As the granddaughter of a Jewish orphan who fled Russian pogroms in the early 20th century and lost family in the Holocaust,I’m profoundly disturbed by current events in the Ukraine. But, like many of us, besides donating some cash, I’m having difficulty figuring out how to help.

Last week, writer Palmer Faran presented the following piece to my writers group, “the Write Stuff,” in Lincoln, Mass. She has graciously allowed me to share it, it here.
–Anita M. Harris

ECHOES OF THE PAST: IS ANYONE LISTENING?

Below are 2 quotations that I read years ago and have always remembered.

“They came for my neighbor down the street. I was scared 

and said nothing. They came for my friend next door. Still I

said nothing. Then they came for me.”

“Evil triumphs when good people do nothing.”

I have just finished reading “The Boys in the Boat,” a wonderful book about the United States rowing team that won the gold in the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. Interspersed with the stories of these remarkable boys, is the story of events in Nazi Germany’s Berlin. As I thought about it, I felt as though I were reading about current events.

The 1936 Olympics were a propaganda opportunity for Hitler’s Nazis. They were good at it. The Jews, the Gypsies, the homosexuals were hustled out of the way. Flower boxes were everywhere, windows repaired, streets swept. The Germans were at their best and it worked. Many who attended the events thought Germany was just fine.

Although Germany took many of the gold medals, it was not a clean sweep. Other countries also won medals. The most prized was the 9 man rowing crew who won the gold for the Americans. The most stunning was the track events in which Jesse Owens, a Black American runner, won 4 gold medals, making a lie of Hitler’s claim of the inferiority of the Black race.

Soon after the Olympics were over, Hitler took over the Rhineland, a demilitarized zone established by the Allies after World War I. He claimed there were Germans there who needed protection. The world stood by.

Sound familiar?

In 1938 Hitler invaded Sudetenland, part of Czechoslovakia, claiming there were Germans there also. The world stood by.

Familiar again?

In 1939 he invaded Czechoslovakia, a claim for a greater Germany. In the Munich agreement, the Allies sacrificed that nation. Later that year Poland fell, then Belgium, Netherlands, France, Denmark, Norway. The little fires that were contained for a while burst into flames that soon engulfed the whole world.

Is our collective memory so short? Have we learned nothing in the last almost 100 years?

The world was different then, no nuclear bombs, no television. Our excuse was that we didn’t know. (Although many did know.) Now we watch in real time. Buildings crumbling before our eyes, bodies in the street, a child’s shoe in the gutter. This is not a movie. What will be our excuse this time?

The cries of mothers and children, the moans of the wounded and dying echo across the years. Do you hear them in the halls of power in Washington? Are you listening? Is anyone listening?
–Palmer Faran

Palmer Faran is a long-time Massachusetts resident who recently moved to Arizona.

New Cambridge Observer is a publication of the Harris Communications Group in Cambridge, Mass.

After Colleyville, how do we vaccinate against hate? Keep building bridges..

By Gordon Lewin | January 26, 2022

Erev Rosh Hashanah 1986: It was a perfect New England autumn day, with crisp air and the leaves beginning to turn colors.

As my wife and I walked through the Harvard campus on our way to Hillel services, we saw something strange and unexpected. The building we were heading for was surrounded by eight police cars with a policeman standing next to each car.

As we walked up the front steps of the auditorium, we saw eight additional policemen who were amiably chatting among themselves and saying hello as we passed by.

When services began, I expected the rabbi to say something. He didn’t. Perhaps he didn’t need to. A few weeks earlier, Palestinian terrorists had attacked a synagogue in Istanbul, Turkey, with machine-gun fire and grenades. Twenty-two worshippers died during Shabbat services.

Istanbul was an ocean away, but Harvard is a high-profile place. Better safe than sorry. At the time, I was not alarmed.

Let’s fast-forward 22 years and across the continent to Stanford University. It’s another beautiful autumn day. My wife and I are walking to High Holiday services across a campus plaza to an auditorium being used by Hillel.

We arrive to find a contingent of four policemen out front. They were not greeting the worshippers. They were not smiling. It was the SWAT team, decked out in body armor and helmets while holding large weapons. As we walked past, they didn’t say hello. They were busy scanning the plaza for possible threats, which fortunately did not arrive.

