Stories
Boston University biology professor Pamela Templer is a real-life Lorax. She studies the effects of climate change on trees across New England: from the White Mountains of New Hampshire to the Harvard Forest in central Massachusetts, and in urban areas like the campus at Boston University along Commonwealth Avenue. “I love working with trees,” Templer said.…
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A year ago, people flocked to vacation towns in states like New Hampshire to flee COVID-19. For some, it was just a brief escape. But others settled into a rural lifestyle. The question now is how long these newcomers are going to stay. For five-year-old Joanna Shelov, coming to New Hampshire has meant a year…
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When Janet Buxton, her parents and her 11 siblings moved into a Kensington farmhouse in 1954, the sugar maple out front was already massive. Sixty-seven years later, it’s an institution, a national record-holder, and, as of Monday, now becoming a leafy memory. “I call her the Old Lady,” said Buxton. After surviving centuries of New…
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Inside her apartment in Watertown on a recent afternoon, Emily Knowles met with her software development team remotely, testing apps to make sure they work the way they’re supposed to. Knowles, a quality assurance analyst, is bi-racial — a daughter of Black and white immigrants who never went to college. She’s working in tech —…
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People have been making the case for reparations for Black Americans for decades, and there are signs of forward movement. President Joe Biden has expressed support for a federal bill that would study the issue, and the new COVID-19 relief legislation includes several billion dollars to help Black farmers. In New England, some groups are…
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When someone dies in a violent encounter with police, people have come to expect to see the video. A police body camera captured Daniel Prude’s death after he was physically restrained by police in Albany, New York last year. In Minneapolis, both police and private cameras caught officer Derek Chauvin kneeling on George Floyd’s neck…
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Today we meet someone who’s something of a barometer for the battered live music industry in Boston. His name is Fred Mudge and he’s been a piano technician, fulltime, for about three decades. “Three things throw a piano out of tune,” he explained. “Playing it. Temperature. And humidity.” On the day we spoke Mudge was…
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Federal officials won’t say yet whether they’ll give Vermonters more time to weigh in on a controversial plan to install surveillance towers on the Vermont-Canada border. U.S. Customs and Border Protection wants to erect 199-foot “Remote Video Surveillance Systems” in five northern Vermont communities. Mike Niezgoda, a public affairs officer with the federal agency, says…
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