It is almost election day. What? There’s an election? There is an election in Boston every November. Every 4 years of course is the Presidential election, as well as a host of down the ticket races, including Congress. The year following is the quadrennial election for Mayor of Boston as well as for the City… (read more)
The following unwieldy table is an attempt to summarize the 2010 Census for the specific precincts through which the Upper Road to Braintree passes. This chart is meant to accompany the previous entry, Taking the High Road in Roxbury and Dorchester. My intention is merely to highlight the fact that the road passes through neighborhoods… (read more)
The Last of the ‘Old Roads’ from Boston is the road variously referred to as ‘The Way to Braintree’ or the ‘Upper Road to Dorchester.’ It is the last in the sense that the road was laid out in the 1660s to provide a shorter route to the bridge over the Neponset River at what… (read more)
One of my interests is birding. I am also interested in Boston. Naturally, one or more of these entries will be about birds in Boston. This is the first. How many birds are there to see in Boston? This is a much more complicated question than it appears to be. What do I mean by… (read more)
One of the difficulties in doing a project of this nature is the internal tension between a desire to produce these entries in a steady stream and the fear of making mistakes or of being superficial. I have an urge to generate as many entries as I can as quickly as possible. I also know… (read more)
In a couple of previous entries I described the original road to Cambridge from Boston which passed along the Neck and through Dudley Square, winding its way to Brookline and what is today Allston and Brighton, crossing the Charles River at what is today the Larz Anderson Bridge and ending at Cambridge Common. I wrote… (read more)
Recently I was watching a documentary the French filmmaker Louis Malle produced in the late 1960s about India. In this film, which to me was as interesting a period piece reflecting the ideas, values, and prejudices of the era in which it was made as the subject matter of the film itself, one scene replayed… (read more)
Dudley Square, Roxbury, Massachusetts. I moved to Braintree, Massachusetts in February 1977 from the semitropical island of Bermuda. I had never seen snow and the ground in Braintree was covered in it. Lots of it. Also it was extremely cold, something for which I was completely unprepared. Also, as a teenager moving to a new… (read more)
“He was buried in the tomb of his fathers; but his epitaphs are only to be read on the numerous mile-stones that skirt the roads…” Nathaniel B. Shurtleff, in History of Norfolk County, referring to Paul Dudley. One more entry (#14) from my Walking the Post Road Project. The purpose of these entries is to… (read more)
‘Feria secunda, July 14, 1707. Mr. Antram and I, having Benjamin and David to wait on us, measured with his wheel from the Town-House Two Miles, and drove down stakes at each mile’s end, in order to place Stone-posts in convenient time. From the Town house to the Oak and Walnut, is a mile wanting… (read more)
