This....bothers me

So much that I went to my old camp's Web site to make sure they aren't doing any of this silliness:

In the age of instant gratification, where parents can contact their children almost whenever they want via cellphones, text messages, and e-mails, it is Mom and Dad, not their little campers, who are struggling to let go.

"It kills them not to know that Johnny's on the basketball court right now, or in the bathroom, or changing his shirt," said Bette Bussel, executive director of the New England chapter of the American Camp Association. "Parents expect a totally different kind of communication than they did years ago. Totally different."

AP: Northeast braces for home heating oil increases

How will people cope?

New Englanders struggling this summer to pay gas prices topping $4 a gallon should brace for more bad news -- home heating oil costs next winter are expected to hit record highs.

One retail heating oil dealer says she expects a typical household delivery that cost $500 last winter will climb to at least $850 this winter.

"It's going to be staggering," said Northboro Oil Co. owner Sandra Farrell in telephone interview with The Associated Press. "It's going to be a real problem going into this winter for everyone unless something changes."

Grim proving ground for Obama's housing policy

Read the accompanying article here.

Handy for intarsia

Balls of yarn stay clean and sit securely inside the zip case, while the yarn can be pulled through the grommet holes on the top of the case to facilitate easy knitting.
The Needle Holder is a convenient way to hold needles while on-the-go, and even at home. Both are constructed of nylon mesh so they are super lightweight to carry, yet strong enough to prevent needle tips from popping through the fabric.
Yarn Holder sells for $39.00.

China renames menu items for Olympics

What's in a name?

Local dishes like "Husband and wife's lung slice" or "Chicken without sexual life" conjure lots of furrowed eyebrows on famished foreigners.

So, with the Olympics a few short weeks away, China is giving its cuisine a linguistic makeover.

It is proposing that restaurants change the names of exotic, but bizarrely named, delicacies to make them more delectable for the estimated 50,000 visitors arriving in August for the Summer Games.

The appetizer "Husband and wife's lung slice" is taking on the more appetizing "Beef and ox tripe in chili sauce." "Chicken without sexual life" has been transformed into "Steamed pullet."

The government has put down more than 2,000 proposed names in a 170-page book that it has offered to Beijing hotels, according to state media.

"Thanks to the pamphlet, we do not have to struggle to come up with the English translations of dishes any more, which is usually time consuming," a senior manager at the four-star Guangzhou Hotel in downtown Beijing told the Xinhua news agency.

Why is this pink hat so hated?

BECAUSE IT SUCKS.

Don't be that person. If you can't wear the team's colors, you missed the part where following the Sox is mostly painful and has nothing to do with fashion (or "getting interested in them" after 2003.)

Funny Globe article today:

Next to Yankees caps and Giants jerseys, the pink Red Sox cap has become the most polarizing piece of clothing a Bostonian can wear. Fans of the hats think they're simply a cute way to show their love for the Sox. Haters say pink-hat owners are latecomers who only support the Sox because it's suddenly cool - even fashionable - to do so. Pink-hat wearers haven't suffered sufficiently, they reason. No one suffers in pink.

A-Mazing

IS this perfect casting or what?

Tony winner Bebe Neuwirth will play Morticia in the upcoming Broadway musical "The Addams Family." And the role of Gomez has been offered to . . . Nathan Lane.

He hasn't officially accepted yet, but the buzz around town this week is that a deal is imminent.

Pashe Keqi recalled the day nearly 60 years ago when she decided to become a man. She chopped off her long black curls, traded in her dress for her father’s baggy trousers, armed herself with a hunting rifle and vowed to forsake marriage, children and sex.

For centuries, in the closed-off and conservative society of rural northern Albania, swapping genders was considered a practical solution for a family with a shortage of men. Her father was killed in a blood feud, and there was no male heir. By custom, Ms. Keqi, now 78, took a vow of lifetime virginity. She lived as a man, the new patriarch, with all the swagger and trappings of male authority — including the obligation to avenge her father’s death.

Italian xenophobia sinks deeper

Europe, for all its diversity, can be remarkably provincial. The latest Italian government came to power two months ago on a platform promising to crack down on illegal foreigners, who immigration opponents here say are associated with crime.

Last month the Italian police arrested hundreds of migrants living in shantytowns. Vigilantes attacked Gypsy encampments near Naples in May after reports of a 16-year-old Gypsy girl’s trying to steal a baby.

Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s new government has just proposed one of the strictest anti-immigration laws on the Continent, provoking heated opposition from human-rights organizations, the Vatican, the United Nations and also Italian prosecutors fearing courts swamped by criminal cases.

But with plummeting birth rates and an aging populace, Italy can hardly survive now without foreign laborers. Albanians and Romanians care for the elderly. Indians working in Emilia-Romagna tend the cows producing the milk for Parmesan cheese.

In Energy-Stingy Japan, an Extravagant Indulgence: Posh Privies

When it comes to saving energy, the Japanese have much to teach the United States and other rich countries.

Energy consumption per person here is about half that in the United States, and the growth of greenhouse gas emissions is slower than anywhere in the industrialized world.

There is a hiccup, though, in this world-beating record. It happens inside the Japanese home, where energy use is surging.

Japanese toilets can warm and wash one's bottom, whisk away odors with built-in fans and play water noises that drown out potty sounds.

They play relaxation music, too. "Ave Maria" is a favorite. High-end toilets can also sense when someone enters or leaves the bathroom, raising or lowering their lids accordingly. Many models have a "learning mode," which allows them to memorize the lavatory schedules of household members.

Globe seeks pay cuts, Herald plans for layoffs

Boston’s two major daily newspapers are going through another round of painful cost-cutting measures.

Boston Globe unions have been asked by management to take an across-the-board 10 percent pay cut to help trim costs, while the newspaper also looks at consolidating its printing plants, according to several union members.

The Globe has just completed a round of buyouts that led to the departure of several high-profile staffers, and a top union official vowed yesterday to fight the proposed pay cut.

“The Boston Newspaper Guild has given enough in the name of company equity,” said Dan Totten, president of the Guild, the Globe’s largest union. “Globe and New York Times management must now give back.”

The Boston Herald officially announced plans yesterday to outsource its printing operations and lay off 130 to 160 press operators, electricians and other production-related workers later this year. Herald owner and publisher Patrick J. Purcell said there are no plans to cut newsroom staff.

Purcell said he told union leaders the job cuts and outsourcing were necessary because of the unreliable print quality of the newspaper’s 50-year-old presses.

“My personal goal has been, always, to keep Boston a two-newspaper town and the Boston Herald alive,” said Purcell in an interview after meeting with union chiefs.

About 10 unions would be affected by the Herald’s printing move, tentatively scheduled to start in late September or early October.

Purcell said he is in talks with News Corp. [NWS], owner of a plant in Chicopee where editions of the Wall Street Journal are printed, to handle printing the Herald six days a week. The Herald is in talks with Boston Offset, owner of a plant in Norwood where USA Today is printed, to print the Herald on Fridays. News Corp.’s Chicopee plant prints the Barron’s business publication on Friday nights.

Sources say Arthur Sulzberger Jr., head of the New York Times Co., which owns the Globe, confirmed at a staff meeting this week in Boston that management has asked unions to reopen contracts to discuss wage cuts.

Boston Globe Executive Vice President Al Larkin Jr. said the company has asked for the wage cuts because of declines in advertising revenues.

“Like all newspapers, we are talking to our employees about the current economic climate,” Larkin said.

Fire guts downtown Natick businesses

Have they figured out the appendix?

Some experts have guessed that it is a vestige of the evolutionary development of some other organ, but there is little evidence for an appendix in our evolutionary ancestors. Few mammals have any appendix at all, and the appendices of those that do bears little resemblance to the human one.

Last December, researchers published a novel explanation in The Journal of Theoretical Biology. The appendix, they suggest, is a “safe house” for commensal bacteria, the symbiotic germs that aid digestion and help protect against disease-causing germs.

Structurally, the appendix is isolated from the rest of the gut, with an opening smaller than a pencil lead, protected from the fecal stream that might be carrying pathogens. In times of trouble like a diarrheal infection that flushes the system, these commensal bacteria could hide out there, ready to repopulate the gut when the coast is clear.

For Blacks in France, Obama’s Rise Is Reason to Rejoice, and to Hope

PARIS — When Youssoupha, a black rapper here, was asked the other day what was on his mind, a grin spread across his face. “Barack Obama,” he said. “Obama tells us everything is possible.”

Americans, who have debated race relations since the dawn of the Republic, may find it hard to grasp the degree to which race, like religion, remains a taboo topic in France. While Mr. Obama talks about running a campaign transcending race, an increasing number of French blacks are pushing for, in effect, the reverse.

