Love's Tinderbox

Even a coward can be a lion.

Have I told you about my anonymous friend who loves his thirty-inch, self-trimming, electric firebox?  You can’t blame him.  She is a beauty.  He’s got a special name for his Dimplex Essex White Electric Indoor Transitional Fireplace.  He calls it Mabel.

My anonymous friend likes to cozy up to Mabel with a good book and a snifter of brandy.  “We’ve spent many romantic nights together, reading John Donne, and Portuguese sonnets, ” he says. 

No man should keep a mistress, but an electric fireplace is the perfect fixture for a modern bachelor pad.  You’ll always find success when it’s a Dimplex, especially the Essex.  Just ask my anonymous friend who has on-demand heat from a thirty-inch, self-trimming, electric firebox.  

That’s Mabel: always able.  Three cents and hour with flame only.  Eight cents an hour for warm flame, hour after luxurious hour.  

The Dimplex Essex White Electric Indoor Transitional Fireplace.  He calls it Mabel.  His wife calls it May Belle.  

Peacocks!

It may be too early to be envisioning the green on Meeting House Hill in Dorchester as a pleasure garden. After all, there isn't any greenery on the green, just ice and snow. As every good gardener knows though, it takes planning during the fallow months to ensure a bounty once the earth moves closer to the sun . Peacocks have just gone on sale.

We are not referring to the dandy rakes and elegantly made-up ladies that parade up and down Bowdoin Street where it runs near Adams Street and Quincy Street and Church Street. We are referring to the birds that were the favorite of the Greek goddess Hera (Juno in Latin). Here is a thought: why not populate Adams Park, which is under the watchful and majestic gaze of Dorchester's First Parish Church with peacocks? People may argue that the fowl would wander into the street and foul traffic but, alternatively, couldn't they be fitted with miniature collars and an electric fence be installed? It works with dogs.

Imagine Adams Park full of strutting, iridescent peacocks. It isn't hard. The birds are a perfect fit for the scenery. The cost of eight chicks is a mere $272.32. Even if no single benefactor wants to foot the whole bill, there is no doubt a community collection would cover the cost not just of the chicks but the electric fence as well. Who doesn't like peacocks? Even if the collection can comes up short, some lavender guineas could be substituted for a similar, if less spectacular effect.

This park isn't deserted during the year's warmer months but the addition of a little avian pageantry would only add eye appeal to what is already a feast for the eyes. If something is good, why not go over the top making it better? Stranger things have happened in Dorchester, the part of Boston where dreams become real.

Who is a good gardener? Here is fictional one that got pretty far on the principles of good garden management:

Smooth Sounds of the New Dorchester

Top forty and hip-hop have their places in Dorchester. This is a neighborhood of middle-aged, middle class, working folks out to dance like it's 1999. It is also a neighborhood that pulses with the fresh and angry sounds of disaffected, disenfranchised, urban youth. Between these two extremes there is another demographic that is a little more suave, a little more laid back, a little more je ne c'est quoi, if you know what I mean. They're cocktail people.

D Bar caters to these clientele. So does C.F. Donovan's. So does the Blarney Stone and the Ashmont Grill. Other joints have upped their sophistication to lesser degrees but there's a new beat in Dorchester and it's measured in 3:4 time. To be or not to be? I would tell you after last call, but by then I've forgotten the question. There's no such thing as too much lounging. It is good for the soul, if a little soggy on the gray matter.

We were in the Twelve Bens on Adams Street when some joker played Herb Alpert and His Tijuana Brass's classic "A Taste of Honey" on the jukebox. The patrons were a bit riled as this album has never been played in the Twelve Bens and they didn't know what to make of it. There was a vote to pull the juke box's plug and it was done unceremoniously.

A younger guy sitting in the corner stood up and said, "Hold on a minute. If you don't like that, I think you'll like this. It's the same thing, only better." He pulled out his ipod and plugged it into the house stereo. The John King and Dust Bros. remix of "A Taste of Honey" came through the overhead speakers and peace settled over the bar. It wasn't an Irish lullaby but everyone got swept up with the refrain and the back beats. Everyone agreed this is the sound of the new Dot.

This is your father's Herb Alpert:


This is the new, re-whipped cream: