The Boston City Council has had 3 extremely remarkable members that are worth mentioning. These people include:
1.
Laurence Curtis was born in Boston on September 3, 1893. Before going to college Curtis served in the Foreign Diplomatic Service for a year and then he entered the U.S. Navy during World War 1. While there he was in a crash where he lost his leg and thus was awarded the Silver Star. He then went on to graduate from Harvard University in 1921. At this same time he was also admitted to the Massachusetts bar. He began practicing law in Boston before going on to do some other great things. One of these things was serving on the Boston City Council from 1930 through 1933. Afterwards he was a member of the State house of representatives from 1933 through 1936 and a member of the State Senate from 1936 through 1941. He was also a Republican member of the Congress from January 3, 1953 through January 3, 1963. Along with these great successes though, came a lot of failures too. He failed to become a member of the U.S. Senate or the Congress anytime after 1963. Nevertheless, he continued to live in and serve the people in Boston, Massachusetts until his death on July 11, 1989.
2.
Sam Yoon was born in Seoul, South Korea. He came to America with his parents when he was only 10 months old. When he was 10-years-old he became a naturalized U. S. citizen. He was then elected to the Boston City Council in November 2005 after graduating from Princeton University with a B.A. And from Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government. While in school he focused upon community economic development and affordable housing. He also worked for numerous community-based non-profits.
He was the first Asian American to ever run for an elected office in Boston. As such he was an At-Large City Councilor who represented every neighborhood in the city of Boston. This was done with a strong commitment to public education, affordable housing and public safety. It was his goal to make Boston a safer, stronger, more affordable place to live. This was done while he chaired both the Housing Committee and the Committee on Hunger and Homelessness.
The New Majority, which is a coalition of African Americans, Latinos, and Asians, also had Sam Yoon as a founding member. This group joined together to advance the common agenda for the colored people who were living in Boston. Another group for colored people that Sam Yoon is very active in was Viet-Aid. This is a group that serves the Vietnamese community that is located in Boston's Dorchester area.
Most recently, Sam Yoon has served as the Development Director for the Asian Community Development Corporation (ACDC). Here he is working on creating affordable housing for people who are living in Boston's Chinatown. Some of the other housing organizations that Sam Yoon has worked for include the Boston Aging Concerns, which is an organization that is focused upon providing housing for families wherein the grandparents are the primary caregivers; The Community Builders, which is the nation's largest nonprofit developer of affordable housing; and Abt Associates, which is a leading public policy research firm.
3.
Anna Louise Day Hicks (October 16, 1916–October 21, 2003) was a United States Irish-American/Catholic politician and lawyer from Boston, Massachusetts. She was elected to the Boston School Committee in 1961. Then in June of 1963 she was a chairperson of the committee when the Boston chapter of the NAACP demanded that there should be an immediate public acknowledgment of de facto segregation within the Boston public school system. She was actually the person on the committee who was holding out on the court ordered busing of students into inner-city schools in order to achieve integration. This caused her to become the most popular politician in Boston within several months. However, as you can imagine, this also caused her to become very controversial as well. As such, it is what Anna Louise Day Hicks is most known for. It was at this time that she started an organization that is called Restore Our Alienated Rights (ROAR), which actively engaged in incidents of massive resistance to school desegregation.
In 1967, Anna Louise Day Hicks came within 12,000 votes of being elected as Boston's mayor. Her slogan throughout the campaign was "You know where I stand." So, while she was the first woman president to be president of the Boston City Council, she was unable to become Boston's first female mayor.
Later on, Anna Louise Day Hicks went on to serve 1 term in the United States House of Representatives.
As you can see, Anna Louise Day Hicks was actually quite conservative in racial matters. However, when it came to other matters, she was very progressive. For instance, she was a member of the National Organization for Women, and while a member of this organization serving in Congress she lobbied for the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment.
