The games we played as children: Relievio

It's now early September. Hearing the crickets at dusk takes me back to the warm late summer evenings of yesteryear, and the sounds of neighborhood kids playing outside. 

Growing up, what were the games you played with your neighbors or siblings? Hopscotch? Stickball? Jumprope? A list of children's games is endless. But I wanted to mention a special one: Relievio. 

From age around the age of 8 to 12, this was a favorite game in our neighborhood. Relievio was a simple game, a cross between hide and seek and capture the flag, but spanned all of the properties on the street, including back yards. You needed at least a half-dozen kids to play, who were divided into teams. There was also a "jail," but the captured kids could be freed by a teammate. There were special phrases and calls, including "Ollie Ollie in come free." 

We would play after school until it got dark or it was time for dinner. On a warm night, we would go home for supper, but then come out again to play until twilight or our parents called us in. The cries of the game and shouts of glee when someone was tagged echoed throughout the neighborhood and then faded as everyone drifted home. As darkness fell, the crickets started their own calls. The block fell silent until the next day. 

I always assumed that one of our cleverer or more social friends made up Relievio, or perhaps learned of it from other kids in our town. Recently I learned that Relievio actually has a long tradition, going back to the 1800s and spreading across at least two continents under various names. The origins are obscure, but it seems to have come from Britain. The game-ending phrase that I heard as a child - "Ollie Ollie In Come Free" - was likely "All ye, all ye, in come free" at some point. We had no idea! 

Nicole grew up on the other side of the world and never heard of Relievio. But growing up, she and her siblings and friends had their own games and traditions. Every group of children did, no matter where they lived, or when they lived, as this Breughel painting shows:

Remembering these games now brings a smile to our faces!

As for our own children, our teenage son never heard of Relievio. It's sad, but it's not the first gaming tradition to fade away. I remembering hearing about kick the can, and would find scuffed marbles in the school playground, but never played these games myself - they were the domain of an older generation of children.

But other games live on. Our son played some of the same games that we did 40 or 50 years ago, including touch football and run the bases. In the winter, he went sledding with his friends. Both of our kids were enthusiastic Halloween participants through middle school. These and other childhood traditions will live on ... or perhaps be replaced by something new.

This old house: old owners come back

Do you ever get mail for people who used to live at your address? We do. It's usually junk. Until now, we have always marked it "return to sender."

But a piece of mail from a state retirement system a few weeks ago looked too important to send back. Through a neighbor, we contacted the previous owners of the house, who lived in it from 1991 to 2005, and asked if we could forward the mail to their new address. They said that they were going to be in the area the following day, and we could give it to them in person.

Why not? We had some questions about the house, and knew that they probably wanted to see what it looked like as they had done a lot to improve the property and had raised a family there.

So we invited them over. And it was a lot of fun! We were surprised to learn that they were only the third owners of the house, which was built in 1916. They purchased it from an elderly lady who was related to the original owners.

When they got it, the house had good bones. But it needed a lot of TLC, including a new roof, better drainage, work on the gardens, and work on the interior. We learned about the plants they had planted, the construction they had completed, and the little things that seemed strange to us when we moved in in 2007 but made perfect sense once they explained the situation that faced them in the 1990s.

We laughed about the house's quirks, such as the roof's tendency to attract nesting birds. Or, carrying the window air conditioners up from the cellar every June, and taking them down in October. One year, when Steve was mounting the air conditioner, he pushed too hard and the air conditioner went right out the window to the garden below!

We also talked about some of the same activities that our families had done, such as waiting for the bus when the kids were little, or going down to the river nearby to canoe. The house has mysteries like the outdoor hatch (anyone remember the history mystery from last year?) and the check stubs an electrician found in the attic crawlspace.

If you have a chance to talk with the previous owners of your house, do it! It's an opportunity to learn about the history of your house ... and pass down stories to the next family.

The Pilgrim's struggle with soil

Earlier this year, I took our son on a scout camping trip in Plymouth, Massachusetts. Plymouth was made famous by the Pilgrims, who arrived in 1620 to escape religious persecution and create a new life for themselves and their children.

But if you were to visit Plymouth today, you would be surprised about how empty the area is. Driving through Myles Standish State Forest to the campground, we were struck by the wilderness around us. Miles and miles of scrubby forest and sandy soil, with most of the plant life consisting of short pitch pines and bushes, as shown in the picture above.

Indeed, Plymouth and nearby areas of Southeastern Massachusetts must have been a shock to the Pilgrims. Not only were the winters colder and the summers hotter than in England, the soil was terrible for planting. Quoting the Soil Science Society of America blog post titled "What type of farming challenges did the Pilgrims face?":

In the coastal area of Plymouth Colony, soils are shallow, sandy and stony. This contrasts with the farmlands of southern England, with deep, nutrient-rich loamy soil. In addition, the English soils were more fertile and tillable by hand or with draft animals to a depth of perhaps 6-12 inches. Massachusetts coastal soils were not deep, and sit on top of hard bedrock. The Pilgrims did not bring draft animals (horses or oxen) and although the sandy soils could be tilled or cultivated by hand, they were very stony, making this difficult work.

Sandy soils do not hold the nutrients – or water – that plants need for a bountiful harvest. They are more susceptible to drought, because the water filters through faster. The Pilgrims were lucky that the Wampanoag shared more suitable crops with them, such as corn and squash. These crops are able to grow in less ideal conditions. It’s reported that a late-season rain helped boost the harvest as well.

During that brutal first winter of 1620-1621, nearly half of the 102 Mayflower passengers died, and the colony came close to failing, as described in Nathaniel Philbrick's Mayflower: Voyage, Community, War.

The Pilgrims were determined, but it was not enough, especially as members began to die around them and it became clear that raising crops in the New World required a different approach. If you have Pilgrim ancestors, they survived only because the Wampanoag (specifically, the Pokanoket people) showed them how to farm. One of the many gifts the Native Americans gave to the Pilgrims were crops, such as corn, that were better suited to their new farming location, as well as the "Three Sisters" technique for strengthening soil nutrients and avoiding famine, as described in the SSSA blog.

Walking around the desolate Plymouth backcountry, I spotted two other things the Wampanoag introduced to the English settlers: wild turkeys and cranberries! Cranberries are now one of the few crops to truly thrive in southeastern Massachusetts, and you can see the bogs everywhere. 

 

 

Pandemic-era Eagle Scout Service Project with the Boston Area Gleaners

Last summer, my son led his scout troop (Troop 355) to gather hundreds of banana boxes for a local group that fights food insecurity. This was part of an Eagle Scout Service project, which is required of all scouts seeking to attain the rank of Eagle. The following pieces of information are from the project summary he prepared.

The Boston Area Gleaners is truly a fascinating organization that not only provides fresh produce to local food banks, it also targets food waste on local farms by taking excess produce. The humble banana box is an important part of the storage and transportation infrastructure, as this video shows:

According to the Greater Boston Food Bank, the pandemic has caused food insecurity among children to rise 117% in Eastern Massachusetts so that now 1 in 5 children live in a home that is food insecure. In 2020, the Gleaners collected and distributed 8 million lbs of fresh produce to go on tables across New England. To run their operations, the Boston Area Gleaners need lots of banana boxes! 

The original goal of the project: obtain 400 empty boxes, and deliver them to the Gleaners by July 31st. This represents capacity for the Gleaners to transport 14,000 pounds of produce, enough fruits and vegetables for nearly 38,000 meals! Most cars can fit between 5 and 15 banana boxes each (bigger cars or trucks could most likely fit between 20-25 boxes).

By the end of July, scouts from Troop 355 as well as parents and siblings gathered 450+ banana boxes, and did so safely, following safe social distancing requirements. Twenty scouts from Newton and Boston took part, with support from scout parents, scoutmasters, and other members of the community.

Managers and staff at Star Market, Shaw's, Stop & Shop, Russo’s, Market Basket, and Whole Foods played a crucial role in setting the boxes aside, which otherwise would have been crushed or used for other purposes. 

It really was a great learning and leadership experience, and a great cause. Thank you all for your help!

Boston University: 1987 vs. 2020

I've done some volunteer mentoring for my alma matter Boston University at the graduate level, but today I got to see the school through prospective undergraduate eyes after taking my daughter there for an info session. It's interesting to see how much has changed since I attended BU some 30 years ago, even while some things have remained the same.

Being an urban campus spread out along Comm Ave, BU never had a "center" of campus the way many other schools do. That said, when I started my undergraduate degree back in the 1980s the center of gravity was generally the area from Marsh Chapel/Warren Towers/GSU down to Kenmore Square, where the BU Bookstore and Myles Standish Hall were located. Kenmore was a lively and somewhat gritty place, not just because of its proximity to Fenway Park, but also because of the clubs, restaurants, and shops. There was even a movie theater a short walk from Kenmore, the Nickelodeon behind Warren Towers and the College of Communication.

