With Marty Walsh directing traffic on a larger scale as US Secretary of Labor, will the new year see a revival of long-discussed plans and a commitment of some sort to the state’s rehabilitation of Morrissey Boulevard that came to an abrupt halt when the former mayor took issue with some of the redesign’s elements? The blunted plans addressed the need for significant climate-change adaptations for this well-used coastal thoroughfare. The city and the state announced a $1 million infrastructure study of the oft-flooded roadway last March, with a report expected within a year’s time. Funding? Well, for starters, there’s the recently passed federal infrastructure legislation that was just a dream last winter.
Should things start to move on the revamp, traffic considerations will loom large alongside climatological issues. Rush hour backups now begin shortly after 6 a.m., particularly along the stretch that begins at Boston Bowl and runs north beyond Freeport Street past the UMass Boston entryway approaching BC High and Kosciuszko Circle, and begin to pick up shortly after 2 p.m. going the other way. What once was viewed as an urban parkway with a neat harbor view today offers a combination of a mile-long parking lot at busy times and a speedway once drivers get the go-ahead from minutes-long waits at the UMass and Freeport Street intersections. Add in the entering into and exiting out of The Beat complex when that building is ready for clients, reportedly in the near future, and you have the ingredients for driver rage gone wild.
While there is planning on the books, the development of Dorchester Bay City on Columbia Point, now front and center for consideration, will unquestionably have serious impacts on the roads leading into and out of the new neighborhood from both ends and maybe through the middle. With completion of the project set for the early 2040s, developers say there’ll be plenty of time for adjustments to reality. But it would be nice to consider now just what those ad hoc fixes might be.
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Speaking of the former mayor-turned Biden cabinet member, what interests other than ambition and a cure for political homesickness would be served were he to turn his back on the president who faces a new year full of calamitous possibilities from the pandemic, for his legislative agenda, and for the Democratic Party’s standing with mid-term voters in the fall? One thing for sure: Not the interests of the president who appointed him Labor secretary. To be fair, Walsh has not deigned to address the talk directly and in the open, but there are times when saying nothing is saying too much to those whose stock in trade is turning rumors into virtual reality via Twitter-style talking points.
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What will the new year bring for residents of the former St. Brendan’s parish and the church building on Gallivan Blvd. that they and their forebears worshipped in for close to 90 years? The accompanying photo shows how families enthusiastically greeted the opening of their new worship place in November 1933. For Roman Catholics of a certain age, the diminution of parish life as represented in the disappearance of churches, rectories for priests, convents for nuns, and schools for the children as distinct worshipping villages and civic communities has been painful to endure, a memory of times past that seem irretrievable for many of us.
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The biggest question of all for the year upcoming is how the city, state, nation, and world will cope with the coronavirus that will not quit changing its skin at the first strong hint that science and medicine are getting ahead of the epidemic’s curve. While some of the ideologists waging war on a certified-by-experience epidemiological solution to Covid-19 infections are somehow, and preposterously, gaining traction on political grounds via online misinformation, truths about the way to end the continuing threat of enervating hospitalizations and private funeral ceremonies – vaccinations for as many of the living as possible – often end up in episodes of rhetorical wrangling where the loudest voices dominate proceedings.
“People are scared, and for good reason. Omicron is rising and hospitals are filling,” Dr. Renee Crichlow, the Codman Square Health Center’s chief medical officer, told Reporter correspondent Chris Lovett this week as she suggested a reality-based gift for the holidays:
“In this season of love, the best gift you can give your family, your community, and yourself is to protect them against serious Covid. We know that vaccines protect against serious infection. Masking and vaccines spread love and stop the spread of serious illness.”
My sentiments exactly.
Thomas F. Mulvoy, Jr. is the former managing editor of the Boston Globe and a native of Lonsdale Street in Dorchester.