Sitting inside, I had an unsettled feeling. On the one hand, I felt present at services. Yet I also felt the presence of heavily armed policemen outside the building protecting me while I prayed.

But police cannot not always be on hand, as we have witnessed over the past few years at attacks at Tree of Life in Pittsburgh, Chabad in Poway and now Beth Israel in Colleyville, Texas.

I am grieving, and not just for those who have suffered. I am grieving for myself, for my loss of optimism.

My father and I once had a friendly disagreement about antisemitism. He grew up in a poor family in a rough neighborhood. Antisemitism was a daily experience for him. Jewish boys had to walk home from school in groups for protection against Irish gangs. Bigotry was commonplace and discrimination was everywhere. It was perfectly legal.

I grew up in the suburbs and went to excellent public schools. I have had unlimited opportunities. I understood antisemitism from my father’s stories, not from my actual experience.

So I thought antisemitism was slowly but surely dying out in America. In recent years, national surveys have confirmed that antisemitic attitudes have indeed been declining.

My father was more pessimistic, even though he agreed that things were getting better. In fact, he once told me “no other country has been as good to the Jews as America.” However, he explained that life was good for the Jews in Spain until it wasn’t. Then there was Hitler. In Germany, the pessimists went to America and the optimists went to Auschwitz. Israel was important, because you never know what can happen in the future.

So what is happening now?

After the attack on the Tree of Life synagogue, I consulted with a dear older friend who was a Holocaust survivor.

“Could we be facing a future Kristallnacht?” I asked her.

“Absolutely not. America is a totally different society,” she assured me.

Yet my friend would not move to senior housing on the Taube Koret Campus for Jewish Life in Palo Alto, which I thought would be a good place for her. She was afraid of living in a Jewish apartment building. It could be a target.

That’s the fear right now. We all know it’s great being Jewish in America, even more so now than in my father’s lifetime. Yet the concern today is about safety when we are together.

I spent 12 years serving on public school boards. My worst fear was losing students to a mass shooting, as I pictured attending their funerals. Our school board received briefings on school safety plans and drills. We supported having a policeman on every high school campus. During my tenure, there were lockdowns, but no one was ever hurt.

That’s the reality of public education today, and parents still send their children to school.

Synagogue boards are now facing the same unenviable task of addressing security, something that was once taken for granted.

Yet no matter how important, building security is not the whole solution.

A few years ago, a scientist friend compared antisemitism to a virus that can go nearly dormant while smoldering in small pockets until it mutates; eventually producing a new epidemic. To him, that analogy explained how anti-Zionism has emerged as the new politically correct antisemitism.

So how do we vaccinate against hate? For starters, we reach out, we don’t hunker down. We plan more interfaith activities, not fewer. We stay involved in our broader communities, we don’t withdraw.

In Texas, Beth Israel’s mission statement proclaims, “We believe in interfaith inclusion and transforming Jewish isolation through engagement, participation and volunteerism.” When the chips were down, the Beth Israel congregation did not feel alone as it witnessed an outpouring of support from all communities of faith in Colleyville.

Safety and security is on everyone’s mind, and therefore on the agenda of every Jewish institution. It will be addressed. Yet, it is also important to remember that this is a time for building connections.

The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of J., The Jewish News of Northern California, which graciously allowed New Cambridge Observer to republish it.

As a longtime admire of the Lucy Lacoste gallery in Concord, MA, I was honored when Lucy asked me to write a press release for the show that opens there tomorrow. What follows is essentially a paid post–which the gallery has expanded on its Website.

In the show, “Articulating Space,” at 25 Main Street, two female artists challenge the boundaries of traditional ceramics and contemporary sculpture.

Both artists, Josephine Burr and Lily Fein, use the centuries-old technique of coiling and pinching clay to build forms, rather than rely on clay slabs or the potters wheel. Yet their work is highly modern—taking unusual shapes, embracing light in new ways, and shifting the expected boundaries of artist, object, viewer and artistic convention. Each artist takes a unique approach, Lacoste explains.

Lily Fein
Fein’s work tends to be intuitive and, in this exhibition, figurative, with vessels suggesting or relating to the human body.

Fein explains that while her pieces often evoke bodily forms, she sometimes challenges this metaphor “so that the distinctions between the interior or exterior of the vessel invert, touch, or disappear.

