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Immigrants, 1850

Recently I researched and wrote a book about a group of immigrants who came to America in the 1840s and 1850s. Getting to Grand Prairie: One Hundred Londoners and Their Quest for Land in Frontier Illinois will appear this summer. It tells a true story of the farming community I grew up in. I’m preparing the book’s index now.

Although I have published three books with commercial publishers, I could not find one for this book. I can understand—where is the market? These immigrants were not fleeing poverty or religious persecution as were many 19th-century arrivals. It was not the high drama publishers want.

At some point, though, I realized I had a ready-made audience. Those hundred Londoners now have hundreds of descendants and, in doing the research, I acquired many emails. Why share proceeds from this book with a publisher when I already have buyers? I’m not David McCullough. Most lesser known authors have little negotiating power and realize little profit from their works. I decided to publish it myself.

But that’s not what this column is about. It’s about what I learned about views toward immigrants in researching this book.

Today, some Americans heap vitriol on hapless children fleeing deadly gangs in Central America. Some Americans, especially those elected to Congress, want to send back the offspring of illegal immigrants to a homeland they left as children. Some Republican presidential candidates draw support by stimulating nativist bigotry and fanning fears of immigrants stealing jobs and wreaking havoc. Donald Trump’s statements are inflammatory, but other presidential candidates seem to agree with him even if they won’t express it in his terms. Meanness all around.

The research for my book showed the attitude toward immigrants was different in America in the mid-1800s, especially in the Middle West. There was land to be sold, business to be done and a population to build. Only 20 years after Illinois became a state, its citizens clamored for everybody to come. It was mostly European immigrants who were arriving. Germans, Scandinavians, Poles, Irish—all were welcome. The skin color was the same as the American-born, but they were nevertheless exotic.

I learned the most about the Londoners, since they came together and had a great impact on their new community. They chose Illinois’ Grand Prairie because they were invited.

A land speculator, Isaac Sandusky, sponsored a lecture in London, extolling the virtues of the Grand Prairie, which stretched south from a growing Chicago along the Indiana border. It was one of about 100 named Illinois prairies, separated by rivers or forests. Abraham Lincoln’s family moved from Indiana and settled on Goose Nest Prairie, just west of the Grand Prairie, when he was a young man. The prairie names were used because the civil boundaries had either not been established or were in flux. Sandusky, whose original family name was Sodowsky, was said to have noble antecedents in Poland. Maybe that is true.

Isaac and his family had bought thousands of acres from the federal government in the 1830s and early 1840s, paying $1.25 an acre. They sold parcels for $4 or $5 an acre during the 1840s and ‘50s, so they prospered from the immigrants they had invited. They also sold the newcomers equipment and livestock.

It wasn’t just the Sandusky/Sodowsky family welcoming the immigrants. Immigrants were a profit center everywhere, so those with an eye on making money welcomed them.

New York (and presumably Boston) was prospering from the dozens of ships owned mostly by American investors that sailed from Europe, bringing 300 to 500 immigrants per crossing. A shipboard letter one of the Grand Prairie immigrants wrote described the customs agents as polite and welcoming as they boarded the Hendrik Hudson, with no restrictions on what immigrants could bring with them. The agents examined the passengers for signs of illness, but they allowed all to enter.

Immigrants paid for passage on the ships, enriching the owners and crew. Even the poorest bought supplies from local merchants when they arrived. They paid for trains, stagecoaches and boats that took them inland. It wasn’t hard to start a business or find a job. Such a welcome made me rethink some rejection stories of Irish immigrants in Boston. Some probably had a hard time. But it is also likely that many entrepreneurial Yankees saw the Irish as potential customers who would soon be buying what they had to sell.

The immigrants whose stories I unearthed were luckier than many. They spoke the same language as Americans. They shared an ancestry with many of them. The ships’ manifests show they often came with families. That was not true of the Irish and Germans on the same ships. They usually came alone.

Even though the immigrants were welcomed, they must have had mixed feelings. In most cases, they would never again see family or friends left behind. Finding a job, starting a business, learning the language and culture, even if they had commonalities, must have been both frightening and exciting. And then there was looming that awful war.

What comes through strongest is that in the mid-19th century, Americans realized they needed the immigrants. Today, except for economists, university research labs and large-scale farmers and business owners, most folks don’t see the connection. It’s true in Europe too. A couple of years ago, when visiting in Oxford, England, I heard people say, “We have enough people here.” I realized it was code for “No more immigrants.”

I don’t know how to solve the immigrant problems that appear to be worldwide. I do know we must pay tribute to our history of welcoming immigrants, and we must find a humane way to do it.

Questions you’ve always wanted answered

Recently we’ve noticed small, colored plastic disks embedded in the asphalt on Boston streets, especially in sections that have been repaired. What are those disks doing there?

“They signify the utility contractor that did the work” wrote Gabrielle Farrell, associate press secretary in the mayor’s office, in an email. “This gives the Public Works Department a way of tracking work done on the street. PWD notifies these companies if work is improper or if after 60 days PWD needs to finish the job.

Turns out I could have found the answer on the city’s website at http://www.cityofboston.gov/publicworks/construction/tags.asp

Since the spring of 2011, Public Works has required all utility companies, private contractors, city contractors, and other agencies that dig up Boston’s streets to insert what they call Utility Repair Tag Pavement Markers. These plastic disks identify whoever dug up the street. For example, Verizon’s orange disk has the year it was installed in the center, its name at the bottom and its bond number of 416 at the top. National Grid and NStar Gas have both been assigned a yellow disk, but their names and numbers are different. Private contactors’ disks are green. J. F. White, which does much work in Boston, was assigned the number 287.

City officials can check the disks if they notice a problem. Citizens can also identify the contractor or utility and call the mayor’s hot line or submit a cell-phone picture of the problem and the contractor through Citizen’s Connect.

These disks may help solve a problem about which many residents complain: a recently paved street, dug up and left messy by a contractor or utility that has to do underground work.

 

Hosts on NPR thank guests for appearing on their show. Why do the guests respond with a “thank you,” when they should say “you’re welcome?”

First, it’s just a place-holder, said Dr. Shari Thurer, a local clinical psychologist who is a keen observer of human behavior. Lots of people say thank you when there is really nothing to thank people for. But on NPR, some people have a new book out. It’s hard to find venues to talk about such things. No wonder they are thankful. Even if they haven’t written a book, those who are interviewed are probably genuinely grateful for the chance to express their views. It bugs me, but Dr. Thurer takes it in stride. Maybe the guest could say, “It’s been my pleasure,” instead.

 

Tower cranes are operating all over Boston and Cambridge. Some have an arm at a right-angle. Others have a movable arm mounted on the diagonal. What determines the kind of crane used on a construction site?

Chris King, president and general manager of Liberty Construction Services, which owns the cranes Suffolk Construction uses on its projects, knows the answer.

“The right-angled tower cranes are typically referred to as hammerhead tower cranes,” he said in an email provided by Leah Pennino of Suffolk Construction. “These are the more popular cranes throughout the U.S. The “diagonal jib” cranes are referred to as luffing jib cranes, and they are not as common.

“The luffing jib cranes are used in tight areas like downtown Boston where other buildings are close by. By being able to “luff” up and down, these cranes can avoid nearby structures. Hammerhead cranes are typically faster to erect and dismantle and easier to operate. These hammerhead cranes are found on most concrete jobs that are outside of downtown settings or in areas without nearby structures.

“The luffing jib cranes typically have more capacity than most hammerhead cranes by design. This is why most buildings erected out of steel use them. Hammerhead cranes are better suited to concrete projects.”

Aren’t you happy you now know about tower cranes?

Closing a church and its garden

Church attendance is down all over America, but especially in New England, where only 17 to 22 percent of the residents report weekly attendance. Almost half of all Americans report they rarely or never go to church. One web site lists 27 churches in Massachusetts for sale to developers. The Catholic Archdiocese of Boston has eight pages of closed or merged parishes from the 1990s through 2011 listed on its web site.

Closing a church is a dicey business. Parishioners in St. Francis Xavier Cabrini in Scituate who objected to that church’s closing have occupied it for more than 10 years, despite court rulings that have affirmed the right of the Catholic Archdiocese to close it.       Sometimes there is a fight over the money brought in by the sale of a church.

But since it was sold to a residential developer in October, 2014, the mission church of St. John the Evangelist on Bowdoin Street on Beacon Hill has been dealing with a different problem from most. It is a question: “What shall we do about the garden?”

“Our congregation cared about this,” said St. John’s priest-in-charge, the Reverend Katharine Black. The congregation’s numbers had dwindled long ago, but there were still members and friends for whom the church and especially its garden were important. “There was no way to sell the building without a plan for the garden.”

The garden was special because it had been affected by events unique to the end of the 20th century.

When gay men began dying of AIDS in the 1980s, their friends and family faced a trying situation, Black reported. Many cemeteries, not knowing how the disease spread and fearing that a dead body might still be contagious, refused to accept AIDS victims’ bodies for burial.

Church members felt anguish over such rejections. Many gay men had found sanctuary in the church, and members believed it was their duty to take care of them.

So they decided that those who wished to do so could instruct that their remains be cremated and the ashes scattered in the garden. Church members dug holes for the ashes, some near the hostas, some near the Japanese maple or the rhododendrons to mark the spot. Soon, the bodies of others, including three children and a young man who committed suicide, were cremated, and their remains were also scattered by church members or friends.

Massachusetts has laws regarding graveyards. When a body has been cremated and buried in an urn, it can be excavated and re-buried. But what does one do about ashes scattered in an entire garden?

The congregation came up with a solution. They would scoop up dirt from various sections in the garden, sometimes by the spoonful, and place the dirt containing ashes in an urn. But where would they place the urn, since the church was closing?

Plans were for St. John the Evangelist to merge with the Cathedral Church of St. Paul on Tremont Street. The $4.5 million received from the sale of the mission church would go toward the cathedral’s renovation. As part of the work, a chapel would be built commemorating the Church of St. John the Evangelist. The chapel was constructed so the urn could be placed in a wooden box, made by St. John’s facilities manager, Jim Woodworth, and that box would be placed in the floor.

When the floor was ready, the congregation of St. John carried the urn with the garden dirt and the remains inside. With due ceremony they proceeded up Bowdoin Street and down through the Common and placed it in the chapel’s floor. A placard in the container describes the contents.

St. John is still negotiating with Mount Auburn Cemetery to see if it will take the top layer of remaining dirt from the garden.

The church building and the adjacent mission house will soon undergo construction into large two and three-bedroom condominiums. The church’s hope and that of the neighborhood is that families will be enticed to move in.

Still to be decided is what to do with religious artifacts, pews, and some of the church windows. But compared to the garden and its sacred holdings, the disposition of other church possessions is easy.

The Reverend Katharine Black is satisfied by the solution that was worked out for bereaved friends and relatives. “It was important to do the right thing,” she said.

The more things change . . .

Larry DiCara remembers his first encounter with Mayor Kevin White. It was 1971. DiCara was newly elected to the Boston City Council. The mayor phoned. Would DiCara meet with him?

The young DiCara, outfitted in his best suit, entered the mayor’s office at the new city hall. White stood at the window overlooking Faneuil Hall and Quincy Market. White said he had two goals—depress the Central Artery and fix Quincy Market.

White accomplished one goal while still in office. In 1975 Quincy Market and later the North and South Markets opened to immense excitement, bolstering Boston’s downtown success.

But accomplishing that task was much like the Olympics effort today. The knives were out. Pessimism ruled. Doom was predicted. Costs rose. A bold, perhaps transforming plan was mocked, scorned, condemned and denounced.

What saved it was a visionary, a prime mover, a deadline and a tough mayor.

Architect Benjamin Thompson articulated his vision for a successful city when his contemporaries were designing big empty plazas.

“Of all the pieces in the urban puzzle, the marketplace is the most fundamental, most civically important—and most neglected,” he wrote in the Boston Globe, July 4, 1971. “Historic marketplaces, springing up at intersections of navigation and trade routes, were the seed and heart of cities.”

Thompson cited the “natural pageantry of crowds.” He predicted that the crumbling Quincy Market and its flanking buildings could be brought back to life, recreating their original purpose in a contemporary way.

After a false start with one developer, Thompson found the Rouse Company. Rouse developed shopping malls, but also had created Columbia, Md., where housing was built around old-fashioned town centers instead of the usual suburban sprawl.

James Rouse was the prime mover. The Globe’s real estate reporter Anthony Yudis quoted him: “We should always examine the optimums and forget about feasibility. It will compromise us soon enough. Let’s look at what might be and be invigorated by it.”

White was excited by the plan. He wanted Quincy Market completed by Boston 200, the city’s bicentennial celebration, set to begin in 1975. Rouse would fund a portion of the celebration. Out-of-towners Chase Manhattan Bank and what is now called TIAA-CREF put up half the money or $10 million. Boston banks would provide the rest.

The critics erupted.

The meat, cheese and produce purveyors that occupied Quincy Market complained they would be displaced, and the renovated building would be unaffordable. Rouse’s promise they could return for three years with the same rent they were paying in the old building did not move them.

White’s own staff put up a fight. DiCara remembered that Herb Gleason, White’s corporation counsel, supported a scaled-down proposal by Roger Webb, admired for his reclamation of Old City Hall.

As city property, the markets needed approval from the city council for any deal. Yudis reported there was little interest in either proposal. Only three councilors attended the hearing at which the two were presented. The councilors were too busy fussing over the proposed Park Plaza. Yudis wrote, “Some urban experts think the Faneuil Hall-markets plan is the ‘sleeper’ in the future Boston that could have just as much significance as, if not more than, the Park Plaza concept.”

DiCara said it was a tough sell. Dapper O’Neill, Joe Tierney and Freddie Langone opposed the market’s redevelopment, but the proponents were finally able to get six councilors, including DiCara, to vote for it, mainly because of Rouse’s good reputation.

Remarkably, the BRA worked against the Rouse proposal even after the company was designated in 1973.

It took the BRA two years to sign a lease. The BRA board chair predicted the whole enterprise was foolish. “Only one sour note was expressed — several times following the lease signing,” Yudis reported. “The chairman of the BRA, Robert T. Farrell, made it clear to those connected with the project that, in his opinion, the project never will be carried off. Time will tell whether this was an astute observation.”

