Religion, politics and Satchmo

St. Joseph Cemetery, Central City. 

I was trying to find the "Vieux Point" column from last week's Thursday Times-Picayne but their website is being uncooperative.  Allow me to summarize.

It was about the Jazz Mass at St. Augustine Church in Treme during the Satchmo Summerfest.  I was there.  It was a great and uplifting ceremony with local musicians, the church's regular choir, the priest who delivered a relevant and thoughtful sermon, an august ceremony, and a moving celebration of communion.  After that was done the priest ceded the floor to politicians and the Summerfest coordinator.  That killed the celebration and the spirit why we were all gathered that Sunday morning.

The main speaker was a council member, a woman in her fifties.  I took it that she was the head of the City Council but I may be wrong.  She spoke at length about Summerfest and how she had attended all the jazz masses from the beginning and how important the event was to the city.  Then she introduced the newly elected council member representing the district, a younger woman of the same mold who had sat with her young daughter in the VIP pew.  The VIPs were the council members, a rector, and the priest when he squeezed into an available seat while the politicians were speaking.  The younger council member read a proclamation from the City Council and recognized the organizer of this year's Summerfest as well as a former organizer.  They posed at the pulpit for pictures.  I may have some details wrong.  I tried to erase it from my memory so as not to spoil the otherwise positive impression of celebration and piety.

The whole display was very inappropriate for a time of worship.  It would have been better performed on one of the stages.  It should have been.  Instead of being a mass in the key of Armstrong and Jesus, it was co-opted by grandstanding hacks.  No way to end a religious service.  

Politics have their place but so does life.  Life encompasses more than politics and politics and backslapping don't belong in church no matter what the occasion.  Maybe this happens every year, a tradition.  It should stop.  Hymns praising the eternal have no truck with the transient fortunes of politicians or demagogues or advancing careers built on promises that are often left unfulfilled.  The tail end speakers must have been pleased to find themselves in front of their captive audience.  I found the whole thing distasteful.  

It's a shame.  The priest handled the ceremony well and brought dignity to the proceedings, keeping enthusiasm in check and respect in place for the important aspects of the service.  He commanded attention and reverence for the miracles and mysteries implicit and evident in the mass.  While he elicited charm and warmth, he never abandoned gravitas.  Too bad he gave up control at the end.  I'm not one to judge anyone's motives, which are always more complex than they seem, but the place for secular concerns belongs in the secular world.  If you want to congratulate a successful festival, do it at the festival grounds, not in a church after communion.

If you've still got last Thursday's Times-Picayune, fish it out.  I'm not the only one with this opinion. 

Pelican diet

A gulf menhaden

Pelicans, like many of the birds and larger fish in the Gulf survive off a diet that consists mostly of menhaden.  This is a small, oily fish full of tiny bones that fishermen disregard.  Because of the bones and the taste and the size, menhaden aren't considered food fit for humans.  Most fishermen will catch the menhaden in nets and then use them as chum to attract other fish.  These are small fishermen catching small fry.  There is another kind of fisherman who catches every single menhaden he can find for sale.

Omega Protein is the corporation that dominates the menhaden fishery.  As they boast, and rightly so perhaps, they use every single bit of this small fish.  They manufacture those omega-3 fish oil pills you find in health food stores.  They also grind up the fish for animal feed and pet food.  That chicken you eat was probably fattened, at least partly, on menhaden meal.  Mmmmm.

The data isn't yet in on how the menhaden stocks are faring in the current BP Gulf of Mexico oil spill fiasco.  This once plentiful fish will no doubt be affected, however, and not for the better.  Menhaden stocks are already at historic lows.  No matter how many oily pelicans are scrubbed clean with dish detergent, they will still need to eat.  The Gulf ecosystem will be in a shambles for years to come, the food chain disrupted.

Someone will devise some other feed for the factory farmed chickens.  Omega Protein may already be on the case.  That's not the main worry.  What about the pelicans?  They feed themselves and there won't be many fish for them to find.

If you are taking fish oil supplements, you may want to switch to eating tinned sardines from Morocco.  The pelicans will thank you if they survive this.

BP's tin ear

This week's New Yorker arrived yesterday and I spent this morning reading Patricia Marx's clever The BP "I Hate to Clean Up" Cookbook.  I especially enjoyed 'Chef Tony's' commentary accompanying each recipe. While I am not following this environmental crime very closely, it's hard to avoid being exposed to developments.  When the World Cup isn't on television in my usual haunts, the news is.  New Orleans news stations are rightly dominated by coverage of the Gulf oil spill and its ramifications.

What makes the New Yorker article so apt is that it demonstrates how ineptly BP is trying to whitewash this manmade disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.  The satire is so black that it's funny even if the company's actions are so deplorably depressing.

Imagine my surprise at the serendipity of today's article in the Times-Picayune about BP's rosy reportage of events along the Gulf Coast.  For the love of decency!  I understand the art of public relations is about swaying opinion to your side but this ham handed purple prose is as ugly as an infected, self-inflicted wound.  Patricia Marx has got nothing on the 'reporters' BP has in the field.  At least she was writing for a laugh.  The BP blogs are meant to be serious.  Frankly, Chef Tony's Fun Fact: "As far as can be determined, nobody has ever sustained permanent injury from a smell," tells me as much about how BP seems to feel about their culpability as the fact that "one bird rescued is one victory."  The latter was penned on June 20 by Paula Komar on the BP blog.