 “I encourage the objects to morph and change as I create them, developing a language of improvisation that gives form to a stream-of-consciousness approach to making. I am interested in how a clay form can capture, imply or perpetuate movement… defying the nature of the role we’re taught [that] objects occupy in our world.” 

A 2016 graduate of Syracuse University in 2016], Fein has won numerous awards; held residencies in Massachusetts, Minnesota, Montana, New York,  and Japan; and exhibited  in Louisiana, Massachusetts, Missouri, New York, Oregon, Montana, and Washington State. Born in Newton, MA, Fein currently resides in New Orleans.

Josephine Burr
Burr, a professor of ceramics at Massachusetts College of Art and Design, raises questions of interiority and objecthood (or: duration/temporality), according to Lucy Lacoste, the gallery owner “Some of her pieces are unusually large for ceramics—and she sometimes punches holes in the clay to allow light—and her own energy—to shine through.”

Burr explains that the “language” of clay is “mute and absorbent… a holder of time and of the unnoticed, of the underpinnings of consciousness and of daily life.” In her work, she probes at this “unnoticed space, coaxing the temporary and fleeting quality of experience into visible, tactile form.”

Her sculptures “echo familiar objects but confound their meaning—pinched to hold passing time, shifting light, the fragile uncertainty of being,” she says.  “Boundaries are intentionally blurred: between interior and exterior space; between pot and sculpture; between object and drawing.

“While clay as a material speaks of the familiar, the concrete and the immutable,” she says, “it also carries a sense of transition, fragility and porousness.” For Burr, “making becomes an act of tactile listening, attending fully to that fragile terrain at the edge of perception… Balance and trust are essential to this process. It is my hope that the work invites the viewer to recognize and rest in that space.”

Burr’s latest approach embraces and interrogates the boundaries of both two- and three-dimensional work. In her ‘still life’ An alphabet of makeshift days, #2 (winter light)—three small sculptural vessels rest on a shelf, a clay ring set against the wall, behind—Burr invites the viewer to consider the continuity and difference between her own work and the art historical lexicon.

Professor Burr, who lives in Hyde Park, MA, has held residencies and/or exhibited in Massachusetts, Maine, Houston, Philadelphia, New York, Texas, Vermont and Iceland. She is a 2021 nominee for the Boston Foundation’s Brother Thomas Fellowship.

Lacoste is “delighted to share the work of two insightful artists who are making important contributions to the increasingly synergistic worlds of ceramics and sculpture,” she says.

Articulating Space will be open through August 7, 2021. Both Fein and Burr will attend the opening reception on July 10^th from 3 – 5 PM, with artists’ remarks at 4 PM.

Articulating Space will transition into an online exhibition on Saturday, July 17^th to accommodate gallery renovation.

–-Anita M. Harris
New Cambridge Observer is a publication of the Harris Communications Group, in Cambridge, MA.

On June 12, I had the privilege of introducing the zoom happy hour for classmates who attended the 51st reunion of my graduating class. I touched on some of the incidents I wrote about in my 2015 book, Ithaca Diaries, which is about our four years 1966-1970. Sometimes, I call the book “Gidget Goes to the Revolution” which, in a way, sums up my college experience. But 51 years later, I thought it would be important to reflect on the past as it relates to the present and future–rather a handful for a 10-minute talk–but I think I managed to do it. Here’s a link to the video; the script, which I did not follow exactly, is inserted below.

Hi, I’m so glad to see everyone here, and especially that we’re all still here after this difficult year. I know that some of us are disappointed not to be in Ithaca—but the good part is that friends from far away can be with us.  One such friend said he would join in if I provided free drinks…which I am…in my living room.  CHEERS!

51^st ANNIVERSARY OF GRADUATION 1970
 I’m sure you know that this is the 51^st anniversary week of our crazy graduation. With those three walkouts, and the demonstration on stage where Morris Bishop, the distinguished historian and leader of the processional hit someone over the head with the baton he was carrying… Many people think that it was Dave Burack—my gov instructor—who got hit over the head …Burack swears it was his roommate…In any case, the demonstrators got hauled off stage and into a cop car…The bear at the top of the mace got bent and has never been the same—nor, I think,  have we.

 I remember that really well…which is amazing because people were  passing a JOINT when we were standing in the graduation processional…and I was definitely stoned.

I WROTE ABOUT THAT IN MY BOOK, ITHACA DIARIES which is based on the journals I kept as an undergraduate: it starts with me arriving at Cornell freshman year carrying the pink suitcase my uncle leon gave me for my bat mitzvah—goes through draft card burnings, demonstrations against the war,  the straight takeover,  MY LOVE LIFE, WHAT WAS I THINKING Kent State…and  ends on graduation day….when, to my amazement,  I even led a demonstration.

I WAS ORIGINALLY SUPPOSED TO TALK ABOUT ITHACA DIARIES LAST YEAR, AT OUR FIFTIETH but with the pandemic that really didn’t work out. So this year, Sally and Kathy asked me to introduce the social hour– they told me several times to be brief and to keep in mind that this is supposed to be a HAPPY hour. So I’m not going to reminisce a whole lot…I will just move the story ahead a little, wax a bit historical and philosophical, and then we’ll breakout out the drinks.  I mean..join the breakout sessions.

                                                                                    *

SINCE ITHACA DIARIES CAME OUT, I”VE BEEN WORKING ON TWO SEQUELS.

THE FIRST SEQUEL IS ABOUT MY FIRST YEAR OUT OF CORNELL— and I imagine that many of us went through similar experiences.   After all the turmoil on campus, and changes in the late sixties, I had no idea what to do with myself. (And of course, I was an English major…need I say more?) But as a fledgling feminist, I wanted to prove that I could do things: that anything a guy could do, I could do, too.  I got a bunch of short-term jobs.

WEST VIRGINIA First I got a job with the ILR School that took me traveling around the country to several hospitals,; in West Birginia, I had my first look at coal miners with black lung disease.

I WORKED IN A  POLITICAL CAMPAIGN  where one of the pols spent his days pretending to read the newspaper while staring at my legs…

THEN I WENT ON A ROAD TRIP cross country with two Brits I didn’t know, whose names I found on a bulletin board. They were both named John John, John, and I  drove cross country in a big black buick =–u drive it—and picked up every derelict and druggie, all the way from Miami to San Francisco.

AFTER THAT, I WORKED WITH DISADVANTAGED TEENS IN THE PHILADELPHIA GHETTO…AND FINALLY, I WOUND UP IN HARRISBURG, PENNSYLVANIA.  

That’s where the first sequel, which I’m CALLING PHILADELPHIA STORIES  ENDS.

HARRISBURG

SO, THEN, THE SEQUEL TO THE SEQUEL:  HARRISBURG
IT TURNED OUT THAT THREE OF OUR CLASSMATES, ED ZUCKERMAN, FRED SOLOWEY, AND VINCENT BLOCKER, WERE ALSO IN HARRISBURG, EACH FOR HIS OWN REASONS. WE AND SOME OTHER PEOPLE ENDED UP STARTING A NEWSPAPER THERE, IN CONNECTION TO A MAJOR POLITICAL TRIAL— IT WAS THE TRIAL OF THE HARRISBURG 8., WHICH HAD AN INTERESTING CORNELL CONNECTION. 

HARRISBURG 8 TRIAL
BERRIGAN: You may remember Dan Berrigan the anti war Priest, and poet who was deputy director of  Cornell United religious work. Anyway, while Dan Berrigan was in prison, Nixon’s FBI Director J EDGAR HOOVER ACCUSED DANIEL’s brother  Philip , who was also in prison, of conspiring to kidnap Henry Kissinger and blow up underground heating tunnels in Washington DC.  Also accused were  former ILR Professor Eqbal Ahmad, and six others—mostly nuns and priests. I’m not kidding, I’m not kidding.

So, Ed, Fred, Vincent and I started a newspaper called the Harrisburg Independent Press—or—HIP- around the trial of the Harrisburg 8. That was how I became a journalist, the paper was amazing.

And, for the last few years I’ve been working on a book on my experiences at HIP.

A FEW WEEKS AGO, I WAS WORKING ON THE CONCLUSION. And I started wondering what the heck am I doing, why am I time traveling, going back into the past all the time?  

ONE REASON IS PERSONAL : AS WITH Ithaca diaries, I needed to understand on a personal level, just what had gone down, to get things straight in my head, this was such a formative period, in order to figure out what to do next.  

BUT ANOTHER REASON IS HISTORICAL/SOCIETAL.

