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2020 ballot box

Prompted By Trump Attacks? Vandals Set Fire To Ballot Boxes

A ballot drop box outside the Boston Public Library was set ablaze last Sunday, marking the second such instance in just over a week after another ballot drop box was burned outside a California library on October 18.

The two incidents come as Donald Trump eagerly pushes debunked claims of fraud regarding mail-in ballots.

The suspected arson attempt destroyed 35 ballots out of the 122 in the box at the time of the fire, according to the Boston Election Department.

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A Market In Boston For Every Taste And Price Point

A Market In Boston For Every Taste And Price Point

By Ellen Creager, Detroit Free Press (TNS)

BOSTON — It’s hard to pack an organic egg in your suitcase.

Still, tourists can find souvenirs galore at Boston’s newest tourist attraction, the Boston Public Market. You may even find lunch.

“Bring a knife, and you can get some smoked sausage, some bread and cheese, and you’ve got lunch to go,” says Becky Stillman of Stillman Quality Meats, standing next to her family’s bierwurst case.

Opened on July 30, the year-round indoor public market features products and produce from across New England. The wide, bright space near Boston’s North End is next to the Rose Kennedy Greenway park. It also is near Boston’s tourism heart, Quincy Market and Faneuil Hall.

Inside, the aisles are still being populated with permanent vendors. Each is more artist than farmer. One sells Rhode Island-made capocollo cured meats. Another features dairy products from the Massachusetts Cheese Guild. You can buy fresh fruit vinegar. Handcrafted chocolate. Perfect sunflowers. Piles of heirloom tomatoes show nary a blemish.

I visited the public market twice on a Saturday, once in early morning with few visitors and once in the late afternoon when it was packed.

Although geared to fresh food, there are plenty of options for souvenir-hunting tourists. You can buy raw honey from a Massachusetts beekeeper. You’ll find fieldstone trivets, where all the fieldstone comes from old stone farm walls in New England. You can purchase bowls made from wood salvaged from fallen trees in the region.

The Public Market also has a new demonstration kitchen and a seasonal outdoor market on Sundays and Wednesdays.

The market is fun. It is sure to have an effect. I’m just not sure on whom.

Why? Cost. That artisanal handmade sausage is $17 a pound; beeswax candles are $12, and a type of cheese called Pinnacle is $25.99 a pound. Come to this area on a Saturday, and it seems that most of the actual grocery-shopping public is directly next door at the chaotic, lowbrow, outdoor Haymarket farmers market where you can buy five lemons for $1.

Of course, walk two blocks farther, and you are at the biggest traditional market of all: Quincy Market at Faneuil Marketplace, the city’s most visited tourist attraction.

Quincy Market was saved from the wrecker’s ball in 1976. Today, it is a food colonnade surrounded by a web of buildings, push-carts and shops, where you can buy everything from Sunglass Hut shades to shadow lanterns. Inside the hot, aromatic building, shoulder-to-shoulder tourists quaff chowder and shawarma, curry and cheese steaks. The building still has great bones, especially the center court with an oval balcony and sweeping staircase. Faneuil Hall Marketplace is about to embark on a needed renovation – and longtime tenants are afraid they’ll be up-scaled right out of their space.

Across the street from Quincy Market, climb a few steps and you are inside the Great Hall of Faneuil Hall. The old building known for its role in hatching the American Revolution is a National Historic Landmark. And it is hushed and cool in comparison to the chaos outside.

Tourists sit quietly, observing the expansive and serene colonial architecture.

One can imagine firebrand patriot Samuel Adams arguing here, and he certainly did, back in the day. One can also imagine the Son of Liberty taking a break, wandering outside through the clanging streets and markets of Boston of today.

I picture Adams wandering past Quincy Market’s push carts and chain stores and into the new Boston Public Market, sniffing and analyzing. I see him walking past the kiosks and pausing to hear the vendors’ stories. Products from New England! Hardworking small farmers! Heirloom tomatoes! Trivets from fieldstone and bowls from fallen trees!

That’s how you build a country, Sam Adams would say. Hard work. American ingenuity. Shopping locally. One organic egg at a time.

Then, he’d give it his stamp of approval.
___

IF YOU GO

Boston Public Market is at 100 Hanover Street, next to the Haymarket T stop on the Green Line. It is a couple blocks from Faneuil Hall/Quincy Market. It is open Wednesday-Sunday year-round, 8 a.m.-8 p.m. Free.

Lodging: Ouch. Plan to spend about $250 a night even for a mid-range hotel. If you want to focus your stay on the North End near the Boston Public Market, think about staying in Cambridge near the Green Line.

Nearby attractions:
_ Quincy Market and Faneuil Hall Marketplace: 200,000 square feet, 70 shops, food colonnade.
_ Rose Kennedy Greenway: Created after the Big Dig buried the unsightly freeway underground. Now mature plantings and fountains make it a pleasant walkway.

(c)2015 Detroit Free Press. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Vandalism: Confederate Flag Placed On Black Civil War Troop Memorial In Boston

Vandalism: Confederate Flag Placed On Black Civil War Troop Memorial In Boston

It may be considered an act of vandalism to take down the Confederate flag in South Carolina, but it is truly a whole other—and special—kind of vandalism to raise that flag up on a particular memorial in Boston, Massachusetts.

The battle flag was found Sunday night attached to the memorial for Colonel Robert Gould Shaw and the Massachusetts 54th Regiment — the first black troops organized in the North during the Civil War — with the flag having been placed over the sword on the figure of the white commanding officer Shaw. The monument is located across the street from the Massachusetts State House.