West Campus in the 80s was a distant planet, a mile up Comm Ave from Marsh Chapel. This is where athletes and fine arts students roamed. BU had three large dorms there, as well as SFA and a few real estate holdings like the old brick armory. I only went up there when I was in the BU marching band (BU still had a football team) or when I attended concerts in clubs such as the Paradise or Bunratties.

How things have changed. In 2020, Kenmore is a luxury dead zone. The Rat, Narcissus, Nemos, and the BU Bookstore are all long gone, along with the many small record shops and cheap restaurants that students used to frequent. They've been replaced by high-priced hotel rooms and condos. Just about the only holdouts are the Buckminster and of course Kenmore Station, as well as the dorm and a few brownstones BU bought decades ago.

West Campus is now totally transformed, thanks to a slew of new dorms and facilities including Agganis Arena and a very modern fitness center. The BU Bookstore is there, too (moved up to 990 Comm Ave.) And the cultural attractions including food and activities seem to have multiplied. The Paradise is still there (and better than before with a more concert-friendly layout), but now there are new clubs (Brighton Music Hall) and far more Asian restaurants and small shops down Brighton Ave and up Harvard Ave.

Indeed, the new BU axis seems to have flipped to the west. Students still live in Warren and take classes across the street in the old academic buildings, COM, and the expanded School of Engineering, but they are more likely to be drawn up to West Campus to use FitRec, go to the BU Bookstore, or sample the student haunts in Allston than to go down to Kenmore. Why go to Kenmore when there's nothing to do there?

One of the few buildings that hasn't changed much on the outside is COM, at 640 Comm Ave. The exterior still looks as it did 35 years ago (a squat 50s-era classroom/lab building), although the interior has been refreshed and WBUR is no longer on the third floor (it moved to West Campus, naturally).

BU Academics

The academics at Boston University have evolved and gotten stronger. I have seen some of this through the pages of Bostonia (the alumni magazine), which highlights research and other activities. BU's physical expansion has been going on since the 1980s, thanks to some smart real estate investments in the second half of the 20th century, but a lot of organizational change and a focus on research and academic excellence across the university has taken place under President Robert Brown, who was recruited from MIT 15 years ago.

This excellence is reflected in the many research initiatives as well as scholars and students attracted to the school. According to the handbook I was given today, the middle 50% for SAT scores ranges between 1420 and 1530, and the admit rate is below 20% -- roughly what Harvard College experienced in the 80s. It's pretty clear that BU is now in the upper echelons of second-tier private colleges. In the 80s, BU was considered a good school, but wasn't at that level.

During my student years in the late 80s and early 90s, it was clear that President John Silber sought to raise BU's profile as well, and succeeded in the sense of moving BU from a regional college to an international university. But Silber also held it back. He was a condescending, polarizing figure to students and faculty. Silber delighted in steamrolling campus voices that spoke out or took stances he didn't like, and would go to great lengths to shut them down, such as his move to establish WBUR as an independent entity (as a COM student, I was not able to even intern there). It wasn't until both he and his protege Jon Westling had left that the university could enter a new phase of development, and I think Brown's stewardship has been wonderful.

Brown and his people brought over some concepts from MIT that are a breath of fresh air, including UROP (Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program) which matches undergraduates with labs, studies, and other academic research initiatives.  I really wish we had something like this when I was there (at the time, serious research was typically the domain of grad students) but I was able to do other activities that matched my academic interests.

It's interesting to me that some of the academic activities I took part in as a student 30 years ago are still around, including the London Internship Program -- a combined internship/study abroad program that literally changed my life (long story for another post). The London campus has also become a bigger part of the undergraduate experience thanks to integration with the College of General Studies -- from what I understand, CGS students starting in the Spring spend their first semester in London with faculty, which seems like a fantastic opportunity for learning and bonding.

Anyway, those are some thoughts I have after visiting BU with my daughter. Are you a current or former BU student? Please feel free to share comments below.

YIMBYs in Newton co-opted by developers?

There's an article in Commonwealth magazine that's worth reading to understand some of the forces at work trying to promote affordable housing. Members of the YIMBY movement (Yes In My Back Yard) among other things are demanding local governments remove restrictions on building apartment buildings and other "dense" housing in areas where it doesn't exist now, such as in certain neighborhoods in Boston as well as Newton and other nearby suburbs of eastern Massachusetts.

The idea is, if a massive amount of new housing hits the market, prices will come down and young people and others will have more housing options close by to where they want to live and work (preferably using public transport and other shared transportation resources). The movement has also taken off in Washington D.C., San Francisco, and other space-constrained areas where a lot of young professionals want to live.