WHEN I FIRST STARTED WORKING ON THE HARRISBURG BOOK, TRUMP WAS JUST COMING INTO OFFICE, AND I FELT THE COUNTRY WAS DIVIDED, much as it was in the late 60s and early 70s.  I thought it might be interesting to draw some parallels between the present day divisiveness along the lines of  race, poverty, ethnicity, and corruption… and what was going on back then, under the Nixon administration, with race relations, the Vietnam War, dirty tricks and such.

SPIRALS: BROKEN PATTERNS:
 Then I thought about my first book, it’s called Broken patterns, and it’s about our generation of professional women in relation to our own mothers and grandmothers. It describes a spiral pattern in history—a spiral pattern that I think holds true for Individuals as well.

WHAT DO I MEANBY SPIRALS?  HERE I’d LIKE TO PONTIFICATE, A BIT, IF YOU WILL INDULGE ME…

Many of us—myself included—tend to think about progress in a linear way. That is, that to progress, we move forward in a straightforward path toward a goal.  But the older I get, the more I see that life sort of emerges in a series of starts and stops—that we get just so far, in moving toward a goal—maybe we reach it; maybe we get blocked… and then, as a society or as individuals, we tend to pull back to reassess, to reintegrate our own pasts, our country’s past, in order to move forward, once again.  

TODAY A TURNING POINT IN A SPIRAL
I think that now as a society we’re at a turning point in a spiral that’s kind of similar to where we were. 50 years ago. Now, as then, society is divided. Many have moved toward equality but others have been left behind.   As you know, there are issues of race, poverty, war, environment, how government should work, what kind of nation we want to be.  BUT despite all of the disruptions, the divisiveness, the protests,  the violence, I feel heartened that many of us are looking back historically, to understand how we got to this place so that we can regroup to find new ways of doing things.  I know that I’m painting with a rather broad brush—but I believe that==or I HOPE that– retreating a bit to reassess, will allow us move forward as individuals, and as a society, once again. END PONTIFICATION

COMING TOGETHER FOR OUR 51^st
 In the same way, coming together for our 50th, or 51^st reunion, gives us the chance to look back, to heal, to understand, to figure out where we’re at in order to find new ways to move forward in our own lives. I’m hoping that in our social… er happy hour, we’ll have a chance to catch up, figure out where we’ve been, where we are now, and  what adventures come  next as we enter this new phase in our lives.  TOAST WITH GLASS

One quick reminder—please use chat to catch up/share info or addresses with anyone you want to stay in touch with after the social.  

Concord’s LaCoste Gallery has hit the ball out of the park yet again–this time with a remarkable and timely show by Massachusetts ceramicist Paul Briggs. The show, “Intuitive Responses: Poetic Justice in Clay,” centers on six sculptures, each inspired by a a specific poem written a noted black poet. The poets are: Maya Angelou, Lucille Clifton, Langston Hughes, Audrey Lorde, Harryette Mullen and Sonia Sanchez.

The works, part of Briggs’ “Cell Personae” series, are built and glazed to resemble prison bars and chains–but, as Briggs explained at an opening on February 13, 2021, they shows that despite oppression, the human spirit prevails.

Briggs writes in his artist’s statement:
The poetry series came about as a way to look for hope and strength during these difficult times and their impact on people of color. It is my work toward finding courage in light of my ongoing work concerning legal violence and incarceration, the disproportionate number of people impacted by the pandemic, and the awakening the siege on the capital brought about as we witnessed the different manner in which people protesting under the banner of Black Lives Matter received versus those flying banners of white supremacy. What became clear was the degree to which black poetry included so much pain and power.”

At first, I found the work intense and powerful, yet off -putting—I mean, who wants to look at what seem to be iron bars and cages in the midst of a covid pandemic? But when Briggs explained more about what the works showed, they became, for me, profound and freeing. One of my favorites, “I’ve Known Rivers,” was inspired by a poem in which Langston Hughes relates history and flowing water to the depth of the soul. Brigg’s sculpture appears to be an iron-bar frame, locked in place by knotted chains–but the knots seem to give way to graceful flowing arcs which escape the bars–forming a waterfall-like structure that cannot be constrained.