Gay men, straight women -- same brain?

MRI and PET scan studies are showing remarkable similarities between the brains of gay men and straight women, and between those of lesbians and straight men.

For example, the brains of straight men and of gay women share certain common features: both are slightly asymmetric, with the right hemisphere larger than the left, say the Swedish researchers.

On the other hand, the brains of gay men and straight women are both symmetrical.

Similar trends emerged when scientists tracked connectivity in the amygdala, the region of the brain involved in emotional learning and in activating the fight-or-flight response. They noted strong similarities between gay men and straight women, and lesbians and straight men.

The findings are published in the current issue of theProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"This is a very interesting study demonstrating a possible neurobiological relationship in brain size between gay men and straight women," said Paul Sanberg, distinguished professor of neurosurgery and director of the University of South Florida Center for Aging and Brain Repair in Tampa.

Just keep the effing name

Doug Flutie is right. Hopefully they'll get a ballot question on in November to take care of this. Did any of these School Committee people even go to Natick High, or grow up there? It seems like none of these people who show up to the meetings live in town, either. At what point does this lunacy stop? Maybe we should change the cheerleader uniforms because they're degrading to women? Or change the school colors from red and white completely, just so there's no implied Native American insult? GIVE ME A BREAK PEOPLE.

(See the extended Metrowest Daily News article here.)

What's Up with Caffeine? Blood Sugar

A University of Guelph (Ontario) study shows that drinking a cup or two of caffeinated coffee an hour before a carbohydrate-dominated cereal breakfast significantly drives up the body's blood sugar or glucose response, no matter if the cereal is low sugar or relatively sugary.

What's more, the study found that regular coffee taken an hour before the low-sugar cereal (All-Bran in this study) increases blood-sugar readings about 250 percent greater than if you consumed a cup of decaf an hour before a bowl of moderately sugared cereal (Crispix).

"What we found is both the resistance to insulin and glucose levels went up dramatically with either cereal if (volunteers) had caffeinated coffee before the meal," said researcher Terry Graham. "It's the caffeine in the coffee that is altering your body's sugar response. It makes us resistant to insulin, which in turn makes our blood sugar levels go higher."

'Pro-Life' Drugstores market beliefs

When DMC Pharmacy opens this summer on Route 50 in Chantilly, the shelves will be stocked with allergy remedies, pain relievers, antiseptic ointments and almost everything else sold in any drugstore.
But anyone who wants condoms, birth control pills or the Plan B emergency contraceptive will be turned away.

That's because the drugstore, located in a typical shopping plaza featuring a Ruby Tuesday, a Papa John's and a Kmart, will be a "pro-life pharmacy" -- meaning, among other things, that it will eschew all contraceptives.

The pharmacy is one of a small but growing number of drugstores around the country that have become the latest front in a conflict pitting patients' rights against those of health-care workers who assert a "right of conscience" to refuse to provide care or products that they find objectionable.

Robert Semler will run DMC Pharmacy, set to open in Chantilly.

Anyone want to go to this?

"Baseball As America," the splendid peanuts-and-Cracker-Jack-filled extravaganza that opens Sunday at the Museum of Science, reminds us that the sport is something better than a mere national pastime.

Baseball is a national museum - the Smithsonian with box scores.

13 years later, search for Bulger still intense

More than 13 luckless years after Bulger vanished, a multi-agency task force of seven investigators is still assigned full time to tracking him.
He fled just before his January 1995 federal racketeering indictment, was later charged with 19 murders, and is now being pursued by a posse of two FBI agents, two Massachusetts State Police officers, two lieutenants from the Massachusetts Department of Correction fugitive apprehension unit, and an FBI analyst, all of whom work out of an unmarked suite of offices in downtown Boston.

Tim Russert dead at 58

NY Times: TV journalist Tim Russert dead

According to the New York Times website, Tim Russert, 58, the NBC television journalist and "Meet The Press" host, has died of a heart attack, his family said.

See MSNBC for more.

So you think you can drive

Think you're a good driver?

Take the test and see.

I got a 70 % and I think I'm a pretty cautious driver.

The Medford Square farmer's market starts up June 19!

This is a real hidden jewel, and I can't wait to start finding some meal inspiration here after work each week. It's held near the Medford Square bus connection, opposite the CVS on the Riverside Avenue end of the square, so it's right on the bus line AND there's parking behind the stores. I'm excited.

