Dorchester doesn't have it's own website. Enquiring minds that who want to learn more about this particular part of Boston have to visit www.cityof boston.gov. Dorchester, while acknowledged as the biggest metropolitan neighborhood, is accorded a brief synopsis, that mentions former residents are known to sport initials on their chests. To find out what those in the know really wear on the tee shirts, please click the title of this essay or the appropriate advertisement in the right hand column of this very blog.
You can learn more about Dorchester by clicking a link on that page, but be warned, it's pretty thin gruel. Titling this information 'general' is putting it mildly.
There are worse places to live of course. Consider the stand alone city of Hinton, WV. The photos on the home page look attractive enough, a small city nestled on a river. Trees bloom in spring and the courthouse is well maintained. Mayor Cleo P. Mathews looks to be as able an urban mechanic as the Hon. Thomas M. Menino. A useful homeland security advisory is in the lower left and we learn that, today, the threat of a terrorist attack to Hinton is "elevated." The City of Boston doesn't provide this information about Dorchester.
Dig a little deeper and the available information is more and more distressing.
It appears the last recent news in Hinton occurred in August 2006. It's Appalachia and, maybe, things don't happen as frequently in a small, mountain city as they do in a big, world-class one. If you check the minutes of City Council meetings, it seems city business stopped after a certain someone's birthday in 2007. Nothing happened in 2008 and, as for 2009... it may as well not exist.
What happened on December 17th, 2007? The esteemed council voted to pay Magic Mart $36.31 for batteries and pencils as well as some other routine expenditures. Then the record falls silent. According to wikipedia, Hinton hasn't become a ghost town. It's just off the radar and off the grid.
Hinton does have a newspaper, the Hinton News, but it isn't available in an online edition. Not that anyone complains about walking to Tedeschi for a copy of the Dorchester Reporter, but at least if you need a news fix in a pinch you can access all the Dot News you need to know via the Internet. Needless to say there's no Hinton page on craigslist. In Hinton, if you want to get your news fresh, you have to linger in the lobby of the Sweet Rose Motel. If you happen to find yourself in the New River Valley and you stay at the Sweet Rose, drop me a line to tell me what's going on. I'll bet dollars to donuts more happens in Dorchester in an hour than happens in Hinton.
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