Another work, Brigg’s “Caged Bird, “, which includes sculptures of two birds behind bars, references the Maya Angelou poem of the same name. It’s final paragraph reads:

The caged bird sings
with a fearful trill
of things unknown
but longed for still
and his tune is heard
on the distant hill
for the caged bird
sings of freedom.

A link to the photos of the sculptures and their poetic inspirations follows the main writeup at https://www.lucylacoste.com/exhibitions/paul-s-briggs

According to Lucy Lacoste, the gallery founder and owner,

Briggs has said that ceramics are, for him, a way to philosophize concretely.” In this seemingly contradictory phrase, we already get a sense of his work, in which deep structures of thought and feeling find material equivalents. Briggs’ series Cell Personae exemplifies this approach. It is his personal response to the “other” pandemic raging through America – the mass incarceration of Black people, which is itself an act of grand-scale criminality. The works amount to a firm, resolved protest against this ongoing tragedy. Each is rectilinear, evoking the confining dimensions of a jail cell, and contains within it a nest of serpentine forms. They could be taken as symbolizing the psychic energy of imprisoned individuals – complex thoughts and emotional torment – or perhaps, more optimistically, the inevitability of eventual change. The works are remarkable for re-scripting the basic vocabulary of ceramics (slab construction and coils); Briggs brings to these familiar techniques a wholly new, compressed and clear meaning, of great relevance in this year of reckoning with issues of race in America.

The exhibit, at 25 Main Street, Concord MA, will run Monday-Saturday 12-5 through March 13, 2021.

–Anita M. Harris is a writer, photographer and communications consultant based in Cambridge, MA.
New Cambridge Observer is a publication of the Harris Communications Group, also in Cambridge.

Our friend R in San Antonio reports on the current weather situation in Texas…perhaps giving new meaning to the idea of “power politics.” He asked that his name not be used. —Anita Harris

To our friends who have been worried about us because of the crazy weather:  

Thank you for your expressions of concern.  We are fine.  Here is the story.  

We heard that last Saturday, the temperatures would go below freezing and our insurance company (State Farm) advised us to keep the water running to prevent the pipes from freezing.  We did that, and the pipes never froze.  In addition, the external parts of our pipes have long been covered with insulation.  What I did on Saturday was to put heating pads on the external pipes and turn the temperature of the pads up to the maximum.  I plugged the heating pads into an outlet in our bedroom.  The window there is open a crack and I put towels there to keep from freezing.   We have slept very comfortably.  

On Sunday night, it snowed about 4 inches. and that is when the problems started, mostly for the city, not for us, but unfortunately for many of our friends.  The electric company instituted rolling blackouts.  In theory they were supposed to be 15 minutes on, 45 minutes off, each hour, but in reality, they morphed into 5 minutes on, 23 hours, 55 minutes off, every day or simply being off for a couple of days straight.  Since we use gas for heating and since our power never went off, we were fine, but many people we know were not.  Collecting the data from these people I gathered that the electric company was punishing the major individual users (i.e., people who use electricity for heating) and neighborhoods that are major users (i.e, ones with small houses close together).  Our neighborhood has houses that are pretty far apart so, collectively, I doubt that the neighborhood uses much electricity compared to many other parts of the city.   Also (alas) much of our neighborhood votes Republican and even though the city government is Democratic and progressive, the individuals in charge of the power grid are Republican appointees. They have done a miserable job. 

 To make matters worse, because of the power failures and the bursting of pipes, the city water company has had to cut off water from many people (add these to the people who have no water because their own pipes burst). The water company fears that the water will back up and that raw sewage will come out of the faucets so they have advised people to boil their water.  (Of course, if you have no power, you can’t boil water).  In our case, we get our water directly from the aquifer, via a pump located at least 300 feet underground.  As long as we have power, we will have no water problems but we are stockpiling some water, just in case.  So, many people have been freezing in the cold and darkness and suffering from thirst.  Our former governor, Rick Perry, a Republican, says that Texans would rather freeze than endure federal regulation.  The city has opened the Convention Center and other buildings to people who need to keep warm.  Naturally, these places would be superspreaders of the Covid virus.  And just when the city had turned the corner and cases in San Antonio were going down rapidly!  

It was very unusual to see our cars buried in the snow.  We had not had a real snowstorm here since January 1985.  The temperature on Monday dropped to about 10 degrees.  

