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This was an article about Cutchins intended for the Globe, but the timing didn’t work out. 5.APR.2025BOSTON – Governor Healey’s FY26 budget, line items 5042-5000 & 5095-0015 abandons children facing mental health challenges, leaving their families with few options. Evan was only 20 months old when Megan and...
I drove into work for an event.My bike carved into the turnsthat only make sense in a cityuntil the skyline revealed itself.Taking the South Station exit,sitting at a stop light,suddenly the smell of lilacs.All around me buildings stand up straight totake in all the sun they can.Sleepy streets just beginning to stir.
Black Star’s 1999 hit Respiration, begins with a short phrase:Escuchela la ciudad respirando.Listen to the city breathing.The song goes on with the artists talking about their experiences, their losses, personal or more, and they talk about their city.The shiny Apple is bruised but sweet, and if you choose to eatYou could...
I strolled into a used bookstore I hadn’t been to before. I found the poetry sction and started looking up and down, until I saw a name I recognized and immediately tore the text from the bookshelf and held it to my heart, like finding an old friend in a strange place.
Crossposted @ NSHBOSTON – On January 22, 2025, Secretary Walsh presented Governor Healey’s proposed $62 billion budget plan to the Commonwealth’s stakeholders—a strategy that, while promising hundreds of millions for the MBTA, would simultaneously eliminate vital mental health services for our most vulnerable...
It is the ugliest police station I have ever seen in my life. Not that I’ve seen many, thankfully, but this looks like a shoebox blown up to accommodate three firetruck-sized garage doors.Inside, behind the wooden counter are a few office chairs and desks. One of the two officers smiles when he looks at me and says...
I want to help set intention for the next season, in part, by recounting the last.Greatest PicsMixmasterI make mixes for getting work done. They are about an hour in length, begin with a poem and consist mostly of sound tracks from shows, movies and games, as well as classical and jazz. Generally, music with lyrics tends to be...
I parked the car just at midnight, as planned. I put the car further up the street than I had initially thought to, so the path to my objective was longer. The neighborhood was quiet, with a few cars on the road here and there. I got my bag and started walking.I remember a tall gentleman on his phone in front of me the entire time...
bounds and bows with a heartbeat thrumfrom driving over bridge supports,cruising down 91, into the tide of night.Motown fills the cabin.A trillion billion galaxies, the sum of timewake and shimmer asamber electric torchesglide by, guide us and split wide toreveal a city of stars.I look up at him,between the slabs of oscillating...
I saw the great wings flash before the windshield and disappear.Then I stood in the road, over the body.My clumsy steel metronome of hazard lights, flashinghelphelphelpagainst the wooded dark. The owl’s wings were only just part way folded under its body. When I move it, I know if it is not dead I may lose my eyes, talons...
Anansi Field Notes system is a modification of the Grinnell Field Notes system tailored for Urban Exploration.
Home is in your smile.Wherever, whenever.
My friend Misty Catherine Bassi was killed riding her bike in May, 2009. She was the most gentle person I have met, and it took me a long time to register that she was gone.We met at the UMass pagan group where we were often the only people over 20 to attend meetings. She would always insist on grounding cerebral concepts by...
The Rooster crows at the Moonpouring light down the mountaininto fog and over frosted fields made luminoustouching shadows spun behind trees and between barns, bushes, and bramble.But I am blind to all of itlaying in the lap of nightbreathing low and slowin stillness as soft as silt.Caught in inner constellationsof tangled...
AMHERST The line outside Craig’s Place at 434 North Pleasant St in Amherst, the only homeless shelter in Amherst, starts to form around 9:00 p.m.. Waiting in queue, the group of mostly men talk and smoke cigarettes as they wait, more people arrive in ones and twos, emerging out of the darkness to be painted by floodlights. The...
NORTHAMPTON On a busy afternoon at Haymarket Cafe in the heart of downtown Northampton Tricia McDonough, 26 from Easthampton MA and a barista makes the call to the Northampton Police Department because someone has locked themselves in a bathroom and seems to be unresponsive. The problem first surfaced when several customers asked...
Waking next to you
Is as sweet as that first Spring rain, Gently tapping on the window sill.
“Let’s go see what’s up here,” she said, motioning up a dirt path. My friend Laura and I are out taking photos of the land I have just moved to, 100 acres of mixed wood forest in rural Massachusetts. Autumn is full bloom all around us. Gold and red carpet the ground and cling to the tops of branches as if to set...
He cried out for his mom, pleading to air and asphalt for the long deadcrushing the country into another momentary island of waking.A man casually took the life of another,In front of everyoneand if you fall for the distraction of the uniformyou may miss the message of its privilege: convenient castration. The world watched blocks...
The first time I met Paul, I was unsure what I had gotten myself into. He was a friend of a friend who was interested in missions. That’s what we called Urban Exploration events in 1998 before we knew it was a popular hobby. He was quiet but passionate. As I came to know him, Paul seemed like a good friend who routinely made...
22.April.2019I am sitting on a woman’s chest. We call this Mount position. I am trying my best to choke her with both hands. My right hand grasps the back of her collar so that the boney side of my wrist naturally impinges on her carotid artery as well as the trachea when my other hand closes on the other side of her neck creating...
Skies slung so lowTree kaleidoscope dreams floatWet and shimmering with half rememberingsOf the season unlacing.
Life isnaming new ways to say itthese rags of all I ammay only spill in so many wayson wings of dreamsin song of prayer or spell of sleepslip to skin, like years and whisper by candlelightI love you, I love you, I love you.
I stepped off the back of the boat and into the sea, then swam along side to the front or bow of the Tropical Serenity, where a rope called the wreck line was fixed. I tried to use the rope to pull myself down to 25’ as I had yesterday but could only hover at 10’. I was still having real trouble equalizing sinus pressure. It feels...
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