mail said. “It is a time when neighbors come together to share stories, celebrate, and honor the memories of loved ones.”
The trust halted all programming, including the Lantern Festival, indefinitely when strategic planning began at the start of 2011. The move came shortly after its executive director of 10 years stepped down. The planning process, which includes surveying local residents, is still ongoing, the nonprofit group said, adding that more event announcements are forthcoming.
Jamaica Plain Lantern Festival admission is free.
A key part of the ritual is sending out memorial lanterns on water. A $10 donation is requested per lantern. Parking is $10 and attendees are encouraged to use public transit. For more information, visit www.foresthillstrust.org or call 617.524.3150.
