Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.
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LAST WORD: Joe M.
One of Joe M.’s earliest memories is of jumping into bed at night and his mother saying, “Quiet, I’m praying.” Joe always respected his mother. Telling me about her now, he laughs at the little quirks in her character—for instance, the fact that she would always make Joe and his sisters go to church on…
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VOICES FROM THE STREET: The Virus (Part Two)
(Dean and Casey are in the bathroom of a bar getting ready to shoot-up after finding a dead addict in one of the stalls. They took his hypodermic.) There was a glass on the sink and Dean filled it with water and they each stuck the nozzles of their gimmicks into the glass and…
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EDITOR'S NOTE: After the Storm
A few days after “snowmageddon,” Cambridge’s Harvard Square is slowly getting back to normal. Jon Denning, one of Spare Change News’ younger vendors, greets me as I pass his usual spot in front of Qdoba. He’s smiling. “Man, it’s not so bad tonight,” he says, alluding to the below-zero temperatures he’s endured for the past…
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CENSUS SHOCKER: Walsh spearheads efforts to count the city’s unsheltered
Mayor Martin J. Walsh and over 300 volunteers took to the streets of Boston for the 35th Annual Homeless Census on Thursday, Feb. 25. Alongside the Boston mayor were city officials like Boston Public Health Commission Director Huy Nguyen, Emergency Shelter Commission Director Jim Greene, Chief of Health and Human Services Chief Felix Arroyo, Commonwealth…
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CARD CHARITY: Eighth grader offers help to the homeless
Joanna Munson-Palomba, like most Boston commuters, notices panhandlers on the streets daily. She has a round-trip commute of three hours, which takes her through Harvard Square. Five days a week, she takes the Red Line to Downtown Crossing and the Orange Line to Jamaica Plain. She wants to make a difference for some of Boston’s…
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VOICES FROM THE STREET: Homeless Winter Blues
As I write this Massachusetts has had to endure another snowstorm. It’s the third in three weeks and, once again, there was a mad scramble by the homeless to find shelter anywhere that was safe and that may not necessarily be a shelter. Some people try to take refuge in an MBTA subway station or…
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THE VIRUS (PART ONE)
The day was grey on the Interstate to Inner City and Dean sat in the passenger seat fitting a new collar onto the dropper. He stripped the edge off of a dollar bill, ran the strip of paper through his mouth to wet it thoroughly, and then painstakingly wrapped it around the narrow end of…
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Book Review: Trigger Warning by Neil Gaiman
When I was in the detox unit at the hospital, they taught me about “triggers.” A “trigger” is something that brings back that old rush that heroin used to give me, which would make me weaken and want to go see the dealer. Neil Gaiman’s new book of short stories is called Trigger Warning: Short…
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BIZARRE BOSTON: The smallpox controversy of 1721
As you’re probably aware, a controversy is raging in the United States right now over the vaccination of children. Some parents have been refusing to vaccinate their children against diseases like measles because they don’t trust the medical establishment, while others have been refusing based on their religious beliefs. Some people have even blamed a…
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Linda Larson: Rise and Shine
The poems printed here were selected from Linda Larson’s most recent book, Rise and Shine, published by Wilderness House Press. Larson writes with exquisite talent and soul. She reaches into her past to give the reader stunning portraits of a kaleidoscope of feelings and situations, from a doorway in Cambridge on a cold winter night…
Got any book recommendations?