Loving the Dot Life.

Birds do it. Bees do it. People in Eastie and in West Roxbury do it. People in Dorchester do it too: they fall in love.

A city is a school of hard knocks and Boston is no exception. There is a reason that MIT and Harvard are located across the Charles River in Cambridge. Painful lessons get taught and learned in a metropolis where the spoons are not cast in sterling silver but in zinc and lead, pig iron and trace molybdenum, a curry of slag and mercury tailings mixed into a slurry of ferrous sulfate, ferrous oxate and feral habits. Some intellectual meals are consumed with dainty silverware, while others are served up on the blades of snow shovels and forced down an unwilling student's throat with a boot heel and a blackjack that is more bitter than any supermarket or convenience store brand of licorice.

It takes a neighborhood to raise a child, and anyone who can recognize that fact can be the Secretary of State or, maybe, even President of all 50 United States. There is no rule that someone born and raised in Dorchester, Mass., the biggest and best part of Boston, cannot reach past the limits of her or his potential. Comets never stop. Dorchester hasn't stopped moving or evolving since Time began. There is no evidence to suggest that Dorchester itself doesn't set the standard toward which other places should aim. Some places lead. Eventually, other places will follow the sweet, sweet smell of success. For the moment, at least, Dorchester stands alone.

Dorchester is unique. Spend a few hours on Bowdoin Street or on Columbia Road or on the mid-southerly stretches of Columbia Road. You learn quickly enough that you're not in Roxbury anymore. You learn quickly enough that while you are in Boston, you are in a different kind of Boston. You are in Dorchester. You're in the Dot, and the Dot is not a pot of jam, a pot of mustard, or a cannabis market. It is a place in which generations follow one anther trying to do well for everyone involved, personally, familiarly and communally. Each party pulling ever upward at the sails with all hands on deck.

Children are raised in Dorchester to become responsible adults, productive citizens, vertebrae in Boston's semi-rigid, semi-flexible, ramrod backbone. Adults spend their whole lives in Dorchester, mixing their good will and collected energy, minute-by-passing minute, into the concrete that will cement a better tomorrow. Love makes a community and love blossoms in Dorchester. Sometines that love is passionate. Most often that love is resigned and contented that good work is being done.

Birds do it and bees do it. Dorchesterites do it too. There is plenty of room and time in Dorchester for love. Office workers downtown watch the clock ready to punch out and get on with thier real lives, their Dot lives. They leave Boston proper and head home on the bus or the Fairmont Line or the Red Line. You can love your job in Boston but if you live in Dorchester, that's where you really love your life.

Some different ways to think about the facts of Dorchester.....

...secrets, situations, comedies, decadence....Dorchester...100% on the Dot.

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.

Two shots of happy, one shot of sad

The way dropped toast lands in Dorchester is always buttered-side down. Luckily the floors are spotless, spic-and-span. We were at the Sugar Bowl this morning at 857 Dot Ave. You know the place, across from the New Store On The Block, though how new that store is, I don't know. I was enjoying a slug of java and a scone, watching the foot traffic outside the curved, plate glass window. It was Sunday. Parishioners were filing toward the Blessed Mother Theresa of Calcutta Church for mass. We felt we should be following, but other obligations intruded. I checked my watch and looked at my companion. She was finishing up a blueberry muffin. She said, "Is it time?"

It was.

Donning our helmets we rocketed out of Dorchester on the Littlest Ninja this side of the Charles River, one stoplight at a time. She hugged me tightly down Columbia Road and then down American Legion Highway. The engine screamed in fifth gear. We navigated through Roslindale to Center Street, heading into West Roxbury. Today's mission: to get from the West Roxbury line, where Boston abuts Dedham, to the Charlestown Bridge with as few turns as possible. Sunday morning seemed the best time to accomplish this endeavor.

We pulled a tight U-turn at the Dedham border and headed north. Center Street was no problem, a reasonably straight shot with no traffic and no interference. We hit the Jamaicaway, then the Riverway, then Fenway. Things started to get dicey. We figured Boylston Street was the best bet and it was for awhile. After the Common, our plans all went to hell as we turned and swung around and back again in Chinatown.

Determined not to take the Surface Road, we wove through downtown. It was magnificent to wend through the canyons of old buildings mixed with new with no congestion. Sunday is the day to take a motorcycle through downtown Boston. Though a temperature of fifty degrees is nothing to crow about, it's nothing to complain about either, especially when both parties are wearing polypropylene long johns and wind-proof jackets.

After speeding in circles through back alleys and along one-way lanes, we sighted the Charlestown bridge. Would we cross it? No. We didn't want to go too far afield. Charlestown's delights would wait another day. We headed to Charles Street, found enough room to park the bike and wandered Beacon Hill with our day's second cups of coffee in our hands. Charles Street is picturesque, but it's no Dot Ave.

Dropping our empty cups into the trash barrel in front of Seven-Eleven, we mounted the Little Ninja again for the sweetest ride of all: the ride back to Dorchester. Hurtling through Newmarket, we felt a pull on the front tire that matched the push of the rear. The bike, like its passengers, knew it was headed home and couldn't wait to get there.

January motorcycling

In early December, 35 degrees seems too cold and treacherous to take the motorcycle to work. In late January, three degrees above freezing seems warm enough to go on a criss-crossing jaunt through Dorchester and a little farther beyond. Cabin fever leads a man to do things that would have been unpleasant seven weeks before. Now they are refreshing.

