Tag: Medford

A Medford church’s demise and uncertain revival

wmcong
Photo via Penny Postcards

The Boston Globe has published a terrific story by reporter Lisa Wangsness and photographer Dina Rudick about a Congregational church in our West Medford neighborhood.

It was right down the street from us when we lived here in the early ’80s. When we returned to a different part of West Medford in late 2015, we noticed it had become a Haitian church and that the Congregationalists had moved into a storefront in West Medford Square. The storefront is called the Sanctuary United Church of Christ.

Now I know what happened.

A wicked smart idea to fund public transportation

640px-MBTA_Green_Line_B
2006 photo (cc) by Adam E. Moreira.

The Boston Globe’s Tim Logan has an important story today about an emerging new paradigm for funding public transportation: charging a fee to property owners who will benefit from it.

It’s already working in some areas, Logan reports. Columnist Shirley Leung notes that Steve Wynn is paying a substantial subsidy to improve Orange Line access to his proposed Everett casino (which I still hope will never get off the ground, but that’s another matter).

My wicked smart Facebook community has already been talking about using such fees to pay for the $1 billion extra that it’s going to cost to build the Green Line Extension into Somerville and Medford. It sounds to me like a great idea, especially since — as state Secretary of Transportation Stephanie Pollack tells Logan — developers are already assessed fees for road improvements. I’d rather see them pay for a new MBTA station than a new interchange.

As always, we need to avoid unintended consequences. There’s already a danger that small, independent businesses will be forced out as property values soar. Perhaps they could be exempt from whatever fee structure the state ultimately decides to adopt.

A chance encounter in a snowbound cemetery

Oak Grove Cemetery
Oak Grove Cemetery

Because today was a rare beautiful day, I took a walk this afternoon through Oak Grove Cemetery in Medford, which is down the street from our house. The snow was so deep that it reached up near the tops of the gravestones — an eerie sight even in the bright sunlight.

I came across a middle-aged man and woman. She was sitting in the passenger seat of a parked car. He was trying to make his way through deep snow toward a grave, holding a brightly colored balloon that proclaimed “Happy Birthday!”

Whose grave were they visiting? A parent’s? No, that’s not what I was really thinking. A child’s? The passage of time must have healed whatever pain they had lived through, because they seemed to be in a light-hearted mood. I heard the theme from “Rocky” as he closed in on his destination (“Da-da-daaaa! Da-da-daaaa!”)

All of us eavesdrop on the lives of others every day. For whatever reason, this one stuck with me.