A potentially snarly debate

West Newbury reviews bias rule

Boy Scouts’ access to facilities questioned

By Taryn Plumb |  Globe Correspondent

August 26, 2012

Town officials to Boy Scouts: If you’re going to discriminate, you may have to take your business elsewhere.
West Newbury selectmen are mulling a proposal that would bar groups that openly discriminate from using town facilities.
“I would hope that this town would not condone discrimination,” said Selectman Glenn Kemper after presenting the proposal at a meeting earlier this month. “I think we are doing that now by letting people who discriminate use our facilities.”
The Boy Scouts of America — which recently reaffirmed its longtime stance that excludes openly gay leaders and members — was the only group mentioned by name during discussions, and is the one that would be immediately impacted by such a policy.
Troop No. 26 holds weekly meetings in the town’s parks and recreation building.
Local scouts and leaders were “blindsided,” and “shocked” by the proposed plan, according to Troop 26 committee chairman Harvey Ing, who called it “misguided” based on all that the scouts have done for the community over the years. The troop — which has about 14 boys — is taking a preliminary look at private facilities for its meetings and events, Ing said, “just in case,” but is waiting to see what selectmen decide.

Ing noted the scouts’ involvement in the town, including marking trails and installing signs at the Mill Pond recreation area, performing various flag ceremonies, and leading the yearly Memorial Day parade.
Ing said the local troop was never notified about the proposal, and only heard about it when the local newspaper ran a front-page story. The Boy Scouts have been using the parks and recreation building for meetings for several years, he said, and have also held a pinewood derby regularly in the 1910 Building Annex, while making use of various other town buildings.
Troop representatives have contacted Kemper, but Ing said they haven’t received a response; they also have a call out to the selectmen’s office.
Troop scoutmaster William Sergeant declined to comment “in service to the best interests of our scouts, our troop, and our town.”
Town counsel Michael McCarron is looking into the ramifications of a policy change, and selectmen expect to discuss the issue in mid-September.  
President Obama has spoken out against the Boy Scouts’ policy against gays, as has Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney. Likewise, some scout and den leaders across the country have resigned in protest — including Karin Weldon of Brookline, who created an online petition with 307 signatures as of Wednesday — while some Eagle Scouts have returned their badges.
But West Newbury appears to be the first local town grappling with the issue as a community.
Kemper, who was not available for additional comment beyond the meeting, stressed that the Boy Scouts have “every right” to run their organization as they see fit.
“I have no problem with what they do in their own private organization,” he said, also noting that it’s his right to not be involved with them, based on his own beliefs.
However, he made a case for the policy change by pointing to town bylaws that dictate that the town cannot discriminate against any applicants for employment, or an employee, on the basis of race, color, national origin, religion, sexual orientation, gender, age, physical or mental handicap, or military veteran’s status (or any other characteristics or status protected under state and federal law).
Bylaws also dictate that the town will provide equal access to its services, programs, and facilities. Kemper also noted that the town can purchase goods and services only from companies that have policies of nondiscrimination.
Ultimately, he said, these policies should extend to groups that regularly make use of town facilities. “It’s pretty self-explanatory,” he said. “I can’t imagine anyone not going along with it. . . . “It’s been festering in me for years. It’s time.”
Another selectman, Dick Cushing, thanked Kemper for bringing the proposal forward, calling it an “important and provocative” topic.
The Haverhill-based Yankee Clipper Council, which facilitates troops in 52 communities — including West Newbury — said it hasn’t received any notification from the town, according to Kevin Nichols,  scout executive/CEO.
“We would hope that any government entity would uphold the constitutional rights of all citizens and community groups even though they may not personally agree with all viewpoints,” he said in a written statement.
“By focusing on the goals that unite us, rather than on one issue that divides us,” Nichols said, “we are able to accomplish incredible things for young people and the communities the [Boy Scouts of America] serves.”
West Newbury selectmen agreed that it could be a potentially snarly process, requiring objectivity in identifying groups that are discriminating, a determination that could then be subject to challenge by those groups, and could even lead to charges of discrimination back at the town.
“Obviously no one is for discrimination,” town counsel McCarron said at the meeting. But “it bears a careful review.”
Kemper agreed, and said it was something that the board could “bite off” over time.
“We want to make sure this is done properly.”

© 2012 The New York Times Company

An inspiration to all

I was sad to hear that Brian Russell, a legally blind skier I interviewed for a story that ran in the Globe in Feb. 2009, has passed away. His obit can be found here.

But I was also extremely touched that his friends and fellow skiers contacted me to tell me how much they enjoyed the story, and how it was helping them to remember him. I'm not tooting my own horn, and I'm reluctant to take the credit -- Brian was the inspiring one, and I was lucky enough to be able to tell his story. 

Here it is:

Being one with the mountain

Blind skier follows his other senses to master the slopes

 

(Aram Boghosian for The Boston Globe)

By Taryn Plumb

Globe Correspondent / February 8, 2009 

Clouds the color of dirty chrome clutter the summit. Snow-glazed trails curl down from their cloak like ribbons.

Up in the hazy blend of white and gray, a cluster of skiers emerges.
At first just blemishes against the snow, they skim along - one in front, three spread out behind, coasting left, then right; left, then right.
The sky chooses that moment to tear open. The group fades in flying white.
Moments later, they whir back into view. Closer now, chasing the mountain's curves.
As they whisk to the bottom, the orange vest emblazoning the skier in front suddenly appears, like a highlighter against the snow; calls from one behind fight the lash of wind: "Turn right. Hold. Left. Hold. Left. Hold. Left."
When they finally slice to a stop, skis sending up wakes of snow, the vested skier needs a couple of extra hands to snap free of his Rossignols, an arm to guide him over the ice to the lodge .
There, in the sudden rush of warmth and voices, a scuffed white cane takes over.
Brian Russell can tame a black diamond trail - without even looking.
Legally blind from retinitis pigmentosa, he doesn't see his way to the bottom. He feels and hears it.
"Most people have never seen a blind person ski down a hill," said the Medford 42-year-old, who relies on his other four senses to navigate down Loon Mountain in Lincoln, N.H., through the New England Disabled Sports program.
"It's something you can do with a disability," he added, face red and damp with perspiration, hazel eyes unfocused, as if fixed on something in the distance. "It's realistic."
He sees the world in shadows, shapes, and light. No fine details - sun falling in through windows, hazy outlines of people and objects, maybe hair color and the bright smudge of a jacket when the light is right.
There's no doubt it can be limiting - but not on the slopes.
Up on the white flourish of Loon's trails, the advanced skier navigates by attuning his feet, snug inside size 13 boots, to the pull of curves, the rush of sudden bumps, the drag of snow, and the wetness of flakes against skin; by focusing his ears on the whoosh of passing skiers and the Styrofoam squeak of hard-packed powder.
"I'm listening to what my feet are telling me," he explained. "You have to feel the slope in order to know what to do with the slope."
Not surprisingly, his fellow skiers often respond with amazement. As he cruises along, he's hard to overlook - blazing vest tight over a 6-foot-5-inch frame.
"He's legendary on the hill," Beth Potier, a volunteer coach with New England Disabled Sports from Durham, N.H., said as she stood in front of the base lodge. "People are just stunned that he's on the mountain."

Ten years ago, though, Russell wasn't thinking about racing across powder - he was mired in a stubborn muck.

Diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa (also known as "tunnel vision") at age 19, his sight is dulling like a worn-out picture tube - darkness at the edges slowly creeping in. As the years pass, his vision becomes narrower and narrower; a cataract in his left eye further blurs the landscape. "I'm slowly slipping into the world of blindness," he said.

He can admit it now - but his deteriorating sight was something he once denied. He could fight it, he thought. He refused help, reluctantly gave up driving, rotated through several jobs, and spurned the idea of navigating the streets of his hometown with a cane (which he now calls his "best friend").

"I beat my head against a stone," he explained.

But then he found skiing. With it, "I've learned how to accept being blind," he said. "It allows me to be free, allows me to be me."

With each run, he's learned to trust his senses; tolerance and patience have slowly replaced bitterness and denial, he says. And although frustration can still take over - rising out of his own codependence or confrontations with people who just don't understand - he's better able to communicate his needs and strengths and accept his limitations.

Ultimately, he's come to recognize: Going blind doesn't mean you have to close down. And now, he says, he has something to offer. "I have a productive life," he said, "whether I'm sighted or not."

It's an affirmation he strives to engender in others. He regularly coaches visually impaired skiers down Loon with the aid of adaptive equipment such as tethers or hula hoops looped around waists.

Similarly, he described "nurturing" the roughly 35 volunteer instructors who chaperone him down intermediate and expert trails. Because he has roughly a decade's experience tracing trails, he helps his guides learn to intuitively position themselves based on noise level and visibility; they also explore different scenarios in varying weather and conditions.

"He's actually teaching the coaches what to do," volunteer Kathy Kay of Bow, N.H., said as she glided off the snow after a recent run. "He's such a good skier that he's training us how to guide him."

In turn, coaches serve as his cane, his sight. Three typically surround him on every run - they yell out commands and, when things are noisier, clap. Inflection is another indicator on the mood of the mountain and the weather - Russell described intense voices, relaxed voices, and "thank God you can't see it" voices.

"They're part of my equipment," he said. "Without their help, I'd never be able to ski."

And what a void there would be in his life if he couldn't.

He's up at Loon every weekend, holiday, and most vacation days. Generally, he makes the two-hour journey by bus.

"I'd rather hang on a mountain with a set of skis than do anything else," he said as he rested on his poles at Loon's trailhead on a toe-numbing and snow-whipped day. "It's a wicked awesome sensation, flying down the side of a mountain."

All around him, skiers and snowboarders coasted in from the trails; some wiping out, others sending up arcs of powder as they applied the brakes.

The day was darkening, mountain a cascade of white under an ashen sky.

Russell, buffered by a trio of coaches, kicked off toward the chairlift.

