Author: J. Marechal
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I Salute Them
“Nobody here is special.” That was the comment recently made by a staff member at a local women’s shelter. They made the comment in a snarky, insider tone. Apparently, the staff member was, in an indirect way, referencing a small change one of the shelter’s residents had made. The staff member was taking a pot…
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Hands on Deck
SOMERVILE, Mass.—The Boston Handmade Show in Union Square on July 13 is one more event in a string of many that gives Somerville its reputation as a community of makers. This was not an ordinary craft show; every handmaker there had fascinating tales to share along with their wares. The Lady Dye, from the eponymous…
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4H First Aid
Heartbroke, homeless, heatwaved and how? Here is a handy recipe: In a Fourth of July morning bowl, mix the following fresh ingredients: Sous-chef’ing green-and-red bell peppers, kabobs and corn A spin around the linoleum with one loca señora to Spanish melodies while a lurking polyglot frau tries to debate the radio off Practicing foreign-language phrases…
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The Science in Property
Being homeless is many things . . . invisibility, hyper organic networking, a byzantine paper procedural, sensory overload, protracted process for simple tasks, truncated opportunity, frustration, default wrongness, loss, social justice 101 streaming live, instant family, and a variable-but strangely-rather equal measure of humility and bravado. It is fluidity and forgetfulness. It is the new…
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Gut Feeling
“In the Body of the World: A Memoir” by Eve Ensler Metropolitan, 232 pp., $25 (hardcover) Eve Ensler’s new memoir “In the Body of the World” encapsulates the very physical nature of grieving as experienced through the journey of the author’s transcendent deliverance through cancer. The book convincingly proposes a parallel between the ills that…
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Ev’olutions
In advance of a new release frommultiple awards winning playwright and author Eve Ensler, I attended a production of her seminal work “The Vagina Monologues.” Produced by Cambridge Cooperative at the Central Square YMCA, the play was staged as a V-Day benefit for non-profit My Life, My Choice (MLMC). Created in 1998, V-Day is an…
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Boston Love
The randomness of the streets laid out as they grew, organically, in this Neighborhood City. Home of the Midnight Ride; small enough to bike anywhere; the Walkable City. And first in North America: the T, where every language is spoken, and which originally had Rapid in it’s name–until a rider sued on the grounds that…
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Our Chemical Romance
There are 85,000 synthetic chemicals in our midst, introduced into the environment since the Second World War. Over 216 everyday chemicals have proven correlations to breast cancer, and yet only 7% of the 3,000 in high production have been tested for detrimental effect. It is hard to comprehend a process where a blanket tsunami of…
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Thinking Green
Massachus’ians are thinkers. There is scant shortage of intellectual pursuit in this state; Cambridge and Boston especially are visibly abuzz with the life of the mind, in all its variety of bloom. So it is all the more notable that the Northeastern CannaBusiness Symposium, held Saturday March 16th in downtown Boston by the National Cannabis…
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Playing the Feminist Card
A cat token voted into the game of Monopoly is very cool—but Parker Bros. still got trumped, because the hottest deal in game design now is the newly minted Feminist Playing Cards. These decks are portable, playable art collections, encompassing both illustrative and musical adventures. A discussion of Missy Elliott’s efforts on behalf of strays,…