Governor's daughter, 18, says she is a lesbian

Governor Deval Patrick's 18-year-old daughter announced this morning that she is a lesbian, calling it a source of pride that she is ready to share with Massachusetts.

"As private of an issue as it is, we've sort of had to come to terms with the fact that we are a public family and there you give a part of yourself away," Katherine Patrick told the gay newspaper Bay Windows in an article published today.

Katherine, who attended St. Andrew's School in Delaware and is planning to attend Smith College in the fall, told the paper that she came out to her parents on July 3, 2007, as the family prepared for a picnic by the pool at their home in the Berkshires.

She recounted walking into the kitchen, asking her parents to stop what they were doing, and asked her aunt to leave the room.

When her parents turned to her, she said, "I’m a lesbian."

"And I'll always remember the first thing my dad did," Katherine said. He "wrapped me in a bear hug and said, 'Well, we love you no matter what.'"

This is in Davis and I haven't been yet?

Snappy Sushi

Snappy Sushi is not operating in your comfort zone.

Their rice is a daring brown, seating is communal, and "fancy rolls" are boundary pushers that borrow from other cuisines (ever see pineapple salsa or pesto in sushi?). In short, this Davis Square newcomer is gleefully, and for the most part successfully, breaking all the rules.

Pictured, the "tuna gone wild" roll with shino style ika salad.

420 Highland, Davis Square, Somerville. 617-625-0400. Visa, MasterCard, and American Express accepted. Wheelchair accessible.

You thought you knew marinades

Let's put aside pickling, brining and making seviche, techniques that warrant their own columns.

Normal marinades do not significantly penetrate the meat, no matter how long they are left in contact.
Food scientists such as Harold McGee and Hervé This have measured the penetration and found it to be staggeringly small.
An experiment conducted by This at a meeting of European chemical societies last year showed that after eight days, a slightly salty marinade gave meat a somewhat mushy surface but penetrated less than 1/8 inch into the flesh; a mildly acidic one (such as a wine- or vinegar-based marinade) showed next to no effect.

The lack of penetration by the marinade refutes the idea that flavor enters along with it. And doesn't it also mean that the tenderizing effect is minimal?

Too hot to cook?

The Globe offers this:

No-cook turkey salad with red grapes and walnuts

Serves 4

Ask the clerk at the delicatessen counter to cut 1 pound of turkey into four even slices. At home, cut the slices into large cubes and you have something substantial to dig into.

1 pound delicatessen turkey, cut into 4 thick slices

2 cups seedless red grapes

1 cup walnuts

1/4 cup mayonnaise, or to taste

2 tablespoons cider or white wine vinegar

1 teaspoon Dijon mustard

Salt and pepper, to taste

1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley

4 scallions, trimmed and thinly sliced

1. Stack the slices and cut them into 3/4-inch cubes. Transfer to a bowl with the grapes.

2. In a cast-iron skillet over medium heat, brown the walnuts, shaking the pan constantly, for 5 minutes or until they are lightly toasted. Leave to cool.

3. In a bowl, whisk 1 tablespoon of the mayonnaise with the vinegar, mustard, salt, and pepper. Gradually whisk in the remaining mayonnaise. Add the mixture to the turkey mixture. Add the walnuts, parsley, and scallions. Stir gently. Taste for seasoning and add more salt, mayonnaise, or vinegar, if you like.

-- Sheryl Julian

Loyal to its roots

The sea rocket, researchers report, can distinguish between plants that are related to it and those that are not.
And not only does this plant recognize its kin, but it also gives them preferential treatment.

If the sea rocket detects unrelated plants growing in the ground with it, the plant aggressively sprouts nutrient-grabbing roots.

But if it detects family, it politely restrains itself.

The finding is a surprise, even a bit of a shock, in part because most animals have not even been shown to have the ability to recognize relatives, despite the huge advantages in doing so.

Facing Life Without Children When It Isn’t by Choice

When Pamela Mahoney and Alex Tsigdinos were married, they never thought they would have trouble having a baby. But after 11 years and many fertility treatments, they are still only a family of two.

Ten percent of all couples have trouble conceiving, sometimes because of a physical problem and sometimes for unexplained reasons. But as reproductive technologies have advanced, many couples are being given help and hope.

Check out an interesting interactive feature with interviews and photos of several women who have faced this, at different ages and for different reasons.