The slopes beckoned. Just one more run.

Original story link here.  

© Copyright 2009 Globe Newspaper Company.

Hope for the "dreamers"

Immigrant youth prepare for chance to achieve legal status

By Taryn Plumb / Globe Correspondent

August 19, 2012

Mark Wilson for The Boston Globe

LAWRENCE — Standing at the front of a crowded community room, Nataly Castaño asked everyone to raise their hands.

Then she played an elimination game.

Anyone wearing a green shirt, she instructed: Drop your hands.

Have glasses? Sandals? Long hair? Hands down.

She continued until just one arm remained raised: that of a man wearing a baseball cap.

Turn around and look at him, she urged the group. And everyone in the room did; he laughed nervously, shifting in his seat.

“He was the only one with a hat here. The only reason he was different is because I pointed him out,” Castaño, an organizer for the Student Immigrant Movement, told the group of about 40 assembled at Lawrence CommunityWorks Inc. on a recent weeknight. “That’s what’s happening in the immigrant community right now.”

But the crowd — mostly young, undocumented immigrants, predominantly from Spanish-speaking countries, but also from Africa and Asia, intermingled with immigration lawyers and local business leaders — had gathered to discuss a measure of hope against such scrutiny: President Obama’s new deferred action program.

The event was one of several summits being hosted around the state by the Boston-based Student Immigrant Movement to inform people about the new plan, which defers deportation for qualifying illegal immigrants for two years.

“I was very excited when I heard about it,” said Gladys Gitau, 18, a Lawrence High School graduate involved with the movement who came to the United States from Kenya at age 7 on a visa that has since expired. “I grew up just like any other American kid. You would not have known I was undocumented.”

Under the program — which opened to enrollment on Wednesday — qualifying applicants must be 30 or under; have been under 16 when they initially came to the United States; have been in the country for five consecutive years prior to June 15, 2012, the day Obama announced the program (and been in the country on that date); be a high school graduate or have earned a General Educational Development certificate; be currently attending high school, or be honorably discharged from a branch of the US military; and cannot have been convicted of a felony, a major misdemeanor, or more than two minor misdemeanors.

As Cambodian-born Nalyn Yim explained at the Lawrence CommunityWorks presentation, the process will be intensive, costly — application fees will be $465 — and lengthy, with approval taking three months to a year.

“That time period is something we all just have to be patient with, really,” she told the crowd seated before her, taking notes on scraps of paper or typing them into smartphones, and frequently asking questions in English and Spanish.

As the policy went into effect last week, it appeared likely that immigrants will be able to apply for a driver’s license in Massachusetts and many other states. But it was still an open question whether the policy change would lead to access to resident tuition at public colleges and universities.

Both driver’s licenses and in-state tuition rates are a key goal of immigration advocates.

In a presentation that lasted more than two hours — translated into Spanish by Mexican native Gladys Martinez, 20 —  Yim went over the program’s processes and procedures, and urged everyone to “rally up paperwork as soon as possible.”

That includes documents to prove their presence in the United States when they were under age 16 — such as school transcripts or medical records — as well as one document or record proving a presence in the country for every year since 2007; two documents dated just before and just after June 15, 2012; and birth certificates and valid passports.

“The burden of proof is on you,” she said. “It’s your job to find all this information.”

Also, she stressed, those who hadn’t graduated from high school should “go get their GED as soon as possible,” and those with more complicated situations should immediately contact an immigration lawyer.

Ultimately, through deferred action, “immigration status no longer becomes a barrier,” she said.

It’s estimated that the program will help close to 2 million young people who came to the country illegally, grew up here, and consider it their home, yet don’t have other avenues to permanent residence or citizenship.Per the US naturalization process, immigrants who are at least 18 and fall into certain categories — those who are married to an American citizen, have lived in the country continuously for five years, or have served in the military, among other scenarios — can apply to become a citizen, but only if they have been granted a permanent resident card, or a green card, according to a guidebook from US Citizenship and Immigration Services.  Green cards are granted through family connections, or through a job, to refugees and those granted asylum, or for other special circumstances (such as being born to a foreign diplomat in the United States), according to the USCIS book.

Gitau, the Kenyan native, has had better luck in her path to higher education: She will be attending Whitman College in Walla Walla, Wash., this fall,  through a scholarship from the school. Still, when it came time to apply for college, she ran into roadblocks, became depressed, “gave up in school” for a while, and “felt insufficient.”“I worked very hard to be at the top of my class,” said Gitau, who graduated third in her class at Lawrence High. She has since gained her resolve, and plans to study urban development; she says she’s “passionate” about her home city, where she has been deeply involved in the community, and started a paper called “What’s Good in the Hood.” (whatsgoodinthehood.tumblr.com). After getting her degree, she plans to “give back to the city, or cities similar to it.” That dedication and spirit is precisely what Castaño and others hope to tap in their fight for immigrant rights.

“If there was a way, we would have definitely tried,” said Mariel Cabrera, 18. The Lawrence resident, who is also involved with the Student Immigrant Movement, came to the country from the Dominican Republic at age 10, and lamented that her parents “didn’t realize the consequences of bringing me here undocumented.”

As a result, the incoming Lawrence High School senior noted, “I don’t have the same chances as everyone else here.”

As she has watched friends begin to prepare for college and attend summer education programs, she has felt “different” and sometimes even “nonhuman.”

“I feel like there’s no road for me to get to college,” she said, noting a goal to become a physics professor (or, as a fallback, a tae kwon do instructor).

“We need to really get together,” said Castaño, calling deferred action a “step in the right direction, but not enough.”

“We need to come out and say we’re human,” she said.

Cabrera agreed. “We’re fighting for our human rights. We need all the support we can get.”

For more on the Student Immigrant Movement or deferred action, visit simforus.com.  

Original story link here. 

(Also, if you look closely, you'll see me in the back of the photo: Fuzzy, purple shirt -- and the notebook is a dead giveaway.)

© Copyright 2012 Globe Newspaper Company

(Not) Going, going, gone!

Regional auction houses rival big-city sales 

By Taryn Plumb / Globe Correspondent  

August 16, 2012 

A river tinted with the pinks and yellows of sunset, portrayed in an oil-on-canvas by Martin Johnson Heade: $1 million.

A rustic, milky portrait of a woman in white by Korean artist Park Soo Keun:$460,000.

A clock that once marked the time for the John Quincy Adams family: $80,000.

An ornate, intricately-carved Chinese rosewood marble-top table: $46,000.

All these pieces — from American rustic, to furniture fit for a manor, to museum-worthy canvases — were vetted, fought over, and ultimately sold at auction. But not in some stereotypically stuffy, exclusive gallery with a formal dress code: These were sold from an unassuming storefront in downtown Amesbury.

“A lot of regional auction houses have proved that they don’t have to be in New York City,” said longtime auctioneer John McInnis, who sold these varied items through his self-named auction house, housed in what once was a grocery store and sandwiched between boutiques, jewelers, and salons on Amesbury’s Main Street. “We can do just as good a job.”

Enabled by the Internet, auction houses tucked away in the suburbs have become premiere destinations for international fine art, antiques, and other sundry collectibles — whether crafted five or 500 years ago — allowing those businesses to rival their big-city counterparts.

“You don’t have to bring [an item] to Sotheby’s and Christie’s anymore,” said Diane Riva, marketing director at Beverly-based Kaminski Auctions. The market has shifted so that “even a small house can have a wonderful piece and reach a broader market.”

From Amesbury, McInnis sells items from all over the world and from various epochs: Ford Model A’s, grand pianos, paintings picked up for a few bucks at Goodwill, some of which have snagged upwards of $100,000.

An Asian-themed auction in March brought in just shy of $1 million, and attracted more than 900 in-person, telephone, and Internet bidders from all over the world. The Park Soo Keun painting, meanwhile, spurred several prospective buyers to fly in from Korea. And a two-day auction in July of an expansive antique doll collection drew roughly 10,000 page views to McInnis’s online catalog, with Internet bidders hailing from more than 15 countries.

The auction house recently secured the estate of David Powers, special assistant to John F. Kennedy and curator of the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum in Boston, and also has items such as signed Andy Warhol originals, rare Persian fabric, and a Japanese flag captured on Okinawa during World War II that will soon hit the block.

As McInnis noted, New York (or any other metropolis, for that matter) is “not necessarily where the market is.”

It’s wherever the coveted item happens to be.

“It’s the stuff that’s the attraction,” he said. “If you got the right item, they’ll come.”

Well, at least virtually.

Tonya A. Cameronof Wakefield-based TAC Auctions Inc. said that as Internet bidding grows, fewer buyers are actually present at the auctions.

“We used to have more live bodies in the house,” said Cameron, who specializes in estates, antiques, and decorative arts. “In five years, you’re going to see that a lot of auctions will be really ghostly. We won’t have very many in-house buyers.”

Still, McInnis said, wherever the buyers are, the basic principle remains: “old-fashioned competitive bidding.”

That is precisely what prospective buyers were preparing for as they silently and methodically analyzed and catalogued items at a preview of McInnis’s mid-July doll auction.

Boasting roughly 4,000 dolls (along with a plethora of pint-sized accessories, clothes, and furniture), it was the lifetime collection of the late Texan Kathy L. Hipp, and was worth between $200,000 and $500,000, McInnis estimated. (One of its rarer pieces, a Lucille Ball bride doll dating to 1955 and designed by the famed Madame Alexander, ended up selling for just over $10,000).

In the Amesbury gallery — with “Hello Dolly!” fittingly piped in from overhead speakers — cloth, plastic, and porcelain figures were arranged on stands, behind cases, on tables, or beside their protective boxes, tags dangling from tiny wrists. There were Barbies and Kens, Kewpies and Alexanders. There were dolls that were seated, standing, empty-eyed, stiff-armed, and dressed in tutus, wedding dresses, and Snow White outfits.

Sandals, patent leather shoes, ice skates, ballerina slippers, and moccasins fit for tiny feet were laid out neatly in pairs on one table; various hats for different sized heads were on another.

“It’s amazing to see the history, the progression as you go,” Gretchen Moos of Ludlow marveled as she browsed. Dolls offer their own history lesson, she said, and ultimately “tell a story.”

A collector for more than 20 years, she said her particular favorites are the Alexander dolls — especially the rare cloth variety — named for their creator Madame Beatrice Alexander Behrman, who founded her self-named enterprise in 1923 and died in 1990 at 95, according to the company’s website.

Moos is a member of the Madame Alexander Doll Club, has toured the Alexander Doll Co.’s New York studio and factory, and regularly attends conventions and doll unveilings.

“She was a beautiful lady, a tough businesswoman,” Moos said as she admired Alexander’s various dolls on display. “She did it really well.”

Nearby, Judith Armitstead of Lynnfield was examining porcelain “piano babies.”

“Porcelain does something to me,” she said as she delicately picked up a 5½-inch-tall infant with a cowlick and an adorable scowl. “Look at that face. They really are art.”

A longtime dealer and researcher who has written numerous articles, Armitstead sells through her website, www.thedollworks.net, and frequents auctions up and down the East Coast.

She’s a collector, too, of course, with hundreds of her own.

“The house is full,” she said.

“It’s fascinating,” she said of doll-collecting. “It’s an interesting and diverse hobby and business.” 

High-priced auction items

August 16, 2012

$510,000

Early 20th century Chinese paintings signed by Qi Bashi (Kaminski Auctions, Beverly)

$460,000

Park Soo Keun, Korean, (1914-1965) “A Seated Woman” painting (John McInnis Auctioneers)

$300,000

Pair of Famille Verte Bowls, China, 19th- early 20th century. (Kaminski Auctions)

Original link to story here, and sidebar here.

© Copyright 2012 Globe Newspaper Company.

In-between in Ipswich

Coming-of-age movie stars Ipswich and debuts there 

By Taryn Plumb / Globe Correspondent

August 12, 2012 

IPSWICH — There's just something about that time: The sort of twilight zone right after high school, and just before whatever comes next.

It's a transitional gray area when you start to shift from being a kid to a young adult; when one chapter is ending and another is about to begin; when feelings of sentimentality for what you're leaving intermingle with excitement and anxiety for the future.

It's a time we all remember, and one that Ipswich native Brendan Fay, 24, seeks to evoke in his debut — and what he says is his only film — “Weekend in Summer.” 

Inspired by and almost entirely filmed in Ipswich, starring a cast of locals, and made for roughly $1,200 (essentially the cost of equipment), it will premiere at the Ipswich Performing Arts Center on Wednesday.

“It's just sort of trying to capture that lovely moment in life between everything you've known in your hometown growing up — and all the comforts that are afforded by that — and all the unknown that's to come,” Fay said. The trio of main characters are “in this place where the world is theirs, and anything could happen."

The 90-minute film chronicles the adventures and the musings of three young men — Armand (played by Tyler Reid), Lucas (Chad Leonard), and Ernest (Adam Truitt) — over two days in the summer after their senior year of high school. Fay, who also has a role (as Jacob), describes it as a “coming-of-age narrative,” mixed with “elements of mystery and action.”

Although in every sense, Fay noted, it serves as an homage to Ipswich, it's set in a deliberately unnamed town. To emphasize that sense of “whereversville,” he avoided Ipswich's most obvious landmarks, instead sticking to “subtle, beautiful little spots” that he considers its gems. (Locals, though, will recognize some backdrops, such as Crane Beach, the Ipswich Ale Brewery, and the Ipswich Outboard Club.)

Ultimately, the project was a bit of a whim for Fay, a computer programmer by trade and a composer by passion — he continuously writes music for his instrumental band, The Old Man — who has since (and somewhat regrettably) moved away to Somerville.

He made a few short films while at MIT but has no formal training, although he called himself a huge admirer of movies, particularly of Sergio Leone's sweeping Westerns, as well as the unforgettable, moving soundtracks of Ennio Morricone.

But suddenly last June, he said, “I just decided I wanted to do this.”

So he sat down and wrote a 45-page script and eventually set to filming with a digital camera, his friends working for free as both cast and crew. Later, he also composed the movie's soundtrack.

Yet although it's something he felt compelled to do, he has no plans for another film. His focus, and his “reason for being here,” as he described it, is composing.

“What I've been telling people, and telling myself, is ‘This is it,’ ” he said of his filmmaking career.

Depending on the reaction on Wednesday night, he'll do additional screenings, he said, and may even submit the film to the Cape Ann Film Festival.

But there may be more of a future in it than he anticipates: The film is already generating a buzz around town, particularly with Ipswich being one of its main stars (although it’s been a Hollywood darling before, particularly the Crane Estate, which has been featured in “The Witches of Eastwick, “Flowers in the Attic,” and the more recent “Ghosts of Girlfriends Past.”)