BP, you've got a lot more victories to win to make this right.  You are a company whose name is mud, no matter how you churn it.  It's going to take a long time to put this crime behind you, as long as it takes to restore the coast and the seafloor.  Own up to your malfeasance like a responsible citizen.  Only then will you be taken seriously.

...... On a lighter and more New Orleans specific note, this description of  St. Mary's Park appeared yesterday.

What's in a name?

If you look at the top of this page, you'll see the name of this blog is the Dot Matrix.  This is because I've been headquartered the last three years in Dorchester, Mass., the biggest and best of Boston's neighborhoods.  Dorchester is affectionately referred to as Dot by those who live there.  It is a pleasant shorthand turn of name.

It took awhile for me to change the name of the blog to Dot Matrix.  This originally started with the eponymous title Whalehead King, which was fitting enough since articles tended to emphasize the author's exploits tooling around New London, Conn. on a motor scooter.  After a few months, the Dot Matrix title took hold since the focus had changed more to the tessallations of a wide ranging, interwoven sub-unit of a major city.

I find myself in another major city, one far different from the one I left.  I'm not against changing the blog's name once again but I'm not sure what it should be.  Dot Matrix still works fine for me in the idea that my viewpoint is a dot in a wider weave and weft and woof that is New Orleans.  It may take a while before I settle on a masthead.  Nothing is broken but I can't resist fiddling.  A person shouldn't mess with perfection, but this blog is far from perfect.  After a week in New Orleans permanently (today is Day Eight) I am still getting my bearings.  Fools change a name where angels keep conservative?

While I am toying with new names to indicate my new direction, I haven't settled on a compass point yet.  Stay tuned.  Soon enough, ye olde Whalehead King will hit his stride and begin reporting his world as he encounters it: fresh off the griddle.  Until then, I'm afraid these posts will be noodling, stumbling voyages in discovering my surroundings.  I haven't written any gold for a few weeks.

Apologies for the thin gruel and thanks for checking in.  We guarantee shiny nuggets of interesting prose will be forthcoming.  Until then: stay tuned and thanks for showing up.

With a handshake,
WK

Help!!

I alluded yesterday to the fact that a lot of crime has been going on in Dot recently.  Allow me to recap via the headlines at Universal Hub over the past two days.  We have...

Something unpleasant discovered at Uphams Corner yesterday morning.

Of course Dot was represented in this 14 minute crime wave.

While no deaths occurred, someone lost a fingertip at Florian Hall.

Brawling at Ups and Downs.  Couldn't they have taken their disagreements to Quincy?

An armed holdup at the Happy Superette of all places!

A party house where the parties turn grisly.  Don't accept an invitation here.

This is the Dot news culled from just two days.  While this unpleasantness should be reported, can't someone provide some positive spin to what's going on in Boston's biggest neighborhood.  Dottie Hottie?  Social Butterfly? Help!

Sport life

Somedays you wish you were somewhere else, especially after a few days of Dorchester-strength rain.  It isn't even April yet.  These March showers have prompted some flowers to blooming, the rain and the mild weather for this time of year.

So what does today's illustration have to do with Dorchester?  Not much that I can figure except for the magazine's title and the second feature story.  Death is all around us, even in Spring.  If you keep up with  the local media you know quite a bit of crime has been committed hereabouts recently and not the usual victimless crimes either.  If any more bodies get found in basements, Dorchester's reputation may take a turn for the worse.  It was mildly horrifying/intriguing when the dog fight arena was discovered a few blocks from my house.  When dead men are found decomposing in the cellar, its not as humorous as in Arsenic and Old Lace.  

This isn't to say that Dot isn't home to its share of dotty aunts and eccentric uncles, its just that the killing going on doesn't involve poisoned tea.  Today's capital crimes are committed using bullets and knives.  C'mon criminals!  You're dealing with people not rampaging elephants! 

Thanks to Pulp o' the Day.

Is Gillette ripping Boston off?

Everyone says the cost of living is cheaper in the South and I thought I'd test that theory.  As everyone knows, Gillette's World Shaving Headquarters is located right at the base of South Boston.  You may not know this, but I live about a mile and a half from there in a straight line down Dot Ave.  Maybe it's two miles.  If I stop for traffic lights, it's five minutes by bicycle.

I went to the Rite Aid drug store on the corner of Savin Hill and Dorchester Avenues to price an eight-pack of Mach 3 razor blades.  As of March 13th the list price was $21.99.  Some people may think that's a bit steep, but Mach 3 employs the latest shaving technology, if you don't mind using the words 'shaving' and 'technology' in the same sentence.

I travelled 1360 miles as the airline flies to New Orleans to check up on the price of an eight-pack of Mach 3s there, among other things.  I went to a Rite Aid on Canal Street, on the corner of North Broad Street, store # 7262, on March 18th.  This is in Mid-City, a neighborhood reminiscent of Dorchester in New Orleanian terms.  The price of an eight-pack of Mach 3 blades there: $18.99.  A three dollar savings.

Does it really cost less to ship razor blades 1360 miles than it does couple of blocks?

So is Gillette ripping off Bostonians?  I don't know.  Maybe Rite Aid is ripping off Bostonians.  For all I know Massachusetts has some arcane shaving tax in effect.  I'll tell you this though, if you plan a few days ahead, you'll still get them cheaper at Amazon.  They'll only cost you $17.97 and will probably qualify for free shipping.  That's the price for Mach 3 Turbo, if you don't mind using the word 'turbo' in connection with shaving.

Bad weather for prostitution

It's not quite the solstice yet but winter has snapped into place in Dorchester, Mass.  Some people welcome the biting nip in the air while others, who enjoy being outside, dread the upcoming few months.  Some people don't have a choice; their office is out of doors.  The bitter cold has put a temporary halt to one of Dorchester's oldest professions after making chocolate.   That profession would be: making whoopee as a livelihood.

I am not going to try to glamorize the life of a streetwalker.  To be frank, it is no doubt a joyless job and I doubt many people would enter the field were it not the low entry skills required and the rather constant, inelastic demand.   Practitioners do not need an engineering degree to master the mechanics involved.   This really is a job in which showing up is the only critical qualification.  That said, winter is a bad time of year to advertise available services on the streets in person.

I am not going to name the streets I am referencing.  If you don't know them, the neighbors are just as happy not to have you driving slowly along them.  The police are well aware of where they can find a hooker in the dead of night.  In warm weather after the bars close until just after daybreak, you can find ladies of the evening strolling up and down the sidewalks, usually scantily dressed.  I wouldn't say they are a Dorchester fixture, but they are around, as they are in every city with insomniacs driving around looking for something to do.  Any port in a storm, I suppose. 

To cut off any snide assumptions, in warmer weather I am on a motorcycle which doesn't exactly have the room or the privacy of a van, and I don't carry a helmet for passengers.  In colder weather, I use a bicycle to generate my own heat.  I am crisscrossing Dorchester usually to pick up a coffee in Andrew Square at one of the few places open at 4:00 AM.  Being curious and in no particular hurry in the wee hours of the morning, I tend to take a circuitous route.  That's what good reporters do.

At 4:00 this morning no one was walking the streets, male or female, business person or common pedestrian.  It's just too damned cold.  If the last two years are any guide, vice will not be visible to insomniacs for the next few months.  At least it won't be obviously available to innocents such as myself.

Cocaine and Chips Ahoy

Dorchester made yesterday's New England in Brief column (third item down) in the Globe. In 2005 a Julian Street resident attempted to secret his stash of Class B substances in a Chips Ahoy package. Another example of crack detective work by Boston's finest resulted in a conviction and five to seven years in state prison.

While investigating a second floor residence, officers looking out the window noticed a package of Chips Ahoy in the snow outside. It was noteworthy because, as everyone knows, Dorchester is known far and wide for being litter-free. This raised suspicions and a thorough survey of the kitchen counter revealed an unopened cellophane internal wrapper full of what were clearly Chips Ahoy brand chocolate chip cookies.

The suspect seemed too weak willed to leave such a delicious treat lying around unopened. After a quick huddle, one officer was dispatched through the snow outside to recover the presumed litter. The expiration date and serial number of the Chips Ahoy package outside matched the numbers on the cookies inside. The cookies had been replaced by a different kind of treat: two sizable rocks of quality crack cocaine.

Through a combination of sharp eyes, character judgment, deductive ability, and familiarity with the seduction Chips Ahoy cookies offer the criminal class, BPD detectives collared another menace to Dorchester's streets. In light of the more severe drug charges, officers didn't issue a citation for littering. It's little wonder Dorchester remains one of the most crime-free zones in Boston.

Dot heroes don't wear spandex

Dorchester is the dark heart of a wider metropolis. The weed of crime bears bitter fruit in Dorchester, Mass. Hard men and their molls get beaten to pulps in Dorcheser but there are good men too, and good women. Dorchester isn't a cesspool that catches only society's detritus. Dorchester is a garden in which strong oaks grow out of soil fertilized by yards and yards of turned over, overturned shit. Some people think it stinks in Dorchester, and it does. It smells good.

You won't only find heroes in comic books. You can find them in Dorchester. Dorchester's heroes don't wear spandex. They wear Dickies, they wear coveralls, they wear uniforms; they may not dress to impress but they dress appropriately for the job they fulfill. Dot heroes don't just wear a symbol on their chests. Nobody is named S. They have their first names embroidered over their hearts: Al,Tom, Mickey, John. Dorchester heroes don't wear their hearts on their sleeves; they wear their names over their hearts.

Dorchester is home to heroinnes too. They don't flaunt thier cleavage and they aren't necessarily sexy, unless accomplishments are as sexy as oversized breasts (they are!). Dot heroines wear their names over their hearts as well, printed on tags under corporate logos all over this city. Dunkin Donuts, Au Bon Pain, Best Buy, Marriot, Sheraton...these are but a few of the corporate sponsors who support Dot heroism.

It takes a tough community to make a tender neighborhood. Dorchesterites are a sharp as flint and they succeed day after day against steep odds. Dorchester itself is a good place in which to raise a family. Truth and justice are the Dorchester way. Delivery trucks, sidewalks, the Red Line, buses, bicycles, jalopies...they all carry Dorchester heroes and heroines.

To the Dot-mobile, Al! There's an oil delivery to make and an example to be set!

Prurient data

Ever wonder what your neighbors are up to when you aren't looking? Here's some statistics detailing what Dorechesterites did today:

91.8% of the working age population actively in the job market did exactly what they wanted: they went to work.

8,376 medical appointments were kept today, including chiropractors, dentists, physical therapists, mental health sessions and blood pressure checkups with nurse practitioners, as well as medical doctor visits. 787 appointments were rescheduled. Only 82 appointments went empty without a follow up call either from the patient or the provider. No one reported to any of the neighborhood health clinics or to Carney Hospital with symptoms of H1N1 influenza infection.

As of 4:30PM, America's Food Basket in the Field's Corner Shopping Center sold 425 pounds of yams, 315 pounds of chicken, 334 pounds of pork, and seven boxes of Cinnamon Toast Crunch.

The Sugar Bowl in the Polish Triangle sold 188 cups of coffee by 10:10AM. Anna's Donuts in Savin Hill sold 338 cups of coffee by 10:20AM. The Mud House in Neponset sold 228 cups of coffee by 10:35AM. Flat Black in Fields Corner sold 788 cups of coffee by 10:45AM. Flat Black in Lower Mills sold 448 cups of coffee by 11:04AM. The Dunkin' Donuts in Lower Mills sold 1874 cups of coffee by 11:10AM. Dorchester drinks a lot of coffee.

98.6% of all registered public school students under the age of 16 attended class. 93.2% of registered public school students over the age of 16 attended class. 99% of registered public school students over the age of 18 attended class. These figures don't include UMASS Boston or LaBouree College of Nursing students, only those schools under city administration.

Vehicular homicide

Two rats were reported missing last night and I heard the news at C.F. Donovan's a half hour before last call. A fellow barfly stumbled in after spending the evening listening to his police scanner. He was breathless, but he managed to pant out to anyone who could hear his gasps, "Two rats are reported missing." Most of us stared into our beers or at the televisions. Laughter unconnected to the news rang out from the dining room. Just the usual boisterous bunch of roustabouts enjoying their cups and plates on a Friday night in Dorchester, Mass.

Old McNulty grumbled, "Two rats, who cares? They deserve what came to 'em"

Big Gut muttered into his shot glass, "Rats! I hate 'em. They give me the heebie jeebies so much that I get the blues. Sometimes I get the shakes just thinking about rats crawling all over me."

Swan Neck Malloy posed the rhetorical question, "Why's the BPD getting involved in missing rat cases? Don't they have enough to do?"

I wasn't too much interested at the time, but this morning I was making my rounds running bicycle errands around the neighborhood, picking up the next week's supply of sundries from area shops, when I peddled past the solution to both the disappearances. The answer: vehicular homicide. These rats had been run over with intent and the intention was that their remains wouldn't be identifiable after the deed was done. Does one rat look like another? These two are obviously different.

I admit, I don't know the rats' names or their original addresses. I suspect they will be missed by someone. That's why their absence was phoned in. I saw one on Elton Street and I saw the other on Savin Hill Avenue.

Witnessing the aftermath of the carnage, I admit I felt a little sad for the little rat babies that will be missing a parent. Being run over is no way to die, ask any bicyclist or pedestrian. Better to die in bed at peace, unless you are a viking. Dorchester knows its share of mayhem and the smallest crimes are comitted in the dead of night. Because it happens after dark and the absence is negligably noticed, doesn't mean a thread of the community's fabric hasn't frayed irrepairably loose. Some basement will be one less rat today. Who will takes its place? For all I know these were honorable rats who caused nobody any trouble beyond the drivers who couldn't bother to swerve.

A corpse is a terrible thing to contemplate.

Dorchester excelsior!

Today's editorial was going to be the usual pie-in-the-sky, rosily tinted view of life in Dorchester that most of the reports here turn out to be. This article came across the teletype today and I read it with interest to get to the meat of the Dorchester-related subject matter toward the end. If the author doesn't mind I'll include a pertinent quotation, however, I encourage you to read his thoughtful observations in their entirety:

"Once, when I was living in Dorchester, MA, and we had had several gang-related killings, the community packed into a huge meeting with the mayor. What did they ask for?

"Longer hours at the library. More staff at the community youth center. Midnight basketball. Lunch programs in the summer for kids who eat their only good meal most of the year when they get lunch at school. A warrant-sweep to get gang leaders into confinement, at least until the schools were open, so good kids could take advantage safely of the library, the community youth center, midnight basketball, free lunches."

This was the original springboard for what I was going to introduce today and I juggled on how to approach the subject: 1.) That must have been a long, long time ago. Today's Dorchester is a virtual Eden. 2.) He must have moved away yesterday. My sunny disposition naturally drew me toward Door Number One. Preferring the easy mark and the easy jest, I'll always pick the lady over the tiger.

Before I had started writing though, this report came over the news wire. One person's joke is another person's tragedy and the lack of good taste in my original tone wasn't lost on me. When the police say a man is pronounced, they don't mean he is pronounced the groom on what should be the happiest day of his life. They mean he is dead. It's not a reason to yuk it up. A young man was killed and he probably wasn't Pol Pot. He was a neighbor. A young man was shot to death a few blocks from the zoo.

People outside Dorchester may say to other people embarking on a visit, "It's a jungle down there." It isn't. I have spent at least two thirds of just about every day here for the last two years. I've never been the victim of a crime and I have never witnessed a crime. Contrary to what you may have been told, Dorchester is not a den of thieves and cut throats.

Do you want proof that Dorchester isn't a thief's paradise? I owned I bicycle I hated that I bought at Target. I rode it three times, hated it each time more than the last, and decided I wanted it stolen. I left it unlocked by my porch. It took six months for that bike to disappear in the dead of night. Maybe that says more about the uselessness of the bicycle, but it did ride okay, just not to my liking. I think it says more about the quality of the people who pass my yard every day at all hours of the night. I know they pass, I hear them through my open windows and I slumber feeling safe protected by only a scrim of fly screen and a flimsy wisp of curtain fabric.

There are rough and tumble sections of Dorchester. Denying that would be disingenuous. I have tried to include those parts in my essays though, I must admit, though I pass through them, I don't often linger. This isn't because I feel unsafe. There just isn't much to do or look at to hold my interest or my commerce. There are only so many haircuts a man can get in a month and I'm not really in the manicure or hair braiding market. After I buy a bottled drink at a corner store, how long can I linger on the sidewalk sipping it before I am off to elsewhere?

Dorchester isn't really a place full of attractions beyond being an overall attractive place to live. Much of the living attraction comes from affordable rents or from accessible businesses that cater to day-to-day needs. Well, most places have businesses that cater to day-to-day needs, tourists don't visit Dorchester to tour the Fields Corner Shopping Center. If you can afford the rent in a waterfront condo, you'll live closer to the water for the views. While Dorchester's repetitive three-decker streets have a beauty all their own, they don't match the sea breeze or the view of sunrise over the Harbor's mouth at the edge of the vast Atlantic beyond.

Murders happen in Dorchester. This is an unfortunate fact. Another fact is that murders happen everywhere. If they are more common in Dorchester, this is our communal lament. Longer library hours won't change that, but perhaps the people who demand them know in their bones something the rest of us don't realize. Maybe, given the choice between two types of culture, people will follow their better instincts and improve themselves through book smarts rather than street smarts. Hopefully, a library contains the best fruits of the best minds at work, as well as DVDs of collected television sitcoms and 'Ghostbusters.' Street culture is full of sharp intellects at work too, but as often as not they end up in a result that while a game and a joke for some, is a tragedy for someone else in the community. Dorchester needn't be that way and I don't feel it trends toward anarchism red in tooth and claw. This is a fine neighborhood pregnant with good intentions and instincts.

It takes one bad apple to spoil a barrel and Dorchester has its share of worms. It also has its share of honorable townspeople who live what they believe in practice as well their unarticulated theory. They are the majority. You can throw a pebble in Dorchester without hitting a church or community center. Dorchester is solid so that pebble will create few ripples. This isn't a hypocritical community. It is a place where people suffer their burdens and deal with them as constructively as they can.

A bit of Latin to end this on a civilized note: Dorchesterii carpe vita exceslior! Dorchesterites seize life ever upwards!

And to end on a light note:

...or you can check it out from your local library branch when it's open.

Dorchester robbery

There wasn't any need to contact the Dorchester Crime Unit at District C-11 HQ, but while we were away last week a thief broke into a certain Savin Hill apartment. Losses were negligible, maybe sixty cents, but the circumstances are confounding enough for commentary.


Though a large Vietnamese contingent has settled in this section of Dorchester, the neighborhood has deep Irish-American roots. The local restaurants and the smells wafting out of neighborhood kitchens confirms this. The cuisine tends to shy away from sharp flavors. Spice racks are typically stocked with iodized salt and factory-ground black pepper. Maureen Shea once told me that freshly ground pepper is too spicy and she never understood how people could eat it. "It's something fancy they do in the Back Bay and that's why I never eat out there," she said. Aside from these two staples, there is usually also a jar of caraway seeds to knock the winds out of boiled cabbage. Garlic? That's something the Eye-talians in the North End and Eastie eat, but not real Dorchesterites.


Before we went on vacation last week, we dutifully ate all the leftovers, leaving the cupboard bare until our return. One thing that was left, however, were two heads of garlic that rested in a dish on the counter. These heads of garlic were the target of the thievery that took place in our absence.


Despite the long-established, cartoon paradigm, mice don't really crave cheese. In fact, if you are setting traps, most people recommend using peanut butter as bait, though I've often heard gum drops are equally effective. To my knowledge, no one has ever recommended putting a garlic clove in a mousetrap, but it seems that one mouse has developed a taste for this cornerstone of Mediterranean cooking. Over the course of eight days a mouse devoured two heads of garlic leaving only the empty, papery skins.


How do we know it was a mouse and not some other intruder? I don't need to be a part-time private eye to crack this case and finger the perp. There were garlicky mouse droppings all around the scene of the crime. The problem is, this has to be an out-of-town job. What self-respecting Dot mouse would develop a taste for garlic? The answer is that it's not possible. Two theories:

1. Knowing we would be out of town, a certain mus musculus hopped the Blue Line out of Orient Heights and after several transfers on the MBTA, made his way to JFK/UMASS station for a garlic binge. He or she was sloppy about leaving evidence but hotfooted it back to home base before we returned to catch him red-handed with full cheeks.

2. A North End rodent tired of Haymarket scraps hopped the Orange Line and transferred to the Red at Downtown Crossing.

The only other alternative, Dot-on-Dot crime, is unthinkable. Needing some garlic for the first home-cooked meal in a week, I resigned myself, as a victim, to stop by the Shaw's at Harbor Point to restock my garlic supply. A regretful end to a perfect vacation, but, really, I needed to do some grocery shopping anyway.

Tomatoes and clams

We hesitate to use the word Clamato in the title since this word is trademarked by the Mott's company, currently a wholly owned subsidiary of the Dr. Pepper Snapple Group. Food historians have long stated on the record that clamato, in lower-case, untrademarked, generic parlance, was invented by two Mott's food scientists in 1966 in Hamlin, NY. Yes, this is the same Mott's that makes the wonderful. triple-purified apple juice children love so much.

Local lore doesn't discount that Mott's was the first company to commercially market clamato, but the idea that a mixture of clam juice and tomato juice had to be invented by white-coated eggheads in a corporate laboratory rankles the sensibilities of long standing Dorchesterites. Farragut McWhistler, who has lived in Port Norfolk all his life, and I were discussing this at the Mud House in Neponset the other morning. "My dear, sweet mother used to muddle clams in a mash of tomatoes and put it in my bottle," he said.

He said his mother had gotten the recipe from her mother-in-law, who's maiden name was Everett, and who had inherited this bit of baby-rearing wisdom from that side of the family living at Port Norfolk for generations. "Dorchester Bay little necks make the best broth for a baby," he continued, "I believe I have lived as long as I have because I was weaned from my sweet mother's teat with a nip of the sea by way of the garden." I asked him what he thought of bottled clamato available in the Stop & Shop on Morrisey Boulevard.

"I don't care for it much," he said. "I make my clamato myself, with no extra ingredients, the way my family always has. I know I'm not supposed to go shell fishing in the Bay, the Commonwealth forbids it, but I've got a clam rake and I wake up early before the sun comes up. I'm not bothering anyone and I know most of the fellows in the harbor patrol. We leave each other alone, just wave, ask how things are in general, and no sir, I haven't seen anything illegal going on in the Bay."

Mr. McWhistler cleared his throat. "The way I see it, I've been eating Dorchester clams all my seventy-three years. I don't see a reason to stop now. I don't muddle them with mortar and pestle the way my mother did. I use a food processor and I make my clamato year-round. I can buy store-bought tomatoes any time of year in the supermarket. They aren't as good as the garden variety, but winter leads to lean times and you take what you can get."

I asked Mr. McWhistler if he ever sold his clamato. "No, I don't. It's illegal to go shell fishing for yourself let alone to pawn the clams off on a buyer. I figure I'm not hurting anything but my own robust constitution (he pounded his chest) and the law knows this so they leave me alone. If I sold the clams and somebody got food poisoning, the cops would be all over me in a minute. I like to keep my nose, as well as my arteries and gut, clean."

I asked Mr. McWhistler if I could taste his product. He replied, "Sorry, sonny. That's against the rules. I only make this tonic for myself. It's a shame I can't share it but the rules are the rules. If you want some genuine Dorchester clamato you'll have to make it yourself. Be advised, though, Boston Harbor Management regulations forbid it."

Our coffee finished, I walked Farragut McWhistler to his car parked on Neponset Avenue. "It's too late in the morning to go clamming now. Too many people can see you. If you want to rake up a mess of clams off Tenean or Malibu Beach, the sky has to be pitch. I'm going across Neponset Circle to Ups and Downs and then I'm going home. I always drink my clamato before I go to sleep and then when I wake up in the early hours. It keeps me young, I tell you, but you have to make it yourself to get the full effect."

I don't own a clam rake but Mr. McWhislter's constitution seems to be resilient enough that there may be some truth in his testimony of the rejuvenating powers of Dorchester Bay clam meat, especially when mixed with tomatoes grown in Dorchester soil. As he says, he has been supping on this since he was in the cradle. I have a lot of catching up to do. Maybe I'll just take my vitamins.

Noumenal Dorchester

Your humble narrator has been accused of not reporting the facts, that the Dorchester reported on here is not the same Dorchester experienced by the majority of the people on this neighborhood's streets and it is not the Dorchsester described in the newspapers. This is true. When Whalehead King writes about Dorchester, or anywhere or anything else, the reader only gets a particular perspective.

Your humble narrator, who has spent countless, untraceable hours criss-crossing not only Dorchester but other Boston ,out-of-the-way, back alleys, has never witnessed a shooting, a drug deal, an interaction between john and prostitute, a knife fight, a police intervention, an arson, a graffito tagging, or even a petty theft more serious than a can man lifting deposit bottles out of a recycling bin left on a curb. He has seen people moving from Point A to Point B, minding their business while being cordial to each other and everyone trying to get through the day with as little friction and tension as possible with good manners and tolerance. These are the facts, if they may not be the reality.

Crimes are committed in Dorchester the same as they are committed on Beacon Hill and in West Roxbury and Hyde Park and in Persia. People will be people, but a few bad apples needn't spoil the barrel nor turn sparkling cider into vinegar. Your narrator's eyeglasses are not tinted and, as often as not, he doesn't wear them though he spent a week's pay on the frames. The lenses aren't rosy but clear. The neighborhood is what it is. Possibilities abound for those with objective eyes to spy them.

Are these dispatches really just a Dorchester conjured out of a fevered mind? Partly, yes, but ultimately and unequivocally: No. Anyone who can google a map can see the landmarks that exist, the poetic street names, the connotative place names and how the convoluted and leafy landscape is laid out in order to breed small scale adventures and philosophical associations. Layers upon layers of cognition and experience in all flavors and grit are piled atop each other in Dorchester.

Are the personalities portrayed in these missives made of from whole cloth? Again, no. They are here, plugging away, trying to get a head of a little spare pocket change, and trying to earn the respect they deserve. Names are changed because not everyone enjoys celebrity, but every personality has been extrapolated from details garnered from personal interviews and direct observation mixed in with a dash of purple and yellow journalistic sleights of hand.

Some people may scoff at Dorchesterites' aspirations. We think they protest too much and may harbor a smidge of envy. Schemes are hatched in Dorchester. Dreams come true in Dorchester. The same story is repeated all over Boston and all over the globe but a Dorchester victory seems to be one of the sweetest of them all.

Cyrano d'Andrew

Children can be so cruel. Jan Kowalka is forty-three years old, a member of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, a good provider for his family, and he is a devoted father to his daughter and son. He lives off Boston Street in a third floor apartment he rents from his parents, who live on the ground floor. His sister and her husband live on the second story.

Jan Kowalka has a big nose, what Jimmy Durante would call a schnozzola. It's a honker. It doesn't look out of place on his face, but if it were on mine it would stand out like the monument at Dorchester Heights. It would be as prominent as the Hancock Tower in Boston's skyline viewed from Columbia Point. He has been called "Buzzard" since he started attending school. So many years later, on job sites and at the Dot Tavern, people around the neighborhood still call him "Buzz." He's gotten used to it. After all, a man is born with a face and then he learns to live with it.

Buzz Kowalka was walking down Washburn Street this morning, trudging through the snow with his lunchpail, when he was accosted by a gang of children. Though they would normally be in school at this hour but a few inches of snow had fallen in Dorchester overnight and the kids were free to have the run of the streets. "Hey mister," one of the rapscallions called, "Your nose is so big I bet I can peg it with a snowball with my eyes closed." Then he attempted to do just that.

The missle hit its mark and Mr. Kowalka's hat was knocked of his head. He couldn't see for a moment and he tripped on the uneven sidewalk that was buried under the eight inches of snow that came up over his ankles. Mr. Kowalka hit his head on a plastic trash barrel and his lunchpail fell into a snowdrift. The perpetrators scattered. Who knows where? Mr. Kowalka's nose was bleeding.

He headed back home and his wife applied a styptic pencil to to his left nostril to stanch the red stream that was dripping over his lips. After receiving first aid, Mr. Kowalka re-fit his hat, re-wrapped his scarf and trudged down Washburn Street again to retrieve his lunch and get to work, hopefully on time

The missing Tyrolean

Hans Nindelschitz reports that he lost his hat on the 22 bus somewhere after Ashmont Station while the bus was travelling Talbot Avenue. He is a German exchange student at UMASS Boston on Harbor Point and his hat is a cherished possession. It is a forest green Tyrolean hat with the requisite green rope braid over the brim and a boar's hair brush mounted on the left side. The hat is studded with pewter pins that Herr Nindelschitz earned on group hikes through his native Rhine Valley. He attests that he hasn't seen any other hat like it in Dorchester, so anyone who spies it can be reasonably sure of its rightful owner.

Herr Nindelschitz says that the 8:05 PM bus out of Ashmont wasn't crowded so he took off his hat and placed it with his books on the seat next to him on his way home to his apartment in Stony Brook. He could take the Red Line from campus to Downtown Crossing and then the Orange Line to Stony Brook but he has found that the Red Line to Ashmont and then the 22 bus shaves a few minutes off his commute. With his hat and books at his side, after a long day of studying, this scholar fell asleep, lulled by the rocking of the 22 bus. He awoke at 9:11 when the bus came to an abrupt halt at the intersection of Talbot Avenue and Nightingale Street. His head feeling cold, he reached for his trusty Tyrolean hat and came up empty handed.

His books were undisturbed but his hat was missing. He felt around the bus floor and bent to look under the seat but there was no sign of his hat. He made his way to the front of the bus and asked the driver about where it may be. The driver stopped the bus in mid traffic and asked his passengers to search their seats for the missing hat. It really was missing.

At Stony Brook, Herr Nindelschitz spoke with the Transit Police and the officers on duty promised to issue an all points bulletin for the missing headgear. The sergeant at the desk said, "We'll do our best but that hat could be anywhere by now. It could be at the tip of Hull by now and if it is we'll never be able to trace it."

Anyone in Dorchester who happens to accidentally be in possession of an unfamiliar Tyrolean hat is encouraged to turn it in to the nearest MBTA police station so that can be reunited with its rightful owner. Today he was wearing a knit watch cap, popularly called a 'scully' in Dorchester, and while it is warm it isn't warm like he likes.

No news is good news

If your only source for Dorchester news is The Boston Globe, you are forgiven for thinking life in the Dot is more rambunctious than it really is. Be not afraid ye who venture down Dot Ave. There is nothing to fear but the gloom painted in the traditional press. In fact, Dorchester is a tidy, humdrum burg, albeit a sprawling one full of people from all walks of life.

No one was murdered in Dorchester today. There were no crimes beyond petty ones. A teenager left a store without paying for a Charms Blow Pop but his mother took him back to hand over his quarter and made him to pay fifty cents to make amends. After all, a Blow Pop is two treats in one. No sins were committed beyond the venial. Nothing mortal transpired today, not even this week. The parish priests are bored hearing confessions. There is little to justify even a Pater Noster.