The idea of making more affordable housing is admirable, but there's a big problem. From the Commonwealth article:

A coalition of low-income tenant groups says unbridled growth only promises to worsen the affordable housing crisis in Boston and make for more losers at the bottom of the economic ladder. The YIMBY effort “often finds ways to make it easier for developers to build, and that often leads to housing that people can’t afford,” said Darnell Johnson, coordinator for the Boston chapter of Right to the City, a national alliance advocating for low-income tenants.

He's right. Developers want free reign to maximize profits, and they are leveraging the YIMBY movement, sympathetic politicians, and the local media and business communities to get their way. The figures in that article show that 20% of permitted construction in Boston since 2011 has been set aside for affordable housing, another ~22% for middle income people (up to $125k/household income) which means all of the rest is "market rate"/luxury.

In Newton, the numbers are far worse, and its exacerbated by the relentless teardown phenomenon that removes relatively affordable units from the marketplace -- the types of places that young people, new families, and seniors could live. This has translated to an onslaught of luxury/"market rate" condos and multimillion dollar single family homes where modest houses or apartments once stood. What little affordable housing is being made available is utterly insufficient for the need, and it turns into a convenient negotiation point for other developer giveaways.

YIMBY proponents in the article are sensitive to the criticism that they are "mindless shills" for developers. I can't blame them for wanting to find a solution to the affordable housing problem in the Boston area. I do, however, disagree with the way they are going about doing it, which includes the demand that developers be given free reign to build high-density, market rate/luxury housing and often attacking anyone who questions such plans. Follow the #newtonma Twitter hashtag and you will see this attitude in action.

I am also very disappointed in how the administration of Mayor Ruth Fuller and the previous Warren administration have tried to ram through a "vision" that lets developers maximize profits at the expense of ordinary people in Newton. We are now witnessing the impact--large luxury condo buildings planned along Washington Street, at the Riverside T stop, and elsewhere, while McMansions go up in once-modest neighborhoods in Auburndale, West Newton, Newtonville, Newton Corner, and Nonantum. I've observed that developers in the north side of Newton who are unable to build by right almost always get what they want when they go to the city to ask for a break.

As for Fuller's "Washington Street Corridor" plan, here's one of the proposed building scenarios:

I don't believe the city was serious throwing this out there, and many of the notes express similar skepticism. Rather, this is an attempt to get residents to accept something less outrageous put out by city planners and developers -- say, a five story "market rate" development instead of 12 stories.

I am not the only one who is skeptical of how this is being carried out. The residents of Newtonville have been highly critical of the city's support for the Korff family and other development partners over the past 5 years. Here's an excerpt from one letter to the local paper from 2016:

Like many residents of Newtonville, the looming Korff development makes me very uncomfortable.

The 20 existing affordable residential units would be replaced by 171 units, 85 percent of which, by implication, would be unaffordable. The existing residential tenants would be forced out. A sizeable number of long-term and well-loved local businesses would be forced out, and they will not be able to return either. What good does this do for Newtonville?

A few weeks ago the TAB had a delightful article about the mother and daughter team of Jill and Jackie who run the The Paint Bar on the northeast block of the intersection of Washington and Walnut. I bet Jill and Jackie are counting their lucky stars that they aren’t located on the northwest block, soon to be the Korff block, or they would be spending their time now looking for somewhere affordable to relocate.

At the end of this week’s article on the Orr block plan, Mr. Korff’s attorney Steve Buchbinder was quoted as saying that while “not everyone’s going to be happy” about this project, ”...others see this as something, frankly, that’s exciting.” I wonder who those people are? Korff and his team, looking forward to the profit on investment that they hope will be coming their way? Tax assessors at City Hall? The residents of Newtonville? I don’t think a lot of them are looking forward to this project with excitement.

Of course, the developer knew a 15% affordable, six-story building wouldn't fly. In the "negotiations" that followed, most members of the Newton City Council gave the developer just what he wanted: A giant building with 75% market rate/luxury, and 25% reserved for everyone else. 

If big developments are built in Newton, those numbers should be flipped if there is to be any hope for low-income, young families, young professionals, seniors, and people with fixed incomes to move to Newton. It's the right thing to do, and I think it's something that most people in Newton --YIMBY and otherwise -- would agree with.

For this to happen, the developer land-grab for luxury/market rate housing needs to stop. Things will only get worse unless the people of Newton and their local representatives stand up to developers and find a way to make more affordable housing without turning Newton into a sea of McMansions and condos for the rich.