“All of the people involved have lived in Ipswich their whole lives, so there are many friends and family of the cast and crew that are waiting in anticipation,” said Steven LeBel, who also grew up in town and has a cameo in the film.

“As the mother of two sons, I am eager to see Ipswich through the lens of a young man,” said Kerrie Bates, director of Ipswich Recreation, and executive director of the Ipswich Visitor Center. “Far from serving simply as a backdrop to adventure, Ipswich is so bold a place, that it becomes a character among friends.”

Sentimental feelings of a hometown shared by Fay.

“It’s a poetic reflection of my overall feeling about Ipswich,” he said of the film, noting the town’s diversity of scenery (woods, fields, farms, ponds, marshes, ocean), as well as its sense of community. “It’s such a wonderful place.”

“Weekend in Summer” will be screened at the Ipswich Performing Arts Center at 7:30 p.m. on Wednesday. Admission is free, but parents are cautioned that the film has been “rated” PG-13. To view a trailer, or find out more about the film or Fay's music, visit oldmansmoking.com. 

© Copyright 2012 Globe Newspaper Company.

Payments in the cloud for "underserved" SMBs

Targeting the ‘messy middle'

MineralTree sees wide open middle market for payment technology

Boston Business Journal by Taryn Plumb, Special to the Journal

Friday, August 10, 2012

In the financial industry, they’re sometimes referred to as the “messy middle”: Small and midsize businesses that have outgrown simpler cash management and payment models, but that aren’t quite big enough to implement the more complex, high-end software used by larger companies.
All told, they represent a significant market — more than 2.5 million businesses in the U.S. — and many industry experts say they’re underserved.
Cambridge-based startup MineralTree has a goal to tap that need with its cloud-based, “bank-branded” payment technology. The company, headed by BC Krishna, former CEO of Burlington fraud detection software firm Memento, came out of stealth mode in early November, and has raised $7.8 million through two venture capital rounds.
“I wish I could answer why they have been ignored, but they have been,” president and CEO Krishna said of his target customers — companies with annual revenues between $500,000 and $50 million, and which generally top more than 50 payments a month. “There is a gap in the market for a secure payment platform.”
Through revenue-sharing partnerships with financial institutions, MineralTree offers its system to end-users through their banks, and its technology handles non-payroll payments, such as employee expenses, taxes, and vendor checks. Although the company doesn’t deal directly with its end-user, it works closely with its partner banks to market and sell the product, as well as to identify potential customers, Krishna said.
Since coming out of stealth mode a little over nine months ago, the company has announced two venture capital rounds: an initial, $1.5 million investment by Boston-based .406 Ventures last February, and another $6.3 million investment in June led by Fidelity Growth Partners India, along with .406 Ventures. The money has been used to develop its technology, to sign on partners and clients, and to scale the business, according to Krishna. Citing confidentiality reasons, he said he couldn’t disclose the number of customers MineralTree currently has.
The company’s main goal: To present a technology that is easy to install and easy to implement, he said.
But security is just as fundamental as simplicity.
As Krishna explained, small and midsize businesses are an “attractive market for fraudsters” because, unlike large corporations such as IBM or Walmart, “the controls are not as great.”
Maria Cirino, co-founder and managing director of .406 Ventures, agreed that “cyber crime is growing at an alarming rate.”
Those statistics and others influenced .406 Ventures to invest in the startup and its technology, which she described as “complete, elegant and simple.”
There does seem to be ample opportunity for MineralTree given the sheer size of the SMB market, according to Michael Krigsman, president and CEO of Brookline-based IT consulting firm Asuret.
Still, he stressed, the keys to success with small and medium businesses are simplicity, cost and trust.
Cost, particularly, is “always the challenge of serving the SMB market,” he said in an email interview, adding that, “the big question is whether SMBs see their bank as a trusted, reliable business services partner, as opposed to merely the place to hold cash and write checks.”
Likewise, he cautioned, “many companies have tried to crack the SMB code, and relatively few succeed. I am not convinced that SMB’s will seek these services from their bank, but a compelling and inexpensive offering can work wonders.”
Cirino, for her part, believes that MineralTree’s will.
“We think we can grow a big company here,” she said, calling Krishna a “seasoned” and “quintessential” entrepreneur.
Krishna similarly sees great opportunities.
Looking ahead, the goal is to eventually add receivables, he said — but for now, the focus is on building a “robust” payments system for domestic clients.
In the U.S. alone, he said, the market is $10 billion to $12 billion — meaning there’s plenty of room to grow.
But beyond that, “obviously, it’s a global problem, a worldwide opportunity,” he said. “We’re (just) scratching the surface of the market.”

Original article link here.

