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Boston Globe
21-07-2025
- Politics
- Boston Globe
Newton mayor goes over the (painted) double line
And those are just the examples the crack research team at Globe Opinion could identify. ( In Rhode Island, Bristol's red-white-and-blue center line on two-way Main Street is such a cherished tradition that the town secured explicit permission for it from the federal government ( And is any of that really so terrible? The lines — and other nonstandard street markings, like the rainbow crosswalk in Northampton — seem inoffensive to me, small symbolic ways to honor an area's distinctive past or present. Check out Advertisement Now, there is perhaps a reasonable counterargument that such markings could be viewed as exclusive — that an Italian flag painted in a public street sends an unwelcoming message to residents of the neighborhood who aren't Italian (or Mexican or Hungarian, if you want to get technical). Advertisement But that's not how Newton's mayor, Ruthanne Fuller, has defended the decision to remove the center lines, which had been in place for decades before they disappeared in the middle of the night without warning on June 26. Rather, the city says it was a required safety step. Removing them was 'mandatory, not optional,' Fuller wrote in a The standards Fuller cited said two-way streets that are more than 20 feet wide and carry more than 6,000 vehicles daily 'shall' have center line markings that 'shall' be yellow. Adams Street is 33 feet wide and has an average daily vehicle count of 6,002, according to a Citing crash data and other statistics, that same report also listed Adams Street as the highest priority spot for traffic calming in all of Newton — though it didn't specifically blame the Italian lines for the street's safety problems or recommend removing the lines as a way to solve them. (If anything, I'd guess that unconventional lines make people slow down, not speed up, for the very reason that they're so unusual.) Fuller offered a compromise, saying that the neighborhood could paint the Italian colors on the street in addition to the yellow lines in the center. But that's not flying with residents, who are demanding the return of the Italian colors on the center lines, full stop. And Fuller's safety rationale hasn't convinced critics, some of whom have accused the mayor of acting out of anti-Italian animus. Some even tried to Advertisement 'The claim that these markings needed to be replaced with yellow lines for safety lacks merit,' I'm not a lawyer — though many of Fuller's constituents are! — so I'm not going to attempt to parse the legal arguments. Suffice to say, though, that other cities in Massachusetts have apparently accepted whatever theoretical safety or legal risk nonstandard lines pose. (I emailed officials in Malden, Peabody, and Hingham, but none of them responded to my message; a spokesman for the city of Cambridge said the lines on one-way Warren Street were allowed because they do 'not interfere with any form of traffic control.') But let's assume Fuller's legal interpretation is correct and yellow lines are indeed required on Adams Street. With some creativity, and creative readings of the rules, there are still ways the city could end the controversy: The Newton City Council floated the idea of alternating between sections of double yellow lines and sections of Italian tricolor. The federal standards say the lines have to be yellow, but not that they have to be all yellow. As mentioned, Bristol, R.I., has special permission to paint its center line red, white, and blue. The city could petition the Trump administration for a similar exemption. Given its commitment to celebrating diversity, there's little doubt the request would be approved. More of a long shot, but an ideal solution would be to convince Italy to change its flag to a yellow-black-yellow pattern. It can't hurt to ask! Newton could just convert the whole street to a one-way street or, even better, a giant bike lane, which could then be painted however the city pleases. Secession. The rules apply to paved roads. Maybe use cobblestones on Adams Street instead? (That would also slow down traffic!) Secure pledges from three people in the neighborhood — maybe a few more as a cushion — to cut back on one trip on Adams Street a day, to get the daily vehicle count back below 6,000. Ultimately, I don't understand why Fuller picked this fight, and picked it now. Adams Street may well have needed traffic calming measures — and according to Fuller's message, the city is going ahead with raised pedestrian crossing and radar feedback signs. Those measures seem much more likely to reduce accidents than removing the Italian lines, so why not try them first? This is an excerpt from , a Globe Opinion newsletter about the future of transportation in the region. Sign up to . Advertisement Alan Wirzbicki is Globe deputy editor for editorials. He can be reached at
Boston Globe
30-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Boston Globe
There's no defense for ‘Sacco & Vanzetti's Divine Comedy'
And then the play begins. When you stagger out of the theater two-and-a-half excruciating hours later, it is with the bleak realization that what you've just seen — and heard, alas — is indeed special. But in all the wrong ways. Advertisement Let's stipulate that no one ever sets out to write a bad play or give a bad performance. (And there is one very, very bad performance in a crucial role). So you're left wondering how director Tim Habeger and WHAT's producing artistic director Christopher Ostrom — who skillfully handled the scenic, lighting, and projection design — could have lavished so much attention on design elements while not fixing the thing at the heart of the entire enterprise: the script. With immigration currently a hot topic in America, playwright Rice does get points for timeliness. His protagonists are Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, both Italian immigrants who became committed anarchists. In 1921, they were convicted of robbery and murder in the killings of shoe factory paymaster Fred Parmenter and security guard Alessandro Berardelli, in what was then South Braintree. Their trial took place in Dedham Superior Court, with Judge Webster Thayer presiding. Advertisement Anti-radical and anti-immigrant fever were both running high in the 1920s. Sacco and Vanzetti's case became, and remained, a cause célèbre. Many supporters believed they were innocent, that they were being punished for their political views and immigrant status. (Three decades after their deaths, in his great poem, 'America,' Allen Ginsberg wrote: 'America Sacco & Vanzetti must not die.') In 1927, they were executed. Maybe their convictions amounted to a miscarriage of justice, and maybe they didn't. Rice doesn't really try to make a persuasive case, or propound new ideas about the case. Christopher Eastland, as Sacco, and Jon Vellante, as Vanzetti, deliver reasonably competent performances, even though Rice's script requires them to speak with Italian accents so stereotypical they would have embarrassed Chico Marx. The same goes for Kathy McCafferty as Rosina Sacco, Nicola's wife, who seems to have escaped from Tennessee Williams's 'The Rose Tattoo.' Yes, the exaggerated accents, hand-waving, and constant cacophony are meant to satirize the anti-Italian prejudices of the era. But that doesn't make it any less grating to sit through. Rice and Co. might also see all of this as wholly consistent with the anything-goes ethos of farce. If so, the minimum obligation is to be funny. 