Throughout time there have also been some women on the Boston City Council. The first woman was Katherine “Kitty” Craven who fought for urban renewal in the 1960s. Then in the 1970s Louise Day Hicks fought for school desegregation. However, it was not until the middle of the 1990s that women had the biggest impact. At this time women actually held 4 of the 13 city council seats. These women were Maura Hennigan, Maureen Feeney, Peggy Davis-Mullen and Diane Modica. They worked together to form a critical mass and then rise to powerful positions on committees where they were able to make way for other women to enter into governmental leadership positions. Unfortunately this was brought to an end in 1997 though because of their individual political ambitions as well as because of Boston’s political culture itself. Since that time only 2 women have held seats on the Boston City Council: Maura Hennigan from 1981 through 1987 and Maureen Feeney in 1993.
Like our counterpart over at DiningOutBoston.com (check out their review of Haru Boston), we were invited to the special Friends and Family opening night at Boston's newest Sushi place, Haru.
Haru is a Sushi restaurant operated by the Benihana company and they just brought a little piece of the Manhattan-based chain to beantown, opening Haru Boston this month.
Being suckers for exclusivity and access, we had a wonderful time that night. We even think we saw Jonthan Soroff (but would he really spike his hair up like that?) and overheard some other patrons mentioning that they'd seen him to. Of course when Soroff shows up, thats when it goes "from a party to an event", so again, we were happy.
Other overheard conversation led us to believe that there were people from Boston magazine around as well on Friday night, but like the Soroff rumor, we've got nothing to confirm that.
The drinks were great, very unique and creative, most of the ones we tasted featured coconut and were blue and green, we suppose thats because Haru's logo is also blue and green. Nice tie-in. And the food, amazing, we haven't had sushi that good in a long time.
The decor is nice, but not too-nice. It doesn't try too hard as many local sushi places have a tendency to do. The ceiling is a little low, which makes for a cozy, if a tad tight, setting, but we'd imagine that has more to do with the Pru than with Haru.
Our waiter, Brandon, was great, very personable and fun. Service is always one of our most important factors when considering a place and here Haru shines.
A debate on the Iraq war initiated a little bit of a tussle among Boston's city council members on Valentine's Day. They decided that they were tired of being left out by the other, more important legislative bodies, who have all debated and voted for or against totally pointless resolutions against the war. Members quotes American legends such as John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr. in their attempt to seem larger-than-life, like their idols.
Boston City Council members debated a non-binding resolution named "The Resolution to Support Our Troops By Bringing Them Home from Iraq and Afghanistan" to call for the immediate withdrawal of United States troops from Iraq. An entirely symbolic measure that, at best, would effectively accomplish nothing. At the worst, however, it tied up 48 minutes of city council members' precious legislation time (over 10 other actually local issues used up 42 minutes of the council's time by comparison) and drew a painful parallel between the bloated, ineffective nature of the council and the wave of violence that has been sweeping Boston's streets for over a year now.
Councilor Chuck Turner led the City council on the debate, and he took the most heat for the useless showboating. Almost half of all the victims of violence that were gunned down last year were killed in Turner's district and local community activists have lambasted him for ignoring his duties as councilman. At critics, Taylor fired back that a shortage of funds resulting from the United States' expenditures in its quagmire of a war in Iraq have caused a decrease in public safety funding like police and other anti-violence measures.
Boston City Council members are paid $87,000 dollars a year, and members critical of Chuck Turner's move insisted that they are paid that salary to discuss and legislate issues local to Boston, not the Middle East. More conservative city council members like Sal LaMattina, Stephen Murphy, and Jerry McDermott argued that if the council was allowed to discuss the Iraq war, it should also be allowed to discuss other hot buttons issues (especially those dear to the right-hand side of the political spectrum) like immigration and the prison industry. Sal LaMattina represents East Boston, Charlestown and the best neighborhood in the world, the North End. Jerry McDermott is the representative from college-kid-town Allston/Brighton, and Stephen Murphy is a council member at-large, representing the entire city.