Mapping it out

Milford, Franklin map out walking routes

By Taryn Plumb |  Globe Correspondent

August 09, 2012

Tamir Kalifa for The Boston Globe

Maybe you’ve figured you don’t have the time. Or you haven’t known where to go. Or it’s just been easier to jump in the car and head out.
Well, if you live in Milford or Franklin, you no longer have an excuse not to get out and walk.
Through a collaboration between the two towns, the nonprofit WalkBoston organization, and the Hockomock Area YMCA, each community now has its own downtown walking map outlined with numerous routes, time markers, and various points of interest.
Milford’s map was released earlier this year, while Franklin’s is set to come out this month.
The goal of the maps — which were developed through grant money from the MetroWest Health Foundation — is to illustrate the options for recreational walks around each town, as well as to present functional routes that could be substituted for car trips when it comes to running errands, bringing the kids to school, or going to a doctor’s appointment.
“It’s really looking at how we can change behavior,” said Lauren Marciszyn, director of youth and community wellness at the Hockomock Area YMCA, which became involved through its ongoing Healthy Futures initiative, aimed at tackling childhood obesity. “It’s improving the health of the community by making the healthy choice the easy choice.”
Milford’s map, which is available on the town website and at several municipal offices and businesses, features 10 loops with a half-dozen highlighted points of interest, including Louisa Lake, the 1884 Memorial Hall, and the Irish Round Tower, a 74-foot memorial in St. Mary’s Cemetery. Different routes pass by the high school and the Milford Regional Medical Center, and incorporate the Upper Charles River Trail.
There’s also a “Little Engine That Could” walk — inspired by the classic book written by Milford native Mabel C. Bragg — traversing downtown historic sites, marked by a dozen sidewalk stamps in the shape of the iconic, self-esteem-filled engine.
Franklin’s map, meanwhile, will feature 20 to 25 interconnected routes weaving through two downtown historic districts, and past the town’s commuter rail station, the Franklin Public Library, Dean College, the Franklin Historical Museum, the DelCarte Conservation Area, and various other fields, parks, and baseball fields, according to town planner Beth Dahlstrom.
The map, once printed, will be available at town buildings and local businesses, and online, she said.
Routes on both maps range from a half-mile to 2 to 3 miles, and are broken into increments that can be completed in five minutes, according to Joe Cutrufo, program coordinator for WalkBoston. A similar map is also in the works in Northborough, and WalkBoston has created about two dozen similar maps in and around the Hub, Cutrufo said.
Milford and Franklin, particularly, “have walkable, dense, compact, very developed cores,” he said.
Marciszyn agreed that both communities have an advantage in their ample amount of sidewalks. “We want to make sure that wherever we’re telling people to walk, safety is a priority,” she said . “We’re trying to combine both physical health and functionality.”
But, as Cutrufo noted, because cars are often a necessity of living in the suburbs, “so much of this is about walking for health.”
Still, he added, the goal is to encourage people to at least replace some of their driving with trips on foot.
“Really the idea is to just get families walking,” said Ellen Freedman, who is involved with the initiative, and serves as project coordinator for the Greater Milford Health Access Coalition. “It generally promotes walking in the community.”
And as well as teaching about landmarks and distinctive historical points, the maps can also help to illustrate that some walking trips aren’t as long or as ominous as people might think.
“I hope that people will find new routes for walking that they didn’t know existed,” Dahlstrom said.
Ultimately, though, the maps aren’t the only thing the two communities are promoting to get people on their feet.
Franklin, for instance, is in the midst of a $7.25 million overhaul of its downtown; the work includes roadway, streetscape, landscape, sidewalk, crosswalk, and other pedestrian-aimed improvements, according to Dahlstrom.
Milford took part in the National Walk at Lunch Day on April 25, according to Freedman. The town is also challenging kids this summer through the Rethink Your Drink program, which asks them to pledge to have no more than two sugar-sweetened beverages a week (with prizes as an incentive).
Both towns, meanwhile, are participating in Mass in Motion, a program by the state’s Executive Office of Health and Human Services that helps cities and towns initiate efforts to get residents to eat healthier and be more active.
“Ultimately,” said Marciszyn, “it’s about how we can get the community to look at where they live as a place to be active, and to utilize walking as a mode of transportation.”

© 2012 The New York Times Company

Yoga, for guys only

A Y-chromosome twist on the yoga mat

Mike Houlihan (left), owner of Roots to Wings yoga studio in Newbury’s Byfield neighborhood, instructs Craig Grimes (center) and Jim Young, both of Byfield, during a class for men. (Lisa Poole for The Boston Globe)

By Taryn Plumb

Globe Correspondent / August 5, 2012

On a drizzly evening in a second-floor yoga studio, candles flicker in the dim light, incense drifts through the air, and mellowing music intermingles with chirps and peeps from crickets and sparrows outside.

On their mats, barefoot students move from one pose to another: leg lifts, supine twists, downward facing dogs, planks.

This could be any night in any exercise studio anywhere in America, but here, you won’t find stretchy yoga pants and sports bras, jealousy-inducing flexibility, or even anyone with double X chromosomes.

This is yoga — for guys only.

“I just find it incredibly enjoyable and fulfilling,” said 43-year-old Craig Grimes of Byfield, a general internist and new yoga devotee.

