Leslie Walker, the executive director of Prisoners' Legal Services, and José Bou, who served 10 years in prison before becoming a youth outreach worker, talked with Emily Rooney on Greater Boston about some of the problems associated with solitary confinement.  Massachusetts allows the Department of Corrections to put a prisoner in solitary confinement for up to 10 years for disciplinary infractions. Prisoners tend to end up in solitary confinement for fighting. Once there, they remain alone in their cell for 23 hours a day, with usually just a pen and pad Continue reading >>>

By Jeremy C. Fox, Town Correspondent The YMCA of Greater Boston will provide free meals and snacks for children and teenagers this summer at about 20 sites across Boston and in neighboring communities, the organization announced. The Summer Food Program will offer nutritious food at more than 10 YMCA sites as well as other community gathering places, including seven different locations in East Boston. Anyone 18 or under is eligible for the program, which will run from June 24 to Aug. 30. In a statement, Kevin Washington, YMCA of Greater Boston president and CEO, said the program will address Continue reading >>>

Parade: Boston Portuguese Festival celebrating heritage and ethnic pride – Portugal Day | Tweet Posted on 20 June 2013. The 8th Boston Portuguese Festival is organizing the Day of Portugal Parade to take place in Somerville through Cambridge, Sunday, June 23, starting at 2:00pm, in the Portuguese Square (Concord Sq.). The parade is part of a program held during the course of the month of June, dedicated to celebrating Portuguese heritage and ethnic pride with a series of cultural events in the Greater Continue reading >>>

The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum last fall sent four soiled 16th-century Flemish tapestries to Belgium for a state-of-the-art cleaning. Textile conservator Tess Fredette and her staff had to carefully remove and roll the fragile tapestries to ship them abroad. Seven months later, the brighter and clearer images were a revelation and pop inside the refurbished, 4,000-square-foot tapestry room. Continue reading >>>

Author Wendy Murphy recently updated her book, And Justice for Some, which challenges the maxim that the United States has the best legal system in the world.  "There are some things that are great about it, some things that are better than most," she told Emily Rooney, "but when it comes to respecting, especially victimized women and children, we have a pretty awful, especially criminal justice system, that overtly subjugates women, overtly.  Take the case of Ariel Castro, the Cleveland man who was recently charged with kidnapping and raping three women Continue reading >>>

Jun 20, 2013 9:14 AM Frozen seafood supplier High Liner Foods announced a partnership with The Greater Boston Food Bank (GBFB) to donate the use of dock space at its Peabody MA facility. GBFB, the largest hunger-relief organization in New England with an objective to distribute enough food to provide one meal a day to those in need, is committed to increasing food distribution in 2013. High Liner Foods’ donated dock space will be used to facilitate food deliveries in northeastern Massachusetts. “The generosity of companies like High Liner Foods helps extend Continue reading >>>

In the year of the over-ask, I suppose somebody had to do it. Somebody had to come out and make an offer so bold, so far over-ask, it was sure to announce to the Boston residential real estate community, "I am the king or queen of the over-ask world." I bow to you, 66 Sparks buyer, and I bow to the open kitchen, Japanese-inspired gardens, and over-sized driveway that helped inspire that special over-ask offer, an offer that may be remembered in Boston real estate circles years from now with the vividness of Carlton Fisk waving the ball fair. Was the buyer motivated by making the sellers an Continue reading >>>

Thank you for the June 11 editorial celebrating the Huntington Theatre Company’s receiving the 2013 Tony Award for regional theater. The honor was made sweeter by sharing the night with our friends at the American Repertory Theater as the national spotlight shined bright on Greater Boston’s stellar theater scene. Boston Center for the Arts president Veronique Le Melle’s June 17 letter in response to the editorial (“A fuller picture of Calderwood Pavilion’s story”) may have left readers with the impression that the Huntington was not one of the parties that “built” the Calderwood Continue reading >>>

Just check out this 4,000-square-foot Waltham house that was on the market for nearly $900,000 this spring. (And it dwarfs the lot, which is less than a third of an acre, with the front door seemingly ten feet from the road.) Then consider you could get the same house in the Dallas area for a third of the price. Is the tradeoff worth it in order to live in the Boston area, with all its supposed advantages, some real, some imagined? And at what point do companies and professionals say enough is enough and start steering clear? Here are some interesting thoughts on the issue put forth by DrDoofenschmirtz Continue reading >>>

This interesting invitation from the National Archives at Boston, located on Trapelo Road in Waltham: In 1944, at the peak of World War II, thousands of Italian POWs were transported to Greater Boston to help relieve the national labor shortage in the home front port. Unsurprisingly, the Italian POWs garnered much attention, leading to a local debate over how they should be treated. While some local residents felt the Italian men were being "pampered," others praised the men for their labor contributions and even welcomed them into their homes. On Continue reading >>>