The BRA director, Robert Kenney, had no faith either in Rouse’s plan. Three months before the market opened he was still working to change it, trying to get a Hyatt Regency hotel into the mix, with the lobby in the rotunda, reported Ian Menzies, a Globe columnist. Rouse was having none of that.

Thompson said putting a hotel into the market was like the recently completed Harbor Towers on the harbor—a way to keep the public out.

Then there was the money problem. Boston banks refused to come up with their share of the financing. By early February 1975 Mayor White had had it. He called the heads of the local financial institutions to his office, recalled Budge Upton, Rouse’s project manager, who, with Rouse, was at the meeting. White told the banks they had 24 hours to arrange the local financing or he would pull the city’s money from their institutions. By the next day White had $10 million from the First National Bank, John Hancock, New England Life, State Street Bank, New England Merchants, National Shawmut, Charlestown Savings, Union Warren, Commonwealth Bank and the Mass. Business Development Corp.

A few months later, Faneuil Hall Marketplace opened. Among many last-minute snafus, said Upton, was awaiting the delivery of 80 wheels for the pushcarts. They arrived at Logan three days before the opening. No one knew if the rehabilitated market would attract any notice.

But on the first day 125,000 people showed up. Menzies then started writing about how the Central Artery had to go—another effort fraught with negativity. It goes to show—conventional wisdom is sometimes just conventional. It isn’t wisdom at all.

Love in the lab

Kerfuffle. Brouhaha, contretemps, a wrangle, rumpus, melee, a ruckus, a to-do. It is curious that some of the best words in the English language describe a commotion, a disturbance, a fuss. My big American Heritage dictionary, published in 2000, strangely does not include the word. But the online Oxford English Dictionary traces its origin to the early 19th century Gaelic “curfuffle” with the first syllable meaning twist or bend, while the ending used the Scots word “fuffle,” signifying disorder.

Kerfuffle has a light touch. A Boston Globe writer used it to describe the mayor’s aide bullying the president of the Boston Public Library at a public meeting for something she didn’t do. But that’s not the right usage. A kerfuffle must have more humor in it, more wonder, maybe a bit of irony. It’s not mean-spirited.

So I was happy to read about the outcry over comments about women scientists by Tim Hunt, a British biochemist with a Nobel Prize. The New York Times quoted him: “Three things happen when [women] are in the lab: You fall in love with them. They fall in love with you, and when you criticize them they cry.”

It was then that, in another wonderful English language phrase, the shit hit the fan.

According to the Times, one female professor wrote: “Dear department: please note I will be unable to chair the 10 am meeting this morning because I am too busy swooning and crying #TimHunt.” Etc. The backlash was as funny as the comments.

Then Mr. Hunt said more things that got him more in trouble, and he resigned from the faculty of University College London.

But I sort of thought he was wonderful. (Another trait women are accused of—a man supposedly wouldn’t hedge with the words “sort of.”)

When I read his words, I liked them. Working in a lab together. Falling in love. Sounds good to me. I love working with my husband—he’s smart, he holds up his end and he gets things done. If I we knew how to work in a lab it would be lovely. We could cuddle without having to commute. (In fact, I know a married couple working in a lab together. I don’t know how they met, but there is a good chance they fell in love in a lab.)

Falling in love sounds better than what I imagine would really be going on in such labs—infighting, competition, subterfuge such as ruining another lab workers’ experiment.

I know that falling in love with one’s co-worker is fraught with all kinds of concerns about professionalism, yada, yada, yada. But people do it all the time, maybe even most of the time. And isn’t “what the world needs now is love, sweet love? It’s the only thing that there’s just too little of.” We need to lighten up on love.

We also need to lighten up on crying. I can attest that I cry more than the men in my life do. My daughters, my sister and my sister-in-law, all professional women, don’t cry much, but they do so more than their fathers, husbands, brothers and sons. Sometimes it gets you somewhere. Remember when Hillary Clinton shed a tear that helped her win the New Hampshire primary?

Pity women like Hillary. If they don’t cry, they are cold. If they do, they are weak. Can’t we let women cry if they want to? And while we’re at it, let men shed a tear too.

The only place I disagree with Nobel Prize-winning Hunt is that love and crying should keep women out of labs. No. We should instead learn to love that love is in labs—and law firms and hospitals and venture capital firms and retail shops and construction sites. Mr. Hunt has described a heterosexual problem. But now that gays and lesbians are finally welcome everywhere, a man falling in love with a woman is only one of the kinds of people men can fall for. So it’s not women, but it is love we must learn to handle.

As for crying? Mr. Hunt, it’s okay. If you’re not bullying, just criticizing, your words may make the crying woman a better scientist, and she’ll be happy about it later.

Mr. Hunt was mocked, but he actually sounds like a good man. Women fell in love with him and he with them. Not bad for a lifetime. He had empathy for the women he criticized and didn’t like to see them cry.