Wow

The Los Angeles Times has made plans to transfer control of its monthly magazine from its newsroom to its business operations and to replace the magazine’s entire editorial staff, according to two executives at the newspaper.

The arrangement would flout the tradition at most newspapers, which keep business operations, like advertising and circulation, completely separate from the editorial department, which controls decisions about the contents of news and feature pages.

The plan for the magazine was set in motion months ago. A new editor and others were hired, future issues were planned, and mock-up covers were made — all without the knowledge of anyone in the newsroom, including the top editor, Russ Stanton, the executives said. Mr. Stanton and other high-ranking editors learned of the plan last week, they said.

Ahh, leggings for the not-so-tall and skinny among us.

Disabled earthquake victims face tough road in China

About 50,000 of the injured are likely to suffer permanent disabilities, including many with amputated limbs. They face a social stigma and hurdles getting rehabilitation.

Top writers feel heat from publishers' presses

Elmore Leonard said, "If it takes you more than six months to write a book, you're not working."

In an age when reading for pleasure is declining, book publishers increasingly are counting on their biggest moneymaking writers to crank out books at a rate of at least one a year, right on schedule, and sometimes faster than that.

Boston's Dennis Lehane tried the book-a-year pace once, to his regret. He had written a second book by the time his first novel, "A Drink Before the War," was published in 1994. He wrote a third book, he said, "blazing fast, a real fluke." His fourth took 2 1/2 years.

"Then they asked me to turn a book around in a year," he said. "I did it ["Prayers for Rain" in 1999], but the week it was published I realized what would have made it a really good book. The anger of that realization haunted me. I said I would never go back on that hamster wheel. It's what led me to write 'Mystic River.' " He took two years, published it in 2001, and it was his biggest book. The 2003 movie won two Academy Awards.

Disabled placard abusers targeted

FINALLY!

He lives in one of Wellesley's most exclusive neighborhoods, owns a $1.8 million Nantucket vacation home, and has a small fleet of luxury cars at his disposal. But when Gerald Hamelburg drives downtown, he doesn't like to pay his way, according to investigators with the state inspector general's office.

The Boston lawyer, they say, uses his deceased mother's handicapped placard to park his Mercedes convertible, free of charge, at meters near the High Street firm that bears his name.

"It's a particularly obnoxious example of abuse. You use a fake placard to park in any space you want anytime you want to? It's absurd. It's horrible," said Inspector General Gregory Sullivan, whose office pursued Hamelburg for nearly two years as part of an investigation into the misuse of the placards. The investigation, which also involved the Registry of Motor Vehicles and State Police, turned up hundreds of placards that were being used by people who were not disabled and that had been originally issued to someone else.

Free ice cream!

Friendly's Restaurants, which has evolved into a local ice cream tradition since its start in 1934, said it will mark the coming of summer by offering customers a free ice cream cone or an ice cream dish between noon and 5 p.m. tomorrow.

Mama's Boy

Bridget Moynahan, Tom Brady's ex, on being in love with a younger man — her son, Jack

2 Men Scale New York Times Building Hours Apart

Two men, one a practiced French stuntman known for climbing tall buildings, the other a New Yorker who said he wanted to raise awareness of the dangers of malaria, scaled the 52-story New York Times Building in Times Square on Thursday just hours apart. Each was arrested when he stepped safely onto the roof.

There's a cool slideshow and video, too.

How To Win the New Yorker Cartoon Caption Contest

Today I can finally update my résumé to include "Writer, The New Yorker." Yes, I won The New Yorker Cartoon Caption Contest, and I'm going to tell you how I did it. These observations have been culled from months of research and are guaranteed to help you win, too.

Most people who look at the winners of the caption contest say, "I could've done better than that." You're right. You could have. But that doesn't mean you could've won the caption contest—it just means you could've done better. And if your goal is not to win the caption contest, why bother entering? There is one mantra to take from this article, worth its own line break:

You are not trying to submit the funniest caption; you are trying to win The New Yorker's caption contest.

Can Wal-Mart Save Local Newspapers?

Craigslist, take note: It takes one monolithic villain to beat another.

The Times' story about the "miracle fruit" that makes everything taste sweet is a big ripoff of a Wall Street Journal piece.

A Page One WSJ story, at that. And it's not just that the Times wrote a piece on the same topic, which is common enough; they used a bunch of the same sources, and made the many of the same points in the same way. With not even a nod to the original!

This is a semi-gotcha—it could have been solved by simply giving a little credit.

Twins, twice (and she's not even 30)

Katie Groharing thought she was done with the twin thing.

Just a little more than a year after giving birth to a set of boy-and-girl twins, the Byron woman found out she was unexpectedly pregnant again. She left the twins and their older sister at home and headed to her doctor’s office for a the first routine ultrasound. She joked with her doctor as he fired up the machine.

“Make sure there’s not two this time,” she said with a grin.

There were.

“I was instantly in shock,” she said. “I didn’t say anything for the rest of the ultrasound. I cried to the nurse, ‘Five kids! I can’t do five kids!’ ”

But that’s exactly what this 29-year-old mother is doing. In mid-May, she gave birth to her second set of twins. The newborns, Carson and Macy, were welcomed home by 2-year-olds Carter and Madison and 5-year-old Hailey.

That means the Groharing family now has five children 5 or younger — and four of them are in diapers.

“Carter and Maddie are 2, they demand your attention,” Groharing said. “I’m very fearful (about having five small children). For about the first month, though, we’ll be set up as far as help goes. I’m just glad it’s summertime and we can get outside.”

No, there weren’t fertility drugs involved with any of the Groharing children, and no, the family isn’t planning to have any more. In fact, Groharing says she had already started to get rid of the baby items she collected over the years.

“My goal was three kids before I was 30,” Groharing said. “Now I have five at 29.”

This does not comfort me

MBTA works to replace deteriorating Red Line railroad ties

MBTA officials say the Red Line’s railroad ties that extend over the Longfellow Bridge are in such bad shape, they need to be replaced immediately.

Last Thursday, trains were ordered to slow down over the bridge after crews found the ties “exhibited signs of deterioration,” said T spokesman Joe Pesaturo.

During the weekend of June 21 and 22, Red Line service over the bridge will be suspended while workers replace more ties.

It's not so easy being less rich

The wealthy don’t generally speak publicly about their finances, in good times or bad. It’s in poor taste, for one, and their employers could fire them for talking even a little.

But people who provide services to the wealthy — lawyers, art advisers, personal trainers and hairstylists — say they are getting an earful about their clients’ financial anxieties.

Hairstylists and private jet rental companies say the wealthy are cutting back on luxuries like $350 highlights and $10,000-an-hour jet rentals. Even nutritionists and personal trainers notice a problem. The wealthy are eating more and gaining weight because of the stress.

These financial problems — if they can be called that — will hardly elicit tears from the rest of us. But in those gilded living rooms, there is a quiet nervousness about keeping up appearances.

Ready to give your kid a cell phone now?

What do brain surgeons know about cellphone safety that the rest of us don’t?

Last week, three prominent neurosurgeons told the CNN interviewer Larry King that they did not hold cellphones next to their ears. “I think the safe practice,” said Dr. Keith Black, a surgeon at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, “is to use an earpiece so you keep the microwave antenna away from your brain.”

Dr. Vini Khurana, an associate professor of neurosurgery at the Australian National University who is an outspoken critic of cellphones, said: “I use it on the speaker-phone mode. I do not hold it to my ear.” And CNN’s chief medical correspondent, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, a neurosurgeon at Emory University Hospital, said that like Dr. Black he used an earpiece.

Along with Senator Edward M. Kennedy’s recent diagnosis of a glioma, a type of tumor that critics have long associated with cellphone use, the doctors’ remarks have helped reignite a long-simmering debate about cellphones and cancer.

Disgusting but important essay by retired Boston OBGYN

With the Supreme Court becoming more conservative, many people who support women’s right to choose an abortion fear that Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision that gave them that right, is in danger of being swept aside.

When such fears arise, we often hear about the pre-Roe “bad old days.” Yet there are few physicians today who can relate to them from personal experience.

I can.

Forging literary careers via motherhood

This is a good story, though at times it reads like a love letter to Grub Street:

For Darci Klein, 41, a former management consultant, motherhood was a direct source of writing inspiration.
She took her first writing workshop in California while working full time, when her elder child was a toddler.
Then she had three miscarriages before getting pregnant with her younger child.
The family moved to the Boston area, and with unpacked boxes around her, Klein had to lie on her back for 28 weeks to prevent another miscarriage.
"It was a transformative experience," Klein said. After her baby was born, she got cabin fever at home and signed up for a writing workshop at Grub Street, where a class assignment got her writing about her struggles to carry a baby to term.
The book, "To Full Term," was published last year. Now, buoyed by her success, Klein is writing fiction.

Still nothing like Affirmed-Alydar's Triple Crown duel

Thirty years ago, Affirmed and Alydar glorified the three classic horse races that define their sport. When Affirmed beat Alydar by a length and a half in the Kentucky Derby, a neck in the Preakness and a head in the Belmont, sports fans thought they would never again see anything quite like it.

And they haven't.

Affirmed's 1978 Triple Crown was the most recent in a sport that covets many more. So it is nicely coincidental that the 30th anniversary of Affirmed and Alydar's stretch duel in the Belmont is also the time when the long drought seems most likely to end.

See also, a New York Times column on steroid use in horses:

When you watch Big Brown at the Belmont Stakes, you will be watching a horse that is running on steroids. There is no denying the natural athleticism of Big Brown, who stands an excellent chance of becoming the first Triple Crown winner in 30 years. There is also no denying that it would be all the more impressive if it were not drug-enhanced.

R2D2 trash can

The real question is, how could you NOT want this? I smell a Star Wars themed nursery with diapers going in the 'bot...

Imported from Japan, the R2-D2 Trash Can operates via a foot pedal that lifts the little droid's "head" to reveal a removable waste receptacle. Compatible with any bathroom-sized trash bags, this little guy will hold your trash (or dirty diapers) until ready for disposal. A must for any diehard Star Wars fan's household!

Clinton bowing out (finally?)

After a day full of conflicting signals, Hillary Clinton's campaign seems to be sending clearer ones today -- that she will gracefully exit the stage and won't take her fight to the convention.

FINALLY

Hazel Mae, the NESN sportscaster/Playboy wannabe, is leaving the New England Sports Network starting in July, with no immediate plans for the future.

No longer will she be the bane of female journalists everywhere, many of whom had hoped we could still get a good job without having to look like a hooker.

How it all started

Getting noticed at the Somerville High prom

Chance Mitchell was the talk of the Somerville High School prom.

Why? She and her date, Leo Marcolino, were the only ones in yellow and purple duct tape.

It took her two months, $112, and 60 yards of purple and yellow duct tape to make a two-piece dress and a three-piece suit for her date. She even sported a duct tape corsage, and duct taped nails.

Mitchell made the skirt and dress to win $3,000 for college in a contest called Stuck at Prom, a national web-based Project Runway for teens and their duct-tape prom dresses.

Across the country, 19 pairs entered the contest. Mitchell and Marcolino are the only entrants from Massachusetts.

Hynes Convention Center to get retail space

The Massachusetts Convention Center Authority will be holding an open public meeting on Tuesday, June 10 from 6pm to 8pm in room 112 to present the proposed introduction of retail and restaurant space at the Hynes Convention Center and to discuss interior renovation plans.

The proposed retail space will be located in two areas. The first space will span two levels and will be located along Boylston Street at the east corner of the building adjacent to the Prudential Plaza.

The second space will be entirely on one level located along the west corner at Dalton and Boylston Street.

Each of these spaces will be approximately 10,000 square feet. The 20,000 total square feet in retail or restaurant venues will generate additional revenue for the Hynes and enliven Boylston Street without interrupting or negatively impacting convention bookings or business.

The proposed plan also includes updates to the facility’s security, technology and audio/visual capabilities, interior design and new environmentally friendly renovations.

This is the first major renovations done at the Hynes since it opened as a convention center in 1988.

Taxi drivers push for fare increase

Move would make rate among highest in nation

The drivers, newly organized by the United Steelworkers union, have asked Boston for the first increase in their per-mile fare in six years - a proposal that would make a city cab ride one of the most expensive in the nation. If approved by the Police Department, which regulates taxi fares, the cost of a 4-mile ride would go from $11.55 to $16.70. (That's laughably ridiculous).

The proposal, which the city has agreed to review at a public hearing, would increase the per-mile rate by 50 percent and the starting fare from $2.25 to $2.75.

The drivers, many of them recent immigrants, say the request is a matter of basic economics. They work 12- to 16-hour shifts, five or six days a week. They pay $77 a day to lease a medallion. They shell out $60 for gas every shift. And their battered Crown Victorias - when they are not in the repair shop - gulp a gallon of gas every 10 miles. (Why don't they use different vehicles then? Like New York City?)