'Sacco & Vanzetti's Divine Comedy' is not. It registers like an episode of ' As the courtroom bailiff, who ultimately goes over to the side of the defendants, Robin Bloodworth manages to eke out a few chuckles. It is Judge Thayer who's meant to be the villain of the piece. He tosses around anti-Italian slurs, calls Sacco and Vanzetti 'anarchist scum,' and isn't burdened by any of that innocent-until-proven-guilty stuff. But it's impossible to take the judge seriously as a figure of evil because Stephen L. Russell's performance is so off-kilter, whether measured by comic timing, line readings, or overall characterization. Advertisement Maybe Russell was having a bad night on Friday. It happens. The structure of the play, which soon grows wearisome, is: The judge is set up like a bowling pin, and then knocked down by the others. He says something, and they ridicule him. Rinse and repeat, over and over. To call the judge one-dimensional is to understate the case. And he's stuck within some of the show's most inane dialogue. A couple of examples: Judge: 'Take that back! That is an order.' Bailiff: 'No, that is a gun.' Judge: 'There are no good anarchists. The only good anarchist is a dead anarchist.' Judge: 'Over my dead body.' Vanzetti: 'We have some 'friends' who can arrange that.' Judge: 'De Maximus!' Bailiff: 'The Minibus.' Those lines are not outliers. So many scenes have the beginnings of an idea, only for them to go nowhere. While enduring the endless onstage japery, one's eyes are occasionally drawn to WHAT's proscenium arch, on which are inscribed the words: 'Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.' Well, Dante old pal, it can't be said that you didn't warn us. SACCO AND VANZETTI'S DIVINE COMEDY Play by Kevin Rice. Directed by Tim Habeger. Original music and lyrics, Michael Sottile. Scenic design, Christopher Ostrom. Presented by Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theater, Wellfleet. Through July 26. Tickets $15-$55. At and 508-349-9428 Advertisement Don Aucoin can be reached at
The Guardian
31-03-2025
- General
- The Guardian
How to fight a fascist state – what I learned from a second world war briefing for secret agents
The SOE Syllabus was a series of lectures given to prospective secret agents in Britain during the second world war. These 'lessons in ungentlemanly warfare' were released from the top secret bit of the Public Record Office (now known as the National Archive) and published as a historical curio in 2001, when my esteemed colleague John Crace picked out the sillier bits in one of his Digested Read reviews. There was a whole lecture about how to craft a disguise, in which people with sticky-out ears were advised to use glue to pin them back. But now, 24 years later, I have picked up the book with a graver purpose – just on the off-chance that if we end up having to resist a fascist state, the past might have something to offer. They won't know everything, these ungentlemanly gentlemen, being as they didn't have the internet. But they can't have known nothing. A lot of it is quite dated – struggling to comprehend the code system known as a 'playfair cipher', I realise that codebreaking technology has probably moved on in the intervening 80 years and I am making my brain ache for nothing. A section on political language, and how it should always be concrete – eg don't say 'hunger', say 'empty bellies' – felt plausible in principle but wrong on the particulars. Some of the advice serves only to underline how much more complicated the world is now – in information, in surveillance, in every way. There's a section on propaganda that describes the 'jetsam' method of distribution – dropping a provocative leaflet or letter, containing 'libels, rumours and calumnies' in some place where people will find it. It's more effective to drop a fragment than the whole thing, apparently, since it makes it feel like a quest. And it's better to drop it some place where whoever finds it will be alone, so in a train carriage at the beginning of a journey, or the cubicle of a public lavatory. Realistically, though, who would even pick up and read a calumny these days, when they have a phone? There must be some online equivalent of an empty rail carriage at the start of a journey (an empty Reddit thread?), but the printed leaflet has had its day. Nevertheless, there are some broad outlines that have not changed, and they are quite obvious, but they are also quite easily forgotten: such as, there is no point in propaganda unless it leads to an action. The action also drives home the message and makes it true, so creates a loop of authority and omnipotence around the messenger. The opposite is also true: Goebbels' anti-Italian propaganda of July 1934, I read, was worse than a waste of time because no action was taken. It made him look weak, and his point of view contestable. All of which holds for non-state – there's no point in a narrative that yields nothing concrete, no point in a protest that doesn't disrupt, no point in disruption without a plan. More than pointless, it actually undermines the cause, whatever it might be. Environmental protesters of every generation are on exactly the right track, then. They must throw soup and glue themselves to the road, because everything they do that has no palpable action attached undermines their message. As I was reading all this, six members of the 'non-violent civil resistance campaign' (their description) Youth Demand were arrested while holding a public meeting. The immediately striking thing was that the authorities entered a Quaker meeting house to make the arrests, which hasn't happened in living memory but, fair play to the Metropolitan police, did happen quite a lot in the 1660s, albeit without the tasers. But as the event settles, the more striking point is: that's quite a strange thing for a not-totalitarian state to do. It feels a bit like democracy is cosplaying its opposite just because there's authoritarianism in the air. Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist
