You may think you've never heard of Dorchester, but you have. It's Boston. To those who live there, it's called Dot for short. It is Boston through and through, more Bostonian in many ways than downtown.
It's not the North End where Wednesday is Prince spaghetti day. It's not the part where Mystic River was filmed (though much of it looks like that). It's not where Bunker Hill is or where Paul Revere set off on his midnight ride. The Boston Pops don't play in Dot. It's not where a lot of tourists go unless they are visiting the JFK Presidential Library. Some tourists visit. They are either the smart ones or the ones who leave from the wrong side of the JFK/UMASS T station. Either way, they enter the best part of Boston and when they get back on the Red Line they don't see Boston the same way again. They have seen its true, better nature.
Dorchester is the biggest of Boston's neighborhoods, some people (present company included) say it's the best. I lived in Dot for three years and I wouldn't trade those years for the world wrapped with a ribbon. Plenty happens in Boston...plenty, but much of it involves college students and professors, scientists, doctors, engineers, politicians. Dorchester life is the common life sprinkled with the kind of minor miracles that make it a pleasure to get out of bed. A neighborhood of neighborhoods in a city of neighborhoods, everyone is pleasant, they get to know each other and they work together to make a livable place enjoyable for a few blocks or a few miles as far as the eye can see.
Ethnicities rub shoulders and elbows and jowls and bellies in Dot. If there is any friction, it is smoothed by common courtesy and cordiality. Bad manners have no place in Ashmont, the Polish Triangle, Lower Mills, Codman Square, Upham's Corner, or at Port Norfolk. If there is a circle, it is the gravitational orbit that centers around where the Neponset River empties into Dorchester Bay.
Despite the impression of rampant gang warfare and weekly shoot-'em-ups you may cull from the daily newspapers, Dorchester is an overall peaceful and congenial place in which to raise a family and spend a lifetime. Generations have done it. A few bad apples can't spoil a bushel or a barrel filled with golden eggs, none of those rotten.
Big things are afoot in Dorchester. It is a part of Boston where things happen under the radar while regular citizens reap the rewards, spin filigree from flax, glean kernels from chaff, and chafe at a bum rap, all the while getting along, getting ahead, getting together, and having a good time. Loving one's neighbor is easy in Dorchester and the high proportion of churches ensures it is a chaste affection exchanged between passing pedestrians. Playgrounds are populated with well behaved, impish scamps who don't know the word "truant." They scamper about harmoniously with a twinkle in their eyes, bright smiles, and evident good breeding, respect for others, and a sense of fair play.
There are worse parts of Boston than Dot, much worse. If there are better parts, that's a matter of mistaken opinion. If you are thinking of moving to Boston, talk to your realtor about Dorchester. Don't believe the nay-sayers, distrust the haters. Visit yourself, walk the streets, witness the camaraderie and kindesses and civic pride that is on display. Walk into the shops, witness the landscape, the streetscape, the peoplescape. Say hello. Introduce yourself. Ask yourself, "Can I picture myself living here the rest of my life?" When you ask yourself this question, after plumbing the reaches of your soul's needs and measuring the existential bounds of what makes a good life, the answer can only be, "Yes. I can."
Balaenius Rex!
Showing posts with label Dottoman Empire. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Dottoman Empire. Show all posts
Tuesday, November 23, 2010
Thursday, April 08, 2010
Don't pity Dot
Look at Dorchester's outline. Lower Dot swells like a pregnant belly and the silhouette of Columbia Point could be mistaken for a breast taken out of context from a National Geographic photo. Dorchester doesn't mutilate. It builds character.
Can Mr. T serve as a symbol of Dorchester? Despite the similarities between Mr. T's character and Dorchester's the answer is probably No. It's hard to have a name like T in Boston and be associated with pride, good service or respectability. There's no need to pity Dot, indeed, most people who live here would wrinkle their noses at the idea. People who visit Dorchester don't pity it, they respect it. Tourists who wander a bit off the Red Line return to wherever they are from with a fresh, independent understanding of what Boston really is: a vibrant, working city rather than a Revolutionary War time capsule.
I think Mr. T's picture above will reappear again and again this month. He isn't a perfect match for Dot Pride, but there are worse spokespeople we can imagine embodying Dorchester's essence.
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Dot block rebellion
Like many things, it's not entirely clear to me what's going on at Four Corners this Saturday (March 13) at 5PM. Though the Four Corners Action Coalition has organized something they call a rebellion, it seems to be a more usual protest, albeit one that includes a walking tour and a multimedia performance art piece.
And that is what makes Dorchester one of Boston's more surprising places. Better known for criminal transgressions, Dorchester is a place of remarkable creativity. The neighborhood has been remaking itself continually since it agreed to be annexed into the greater metropolis. No one will be taking a duck tour to Four Corners anytime soon and not just because it's not near the water. That doesn't mean it's not a vibrant community in which people tangle the weft of their lives into the woof of the surrounding infrastructure.
21 Bullard Street is located on the slopes of picturesque Mount Bowdoin. While the neighborhood may have seen more spendthrift days, the community is alive and well and rallying. If you are interested, and you should be, the tour starts at this address at 5:00 and ends at the same place. Food, music, video and insight will follow.
Thanks to Boston Indymedia for the tip off.
Thursday, February 18, 2010
DOT: Dalliance on Transcendence
Dot = Dorchester. Nothing could be plainer. Even with long r's why does this compression of syllables make so much sense? I'll tell you. Though Dorchester is a big place with a longish name, it can be distilled into one commonly appreciated, multi-layered concept described by three letters. D-O-T doesn't just stand for Department of Transportation. DOT is also an acronym for Dalliance on Transcendence.
The middle of a bull's eye, the gold spot on a daisy, the halo over the stem of a lower case letter 'i'. You can whittle away your whiles in Dorchester and be none the worse for wear. It's a big sprawling Dot with as many smug secrets as the twin pupils in mysterious Mona Lisa's eyes. Whatever it's not, Dorchester is Dot
Monday, January 25, 2010
Field's Corner upskirt re-design
The Obama administration has just released funds for a shovel-ready redesign of the Field's Corner station on the MBTA Red Line. Official details are reportedly scheduled to be released next week, but an anonymous source confirms that MBTA engineers, under direct orders from the Governor, have studied a Japanese prototype design and green lighted the project for immediate construction.
An anonymous source from the Governor's office confirms. "We're behind this all the way. It will create jobs, not only in traditional construction trades and for unionized track layers and electrical switchmen. There's a big fiberglass fabrication budget that goes along with this design. The benefits are enormous."
An anonymous source at the MBTA stated, "While Field's Corner is one of the system's newer stations, this represents a serious visual upgrade that will focus interest on the Red Line's lesser used branch and increase tourist ridership. The 'gawk-factor' alone is expected to increase ridership between JFK/UMASS and Ashmont by 30%. "
An anonymous source at a local Dorchester redevelopment agency said, "This is the best news Field's Corner has had in years. It's a cheeky project that emphasizes that Dorchester is not just about working for a living but also about having fun while you're doing it."
An anonymous operative from the Mayor's office wanted to be kept off the record until the Mayor released an official opinion. She did scribble the following on a napkin: "If it is already decided, His Honor supports it and his involvement will be traced back to its roots accordingly."
So, what's the new design? You saw it here first. Special thanks to the MBTA engineer who leaked this brunette bombshell.
A tip of the fedora to Dr. Hermes for providing the photographic evidence that such a thing can exist. Some people would say something like this could only exist in Japan. If the MBTA has its way, it will be in Field's Corner by the end of 2013. That's assuming the federal stimulus package doesn't run out of funds. Pure Dot magic.
An anonymous source from the Governor's office confirms. "We're behind this all the way. It will create jobs, not only in traditional construction trades and for unionized track layers and electrical switchmen. There's a big fiberglass fabrication budget that goes along with this design. The benefits are enormous."
An anonymous source at the MBTA stated, "While Field's Corner is one of the system's newer stations, this represents a serious visual upgrade that will focus interest on the Red Line's lesser used branch and increase tourist ridership. The 'gawk-factor' alone is expected to increase ridership between JFK/UMASS and Ashmont by 30%. "
An anonymous source at a local Dorchester redevelopment agency said, "This is the best news Field's Corner has had in years. It's a cheeky project that emphasizes that Dorchester is not just about working for a living but also about having fun while you're doing it."
An anonymous operative from the Mayor's office wanted to be kept off the record until the Mayor released an official opinion. She did scribble the following on a napkin: "If it is already decided, His Honor supports it and his involvement will be traced back to its roots accordingly."
A tip of the fedora to Dr. Hermes for providing the photographic evidence that such a thing can exist. Some people would say something like this could only exist in Japan. If the MBTA has its way, it will be in Field's Corner by the end of 2013. That's assuming the federal stimulus package doesn't run out of funds. Pure Dot magic.
Monday, January 11, 2010
Imagine...
Imagine there's no Dorchester...
Hyde Park, Franklin Park and Grove Hall all contain beachfront property. The distance to Quincy is unbridgeable, the Red Line to Braintree runs, like the Blue Line, under water. There's no Southie because South Boston used to be part of Dorchester.
Boston is really, really crowded. There is nowhere for 100,000 extra people to live except spread around the other neighborhoods. That's a lot of spreading, one sixth the population. The West End is now as crowded as Scollay Square.
The city's supply of natural gas is all stored in Chelsea and Everett. There is a gas tank in Chelsea that is painted in a mural signed 'Corita' with Ho Chi Minh's profile hidden in its brushstrokes. The best Vietnamese food is found in Chinatown, of all places. The Green Line has Boston's most attractive trolleys in service because there isn't a Mattpan High Speed.
Saturday, January 09, 2010
The Dot chest
South Boston is called Southie. East Boston is called Eastie. Dorchester is just called Dot. It's better than being called Dottie.
Roxbury and West Roxbury both end with the requisite '-ee' sound favored in local parlance for Boston's neighborhoods, but even West Roxbury is often shortened to just Westie when people talk about it, which isn't often where I live. Roslindale is Rozzie in gossipy, street argot.
Hyde Park is just Hyde Park. There's never really much need to refer to it. It could be called Hydie. Some people refer to that neighborhood's most prominent resident as Mayor Hyde, but he's more jackal [sic] than anything else.
Charlestown is Charlestown. A place out of the way but so thoroughly Boston that it is often overlooked, taken for granted, the way Bunker Hill looks out over the North End, and the bridge that connects the two is inspired by the Bunker Hill Monument. By the way, the North End is never called Northie.
Dorchester is referred to as Dot. If you call it 'the' Dot, people will know you weren't born here. They'll point and say, "Ha ha, he said the!" It's like being caught with your fly down. All you can do is shrug and say, "Yeah, I love the Dot."
When the Combat Zone was more than just two strip clubs appended to Chinatown, some wags thought Dorchester would be better referred to as Chestie. A lot of professional dancers lived in the neighborhood. Like Dottie, the alternative Chestie moniker never caught on. It's just as well. Professional dancers still make their home in Dorchester but nowadays they work for the Boston Ballet rather than for the Glass Slipper. Calling these prima donnas chesty would be inaccurate, to say the least.
Roxbury and West Roxbury both end with the requisite '-ee' sound favored in local parlance for Boston's neighborhoods, but even West Roxbury is often shortened to just Westie when people talk about it, which isn't often where I live. Roslindale is Rozzie in gossipy, street argot.
Hyde Park is just Hyde Park. There's never really much need to refer to it. It could be called Hydie. Some people refer to that neighborhood's most prominent resident as Mayor Hyde, but he's more jackal [sic] than anything else.
Charlestown is Charlestown. A place out of the way but so thoroughly Boston that it is often overlooked, taken for granted, the way Bunker Hill looks out over the North End, and the bridge that connects the two is inspired by the Bunker Hill Monument. By the way, the North End is never called Northie.
Dorchester is referred to as Dot. If you call it 'the' Dot, people will know you weren't born here. They'll point and say, "Ha ha, he said the!" It's like being caught with your fly down. All you can do is shrug and say, "Yeah, I love the Dot."
When the Combat Zone was more than just two strip clubs appended to Chinatown, some wags thought Dorchester would be better referred to as Chestie. A lot of professional dancers lived in the neighborhood. Like Dottie, the alternative Chestie moniker never caught on. It's just as well. Professional dancers still make their home in Dorchester but nowadays they work for the Boston Ballet rather than for the Glass Slipper. Calling these prima donnas chesty would be inaccurate, to say the least.
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
Two Dorchesters
I've been thinking about a statistic I read in the Globe recently. I'm not going to look it up or link to it because it's a stat that's already been stuck in my mind. How accurate it may be, I haven't researched, but some variation is part of common, ingrained perception and, quite likely, part of common reality in this part of Boston.
The average household income in Dorchester is $28,000 a year.
Whether that sounds like a lot or a little depends on where you begin to measure. For our regular readers who live in Hinton, West Virginia, it's a little for the Boston area. Very little.
Living where I do, by the JFK/UMASS MBTA station (that's the subway to you Hintonites), I don't see any abject poverty. Believe me: $28,000 will not support a nuclear family in Boston. The rent on a two bedroom apartment will consume half that and more, not including utilities. This may explain the lack of nuclear families in Dorchester, but again...I don't see a lot of single parent households where I live, not that I'm taking a detailed census or spying on my neighbors.
Some parts of Dorchester are like the part I live in. Adams Village, Neponset, Pope's Hill, Ashmont Hill, Jones Hills, Mount Bowdoin, the Polish Triangle, Point Norfolk, Lower Mills; they are all fairly stable, middle class, whatever middle class means. Let's say the people I pass on the street don't seem to be going without. They are also primarily located near train stations and they are also predominantly white.
I do not like to dwell on racial differences on the Matrix. I usually make it a point to avoid discussing them, but they exist. Different parts of Dorchester have different ethnicities, to be sure, The same differences in skin color and income that demark other places also occur in the Dot. It isn't pretty, but it is true. Sometimes it's good, sometimes not. Again, it depends on where you start to measure.
If I looked at the tax records for my neighborhood, I suspect the average income isn't dragging the neighborhood average downwards. This part of Dot is full of college students working part time jobs, but they are paying market rate rents and living, as some scholars do, at the local bars soaking up cheap food and suds. Just eyeballing the lay of the land, I suspect what lowers Dorchester's median income figures are the neighborhoods roughly west or northeasterly of Washington Street: Four Corners, Codman Square, Talbot Avenue, Norfolk Avenue, Columbia Road, Blue Hill Avenue, East Cottage Street, Bowdoin/Geneva, and other terrain that doesn't have names for its neighborhoods, just a collection of pins on a police station map.
There are two Dorchesters. Both of them are equally welcoming and equally convivial. I've never witnessed a crime being committed in Dorchester and I have been down most streets and I am out most hours of the day and night. I have never been uncomfortable.
There is a different culture to the west than there is to the east of Dot Ave, which is an approximate, handy boundary line. The east is whiter and more asian (whether Vietnamese or Chinese it's hard to say). The west is darker and more hispanic (or Haitian or Cape Verdean). You can't really say one side is old Dot stock and the other side is new. African Americans have been a majority in some parts of Dorchester for more than half a century. They aren't immigrants. They are Dorchesterites.
East plus West equals the middle ground, which is somewhere near Field's Corner.
I've been thinking about this over the past few months and, unlike my usual folderol, I thought I would work through more serious musings in public. I'm trying to develop a Dot-view that is more panoramic than the one I have now. As I say, I have been almost everywhere, but as a transplant, I have been almost everywhere as someone passing through, or as someone from Savin Hill, rather than as a native. A fellow citizen, perhaps. Some people live in a Dot microcosm. I am one of them. I want to take in more of the macro view.
I don't usually solicit comments but I invite you to add your observations and thoughts. Let's discuss.
Sunday, December 13, 2009
Paradise by Milton
Day breaks but after that everything is ship shape in Dorchester, MA. All the leaks are caulked. There are no drafts to dodge. Snug as bugs in a down quilt, Dorchesterites hunker down and sleep the slumber of the unencumbered.
Where's Dorchester? Look Mac, if you don't know I can't even call you pal... Look Stranger, if you don't know where Dorchester is you'd better take a Duck Tour to find out. This is the time of year to do it. Bundle up as you trundle out. Keep your eyes peeled on that goose chase and stay downwind.
Any bum can rush to Dorchester, but it takes a certain kind of dreamer to linger long enough to catch a Talbot Avenue bus. A Dorchester adventure is an invitation from Fate to a footloose freebooter to bind his or her ties to a geography that includes more three-story buildings than the whole State of Kansas contains and as many active citizens as Vermont's voting population. Dorchester is wild and wooly while being conveniently served by mass transit and civilized amenities. Dorchesterites sip their Dunkin Donuts coffee with pinkies raised. They are generous tippers too.
When the Red Line splits at JFK/UMASS, conductors announce, "Change trains here for Braintree. This train's final stop is Paradise." Paradise for many, perhaps, but others abandon hope when they enter Dorchester. Dorchester isn't for the hopeless. Hope springs eternal from under a rock in Dorchester Park directly behind Caritas Christi Hospital's maternity ward. Hope is the gasoline that lights Dorchester's fire. The hapless souls who lack hope are welcome to stay to nurture their tinder but most head back post-haste, pre-trauma, on a one way ticket back to Porter. There are no downers in Dorchester, only up-and-comers. Smile! The Dot's got your back.
Even if Ashmont isn't the paradise you are looking for in Dorchester, take a transfer to the Mattapan High Speed. You'll find your paradise at the Milton stop. At the southernmost tip of Boston, there's nowhere to go but uptown and inbound. Even if it takes a few connections to reach your eventual destination, those connections are easy to make in Dorchester.
Where's Dorchester? Look Mac, if you don't know I can't even call you pal... Look Stranger, if you don't know where Dorchester is you'd better take a Duck Tour to find out. This is the time of year to do it. Bundle up as you trundle out. Keep your eyes peeled on that goose chase and stay downwind.
Any bum can rush to Dorchester, but it takes a certain kind of dreamer to linger long enough to catch a Talbot Avenue bus. A Dorchester adventure is an invitation from Fate to a footloose freebooter to bind his or her ties to a geography that includes more three-story buildings than the whole State of Kansas contains and as many active citizens as Vermont's voting population. Dorchester is wild and wooly while being conveniently served by mass transit and civilized amenities. Dorchesterites sip their Dunkin Donuts coffee with pinkies raised. They are generous tippers too.
When the Red Line splits at JFK/UMASS, conductors announce, "Change trains here for Braintree. This train's final stop is Paradise." Paradise for many, perhaps, but others abandon hope when they enter Dorchester. Dorchester isn't for the hopeless. Hope springs eternal from under a rock in Dorchester Park directly behind Caritas Christi Hospital's maternity ward. Hope is the gasoline that lights Dorchester's fire. The hapless souls who lack hope are welcome to stay to nurture their tinder but most head back post-haste, pre-trauma, on a one way ticket back to Porter. There are no downers in Dorchester, only up-and-comers. Smile! The Dot's got your back.
Even if Ashmont isn't the paradise you are looking for in Dorchester, take a transfer to the Mattapan High Speed. You'll find your paradise at the Milton stop. At the southernmost tip of Boston, there's nowhere to go but uptown and inbound. Even if it takes a few connections to reach your eventual destination, those connections are easy to make in Dorchester.
Saturday, October 31, 2009
BOGO: Buy one and get one...free
There is a sale going on in Dorchester, Mass. It's a real estate bonanza. It's not a fire sale and it's not a going out of business sale. It's not a holiday sale except in the sense that every day is Dorchester Day in Dorchester! It's good value honestly negotiated over the barrelhead, sold and bought with only the best intentions for sharing a sound investment. Everyone comes out a winner in Dorchester
You can buy a condo or a house or a loft in Dorchester and you get to own that condo or house or loft if you don't think about the bank that financed the purchase and still holds the deed. You also get something added on for free, an extra value, a bonus...you get a little something that makes the mortage less onerous... You get to live in Dorchester!
Not the Dorchester in England. The Dorchester in Massachusetts is the better Dorchester. That's why the Pilgrims sailed away here. It's the best part of Boston. You don't have to sail across the Atlantic. Just take the Red Line and have your downpayment. Happiness and prosperity will follow.
Living in Dorchester is a two-for-one deal: you get to live in the Dot and you get to be a Bostonian. This is the best of all possible worlds. Most Dorchester real estate brokers have a doctorate in optimism. Most Dorchesterites come upon their panglossian view of the world not through book philosophy but by the street lessons their surroundings impart. You can't live in Dorchester long without going through every following day with a punch drunk, Mona Lisa smile on your mug. Dorchester breeds contentment. Realtors don't lie. They don't even fib in the Dot.
Wise investors know they will get the best return on their dollar when they buy property in Dorchester. This isn't speculation. It's a proven, historical fact. Dorchester may be a neighborhood of booms and busts if you keep your ears and eyes open, but it is also home to a steady climb. Everything goes up in Dorchester. As a rising tide lifts all ships, Dorchester promotes the portfolio and personal growth of everyone it touches. Dorchester excelsior!
Buddy, you can spare a dime. When you buy a gumball in Dorchester, two fall out of the machine's slot. It's BOGO all the time in the Dot.
You can buy a condo or a house or a loft in Dorchester and you get to own that condo or house or loft if you don't think about the bank that financed the purchase and still holds the deed. You also get something added on for free, an extra value, a bonus...you get a little something that makes the mortage less onerous... You get to live in Dorchester!
Not the Dorchester in England. The Dorchester in Massachusetts is the better Dorchester. That's why the Pilgrims sailed away here. It's the best part of Boston. You don't have to sail across the Atlantic. Just take the Red Line and have your downpayment. Happiness and prosperity will follow.
Living in Dorchester is a two-for-one deal: you get to live in the Dot and you get to be a Bostonian. This is the best of all possible worlds. Most Dorchester real estate brokers have a doctorate in optimism. Most Dorchesterites come upon their panglossian view of the world not through book philosophy but by the street lessons their surroundings impart. You can't live in Dorchester long without going through every following day with a punch drunk, Mona Lisa smile on your mug. Dorchester breeds contentment. Realtors don't lie. They don't even fib in the Dot.
Wise investors know they will get the best return on their dollar when they buy property in Dorchester. This isn't speculation. It's a proven, historical fact. Dorchester may be a neighborhood of booms and busts if you keep your ears and eyes open, but it is also home to a steady climb. Everything goes up in Dorchester. As a rising tide lifts all ships, Dorchester promotes the portfolio and personal growth of everyone it touches. Dorchester excelsior!
Buddy, you can spare a dime. When you buy a gumball in Dorchester, two fall out of the machine's slot. It's BOGO all the time in the Dot.
Saturday, October 10, 2009
The Illumadotti
Outsiders wonder why Dorchester thrives despite being one of Boston's most disrespected and seemingly neglected neighborhoods. It is true that Dorchester looks a bit down on its luck at first inspection. Yet people continue to move in, businesses make profits and no one who lives here has an unkind word to say about their situation. It's very different from other parts of Boston. Despite seeming to have cause for a litany of complaints, Dorchester is complacent. What unseen benefits do Dorchesterites enjoy?
Boston has a mayor and Dorchester is represented on the City Council. I believe we have Marty Walsh as our elected representative, though I may be mistaken. That's how relevant the chartered government is: a paper tiger. Boston's official, municipal government cleans the streets and staffs the fire stations, but whatever policies get set at City Hall have few tangible effects in Dorchester. There is a shadow government afoot in the Dot, one that spreads Dorchester's wealth and polices the mores and morals of its citizens more effectively than the Health Department or the BPD. Dorchestester's gears are greased, but no elected official has much to do with how things are run.
A cabal of unelected leaders meets fortnightly at a secret headquarters rumored to be at the summit of Mount Bowdoin. They sometimes gather in quorums at other locales according to a rotating schedule set by tradition to ensure they experience all of Dorchester in the round, keeping in touch with their surroundings, leaving no sidewalk untravelled.
No one knows for sure who the Illumadotti are, though anyone who spends time in Dorchester comes under their influence and experiences their effects. It isn't only Dorchester's street plan that is a tangled web, it is its social relationships and its commercial interactions. Some Illuminadotti are prominent businessmen, some are the American Legion adjutants. One heads a branch of the PTA, one is the vice chairman of a neighborhood crime watch, one is a pimp managing a bevy of employees. One hawks newspapers at a traffic intersection in the morning, one approves mortgages, another maps sewers and monitors their maintenance schedules. One is a local historian. One is a midget who has never graduated second grade, year after year, despite attending night classes and earning an associate's degree at Roxbury Community College.
Dorchester is woven through with invisible filaments and no one knows for sure who pulls the strings. The strings get pulled though and Dorchester dances. Good things happen in Dorchester for a reason. The Illuminadotti make sure of it.
I can't say that I know anything about this secret society. I am not a member and even if I were privy to all of its secrets, I wouldn't be the one to blow the lid off this benevolent conspiracy. Let me go on record: I know nothing. Good things happen in Dorchester without official explanation. They happen seamlessly to everyone's benefit. Few homes go without a Thanksgiving turkey and few households are destitute for long. How this happens is a mystery under the radar. Only the Illuminadotti know why what happens as it does.
There are few complaints, if any, in Dorchester, Mass.
Boston has a mayor and Dorchester is represented on the City Council. I believe we have Marty Walsh as our elected representative, though I may be mistaken. That's how relevant the chartered government is: a paper tiger. Boston's official, municipal government cleans the streets and staffs the fire stations, but whatever policies get set at City Hall have few tangible effects in Dorchester. There is a shadow government afoot in the Dot, one that spreads Dorchester's wealth and polices the mores and morals of its citizens more effectively than the Health Department or the BPD. Dorchestester's gears are greased, but no elected official has much to do with how things are run.
A cabal of unelected leaders meets fortnightly at a secret headquarters rumored to be at the summit of Mount Bowdoin. They sometimes gather in quorums at other locales according to a rotating schedule set by tradition to ensure they experience all of Dorchester in the round, keeping in touch with their surroundings, leaving no sidewalk untravelled.
No one knows for sure who the Illumadotti are, though anyone who spends time in Dorchester comes under their influence and experiences their effects. It isn't only Dorchester's street plan that is a tangled web, it is its social relationships and its commercial interactions. Some Illuminadotti are prominent businessmen, some are the American Legion adjutants. One heads a branch of the PTA, one is the vice chairman of a neighborhood crime watch, one is a pimp managing a bevy of employees. One hawks newspapers at a traffic intersection in the morning, one approves mortgages, another maps sewers and monitors their maintenance schedules. One is a local historian. One is a midget who has never graduated second grade, year after year, despite attending night classes and earning an associate's degree at Roxbury Community College.
Dorchester is woven through with invisible filaments and no one knows for sure who pulls the strings. The strings get pulled though and Dorchester dances. Good things happen in Dorchester for a reason. The Illuminadotti make sure of it.
I can't say that I know anything about this secret society. I am not a member and even if I were privy to all of its secrets, I wouldn't be the one to blow the lid off this benevolent conspiracy. Let me go on record: I know nothing. Good things happen in Dorchester without official explanation. They happen seamlessly to everyone's benefit. Few homes go without a Thanksgiving turkey and few households are destitute for long. How this happens is a mystery under the radar. Only the Illuminadotti know why what happens as it does.
There are few complaints, if any, in Dorchester, Mass.
Sunday, October 04, 2009
ADORE-chester!
Ah! Dorchester! It wakes some people up like a slug from a mug. For other people, it is home to sweet dreams.
In a realm of countless delights, can a discerning topophile whittle down a list of just five things that showcase and show off Dorchester’s inherent, characteristic goodness? It’s greatness? …Goodness gracious! The mind reels, the inner cinema goes dark, the imagination’s flood lights spark and then…all the Dot’s a stage:
One. How many dreamers have climbed the Stairway to Jones’ Hill? When they turn at the summit, they look out over the glittering street lights below and the stars over Dorchester and they know they are a few meters closer to Heaven. From Hancock Street at Jones’ Hill’s base (across from Cameron) 145 steps run up a slope too steep for a roadway. They end at a playground on Downer Avenue, the most inappropriately named street in Dorchester and not just because it’s located so high above sea level. People climb to reach their goals in Dorchester, Mass., a place where human potential is exercised and endurance is tested.
Despite the fact that its territory is vast, Dorchester is a warren of smaller sub-neighborhoods and parishes, each of them self sufficient. Each is interconnected by surreptitious shortcuts that those in the know use to get where they want to be. You can get lost in Dorchester but you will eventually find your way. The infrastructure is in place: stairways and pathways and sidewalks and alleyways. Every dead end has a way out, and you learn to navigate without ever feeling trapped. Every day in Dorchester has its own charm and lessons. Living in Dorchester is more poetic verse than prose sentence, more meander than straight shot.
Two. Dorchester was founded by farmers and its population exploded by the sweat of working men operating according to the schemes of streetcar line financiers. Once the roads were laid out and the houses were built someone had to make use of them. Dorchester is not only home to workingmen. It is home to their mates and the children that inevitably follow. Dorchester holds womankind in a particularly fine regard and that is why a little north of Codman Square, on Washington Street, is a comfortable, welcoming park called Mothers’ Rest.
Dorchester’s landscape is a collection of voluptuous undulations, hills and vales. Mothers’ Rest enjoys a vantage that looks out on the flatter lands at Field’s Corner and the far more expansive flatness of Dorchester Bay farther beyond. The park’s location is between Codman Square, the site of Dorchester’s second civic center which grew into it’s most active commercial node, and the first street downhill to the residential neighborhoods that line Codman Hill’s east face. Naturally, like on Jones’ Hill, Mother’s Rest doesn’t only contain benches and playground equipment. It contains a shortcut to Alpha Road. Alpha Road, though it isn’t much to brag about unless you live there, would be an apt name for Dorchester’s Main Street if Dorchester had a main street. All addresses are equal in Dorchester because all are exemplary.
Three. Dorchester’s boundaries are contentious, its identity is fluid. Being an agglomeration of smaller neighborhoods, the farther you move from Dorchester’s core the more confusing your coordinates. Is Ashmont part of Dorchester? Yes. Is Lower Mills? Yes. Savin Hill? Yes. Then things start to get fuzzy. Dorchester bleeds imperceptibly into Milton and Southie and Roxbury and Mattapan, which used to be considered a part of Dorchester until fairly recently. Is the Franklin Park Zoo part of Dorchester? Some say yes, some say no. I’ll side with yes.
If you go past the active zoo on a back trail through the woods to the southwest, you will come across some abandoned cages far removed from the main gate. There are neglected, concrete habitats, pits ringed with spikes, and a stepped, granite plaza overgrown with weeds and litter. What animals were housed here? I don’t know, but I am pretty sure the main pen held bears. There is a bas relief of two bears flanking the city seal set in the wall of the main pen. Though posed to seem stately, they are lumbering, awkward creatures, carved almost as large as life.
Is it appropriate to superimpose the likeness of a bulky, inarticulate creature of intimidating power flanking the symbol of what is supposed to be the most enlightened city in United States, the Cradle of Liberty, the Athens of America? Sure. This is a democracy.
Four. The puddingstone on Quincy Street that protects Fernald Terrace is the most majestically shaped piece of puddingstone in all of Boston. Whether approaching from downhill or uphill, from Columbia Road or from Bowdoin Street, this puddingstone rears out of the ground like the barnacled humpback of an ancient leviathan cresting in stopped motion as it makes a tectonic journey so lengthy it seems still to a human observer. I pass this stone often, zipping by on a motorcycle or on a bicycle, sometimes in a car, sometimes on foot. It never fails to humble me and define this neighborhood. Quincy Street is a typical street and Fernald Terrace is a tidy cul-de-sac lined with regular-seeming homes with nothing in particular about them. They are special though, graced and guarded by a totem of Dorchester’s bedrock. The puddingstone that underlies the foundations of three deckers and duplexes rears out of the fertile earth. A rounded slab of millennial, sedimentary rock forms a protective barrier for Fernald Terrace and a natural monument that children scamper over and passing motorists admire. Nature, in the rough and at its most raw-boned is present and exposed. Boston and Dorchester are not only human creations. They have had a long prologue.
Five. Between Columbia Road and Blue Hill Avenue, along Quincy Street, is more territory that may be Dorchester or it may be Roxbury. In the end, does it matter? If you ask the people who live there, they’ll tell you it’s Dorchester, and anyone one who is Dorchester by Choice (DBC) is okay by me. In an infinite list of good things, Ma Siss’s place ranks as fifth from the top. Not a bad ranking when you consider the Dot Tavern ranks #477 no matter how fond I am of it.
I admit I know two things about Ma Siss’s Place. It was featured in a series of articles about it in the Boston Globe and that series of articles is one of the few things that has stuck out of all the fluff I’ve read stuffed between the Globe’s pages. The other thing I know is that despite its scruffy appearance, Ma Siss’s mission is vital to this well worn, humdrum part of the city. Change is the only constant in a living metropolis and polyglot Dorchester undergoes a perpetual, quiet revolution.
There is an outdoor Buddhist shrine behind the Field’s Corner library and it represents some of Dorchester’s cultural diversity. It is exotic and eye-catching. Ma Siss’s Place and the church with which it shares space in a converted garage, is just as exotic to some people though it lacks much aesthetic allure. Its role in the community isn’t to be pretty, however. Its role is to nurture the soul of its surroundings. Its role is to add to the well being of anyone who is hungry either in body or spirit. Its role is to make Dorchester more livable, through one small act after another, out of the limelight on the all but invisible corner of Quincy Street and Baker Avenue. It is the little things and the people who do them that make Dorchester good.
Here are a few other people who ADORE-chester! A kaleidoscope of views:
In a realm of countless delights, can a discerning topophile whittle down a list of just five things that showcase and show off Dorchester’s inherent, characteristic goodness? It’s greatness? …Goodness gracious! The mind reels, the inner cinema goes dark, the imagination’s flood lights spark and then…all the Dot’s a stage:
One. How many dreamers have climbed the Stairway to Jones’ Hill? When they turn at the summit, they look out over the glittering street lights below and the stars over Dorchester and they know they are a few meters closer to Heaven. From Hancock Street at Jones’ Hill’s base (across from Cameron) 145 steps run up a slope too steep for a roadway. They end at a playground on Downer Avenue, the most inappropriately named street in Dorchester and not just because it’s located so high above sea level. People climb to reach their goals in Dorchester, Mass., a place where human potential is exercised and endurance is tested.
Despite the fact that its territory is vast, Dorchester is a warren of smaller sub-neighborhoods and parishes, each of them self sufficient. Each is interconnected by surreptitious shortcuts that those in the know use to get where they want to be. You can get lost in Dorchester but you will eventually find your way. The infrastructure is in place: stairways and pathways and sidewalks and alleyways. Every dead end has a way out, and you learn to navigate without ever feeling trapped. Every day in Dorchester has its own charm and lessons. Living in Dorchester is more poetic verse than prose sentence, more meander than straight shot.
Two. Dorchester was founded by farmers and its population exploded by the sweat of working men operating according to the schemes of streetcar line financiers. Once the roads were laid out and the houses were built someone had to make use of them. Dorchester is not only home to workingmen. It is home to their mates and the children that inevitably follow. Dorchester holds womankind in a particularly fine regard and that is why a little north of Codman Square, on Washington Street, is a comfortable, welcoming park called Mothers’ Rest.
Dorchester’s landscape is a collection of voluptuous undulations, hills and vales. Mothers’ Rest enjoys a vantage that looks out on the flatter lands at Field’s Corner and the far more expansive flatness of Dorchester Bay farther beyond. The park’s location is between Codman Square, the site of Dorchester’s second civic center which grew into it’s most active commercial node, and the first street downhill to the residential neighborhoods that line Codman Hill’s east face. Naturally, like on Jones’ Hill, Mother’s Rest doesn’t only contain benches and playground equipment. It contains a shortcut to Alpha Road. Alpha Road, though it isn’t much to brag about unless you live there, would be an apt name for Dorchester’s Main Street if Dorchester had a main street. All addresses are equal in Dorchester because all are exemplary.
Three. Dorchester’s boundaries are contentious, its identity is fluid. Being an agglomeration of smaller neighborhoods, the farther you move from Dorchester’s core the more confusing your coordinates. Is Ashmont part of Dorchester? Yes. Is Lower Mills? Yes. Savin Hill? Yes. Then things start to get fuzzy. Dorchester bleeds imperceptibly into Milton and Southie and Roxbury and Mattapan, which used to be considered a part of Dorchester until fairly recently. Is the Franklin Park Zoo part of Dorchester? Some say yes, some say no. I’ll side with yes.
If you go past the active zoo on a back trail through the woods to the southwest, you will come across some abandoned cages far removed from the main gate. There are neglected, concrete habitats, pits ringed with spikes, and a stepped, granite plaza overgrown with weeds and litter. What animals were housed here? I don’t know, but I am pretty sure the main pen held bears. There is a bas relief of two bears flanking the city seal set in the wall of the main pen. Though posed to seem stately, they are lumbering, awkward creatures, carved almost as large as life.
Is it appropriate to superimpose the likeness of a bulky, inarticulate creature of intimidating power flanking the symbol of what is supposed to be the most enlightened city in United States, the Cradle of Liberty, the Athens of America? Sure. This is a democracy.
Four. The puddingstone on Quincy Street that protects Fernald Terrace is the most majestically shaped piece of puddingstone in all of Boston. Whether approaching from downhill or uphill, from Columbia Road or from Bowdoin Street, this puddingstone rears out of the ground like the barnacled humpback of an ancient leviathan cresting in stopped motion as it makes a tectonic journey so lengthy it seems still to a human observer. I pass this stone often, zipping by on a motorcycle or on a bicycle, sometimes in a car, sometimes on foot. It never fails to humble me and define this neighborhood. Quincy Street is a typical street and Fernald Terrace is a tidy cul-de-sac lined with regular-seeming homes with nothing in particular about them. They are special though, graced and guarded by a totem of Dorchester’s bedrock. The puddingstone that underlies the foundations of three deckers and duplexes rears out of the fertile earth. A rounded slab of millennial, sedimentary rock forms a protective barrier for Fernald Terrace and a natural monument that children scamper over and passing motorists admire. Nature, in the rough and at its most raw-boned is present and exposed. Boston and Dorchester are not only human creations. They have had a long prologue.
Five. Between Columbia Road and Blue Hill Avenue, along Quincy Street, is more territory that may be Dorchester or it may be Roxbury. In the end, does it matter? If you ask the people who live there, they’ll tell you it’s Dorchester, and anyone one who is Dorchester by Choice (DBC) is okay by me. In an infinite list of good things, Ma Siss’s place ranks as fifth from the top. Not a bad ranking when you consider the Dot Tavern ranks #477 no matter how fond I am of it.
I admit I know two things about Ma Siss’s Place. It was featured in a series of articles about it in the Boston Globe and that series of articles is one of the few things that has stuck out of all the fluff I’ve read stuffed between the Globe’s pages. The other thing I know is that despite its scruffy appearance, Ma Siss’s mission is vital to this well worn, humdrum part of the city. Change is the only constant in a living metropolis and polyglot Dorchester undergoes a perpetual, quiet revolution.
There is an outdoor Buddhist shrine behind the Field’s Corner library and it represents some of Dorchester’s cultural diversity. It is exotic and eye-catching. Ma Siss’s Place and the church with which it shares space in a converted garage, is just as exotic to some people though it lacks much aesthetic allure. Its role in the community isn’t to be pretty, however. Its role is to nurture the soul of its surroundings. Its role is to add to the well being of anyone who is hungry either in body or spirit. Its role is to make Dorchester more livable, through one small act after another, out of the limelight on the all but invisible corner of Quincy Street and Baker Avenue. It is the little things and the people who do them that make Dorchester good.
Here are a few other people who ADORE-chester! A kaleidoscope of views:
Monday, August 24, 2009
Size matters
Look Stubby, I know you've got talent but sometimes size matters. Look at Dorchester, Mass., that neighborhood that dwarfs the rest of Boston like a pot belly supported by spindly legs. Square miles more vast than other Boston neighborhoods, with a bigger, more diverse population that would win a a tug-o-war if Dorchester's horde held one end of the rope opposite any other part of Boston, Dorchester can dot any other part of ye olde Beane Towne's eye.
Size matters. It takes many cells to make a body. The Dot's got 'em with some to spare. That's the white count (WBCs, are what we call this in the medical trade). Dorchester is immune to infection or contamination. Boston is a city with a egg head, a pencil neck and protected pockets. The city is ham-handed with two left feet, a glass jaw, a bum wing, a gimp, crossed-eyed, and mumble-tongued. Not in Dorchester though. In Dorchester, loopy thinking gets left at the Andrew gate's turn style. There's a collection box and when that box is full, all the fool notions get carried back inbound, special delivery, COD, return to sender. Thanks but no thanks, bub, we've got enough hubbub without your back-biting folderol.
Boston also has a soul, a vast, various, glorious sense of hope that isn't defined by circumstance, race, situation, prospect, or education. This is the Cradle of Liberty, after all. You can earn every degree from one of Boston's colleges and not know anything about how the city works at its most intimate level. Traffic flows through the streets like sustaining blood through arteries. The outer neighborhoods are as well supplied as the core, most often more so. The salt of the earth isn't paved over or hemmed in. It lies exposed on plains, whether in Jamaica or Newmarket, or on the expansive spread of the beautiful Dot. Puddingstone forms the bedrock of Boston, honest Roxbury puddingstone, the kind that rears out the ground in Franklin Park and Dorchester Park and in West Roxbury and Hyde Park.
Boston has heart and that heart beats forcefully in Dorchester. Sometimes bigger is better. Sometimes bigger is best. That's the case in Boston. The biggest neighborhood is best. That's Dorchester...Dorchester, Mass. If you never forget it, you'll never regret it.
And Stubby, I know you got your nickname because you lost a few fingers while working the docks. No hard feelings, pal. Thanks for taking one for Boston Harbor's commerce. Thanks for living in Dorchester. It wouldn't be the same without you. In Dorchester, everyone counts.
Size matters. It takes many cells to make a body. The Dot's got 'em with some to spare. That's the white count (WBCs, are what we call this in the medical trade). Dorchester is immune to infection or contamination. Boston is a city with a egg head, a pencil neck and protected pockets. The city is ham-handed with two left feet, a glass jaw, a bum wing, a gimp, crossed-eyed, and mumble-tongued. Not in Dorchester though. In Dorchester, loopy thinking gets left at the Andrew gate's turn style. There's a collection box and when that box is full, all the fool notions get carried back inbound, special delivery, COD, return to sender. Thanks but no thanks, bub, we've got enough hubbub without your back-biting folderol.
Boston also has a soul, a vast, various, glorious sense of hope that isn't defined by circumstance, race, situation, prospect, or education. This is the Cradle of Liberty, after all. You can earn every degree from one of Boston's colleges and not know anything about how the city works at its most intimate level. Traffic flows through the streets like sustaining blood through arteries. The outer neighborhoods are as well supplied as the core, most often more so. The salt of the earth isn't paved over or hemmed in. It lies exposed on plains, whether in Jamaica or Newmarket, or on the expansive spread of the beautiful Dot. Puddingstone forms the bedrock of Boston, honest Roxbury puddingstone, the kind that rears out the ground in Franklin Park and Dorchester Park and in West Roxbury and Hyde Park.
Boston has heart and that heart beats forcefully in Dorchester. Sometimes bigger is better. Sometimes bigger is best. That's the case in Boston. The biggest neighborhood is best. That's Dorchester...Dorchester, Mass. If you never forget it, you'll never regret it.
And Stubby, I know you got your nickname because you lost a few fingers while working the docks. No hard feelings, pal. Thanks for taking one for Boston Harbor's commerce. Thanks for living in Dorchester. It wouldn't be the same without you. In Dorchester, everyone counts.
Saturday, August 22, 2009
Post Number 496
It was on April 20, 2006 that the Dot Matrix got it's start, under its original, eponymous title "Whalehead King." The first post, full of Whitmanesque bombast, is here. This esssay today, was originally going to be entry number 495, but impulsive events transpired to make this number 496, not that I work on much of a schedule. I start with a rough idea every evening and then just write, without outlines or without really knowing how things are going to end or what ground will be covered from start to finish. All I know when I sit down is the subject, usually Dorchester, Mass. What you get here is pure improvisation. Call it jazz if you will. Some people call it balderdash. Who am I to judge? I'm the creator, not the critic.
I don't really know what a blog is beyond being a "web log," some kind of online journal that other people can access. Until very recently, I would never have spoken in the first person, if I appeared at all. When I did appear, it was in the third person as Whalehead King spelled out, no 'the'. King is my last name, not an honorific. I rule nothing beyond the boundaries of my own skin. I always understood a blog as being an online diary and I don't find my day-to-day existence particularly interesting and I am not a diary keeper. If I can't remember something, it probably wasn't worth writing down to begin with. This is intended as a record not of my life, but of where I live and what I see. There will never be a mention of medical complaints.
Originally, I didn't think of this site as a journal so much as a repository of stories, works in progress, perhaps, about my surroundings, some more grounded in fact than others, but all of them built around a kernel of truth. Even if Dorchester wasn't founded by Atlanteans, the 'Dot Pot' is a fact of cryptoarcheology and the Dot is still a marvellous place with a storied history worth investigating. If you want the hard facts, Dorchester has a newspaper, the Dorchester Reporter, which I have lauded previously as the best source of news in the neighborhood. I tried to subscribe to the paper edition once but it involved an email that was apparently lost in the shuffle, so I read it online or from the convenience store. Nothing beats the hard copy because you can miss some things when it is all Internet-based. Think about signing up for USPS delivery. It's worth it. In fact, since my mail delivery fell through, I missed this tidbit that explained Dorchester's proper boundaries.
I've recently begun to include a few more Boston-wide stories, always trying tie them into my theme that Dorchester is good, a microcosm of the larger city and an irreplacable part of its fabric. I've introduced the pronoun 'I' with some misgivings. After all, you, the reader, is already getting a biased view of things. Do I need to inject my personality any more? I am already the filter and the conduit through which this rosy colored information is being delivered? The Matrix is becoming more 'bloggy' and less 'Dotty.' I'm not sure this is a good thing.
The truth is, I don't spend as much as my time as I would like in Dorchester. I work a day job in another part of the city, for instance, and that takes up a big chunk of my daily experience. Though I do as much of my shopping in Dorchester as I can, there are some things I have to take the inbound Red or the Green or Blue or Orange lines to get. Or my bicycle, or my motorcycle when I have to go to Quincy (at which I say "Shame on Boston!"). After two years of mining the Dot, my daily life has left me a bit bereft of newly authentic Dot experiences. Instead of being the "Dot Matrix," this blog will be, by default, more 'bloggy' and become more of a "Whalehead Matrix." I'm not convinced that needs to happen. The answer is for me to spend more time in Dorchester, which I am happy to do...the people are a cut above, the culture is deep and vibrant, the scenery can make a curmudgeon weep at its unsurpassed beauty. There are, however, only so many hours in a day.
Dorchester is the biggest and best part of Boston, hands-down, no doubt about it. I've been to other parts. They're good. All of Boston is good, but if you can have filet mignon for the price of showing up, you don't order the chuck wagon steak they serve in Fanuiel Hall. I was in Fanueil Hall this morning. A roast beef sandwich cost $7.99. I'd rather take the Blue Line to Royal Roast Beef in Eastie. I have yet to find a good, reasonable roast beef sandwich in Dorchester.
I don't really know what a blog is beyond being a "web log," some kind of online journal that other people can access. Until very recently, I would never have spoken in the first person, if I appeared at all. When I did appear, it was in the third person as Whalehead King spelled out, no 'the'. King is my last name, not an honorific. I rule nothing beyond the boundaries of my own skin. I always understood a blog as being an online diary and I don't find my day-to-day existence particularly interesting and I am not a diary keeper. If I can't remember something, it probably wasn't worth writing down to begin with. This is intended as a record not of my life, but of where I live and what I see. There will never be a mention of medical complaints.
Originally, I didn't think of this site as a journal so much as a repository of stories, works in progress, perhaps, about my surroundings, some more grounded in fact than others, but all of them built around a kernel of truth. Even if Dorchester wasn't founded by Atlanteans, the 'Dot Pot' is a fact of cryptoarcheology and the Dot is still a marvellous place with a storied history worth investigating. If you want the hard facts, Dorchester has a newspaper, the Dorchester Reporter, which I have lauded previously as the best source of news in the neighborhood. I tried to subscribe to the paper edition once but it involved an email that was apparently lost in the shuffle, so I read it online or from the convenience store. Nothing beats the hard copy because you can miss some things when it is all Internet-based. Think about signing up for USPS delivery. It's worth it. In fact, since my mail delivery fell through, I missed this tidbit that explained Dorchester's proper boundaries.
I've recently begun to include a few more Boston-wide stories, always trying tie them into my theme that Dorchester is good, a microcosm of the larger city and an irreplacable part of its fabric. I've introduced the pronoun 'I' with some misgivings. After all, you, the reader, is already getting a biased view of things. Do I need to inject my personality any more? I am already the filter and the conduit through which this rosy colored information is being delivered? The Matrix is becoming more 'bloggy' and less 'Dotty.' I'm not sure this is a good thing.
The truth is, I don't spend as much as my time as I would like in Dorchester. I work a day job in another part of the city, for instance, and that takes up a big chunk of my daily experience. Though I do as much of my shopping in Dorchester as I can, there are some things I have to take the inbound Red or the Green or Blue or Orange lines to get. Or my bicycle, or my motorcycle when I have to go to Quincy (at which I say "Shame on Boston!"). After two years of mining the Dot, my daily life has left me a bit bereft of newly authentic Dot experiences. Instead of being the "Dot Matrix," this blog will be, by default, more 'bloggy' and become more of a "Whalehead Matrix." I'm not convinced that needs to happen. The answer is for me to spend more time in Dorchester, which I am happy to do...the people are a cut above, the culture is deep and vibrant, the scenery can make a curmudgeon weep at its unsurpassed beauty. There are, however, only so many hours in a day.
Dorchester is the biggest and best part of Boston, hands-down, no doubt about it. I've been to other parts. They're good. All of Boston is good, but if you can have filet mignon for the price of showing up, you don't order the chuck wagon steak they serve in Fanuiel Hall. I was in Fanueil Hall this morning. A roast beef sandwich cost $7.99. I'd rather take the Blue Line to Royal Roast Beef in Eastie. I have yet to find a good, reasonable roast beef sandwich in Dorchester.
Saturday, July 04, 2009
History of the Dottoman Empire (part VI)
The Icelandic Dotland Saga (c. 1245) tells the story of Bjarni Blood-Axe Sturlnorlasson and his troop of intrepid adventurers who ventured to meet Leif Erikson in Vinland but were blown off course to a place Bjarni Blood-Axe called Dotland. They seem to have landed where the English did a few centuries later, at Savin Hill, which has always been a nice place for newcomers.
Bjarni and his band encountered some of the locals, whom they called skrylings rather than Massachusett and, hungry for fresh meat, they engaged in a little trading. They traded deer haunches for blocks of good Greenlandic cheese they had picked up en route. The Native Americans, being strangers to cows and dairy products, were lactose intolerant. They took their cheeses back to the village and feasted on this new food and woke up the next morning with aching bellies and other, unpleasant digestive symptoms.
After sharpening up their arrowheads and stocking their quivers they made their way to Malibu Beach where Bjarni had beached his long boat (named "Wave-biter" by the way) and drove the vikings from the shores of Dorchester. They were the only Europeans to visit Dorchester until the good ship Mary and John arrived a few centuries later, in 1630 on this very same shore.
What proof do we have that the Dotland Saga contains even a smidgeon of truth? In 1888 a shiny Icelandic dime was recovered from where it was wedged between some puddingstone boulders on Savin Hill. It is another crypto-artifact along the lines of the Dorchester Pot that can only be explained by having been put there by these travellers from a dimly remembered past.
Bjarni and his band encountered some of the locals, whom they called skrylings rather than Massachusett and, hungry for fresh meat, they engaged in a little trading. They traded deer haunches for blocks of good Greenlandic cheese they had picked up en route. The Native Americans, being strangers to cows and dairy products, were lactose intolerant. They took their cheeses back to the village and feasted on this new food and woke up the next morning with aching bellies and other, unpleasant digestive symptoms.
After sharpening up their arrowheads and stocking their quivers they made their way to Malibu Beach where Bjarni had beached his long boat (named "Wave-biter" by the way) and drove the vikings from the shores of Dorchester. They were the only Europeans to visit Dorchester until the good ship Mary and John arrived a few centuries later, in 1630 on this very same shore.
What proof do we have that the Dotland Saga contains even a smidgeon of truth? In 1888 a shiny Icelandic dime was recovered from where it was wedged between some puddingstone boulders on Savin Hill. It is another crypto-artifact along the lines of the Dorchester Pot that can only be explained by having been put there by these travellers from a dimly remembered past.
Friday, July 03, 2009
History of the Dottoman Empire (part V)
When the moon collides with the sun, Swiss cheese will rain down in Dorchester Bay to be washed up in man-sized chunks on Savin Hill Beach, Malibu Beach, Tenean Beach, and up the mouth of the Neponset River. The discombobulated chunks of cheese will be sliced into layers for spukies 'n' pizza. The price for submarine sandwiches will drop like a stone tossed off the shore of Victory Park.
An old Dorchester myth-story: some day the moon will hit the sun a little after mid-day when the fog is thick and dull. When that happens Beacon Hill will collapse, one side into the Charles River and the other side in a mudslide slurry race down Milk Street to bury the aquarium. Dorchester, of course, will emerge from the cataclysm unscathed, as it usually does from events beyond its control.
Everything stays the same in Dorchester, Mass, the 'Sick Man of Boston.' Ague and catarrh don't bother this part of town one bit. It is used to aches and grippe and gout. It gets along okay with neither a limp nor a hiccup. It will take more than a solar collision to shut this old town down for good eternity. People have lived in Dorchester since time immemorial. They've made a good run of it too. They'll continue their track record until history's end. The sun shines in Dorchester, Mass. It shines brightly like a newly minted penny.
Your thoughts in Dorchester are like dimes rained down from Heaven. Ten of them will buy you a newpaper or a a box of candied peanuts. Three hundred thousand can lease you an apartment for year in the nieghborhood.
An old Dorchester myth-story: some day the moon will hit the sun a little after mid-day when the fog is thick and dull. When that happens Beacon Hill will collapse, one side into the Charles River and the other side in a mudslide slurry race down Milk Street to bury the aquarium. Dorchester, of course, will emerge from the cataclysm unscathed, as it usually does from events beyond its control.
Everything stays the same in Dorchester, Mass, the 'Sick Man of Boston.' Ague and catarrh don't bother this part of town one bit. It is used to aches and grippe and gout. It gets along okay with neither a limp nor a hiccup. It will take more than a solar collision to shut this old town down for good eternity. People have lived in Dorchester since time immemorial. They've made a good run of it too. They'll continue their track record until history's end. The sun shines in Dorchester, Mass. It shines brightly like a newly minted penny.
Your thoughts in Dorchester are like dimes rained down from Heaven. Ten of them will buy you a newpaper or a a box of candied peanuts. Three hundred thousand can lease you an apartment for year in the nieghborhood.
Thursday, May 21, 2009
History of the Dottoman Empire (part IV)
The eminent author and crackpot Charles Fort kept the memory of the Dorchester Urn alive, but the ever reliable Wikipedia is doing its part in the digital age. The Wikipedia scribes get some of the jargon, the date, and some of the details wrong in their entry on what they call the Dorchester Pot, but the story is essentially the same, and their article puts a date to the artifact. It is assumed to be 100,000 years old. This would be about the time the first Atlanteans landed on Dorchester's shores, much like the Pilgrims a few millennia after them.
When the minor continent from which the Atlantic Ocean gets its name sunk beneath the waves, its people scattered across the face of the globe. Massachusetts happened to be nearby so a good number of these evacuees ended up in Dorchester. Their traces remain but they are slight except for those who pay close attention.
The Dorchester Pot, or the Dot Pot as its known in Historical Society circles, is the most concrete piece of evidence that ancient civilizations existed in Dorchester proper. It was a sort of jar or urn made of unknown metal that was blasted out of a ledge of solid puddingstone. It was an out-of-place artifact which no one expected to find enclosed in Dorchester's bedrock. People had heretofore assumed that only savages and wildlife lived off Dorchester's landscape before the English arrived. Savages and wild life still co-exist in the Dottoman Empire alongside the highest hanging fruits of an enlightened, sophisticated, urban culture. There is no reason to suspect things were different in the past.
If you go down to the shore at Port Norfolk and slip through the gap in the chain link fence that separates this no-man's land from the rest of the Dot, you will find evidence that heroic, burly deeds were performed in a place that seems like a sleepy retirement nook today. The foundations of immense concrete works and rusted tools litter the shoreline. I witnessed a few codgers with their metal detectors walking methodically over the dirt piles and wind-blown trash. I asked them why they were searching for treasure here.
One of them told me, "This land holds secrets. Sometimes its a bottle cap, sometimes its a zinc nail from 1880. Other times, its something nobody can explain. I once dug up a thingamabob that I couldn't figure out what it was for the life of me. I sold it to an MIT professor who claimed I had dug up the most perfect example of a perpetural motion machine he had ever seen. He paid me 65 bucks! That's why I keep coming here every week."
Dorchester's soil holds many secrets.
When the minor continent from which the Atlantic Ocean gets its name sunk beneath the waves, its people scattered across the face of the globe. Massachusetts happened to be nearby so a good number of these evacuees ended up in Dorchester. Their traces remain but they are slight except for those who pay close attention.
The Dorchester Pot, or the Dot Pot as its known in Historical Society circles, is the most concrete piece of evidence that ancient civilizations existed in Dorchester proper. It was a sort of jar or urn made of unknown metal that was blasted out of a ledge of solid puddingstone. It was an out-of-place artifact which no one expected to find enclosed in Dorchester's bedrock. People had heretofore assumed that only savages and wildlife lived off Dorchester's landscape before the English arrived. Savages and wild life still co-exist in the Dottoman Empire alongside the highest hanging fruits of an enlightened, sophisticated, urban culture. There is no reason to suspect things were different in the past.
If you go down to the shore at Port Norfolk and slip through the gap in the chain link fence that separates this no-man's land from the rest of the Dot, you will find evidence that heroic, burly deeds were performed in a place that seems like a sleepy retirement nook today. The foundations of immense concrete works and rusted tools litter the shoreline. I witnessed a few codgers with their metal detectors walking methodically over the dirt piles and wind-blown trash. I asked them why they were searching for treasure here.
One of them told me, "This land holds secrets. Sometimes its a bottle cap, sometimes its a zinc nail from 1880. Other times, its something nobody can explain. I once dug up a thingamabob that I couldn't figure out what it was for the life of me. I sold it to an MIT professor who claimed I had dug up the most perfect example of a perpetural motion machine he had ever seen. He paid me 65 bucks! That's why I keep coming here every week."
Dorchester's soil holds many secrets.
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
History of the Dottoman Empire (part III)
On page 130 in "The Book of the Damned" by Charles Fort, is the report of a strange vessel of unidentified metal that was blasted out of a piece of solid rock. This happened in June, 1851. It was a bell-shaped vessel with silver, floral inlays. The editor of Scientific American attributed the workmanship to Tubal Cain, the first inhabitant of Dorchester, Mass.
The role Tubal Cain played in early recorded Dottoman history will be discussed later. We are only in Chapter Three of our history and it is already apparent that citizens inhabited the part of Boston we call Dorchester long before Euroamerican bias declared the area a tabula rasa. In fact, the Dottoman Empire has a long prologue that has been erased and written over. The palimpsest still shows through though and makes itself felt.
What was the Dorchester Urn that was discovered while a farmer was leveling some ledge on his land with dynamite? Some crypto-archaeologists posit that it was a relic left behind by Atlantean wanderers. Ignatius Donnelly was certainly of that opinion. We tend to side with the experts who have studied these facts more intently than we have.
The Dorchester Urn has disappeared, probably sold on the black market for antiquities. It may rest in Steve Job's private gallery. It may reside in the collection of an anonymous, Hong Kong billionaire for him to fondle in his penthouse and chortle while he scoffs at the ignorance of Western antiquarians who do not know he holds a premier piece of treasure in his trove. It may be locked up in the same vault as the antediluvian statuettes of bipedal, giant periwinkles kept secret by the Dorchester Historical Society. We choose not to speculate. All we can say is that eye witnesses described this marvellous artifact just after it was found.
Interestingly, the term "Dorchester Urn" is still used in the funerary business. The current model doesn't resemble the description in the Book of the Damned. The design was simplified to keep expenses down for mass production, but this bit of Dorchester history lives on wherever cremated people choose to bequeath their ashes in style.
Astute readers will note that we have dropped the word "brief" from the title of this history. It's going to be a long slog folks, but an informative one. Bear with us. We will be leaving the realm of legend and old wives' tales in a few weeks. As for tomorrow, part IV is coming...
The role Tubal Cain played in early recorded Dottoman history will be discussed later. We are only in Chapter Three of our history and it is already apparent that citizens inhabited the part of Boston we call Dorchester long before Euroamerican bias declared the area a tabula rasa. In fact, the Dottoman Empire has a long prologue that has been erased and written over. The palimpsest still shows through though and makes itself felt.
What was the Dorchester Urn that was discovered while a farmer was leveling some ledge on his land with dynamite? Some crypto-archaeologists posit that it was a relic left behind by Atlantean wanderers. Ignatius Donnelly was certainly of that opinion. We tend to side with the experts who have studied these facts more intently than we have.
The Dorchester Urn has disappeared, probably sold on the black market for antiquities. It may rest in Steve Job's private gallery. It may reside in the collection of an anonymous, Hong Kong billionaire for him to fondle in his penthouse and chortle while he scoffs at the ignorance of Western antiquarians who do not know he holds a premier piece of treasure in his trove. It may be locked up in the same vault as the antediluvian statuettes of bipedal, giant periwinkles kept secret by the Dorchester Historical Society. We choose not to speculate. All we can say is that eye witnesses described this marvellous artifact just after it was found.
Interestingly, the term "Dorchester Urn" is still used in the funerary business. The current model doesn't resemble the description in the Book of the Damned. The design was simplified to keep expenses down for mass production, but this bit of Dorchester history lives on wherever cremated people choose to bequeath their ashes in style.
Astute readers will note that we have dropped the word "brief" from the title of this history. It's going to be a long slog folks, but an informative one. Bear with us. We will be leaving the realm of legend and old wives' tales in a few weeks. As for tomorrow, part IV is coming...