I've been noticing that since the last snowstorm the streets seem to be hazard-free and, having been acclimated to sub-zero temperatures, the thermometer told me I might be able to enjoy myself. I didn't don my summer gear. I wore fleece long underwear and two windproof layers around my torso. Most of my outfit was courtesy of Aerostitch, a company that seeks to outfit the motorcyclist with the best, if not the least expensive, kit he or she can sport. You get what you pay for. Had I outfitted myself at Family Dollar, I would have resembled the Michelin Man. I put all the armored padding into the appropriate places and started up my little Ninja motorcycle.

The engine wasn't happy and I kept the choke out for the first ten minutes until both the bike and I agreed there was no turning back. After that point we were both as content as playful kittens happy to exercise our muscles.

In warmer weather, I carp about traffic congestion and kvetch about the sorry state of the roads. Not in January, though. I was happy to be out and about. With extra attention to the roads' surfaces for stray patches of ice and slush, and extra attention to cars who probably don't expect to see a little Ninja speeding down Dot Ave, let alone side streets, I made my way hither and yon. I wove from Savin Hill to Fields Corner, then up Park Street to Codman Square. I gamboled on Codman Hill which is a neighborhood that is usually as dull and repetative as West Roxbury or the high, terraced hills behind Roslindale, or the flatlands of Hyde Park. No matter. I was out and about on my motorcycle. It was good to be free.

When I left the house, my companion said she would see me in a half hour. I pulled back into my berth three hours later. "Where did you go?" she asked.

"Everywhere," I answered. "I was in Lower Mills. I was in Mattapan. I was at Norfolk Point. I was in Codman and Adams Village and Morton Village. I took Blue Hill Avenue all the way from the tail end of Boston to Magazine Street and after that I circled around and around in Newmarket Square, just enjoying be able to go around and around."

More frigid weather is projected for tomorrow. At least I got one day to live like it is summer again. It's all what you make it.

Jungle love

With a blanket of snow over Dorchester, we were surprised to hear the soothing sounds of exotic tiki music wafting out of an open, third story window on Sagamore Street. The ukulele strains were so hypnotic, a gaggle of Dorchesterites had stopped in the middle of the middle of the street with ears cocked upward. Nobody was doing a lot of driving today but the streets were thick with pedestrians heading though the snow flakes for milk, malt liquor, bagged snack food and pizza made to order.

A young man sporting a frizzled beard was one of the people stopped on Sagamore Street listening to the music that issued out of this apartment. He said, "I feel like I'm in Hawaii." He said it spontaneously to no one in particular and he was quickly hit with a snowball by a companion who said, "I couldn't do this in Hawaii, buster." The whole group guffawed and scooped snowballs from around their feet and started pelting the guy who exaggerated the situation too much.

It didn't feel like Hawaii in Dorchester or any other part of Boston today. It felt like New England in winter, the worst time to live here. Despite that, it did feel care-free. There is something about a snow storm that makes everyone congenial. We are all in this together. The inconvenience of not being able to travel as far as you choose forges a bond with other people in the street, in the stores, in the pizza parlors...we just want to get out a bit and see that the world is getting on. It's nice to be alive in a winter wonderland. Boston, Dorchester, Roxbury, Eastie, Charlestown, Chelsea, Southie, the Back Bay, the South End, West Roxbury, they are all pretty places but they become even prettier under a blanket of snow.

One of the women who stopped on Sagamore Street, she was 60 years old if she was a day, said, "This music puts me in mind for the beach." She looked at her squire and said, "Why don't we take the Blue Line to Revere and walk the beach?" He said he would load his ipod with tiki music as soon as they got home and then they would be off like a shot for Kelly's Roast Beef and a stroll along the picturesque shores of exotic Massachusetts Bay.

Dorchester breeds daydreams along its shortest streets.

A conundrum of neighborhood names

We all know why the Back Bay is called a bay. It was once a shallow, fetid, stinking backwater of a bay filled with sewage and carcasses before it was filled in with soil to form an arc parrallell to Cambridge to become the eastern picturesque shore of the majestic Charles River. Pricey land, perhaps, but solid land just the same. All the expense that went into filling the bay demanded a solid investment. It remains so to this day, thus far. What of other Boston neighborhood names?

Why is East Boston the northernmost part of the city? Why is South Boston the part that stetches most to the east into Boston Harbor while all of Dorchester spreads below it on a map? Why is West Roxbury at the city's southern edge? Why can't anyone tell Allston from Brighton so much so that the two are always referred to together as Allston/Brighton?

Why is Lower Roxbury right next to North Dorchester though both neighorhoods share a common border and latitude? Why do we travel uphill from the Orange Line to get to Jamaica Plain? Why does the Mission Hill branch of the Boston Public Library have 'Parker Hill Library' carved over its doors? The Mission Church was built before the library and only a puddingstone's throw away.

How does a city known for its parochialism get away with naming neighborhoods, in Dorchester at least, complete with signs from the mayor welcoming travellers, Morton Street Village or Adams Street Village? Morton and Adams Streets are long. Am I to believe that no one ever had a better name for these nodes of commerce and community? Pull off I-93 in Dorchester and you will be greeted by a sign on Columbia Road. It says: "Welcome to Columbia/Savin Hill." Can anyone think of a clunkier monniker? Yes. The Red Line T station on Columbia Road is called JFK/UMASS. There may not be graft involved in this but there is certainly some grafting.