Maybe I wrote this whole thing just because I wanted to use the word “kerfuffle.”

Not your father’s Oldsmobile

The world has changed. Our cars are more efficient and safer than they were a couple of decades ago. We used to be concerned about the Soviet Union. Now it is Russia. At one time women stayed home and took care of children. Now almost 70 percent of mothers with young children work at least part-time. Members of the same sex have married, and the world has not fallen in.

So I thought I would roll right along when Bruce Jenner announced he was going to be Caitlyn. Bruce changing to a woman? No problem. Bruce becoming Caitlyn? No problem. Sixty-five-year-old Caitlyn looking like no 65-year-old woman I know? Really weird.

Is this what the former Bruce thought women were like? All makeup, nail polish, cleavage and big silicone boobs?

Take a look at the Vanity Fair cover. You don’t have to buy the magazine. Caitlyn’s picture is all over the Internet too. She has long, silky not-gray hair, beautiful skin and a gaze like Angelina Jolie. If pictures tell no lies, it looks as if she is also missing a piece of equipment that would pretty much clinch her former status as a man. This is her true self, she says.

Since I was on the Internet, I could look at more women who used to be men and had become their true selves. They were pretty much like Jenner—glamorous, lots of makeup, dramatic, tight-fitting clothes.

Most people I know have no problem with other people wanting to be their true selves.

But Caitlyn’s appearance is a caricature of womanhood. Her get-up would look appropriate on J Lo, but not on any real woman. She will need a whole beauty salon to follow her around if she aspires to always look like that when she is out in public. Most women are too busy for that kind of obsession. Why not aspire to look like women of achievement? Elizabeth Warren, Maura Healey, Hillary Clinton, Loretta Lynch, even 4-foot, 11-inch Senator Barbara Mikulski come to mind.

Caitlyn is going to have more and more company as a transgendered woman. Wellesley College and Simmons College have both announced they will accept people who identify as women, no matter what sex they were at birth. With all kinds of women to emulate there is a real question Caitlyn must ultimately answer: “What does it really mean to be a woman?”

Having recently spent four hours with 50 women who had gathered for a meeting and a lunch, I believe I’m something of an expert.

They were giving away money they had raised in an event—a small business actually. They were talking about their friends, husbands, families and neighborhood matters. They were dealing with plumbers, contractors and kids visiting colleges. They were taking time off from work to be at this meeting, and their cell phones continued to buzz. They were working the room.

I know these women well. Some are Patriots fans, many are interested in politics. Some run their own businesses. Some are doctors, others are lawyers. There were a few philanthropists. One shed a tear, as Gov. Charlie Baker has done.

Many were wearing the workplace uniform—trousers, shirt and jacket. There was no cleavage showing. (Now I know this is Boston, where we “already have our hats,” according to a 19th century female proper Bostonian. It is possible that Boston women are not a good comparison to anyone who appears on the cover of Vanity Fair.)

Maybe they were sharing more secrets, baring more soul than men would do. But it occurred to me that their clothing was also the male uniform, and their concerns and behavior were pretty much like those of men. Except that they can give birth, something men, as yet, cannot do.

So I guess I’m not much help after all in what makes a woman a woman.

What I do know, though, is that Caitlyn’s claim to fame is not that she once was a man. Her notoriety comes from being a celebrity, first as an Olympian and now as part of that bizarre, narcissistic group known as the Kardashians.

Celebrities are a peculiar bunch, often living extreme lives that most of us do not aspire to and that many of us pay little attention to. I wouldn’t bet on a celebrity teaching us anything.

So I’m not counting on Caitlyn Jenner. The ones I plan to follow are those young, anonymous people who will now be attending Wellesley and Simmons. It’s their experience that will help us understand better what it means to be a woman or a man and what it means to make a change from one gender to another. And I bet it won’t involve lipstick.

Embracing the Greenway

It has been six years since the Rose Kennedy Greenway’s first spring. It has been even longer since the Greenway was established, since the non-profits that hoped to cover the ramps abandoned their plans, and since frustrated horticultural volunteers fled the park leaders as too annoying to deal with.

Things are looking up though.

With a change in Greenway leadership, hostilities are way down. The unfortunate planting beds at the north end of the park are being replaced. The activities in the park are not only interesting; some are memorable. Such activities are a rarity in Boston’s parks, which for better or worse are often lauded for their passivity. On the Greenway, however, a lot is going on. The park itself looks good. And the edges, which are more important to a successful space than most people think, are considerably better, if not ideal in every location.

Four of us took a walk down the Greenway from Causeway Street to South Station in the kind of sunny, cool weather we dream about all winter.

Our strongest impression was that this park is heavily used, and maybe even loved. People were everywhere. Children and adults were tracking the maze in the Armenian Heritage Park. A long line waited to get onto the fanciful creatures spinning on the carousel. The water fountain near the light sculpture looked as if it had not yet been turned on, but children were skirting it, expecting it to start spraying momentarily.