The Boston Globe reports that Melissa Carino, a resident of Lowell, reached up and removed the offending flag at 10:30 p.m. — and threw it into a garbage can. Police were also called to the scene to investigate.

The 54th Regiment was brought into popular awareness by the 1989 movie Glory, which starred Matthew Broderick as Shaw, and Denzel Washington and Morgan Freeman as soldiers in the regiment. The movie vividly depicted the deaths of Shaw and many of his troops on July 18, 1863, when they were at the head of a charge on Fort Wagner — notably near Charleston, South Carolina, the city where the recent massacre at a historic black church by a confessed white supremacist instigated a widespread, public backlash against the Confederate flag.

Black troops, and their white commanding officers, all courted grave risk in the Civil War. The Confederate government officially did not even regard black U.S. Army regiments as legitimate soldiers in a theater of war — instead, that regime considered them to be part of a slave rebellion, and their white officers were thus regarded as criminal inciters. As such, they were particularly targeted to be killed in the field, and would not be treated as prisoners of war. (They were often slaughtered even when they attempted to surrender.)

As an additional insult, their bodies were often desecrated — and the 54th Regiment was no exception. As detailed in Albert E. Williams’ book, Black Warriors: Unique Units and Individuals, after the events of that battle at Fort Wagner, “Confederate soldiers buried most of the Union dead in a mass grave.”

Colonel Shaw’s body was stripped of clothing and buried with the dead of his beloved 54th. When a request was made to the fort’s commanding officer to allow retrieval of the colonel’s body, the response was, “We have buried him in the trench with his n*****s.” The Confederates thought this to be the ultimate insult to Colonel Shaw and to the Union Army, but in the light of history, it has become a monumental honor. Colonel Shaw’s father would later state, “We can imagine no holier place than that in which he is, among his brave and devoted followers, nor wish for him better company.”

Historian Kevin Levin also details the significance that the 54th Regiment held after the Civil War and into Reconstruction:

What often goes unnoticed, however, is the crucial role the regiment – along with its sister regiment, the 55th Mass. – played during the immediate postwar period. Both regiments were stationed in South Carolina from April through August 1865. Their responsibilities included managing relationships between former slaves and owners to ensure the arrival of a new crop and safeguarding government buildings and supplies. Most importantly, the two regiments played a vital role in protecting former slaves from their former masters who hoped to rebuild white supremacy on a new foundation.

Photo via @DrezBoston

Boston Bomber Speaks Out For First Time: ‘I Am Sorry For The Lives I Have Taken’

Boston Bomber Speaks Out For First Time: ‘I Am Sorry For The Lives I Have Taken’

By Richard A. Serrano, Tribune Washington Bureau (TNS)

BOSTON — Speaking for the first time publicly about the explosives he and his brother set off at the finish line of the Boston Marathon two years ago, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev apologized for the bombings and to the victims of the worst terrorist attack in the U.S. since Sept. 11.

“I am sorry for the lives I have taken, for the suffering I caused, for the damage I have done — the irreparable damage,” he said.

In a slight voice and apparently racked by nerves ahead of his formal sentencing, Tsarnaev thanked his defense team and praised the survivors and relatives who spoke in the courtroom earlier “with strength, with patience, with dignity.”

“They told how horrendous this was,” he acknowledged.

Tsarnaev and his older brother, Tamerlan, detonated two pressure-cooker bombs at the race’s finish line in April 2013, killing three and wounding more than 260. Tamerlan Tsarnaev was killed days later in a massive manhunt for the bombing suspects. Tsarnaev told investigators days after the bombing that they were motivated by extremist Islamic beliefs and that the attack was in retaliation for the U.S. military presence in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Wednesday’s remarks were a departure from Tsarnaev’s behavior during his trial and even earlier in the day, when he showed no emotion during heart-wrenching testimony from victims and the exhibition of the photographs and videos from the bombing. He did not testify.

“I also asked Allah to have mercy upon me and my brother and my family and I pray to Allah to bestow his mercy upon victims and their families,” Tsarnaev said, noting his own Muslim faith.

In emotional remarks earlier Wednesday, victims of the bombing talked about the lasting damage they suffered.

Tsarnaev, referred to only as “the defendant” by victim after victim, remained still throughout. He gave no sign that he was listening as runners and spectators spoke of invisible injuries and the horror of learning that loved ones were grievously wounded.

One woman confessed to remaining too afraid to sleep, but went on to say she had forgiven Tsarnaev.

Other victims expressed anger. Elizabeth Bourgault, who ran in the race, told those gathered: “The defendant will now die for what he did. Whatever God the defendant believes in will not welcome him.”

A prosecutor had to help hold up Liz Norton, whose two children were gravely wounded. “Who could harbor so much evil and so much hate?” she asked Tsarnaev.
Jennifer Maybury, whose nephew lost both legs, told him: “That day changed the course of an entire family.”

A federal jury voted last month that Tsarnaev, 21, a Russian immigrant, should be put to death. On Wednesday, a judge formally sentenced Tsarnaev to six death sentences and 10 terms of life in prison without parole.

In the federal court system, there is an automatic appeal of the verdict and death sentence. But Tsarnaev will soon be moved to a federal facility in Terre Haute, Indiana, where he will become the youngest inmate waiting to be put to death.

The last federal execution was carried out 12 years ago when Louis Jones Jr., a decorated Army soldier, was put to death for kidnapping and killing a female enlistee.

(c)2015 Tribune Co. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

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