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
A brief history of the Dottoman Empire (part II)
In the antediluvian era before Dorchester was settled by members of the Massachuset tribe, it was inhabited by legendary faerie folk. According to legend and scanty available evidence a third, distinct animal roamed these shores and they continue to live on in the collective subconscious as well as, more benignly, on the beaches. Their identity is shrouded in folklore and legend but, by triangulating what little remains of their presence, scholars have drawn the following conclusions...
Anyone who has walked the intertidal zones along Malibu Beach or Savin Hill Beach or Tenean Beach or Clam Point or Port Norfolk or along the Neponset estuary knows that periwinkles live in abundance along the shore of what we now call Dorchester. Early English settlers were frightened by indigenous tales of monsters that roamed the landscape. These weren't the wee folk that lived in amiable co-existence with the native human tribes, rather, they were out-sized slimy things that crept through the night, swallowing whole households without regard for propriety or custom. They were the Shug N'uraugunth.
According to contemporary descriptions the Shug N'uraugunth resembled giant periwinkles with legs. They were said to be taller than the old growth trees that Englishmen found when they landed on Dorchester's shores. That's right: giant periwinkles with legs, and with protruding eye stalks too that were as thick as and longer than a tall man's arm. These creatures shambled through idyllic terrain, crushing and absorbing everything in their path. They had eyes, but if something was in their way they continued their momentum without noticing, leaving slimy trails of splintered wood, dead animals, dead people and extinguished fires in their wake. They had legs but they dragged long slime-encrusted tails behind them.
The colonists took these tales to be true. Increase Mather, Cotton's father, believed this was proof that, indeed, the Pilgrims had landed in Satan's garden and their mission was one fraught with peril. There are no eye-witness accounts of the Shug N'uraugunth, only furtive diary entries relating what the colonists had been told by the natives, who had been told that by the wee faeries.
A few puddingstone carvings survive that are preserved by the Dorchester Historical Society in a locked vault at an undisclosed location that is not their headquarters on Boston Street. Few people have been allowed to view these statuettes since spreading folklore and terror isn't part of the Society's mission, but reports state that they resemble periwinkles supported by two, stumpy, ankle-less legs.
Unsurprisingly, the author H.P. Lovecraft was interested in these tales and he paid many visits to Dorchester to investigate their validity. Whether he believed them or not is a matter of speculation, but they seem to have served as inspiration for a number of his stories.
Today, if you walk the shore of Malibu Beach at low tide, you will find the sand spiked with innumerable periwinkles, all of them no longer than the first joint of your finger. The periwinkle is a mollusk with a conical, spiral shell that seals itself into its portable home by use of a bony plate the size and thickness of a baby's fingernail. If you look closely at this plate, you'll see that it bears two parallel ridges. People around Dorchester say these are the vestigial traces of the Shug Nuruagunth's femur and tibia.
Graduate students at MIT are sequencing periwinkle DNA as we write this. This evolutionary mystery may finally be laid to rest.
Anyone who has walked the intertidal zones along Malibu Beach or Savin Hill Beach or Tenean Beach or Clam Point or Port Norfolk or along the Neponset estuary knows that periwinkles live in abundance along the shore of what we now call Dorchester. Early English settlers were frightened by indigenous tales of monsters that roamed the landscape. These weren't the wee folk that lived in amiable co-existence with the native human tribes, rather, they were out-sized slimy things that crept through the night, swallowing whole households without regard for propriety or custom. They were the Shug N'uraugunth.
According to contemporary descriptions the Shug N'uraugunth resembled giant periwinkles with legs. They were said to be taller than the old growth trees that Englishmen found when they landed on Dorchester's shores. That's right: giant periwinkles with legs, and with protruding eye stalks too that were as thick as and longer than a tall man's arm. These creatures shambled through idyllic terrain, crushing and absorbing everything in their path. They had eyes, but if something was in their way they continued their momentum without noticing, leaving slimy trails of splintered wood, dead animals, dead people and extinguished fires in their wake. They had legs but they dragged long slime-encrusted tails behind them.
The colonists took these tales to be true. Increase Mather, Cotton's father, believed this was proof that, indeed, the Pilgrims had landed in Satan's garden and their mission was one fraught with peril. There are no eye-witness accounts of the Shug N'uraugunth, only furtive diary entries relating what the colonists had been told by the natives, who had been told that by the wee faeries.
A few puddingstone carvings survive that are preserved by the Dorchester Historical Society in a locked vault at an undisclosed location that is not their headquarters on Boston Street. Few people have been allowed to view these statuettes since spreading folklore and terror isn't part of the Society's mission, but reports state that they resemble periwinkles supported by two, stumpy, ankle-less legs.
Unsurprisingly, the author H.P. Lovecraft was interested in these tales and he paid many visits to Dorchester to investigate their validity. Whether he believed them or not is a matter of speculation, but they seem to have served as inspiration for a number of his stories.
Today, if you walk the shore of Malibu Beach at low tide, you will find the sand spiked with innumerable periwinkles, all of them no longer than the first joint of your finger. The periwinkle is a mollusk with a conical, spiral shell that seals itself into its portable home by use of a bony plate the size and thickness of a baby's fingernail. If you look closely at this plate, you'll see that it bears two parallel ridges. People around Dorchester say these are the vestigial traces of the Shug Nuruagunth's femur and tibia.
Graduate students at MIT are sequencing periwinkle DNA as we write this. This evolutionary mystery may finally be laid to rest.
Monday, May 18, 2009
A brief history of the Dottoman Empire (part I)
Where's the best place to begin a sprawling epic? In the hazy mists of long-forgotten time, of course. This is the easy part. The innuendo, rumors and crackpot theories that pass for the next-best-thing to truth are our only reliable sources detailing Dorchester's origins. Believe them or not, this is what we have to work with today. If these tales seem likely, they probably are. If you leave skeptical, you are forgiven. As our history approaches the present more verifiable facts and documented observations will make up the narrative, but in the beginning we deal with prehistory, before anything was written down. All that survives is vestigial memory of the oral version recited around campfires, open hearths and Franklin stoves...
God set a milkweed pod adrift on the Atlantic and it floated into Boston Harbor. When it hit land, it stuck, and Dorchester was formed. The feathery milkweed seeds grew into trees and the seeds at their roots became the rocks that underlie Dorchester. The milkweed pod sunk in the surf and the seeds gathered in the mud and this where puddingstone comes from. Bees visited the flowering trees and this is why Dorchester is sometimes called the land of milk and honey.
No people lived in this newly made Dorchester but faerie folk moved in as soon as the ground was stable. They gathered rocks into boulders and they carved the landscape into hills and spreading fields. This part of Boston, like the others, has always been a place of rearranging terrain. It is a theme revisited again and again. The faeries weren't tall, and this is why Mount Bowdoin isn't much of a mountain to people who are familiar with the real thing.
One night a star fell out of the sky and it landed on what the wee faerie folk called Rock Hill. They took it as a sign and since that day, even though the wee folk are forgotten, this is a sacred place in the neighborhood. Its summit is preserved as it has been for millenia. No house stands on it and Rock Hill has never been razed to fill the marshland to its east. Rock Hill is, in fact, the spot where great changes started in Dorchester, but that is meat for another chapter.
When the first human family arrived in what is now called Dorchester, the wee folk were suspicious but welcoming enough. They had good manners though they knew these taller people would soon have the run of the place. For many generations, they shared the land and its resources amiably. The faeries kept to the woods and the shadows while the taller people kept to the shore and the daylight most of the time. It was a peaceable arrangement and both parties honored and assisted the other.
God set a milkweed pod adrift on the Atlantic and it floated into Boston Harbor. When it hit land, it stuck, and Dorchester was formed. The feathery milkweed seeds grew into trees and the seeds at their roots became the rocks that underlie Dorchester. The milkweed pod sunk in the surf and the seeds gathered in the mud and this where puddingstone comes from. Bees visited the flowering trees and this is why Dorchester is sometimes called the land of milk and honey.
No people lived in this newly made Dorchester but faerie folk moved in as soon as the ground was stable. They gathered rocks into boulders and they carved the landscape into hills and spreading fields. This part of Boston, like the others, has always been a place of rearranging terrain. It is a theme revisited again and again. The faeries weren't tall, and this is why Mount Bowdoin isn't much of a mountain to people who are familiar with the real thing.
One night a star fell out of the sky and it landed on what the wee faerie folk called Rock Hill. They took it as a sign and since that day, even though the wee folk are forgotten, this is a sacred place in the neighborhood. Its summit is preserved as it has been for millenia. No house stands on it and Rock Hill has never been razed to fill the marshland to its east. Rock Hill is, in fact, the spot where great changes started in Dorchester, but that is meat for another chapter.
When the first human family arrived in what is now called Dorchester, the wee folk were suspicious but welcoming enough. They had good manners though they knew these taller people would soon have the run of the place. For many generations, they shared the land and its resources amiably. The faeries kept to the woods and the shadows while the taller people kept to the shore and the daylight most of the time. It was a peaceable arrangement and both parties honored and assisted the other.
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