Food trucks dotted the edges of the Greenway. Cookie Monstah had positioned two, one near each end. The Harbor Fog sculpture was fizzing. All the hammocks and tables and chairs were filled, and many people lay on the grass soaking up the sun.

When we rounded a corner, the Janet Echelman fiber sculpture came into view, billowing from its cables attached to International Place and the Intercontinental Hotel. When this sculpture was announced, I was concerned. Similar Echelman works are in other cities. Would the Greenway sculpture be like those blasted cows—shown everywhere, with no sense of place, and ultimately boring?

We decided I had needlessly worried. Something this big and beautiful is engaging, fun, and more interesting than plaster cows, even if it has been done elsewhere.

Underneath the sculpture stood an intricate box filled with reading material, and many people were gathered round. This UNI Project, an outdoor library, is in its second year on the Greenway. Full disclosure: it is our daughter and her husband who conceived of the UNI and had the structure made, but since it is part of the draw of the Greenway, I didn’t think it was fair NOT to mention it.

In Dewey Square the farmer’s market was not operating, since it is open only on Tuesdays and Thursdays. But the plaza was filled with people anyway. We turned to look at the artwork on the side of the air intake building. It is fine, but I was nostalgic for the controversy and the attention the provocative Os Gemeos mural had attracted.

The edges of the long park are better than the last time I walked the Greenway with a group to consider its condition. On each side, the trees and shrubs, especially when they are planted on berms, provide a sense of enclosure and refuge from the traffic that still mars the place. Even better are the edges on the other side of the Surface Road. (Can we find a better name for this boulevard? Fitzgerald Avenue?)

It has taken several years for buildings whose blank walls faced the overhead Central Artery to open up. But they are doing so. I started to count them, but gave up because several more may open in the next few weeks.

Some building owners have cut windows into their walls facing the Greenway. Others have opened up the ground floor, and now many outdoor restaurants overlook the park. A few parking lots and dead spaces remain. The worst is the Harbor Garage, whose owner, the persistent Don Chiofaro, has proposed a dynamic, beautiful pathway to the sea between two buildings.

Some still oppose his plan, but his idea to create a path between his buildings from the Greenway to the harbor is exactly what the Greenway needs. Such an opening also occurs dramatically at the Boston Harbor Hotel. But when one is next to the impervious Intercontinental Hotel and the black fence outside Harbor Towers, there sadly is no sense that an ocean lies on the other side. The shortish, blockish, blackish Intercontinental is evidence that it is not height that matters here—it is permeability.

More pathways need to be open to the sea and to the downtown. Faneuil Hall Marketplace, for example, has not yet taken advantage of its new neighbor.

All in all, however, the area has much promise. If you’ve lived here long enough you may remember all the negativity and predictions of doom about the Big Dig. Yes, it was expensive and way over budget. It was also the best money we have spent in the last 50 years. Just think of what it would be like in this now beautiful city to have that overhead green traffic monster still in our midst.

Recycle City

We can get pretty depressed at the precarious state of the environment and the steps public officials are not taking to remedy the problem. Even more depressing are the climate change deniers, the clean coal boosters, the natural gas pipeline aficionados and the people who lack concern about fossil fuels damaging our air and water. Not even several toxic spills into rivers and the oceans have been able to move Congress to face facts and the future.

So it is nice to know that Boston has a tiny bit of good news on the environmental front. The city has increased its recycle rate. It is transforming the sticks in your garden into compost. The city is a wee bit cleaner.

Hey. Let’s take what we can get.

Downtown Boston’s recycling rate has increased by almost 12 percent since last July, Boston Public Works Commissioner Michael Dennehy reported. Several factors went into this good news. The city has placed recycle receptacles beside most trash bins along such major streets as Boylston, Beacon, Newbury and Cambridge, so that items formerly thrown in the trash are now being recycled.

In all the downtown neighborhoods except Charlestown, the city now collects trash only two days a week. But it has increased its collection of recyclables to two days a week also, up from one day a year ago. Some residents, whose neighborhoods formerly experienced trash pickup three days a week, complained bitterly that neighbors living in small apartments couldn’t store their trash for the extra days between pickups, and the streets would be even trashier than before.

But that hasn’t happened. Reducing the number of hours trash sits on the sidewalk each week has made the neighborhoods cleaner. “I was pleasantly surprised,” said Paula Della Russo of the North End. “There is less litter in the streets, and I haven’t seen as many rodents.”

More recycling has also saved the city money. It costs $74 a ton to get rid of trash, but only $5 a ton to deposit the recyclables at the Casella recycling plant in Charlestown, said Dennehy. So every ton of recyclable material the trucks pick up saves the city’s taxpayers $69.

When the market for plastics was better, the city was actually paid for such material.