In terms of our personal situation, the weather has affected us a little bit.  First, L’s second Covid vaccination, scheduled for yesterday, had to be canceled.  They are supposed to contact her soon to re-schedule.  Our internet connection vanished on Tuesday and has just resumed today (Thursday).  I called AT&T and they told me that the cold weather had damaged some of their centers so that the internet was going down all over Texas and Oklahoma.  Our newspaper stopped being delivered as did our mail and the recycling has not been picked up.  We even ran out of coffee, meaning that we are threatened with the end of civilization as we know it.  Yesterday, our daughter volunteered to go out to get coffee.  Fortunately, much but not all of the snow and ice had melted by yesterday.  There was such a mob at the grocery store that she decided to try a drugstore.  It too was closed.  Then another one had all the shelves stripped bare.  The next place she tried was also mobbed   She observed that the traffic lights on Bandera Road were off and the traffic was not moving.  She spent about 20 minutes at the same spot before the police came and pushed a non-functional car out of the way.  The next place she went to was closed but finally she found an open drugstore and was still unable to get the coffee.   

We tried phoning people.  I could call or text some people but my efforts to contact my Argentine relatives failed.  Linda and Sara had similar problems with their phones.  

This morning when we got up all the snow had melted.  The driveway had turned to a sheet of ice so I had to navigate it very carefully as I went to look for the newspaper, which was not there.  Then at 8 AM it started to snow and it has not stopped.  It looks like it could be a blizzard although no blizzard is forecast.  It will probably taper off.  The forecast says that we will be above freezing by Saturday and that next Thursday the temperature will be 77.    

Interesting that our Republican senator, Ted Cruz, who fought until the last minute, claiming that Trump won in November, has flown off for a Mexican vacation in Cancun, while his constituents freeze in the dark and are afraid of drinking the water here.  I propose that, in the spirit of denialism, which he is very good at (e.g. climate change), Ted demonstrate that the water situation is fine by drinking a glass of tap water in Cancun.  

Life is interesting here.  So far, we are all fine and likely to stay that way.  

Un abrazo, as they say in Texas.   R

–Anita Harris is a writer and communications consultant based in Cambridge, MA. R is a childhood friend.
New Cambridge Observer is a publication of the Harris Communications Group, a PR and digital marketing firm, also in Cambridge.

A friend told me recently that during Covid, with no students and many beloved businesses closed, she finds Harvard Square so depressing that she no longer wants to go there. I have a different take.

It is true that early in the pandemic the Square was desolate.

• 

• 

But since the Phase I reopening last summer, I’ve gone there almost every day.

After running on the Charles River, I often head to Henrietta’s Cafe for coffee, outdoors–yes, it’s freezing– but the wonderful staffers there have pretty much gotten me through the year. (Their number is sparser now: with limited seating and very few customers, several servers have been laid off, others work just one day a week instead of their previous five, and those who returned to college in the fall have not been brought back, at all). But those who are there graciously ask me about the book I’m working on, and even laugh at (some of) my jokes.

• 

• 

A few weeks ago, I took a longer look –camera in hand. Yes, Dickson Brothers is closed, the “Dewey Cheatem and Howe” office of public radio duo” Click and Clack” is gone, as are tea shops, coffee shops, and stores like Staples that I’ve frequented for years.

• 

The Red House, once my favorite restaurant, still serves great food but mostly, since even before Covid, it’s a pot shop. Book stores-turned- clothing stores have been turned into banks; the former Au Bon Pain is now the Harvard Student Center; Legal Seafoods has been shuttered and sold; the iconic Out of Town News has closed, and the newstand that once stood on the corner, opposite, is now a milk bar.

• 

• 

• 

• 

Walking around, I tried to imagine riding a bike into the Square or eating at Charlie’s Kitchen in a plastic hut.

• 

• 

I was pleased to see that Cardullo’s has survived, along with national chain stores like CVS, Starbucks , Peets Coffee, and the Gap…

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At Citizens Bank , I was welcomed like a long lost friend. (In the summer, they cheered me on when I showed up with the pool noodle I carried for social distancing…or, perhaps, they were just overjoyed to see a customer–or any human face) .

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By now, the Charles Hotel has been remodelled–It still has its fancy modern exterior, but inside, the lobby has been divided into smaller, cozier rooms with a historic, bookish feel.

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The Coop is under construction; as is the block where Curious George, Deluxe Tea, Urban Outfitters and Dickson Brothers used to be.