While Boston City Council president Maureen Feeney initially did not oppose the debate because of Turner's focus on budgetary issues she ended up joining the Pro-war side and opposed the limp resolution. On the other hand Micheal Flaherty initially opposed the debate when he was city council president using a technical loophole that limits what can be discussed during hearings to prevent such debates, but voted on the anti-war side of the resolution. Other city council members Micheal Ross, Felix Arroyo, Sam Yoon, and Charles Yancy supported the measure and voted on the anti-war side.
I typed "ICA" into the "Service Nearby" option on the new MBTA site, and was surprised to find that not only did their option for the Institute of Contemporary Arts put me smack dab in the middle of a body of water, but when I zoomed out, I realized it was just off the coast of Africa. Oh, really, T? I mean, I know it's pretty far from any of your train lines, but I didn't think it was that far…
Well…is anyone still reading this? It's high time we resurrected this site! I'm going to take it upon myself for the time being to try to get some Boston news out to all you good folks out there. Please excuse me if it doesn't pick up entirely quickly — I'll need to get myself back into the swing of things. But do keep an eye on Puritan City, here. I hope you're all as excited as I am!
In a post yesterday, we asked our in-the-know readers to help us solve a blind item published by the Inside Track (we even offered a prize!). In the comments comes the first guess, NESN personality Hazel Mae.
Now, we don't watch TV, so we had no idea who this Hazel Mae chick was, but after a bit of research we found HazelMae.net, and this tribute video:
Who this blind item in the recent edition of Naked City is referring to:
Then there’s the veddy enterprising media gal who always gets the big scoop. Could it be that she’s willing to do anything - and we mean anything - to get the story???
Good (creative or correct) guesses in the comments will win a free pool party at Felt, with free appetizers, for you and 19 of your closest friends (a 450$ value), so make 'em good.
Alcohol, explosives, gun violence, and bigotry. True American values. Of course, let's not forget what Independence Day is really all about: the Declaration of Independence and our freedom-and-justice loving forefathers:
He has excited domestic Insurrections among us, and has endeavoured to bring on the Inhabitants of our Frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known Rule of Warfare, is an undistinguished Destruction, of all Ages, Sexes and Conditions.
This morning, Mike over at T-Rage discussed his take on what pushes urban cyclists to the dark side:
So cyclists think to themselves, “here I am, actually doing something, and burning calories, not petrol, and I get no respect!” Understandably they start acting out, swerving artfully through traffic, running lights, scaring pedestrians. But they’ll never be a match for a soccer mom in a monster Esplinade.
I don't know, maybe I'm just a jerk, but it's the swerving through traffic and blowing red lights thing that makes biking in the city so much fun to me. I ride a track bike with no brakes, so I tend to prepare for possible incidents by slowing early, so it's not as balls-to-the-wall dangerous as it may sound. And while I can definitely confirm his assertion that pedestrians have this idea that it's not gonna hurt so much if a bike hits them (if they even look before scampering into the middle of a car-free street), I'm more than willing to give pedestrians, yes even blatant jaywalkers, the right of way. My only enemy out there is the cars (for lots of reasons, but that's a post unto itself).
We got an email from a tipster last night about our favorite local-politician-and-TV-newsperson-offspring-cum-American Idol non-winner, Ayla Brown:
Ayla is signing with a record and distribution company on 8/24 and then recording that day. She will have a single out late August/early Sept. and a full CD by mid-Oct. She will also be singing with the POP on 7/3&4 and also on 7/12 at Fenway with Theo Epstein.
Well…is anyone still reading this? It's high time we resurrected this site! I'm going to take it upon myself for the time being to try to get some Boston news out to all you good folks out there. Please excuse me if it doesn't pick up entirely quickly — I'll need to get myself back into the swing of things. But do keep an eye on Puritan City, here. I hope you're all as excited as I am! 