Traffic moved along at its usual, leisurely pace. Books were returned to the library before they were due. Cars stopped for pedestrians at crosswalks. People held doors open for those after them. Gentleman tipped their Red Sox caps to ladies they passed on the street. All the talk in the coffee shops was of concern for family members and commiserating about rising food prices in a weak economy. You can still get good deals on produce at America's Food Basket in Field's Corner and at the Farmer's Market grocery store in Mattapan. For those who go and use their cards, both Shaw's and Stop and Shop supermarkets are offering values and some of their outlets are conveniently located near T stops (Shaw's at JFK/UMASS and Milton...Stop & Shop not so much).

Like most days in Dorchester, there was nothing to report. For the people who live here, that isn't a bad thing. It is business as usual.

Matta-pannus

This story is bizarre beyond being believable, but here we go anyway. Someone has to tell it and I was present and accounted for.

I received an email recently from an agent of the Massachusetts Executive Office of Health and Human Services. It read, "Mr. King, We understand you are familiar with events occurring in Dorchester that may not be followed by the usual news media or government agencies. We request a meeting to discuss some unusual, medical occurrences that have taken place in Dorchester and would like to learn your insight on developments concerning a demonstrable uptick in back alley surgical procedures. [italics mine]." This certainly seemed like my bread and butter so I agreed to an interview on the eleventh floor of One Ashburton Place downtown.

The agent and I sat at an empty conference table while nibbling catered sandwiches delivered from rebecca's cafe (lower case for proper nouns dictated by rebecca's corporate HQ). The agent asked me what I knew about illicit, unlicensed surgeries being performed in Dorchester. I admitted that this development hasn't registered on my radar.

A little back story: Over the past few years Mass Medicaid has been approving and paying for gastric bypass surgery for beneficiaries whose overall health is threatened by morbid obesity. As one would expect, rerouting a person's esophagus more directly to the small intestine is an expensive affair, even at government rates. The surgery is generally successful in alleviating the condition it is supposed to cure. Patients on average lose between 65% to 80% of excess body fat very quickly. This rapid weight loss often results in the patient acquiring a pannus about the patient's midsection.

Pannus is the Latin word for cloth though in this case it may be more properly translated as 'apron.' The patient's skin cannot contract as quickly as the excess fat being lost and hence an apron of empty skin develops that, in some cases without the underlying support, can hang almost to the knees. The Health and Human Services agent informed me that rumor on the street is that Mass Medicaid considers removal of this pannus after gastric bypass surgery isn't covered by the program since it is considered cosmetic surgery rather than therapeutic. I could see the reasoning. After all, I don't see any supermodels with an apron of excess belly skin strutting the catwalk, not even at Boston fashion shows.

The agent explained that some panniculectomies, as the surgical removal of this apron is called, are medically necessary. The underside of the pannus is often subject to dermatitis either of the fungal kind because of difficulties in keeping these deep folds clean and dry, or of the mechanical kind due to excessive rubbing against other surfaces. She emphasized that when medically justified the surgical removal of excess belly skin is a covered service under Mass Medicaid guidelines. This sounded reasonable to me.

The agent leaned in so close that her hair was in my egg salad, "Do you know, Mr. King, that we have seen a twenty-seven patients at Boston hospitals who are suffering complications from panniculectomies performed for private payment in unlicensed operating theaters in the Dorchester area?" I admitted that didn't know that. She continued, "Most of these beneficiaries are eligible for coverage under Mass Medicaid rules from contracted providers but they don't go there because they've been told the Commonwealth is cutting back on reimbursement for this procedure. They are going to unlicensed surgeons to correct their deformity and paying out of pocket. Granted, it's a reasonable fee considering the work being done, but it often much more than what Mass Medicaid has determined to be the proper reimbursement rate. Naturally, providers not certified by the Commonwealth don't always adhere to the standards we here at the Executive Office of Health and Human Services beleive to be in people's best interest. The system is starting to see the consequences in post-operative infections and sponges being left in the wounds." It was all news to me.

She said, "Do you know where most of these operations are performed?" I knew the answer already before she said it, "Mattapan."

Of course, Mattapan, that neighborhood where all sorts of trickery hatches without breaking egg shells. Mattapan...Where truth and falsehood exchange hats and every passing face is an enigma that asks. "How do you do?" Mattapan... Where fake IDs are passports. Mattapan... Where every shyster and accountant and hedge fund manager proudly hangs a store-bought diploma behind his desk. Mattapan... Where the best hot dogs are served, where best suits are tailored, and where the most well-attended churches make room to shelter their congregations. Mattapan.... Sweet, trusty, shady, sparkling, sparking Mattapan, the part of Boston that is most a'glow with unbridled opportunity. Mattapan...

The agent asked me if I could shed any light on the department's statistics. I said no and I thanked her for the sandwich. Exiting onto Ashburton Place, I looked at Boston's skyline looming and stretching to the south. I was only a few miles from Mattapan but I was a world away, slender and stylishly dressed in a bespoke suit and a shirt sporting folded-over cuffs. I get my tailoring done in Mattapan by an unlicensed tailor. If I needed a panniculectomy, I might consider the unlicensed neighborhood surgeons headquartered in that part of Boston. It is a place known as much for its bargain quality as for skirting around regulations. The two go hand in hand. Let the buyer beware and do due diligence. Any sawbones with a paring knife and a bottle of rubbing alcohol can hang his or her shingle in Mattapan but so can any respectable surgeon. You roll the dice for relief and the chance to improve your condition. You take your chances but there are worse places than Mattapan. There aren't any statistics for all the successful operations.