Stories
Back when he was a sophomore at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, James Smith recalled he fell behind on his final housing payment after his family in Minnesota ran into financial problems. Smith said he promised to repay UMass, but the registrar withheld his transcript anyway. “It was sort of like communicating with a brick…
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Illustrator and author Eric Carle is being remembered for his many children’s books, including “The Very Hungry Caterpillar” — and the museum of picture book art he founded with his wife. Carle died this week at the age of 91, in Northampton, Massachusetts. Katrina Fitzpatrick and her two children, who are 4 and 2, visit…
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Singing in South African languages connects Naledi Masilo to who she is and where she comes from. Since she was a kid in Johannesburg, the vocalist dreamed of studying in the U.S. but her family didn’t have the money. When she eventually won a scholarship three years ago to attend the New England Conservatory (NEC),…
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Take away Will Brown’s commute to and from his home on the Dorchester-Mattapan line — and he gets time to think. “After a school day, I normally go for a walk and just listen to some tunes,” Brown says. “Just… refocus myself, you know?” Brown, a junior at Boston Arts Academy, is still learning entirely remotely. So in…
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Before COVID, one of Michael Besson’s biggest challenges in Boston Latin School was class change. “My bag is pretty heavy and it took a lot of work to move around,” he explained. “Plus, hallways were crowded. I use a cane and that slows me down even more.” Michael is legally blind. “I can see, but…
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Most of the Sarah Greenwood School in Dorchester’s Grove Hall neighborhood is surrounded by cement, with four-square courts and some basketball hoops. The corner of its block is occupied by the crumbling facade of a former church — which occasionally sheds trash, even a knife and syringes, into the schoolyard. Then, in between the two, on…
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