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I found myself rushing to capture as much of the present as I could before it became the past. In the near-wreckage, I came across this mural signed “by Dennis.”

Around another corner, while I shot photos of pictures of the old Square superimposed on what will be walls of the new , a construction foreman yelled out, “You’re not allowed to do that!” I asked, “Why not?” He said, “Just kidding,” and insisted on taking my photo, with my phone (Covid be damned!), alongside a construction truck.

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After that, I spritzed on some hand sanitizer and headed home –feeling not depressed but, rather, elated…. by the people, by the energy, and by the beauty of the changing scene: its light, its lines, its colors, its shapes. Snapping photos, I had become part of that scene, experiencing my own transformation, excited to see what the world will look like after Covid, after Trump, after this difficult winter, as we create new futures for ourselves and for one another.

–Anita Harris is an award-winning writer, photographer and communications consultant based in Cambridge, MA.
-New Cambridge Observer is a publication of the Harris Communications Group, a PR and digital marketing firm, also in Cambridge, MA.

As a blogger and journalist, I’ve been appalled by recent attacks on the free press by the current administration.

This is not to say that I haven’t been a critic of the press myself: soon after college, I became a journalist by founding a weekly alternative newspaper called the Harrisburg Independent Press (yes, aka “HIP“)–partly in response to the traditional media’s failure to address many social, economic, and political issues of the day. (I’ll be writing more about HIP in the months to come; I’m now working on a book about my experience, there) .

After a year in Harrisburg, I wrote for two alternative newspapers: the Boston Phoenix and the Real Paper, in Cambridge.

For various reasons (mainly that neither paper would hire me full time or even put my name on the masthead–well, the RP already had a woman reporter–she covered “women’s stuff” ) I decided that in order to get anywhere, I needed some establishment credentials so went to New York, for journalism school at Columbia.

Upon graduation , I stayed in New York–working first for a fellow who was a bit of a maniac (he drooled when he yelled at me), then for the city’s major Muzak station. ( I won awards for documentaries including one from a radical feminism perspective on prostitution and pornography in New York–more to come on that, as well) a. After that, for five years, I covered health, science, technology, law and justice –and other topics!–for MacNeil/Lehrer (now the Newshour), of PBS.

Eventually, I returned to Boston to teach and write; subsequently became a communications consultant, author, blogger, etc. etc., which I’ve now been for more than 20 years.

...in July 1973, an alternative weekly newspaper in Boston called The Real Paper offered this for a lead headline: “Women Derelicts: To Be Old, Homeless and Drunk.”

The story said there were as many as 1,000 poor women living on the streets of Boston. The tales were disturbing. Ordinary women with names like Mary, Ann, and Masha, living in squalor in abandoned buildings; too sick from drinking to work; selling sexual favors for $1 in bars and alleys. And always looking for a place to sleep.

One doctor quoted by reporter Anita Harris was skeptical there was a problem at all. “You must have been talking to the women’s libbers,” he told Harris. Yet it turned out the city’s welfare department had quietly started a homeless women’s division.

This story gripped [Kip] Tiernan and wouldn’t let go. It shined a light on a strange truth in the upheaval of the early 1970s: Women were unequal to men even in poverty.

Ultimately, Tiernan founded the shelter, which became a model for many others, nationwide.

Because I had lived in New York for so many years, I had no idea, until last month, that my article had had such an important impact.

This past weekend, the Globe published “Making a Difference,” a letter to the editor in which I thanked Healy “for her remarkably well-researched piece on Rosie’s Place and for tracing its founding back 47 years to an article I wrote, which until now, I had no idea had profoundly impacted the lives of so many women.

“These days, with the free press under assault, Healy’s article provides yet more evidence of the power of the press to make the world a better place — simply by telling the truth. Thanks, Beth Healy, for paying it forward.”

I hope to continue pay it forward…That is, to make a difference through this blog, my books, and other writing. I also hope that the free press will survive…flourish, even…to give the truth a voice in these difficult times.

Anita Harris is an author, blogger and communications consultant based in Cambridge, MA. (She is not the British rock star, the Somerville School Committee member, or the Australian feminist writer).

New Cambridge Observer is a publication of the Harris Communications Group, an award-winning PR and digital marketing firm also based in Cambridge.