The material that does not go into the trash contributes to the city’s diversion rate. That amount has been growing too. In April of this year in the whole city it was up 27 percent over April, 2014. The material diverted is not only recyclables. It also includes yard waste, which the city this year picks up every two weeks in the spring, once a month in the summer, and every week from the last week in October through the first week in December. Dennehy said if people put out their yard waste on the wrong day the trash haulers will not put it in the trash, but instead will leave it on the sidewalk until the yard waste truck comes on the right day for pickup.

Yard waste goes to City Soil, which for about two years has composted, screened and sifted the organic material (including Christmas trees) at its site along the American Legion Highway and delivered the compost to Boston’s community gardens. Residents can pick up compost there for their own gardens in City Soil’s retail shop.

We still have trash, however. The downtown trash goes to the Wheelabrator waste-to-energy power plant in Saugus. It can burn 1,500 tons per day and delivers electricity to 30,000 households. Trash from the outer neighborhoods—Hyde Park, JP, West Roxbury, for example—gets trucked to the SEMASS facility in Rochester, Massachusetts just south of I-495 near Route 28. SEMASS burns the trash at a rate of 3,000 tons per day, also producing energy. This facility charges the city $60 per ton of trash.

This year the city added a fifth hazardous waste drop-off day.

There are still problems that need to be solved. Although converting waste to energy sounds like a good idea, the plants have their own problems, so much so that the state has imposed a moratorium on building new ones, said George Bachrach, president of the Environmental League of Massachusetts. He said the only effective way to deal with trash is to drastically reduce it, and increase recycling. Some cities and towns have tried such financial incentives as charging for trash or allowing residents a limited amount of trash after which they would be charged. Boston has not gone that route yet.

In January and February, the recycle rate was considerably down. Apparently deep snow affects residents’ tendency to recycle. The outlying neighborhoods’ recycling rate is not as good as the downtown’s, and that’s another place for improvement. Although in April 2015 more than one ton of disposables out of five was being recycled or repurposed, Dennehy would like to see it improve to one out of four or 25 percent.

So it is little by little. That’s better than nothing.

City life is a sharing life

So many people decide to move into the city—what might they be expecting? Convenient trips to the movies, the opera, the symphony, the theater. Walk-to restaurants, bars, parks and libraries. Shops and supermarkets that make deliveries.

All these benefits exist.

The most frequent activity, though, may be a surprise to a former suburbanite shedding an acre of land. But it is one that successful city-dwellers find the most satisfying. It goes back to kindergarten. We spend most of our time sharing.

Sometimes it is structural. We share roofs, ceilings, floors and, even in single-family houses, we share walls. Those walls are usually good at blocking sound from next door but they are old. I know of one family whose fireplace smoked when their next-door neighbor enjoyed a fire.

We share horticulture. A neighbor’s tree will cast shade on surrounding gardens, if one is so lucky to have such a feature on a property. If that tree is a crabapple or a cherry, it will add a glow to the neighbors’ gardens too. There have been a few major contretemps over horticulture, when one neighbor, for example, takes out a vine that has escaped into an adjoining garden and become a major feature. And in such close quarters pests move quickly from one garden to another, whether they are of the insect persuasion or a rodent.

We share sounds. Construction is annoying, but most neighbors remember when they did construction too, so they let it pass. Loud music, inconsolable babies, the dog that barks the whole time his owner is away, trash bins being rolled out to the street—we hear them all. Sometimes through an open window we hear a talented flutist practicing. Not all sounds are annoying.

Our next door neighbor shares her ground floor with us, and we enjoy the peculiarity. Our furnace, hot water heater and laundry room are in her building, and we reach them from our house by a door in the party wall. It’s a long story due to history, and it’s perfectly legal, but strange to those not used to sharing.

Two downtown families I know shared a car for many years. It was easy to work out a schedule since most of their transportation needs were satisfied by walking. This was before Zipcar, the ultimate corporate experience in sharing.

Some people find sharing hard. A real estate broker told me that people who pay downtown property prices do not like to share gardens, as one example. And there are several private downtown gardens behind some glorious homes that are shared. Such an arrangement might not suit everyone.

The shelter magazines are full of houses isolated in Idaho or on a lone promontory on the Oregon coast. Interviews with the homeowner usually emphasize how their property is designed to get away from people so they can do exactly what they want.

A person like that won’t be happy in the middle of the city, and we wouldn’t want them here. We share rules and regulations that limit our ability to do what we want, especially in Boston’s historic districts. Those regulations recognize that we are not the first persons to live in our home and we won’t be the last. Those regulations protect those who come after us.

The most difficult times downtown are when one person takes more than his or her share. They decide that rules don’t apply to them. We found that out this past winter when some residents decided they owned the parking space they had shoveled out. Most of the neighborhood organizations made it clear that we share shoveled-out spaces in the same way we share all spaces. It’s the same for street cleaning—people who don’t move their cars are taking too much of the public realm.