They call themselves the Turkey Squad — a group of men who have taken up yoga at Roots to Wings studio in Byfield under the tutelage of 48-year-old Mike Houlihan. They are admittedly inflexible (or at least they started out that way), and many are self-described “men’s men” who golf and play hockey and mountain-bike. But at least one night a week, they roll out their mats, twist their bodies into positions they thought only women could master, and try to seek inner calm in an increasingly hectic world.

“I kind of naysayed the whole thing — that it wasn’t really a workout — ‘Who needs to be flexible?’ ‘Who needs to relax? I don’t need to relax,’ ” said 44-year-old Tom Girard of Newbury. But since trying yoga for the first time in January, “I’m more connected with the way I feel and the way I move. It’s the most relaxing hour of the week.”

Believed to predate written history, yoga has been practiced for thousands of years almost exclusively by men in the eastern world — with women, in many cases, even excluded from doing it.

Yet here in the United States, the discipline has become dominated by women, with many men, as a result, shying away.

According to Yoga Journal, an industry publication, 15.8 million people in the United States practice yoga, but just under 28 percent of them are men.

“There’s a misperceived femininity,” said Grimes, who had never tried yoga until six months ago. “It’s just not something that most men think about. I never really thought about it, to be honest.”

Still, that is a mindset that is slowly shifting.

In February, for example, the New England Patriots and the New York Giants made news when each team prepared for Super Bowl XLVI with yoga techniques. Meanwhile, the popular book “Real Men Do Yoga,” by John Capouya, profiles 21 athletes, including Boston Celtics forward Kevin Garnett and NFL football veteran Shannon Sharpe, who have worked the centuries-old discipline into their regular routines.

Then there’s the popular, self-named yoga system developed by former professional wrestler Diamond Dallas Page, and the new “Broga,” a yoga practice particularly meant to assuage the male ego, now offered in Somerville and on Martha’s Vineyard.
Roots to Wings began offering its eight-week Turkey Squad classes in January — named, as Houlihan described it, for the guys who got benched or pulled aside by the coach in high school — and it now has more than 50 participants.
Houlihan stressed that it is not intended to be exclusionary, or a “guys club.” He simply wanted to create a class that focuses on the areas of a man’s body that tend to need more flexibility — the hamstrings, for example, or the back, hips, and neck and shoulders — and he figured that without women around, men would be more inclined to let their guard down and “break down their barriers.”

Grimes acknowledged that it would have been intimidating to walk into a studio full of “very flexible women.”

“I like coming with guys,” he said, “because we’re all equally inflexible.”

Whatever their abilities, though, Houlihan said he was confident the practice would resonate with men.

“I knew there were so many guys who could really benefit from yoga,” he said from a seat in his Byfield studio, situated kitty-corner to the Newbury Town Library. “I’m doing this to get a bunch of men in a room so they can soften. This is about allowing these guys to open up.”

That said, he was skeptical starting out.

His wife, Beth, has been doing yoga for years, and when she initially urged him to try it, his response was typical: “I’m not interested in doing yoga; it’s for girls.”

But in his early 40s, things changed. Working as a chief information officer, he was constantly on the road, high-strung, and had what he called a “hard edge.” Then he started having issues with high blood pressure and cholesterol, headaches, nausea, muscle pulls. Worst of all, he just felt older than he should have.

So he gave in and tried yoga.

Since then, he has lost about 40 pounds, changed his eating and sleeping habits, and expanded into the deeper aspects of yoga related to the inner self, as well as Chinese medicine. And two years ago, he left the corporate world to teach yoga full time through Root to Wings, which he runs with his wife.

“When I found yoga, the experience I had was so great I had to share it,” he said, calling the ancient practice a “tangible way to release the anxieties and stresses and sorrow.”

Which was palpable during a recent evening session, as the 10 men assembled in the studio exhaled, inhaled, and let out loud grunts and groans as they pushed through the routine.

They started the session laying flat on their mats, breathing deep, releasing tension.

Then came belt work — wrapping it around one foot, then the other, stretching to the ceiling, then to each side.

“It’s amazing how straight your legs are, compared to January,” Houlihan marveled as he navigated between their mats, the wood floor creaking slightly.

“Find your edge,” he urged, “when a little less stretch wouldn’t be enough, and any more stretch would really be uncomfortable.”

Various mat poses followed: lunging one leg while twisting and stretching the opposite arm to the ceiling; holding steady with bent elbows just a couple inches off the floor; standing with one leg curled in like a flamingo, both arms pointed to the ceiling.

After some final breathing exercises and meditation, the class disbanded, some stopping to chat and sip on Houlihan’s homemade tea (a mixture of dates, gogi berries, licorice bark, and other ingredients).

Girard, as he toweled off, said he is more flexible now, and feels a difference in his overall perseverance.

Grimes likewise said he has increased strength and a “tremendous sense of balance,” not to mention that he is much more limber than he has ever been.

His New Year’s resolution? To be flexible enough to touch his toes.

“Now I can. It seems so simple,” he said, “but it’s something in my life that I’ve never been able to do.”

Original article link here.

© Copyright 2012 Globe Newspaper Company.