The people who are the happiest and most successful at downtown living are those who enjoy the sharing. They are the ones who plant their tree pit and their window boxes to share with those who pass by. They are the ones who share with neighbors their plans for construction or an event. They are the ones who appreciate and contribute to the shared upkeep of our green spaces, our sidewalks and our roadways.

The American mythology celebrates “rugged individualism.” But it turns out that rugged individuals lead unsatisfying lives. Study after study show that the persons most happy are those who participate in community life. Counter-intuitively, a strong community allows individuals with quirks, extravagances, eccentricities and oddities to fully express those qualities without harsh judgment from others.

If you are newly arrived in downtown Boston, take full advantage of its pleasures by becoming the best sharer on your block. Such participation will turn out to be even better than the walk-to restaurant.

Old, white and rich?

The reporting is breathless: Millennium Tower penthouse goes on sale for $37.5 million. A condo in a 19th-century Commonwealth Avenue townhouse sells for $7 million. Luxury apartments, rentable or buyable, going up in the Fenway and in the Seaport.

These new projects add expensive housing to the already-pricey neighborhoods in downtown Boston.

The buyers differ only a little. They are empty nesters realizing that city life is more interesting than that in the suburbs or dot-com youths spending their high salaries or bonuses or foreign billionaires parking their money in safe North American investments.

Which leaves us with a question for the center city’s residents: Do you really want to live with only mostly old, mostly white, but always rich people?

Long ago, residents of Beacon Hill, as one example, decided they did not want to do so.

They believed income, age and racial diversity would enhance that neighborhood’s quality of life. (And it has.) So methodically and purposefully they teamed with developers and institutions. They raised money from the neighborhood to transform an MGH parking garage, a fire-damaged single-room occupancy building for men, and abandoned city property—schools, a police station, a firehouse. Two buildings became community centers. The rest became affordable housing. One of these buildings, Beacon House, is in the spotlight this week, as supporters honor Meredith and Gene Clapp, who spearheaded the effort to help Rogerson Communities buy the building and keep it affordable.

But the city’s downtown surplus properties are running low. One of the few remaining such buildings became the new North Bennet Street School in a swap that expands the popular Eliot public school in the North End.

Beacon Hill is an example of what is happening now throughout the city. Large institutional buildings are becoming luxury housing. Three buildings owned by Suffolk University, the former St. John the Evangelist church property and the former Beacon Press building—all near the State House—are either on the market or have recently been bought by developers.

Now the question is: Is there any hope for more affordable housing in the downtown’s pricey neighborhoods?

Yes, say housing advocates. But the circumstances have changed.

It is no longer the city selling property at affordable prices. Instead it is non-profits who understandably want to reap big rewards from their buildings in pricey neighborhoods. A buyer usually must build luxury housing to cover costs and generate a profit. Sometimes, though, a large institutional building presents problems for luxury conversions, and that creates an opportunity.

There are other ways also to manage the situation, said Sheila Dillon, chief of housing for the City of Boston.

Dillon said several Beacon Hill residents have contacted her, urging the city to require affordable housing as part of the neighborhood’s new developments. The approval process takes the community’s wishes into account.

If a project contains 10 or more units and also needs zoning relief, which most projects do, the city requires that 15 percent of the units be affordable. Moreover, there can be no “poor door,” as there was recently in a New York City project. The affordable units must be constructed and outfitted at the same level of finish as the luxury units.

The city prefers that such units be included in the main project, although developers can make a case for building a separate project or paying into a fund to satisfy the affordability requirement. While the Beacon Hill residents Dillon has heard from prefer to see affordable units incorporated into the neighborhood project, there is an argument for building off site.

“The highest and best use happens to be luxury condos,” said broker Jason Weissman, head of Boston Realty Advisors, about downtown residential buildings.

In a 20-unit development, three would be affordable. For the same price as constructing those three units in a downtown neighborhood, many more could be built in outlying, less expensive districts, he pointed out.

Dillon is aware of that conundrum and said that in many cases a developer will do both—construct some units on site and also contribute to the fund.

There are many ways to bring affordable housing into the downtown neighborhoods, said Robert Beal, president of the real estate development firm, Related Beal.

He ought to know. Using imagination and experience, his company has proposed a 239-unit rental apartment building for low and moderate-income residents who will enjoy benefits usually reserved for high-priced spreads. Located in the fast-growing Bulfinch Triangle near luxury buildings, its northern side overlooks the Bunker Hill Zakim Bridge while southern views incorporate the Greenway.

In smaller projects such as Beacon Hill’s buildings, affordable units are important but their numbers are insignificant unless a special situation arises, which some neighborhood leaders are hopeful, but mum about. Much of the land in downtown Boston neighborhoods is already taken up. Remarkably, though, because of the Big Dig, the freed-up Seaport District and a parking lot here and there, other projects like Related Beal’s could help us get to that juicy mix of ages, ethnicities, incomes and lifestyles that attracted us to the city in the first place.