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Are things getting better?
Author: TriSec
Date: 11/27/2010 14:04:32
Good Morning.
About a year ago now, I wrote this blog about budgeting for Christmas and the impact of the recession on our city's tree-lighting ceremony.
Well, here we are a year later, so I think it's time to review what's changed and what hasn't. Of my wish list, I have a GPS now, which I bought myself during the after-Christmas sales last year for a pittance. Still waiting for everything else.
Again, we were at the city tree-lighting ceremony last night. Thanks to my work with the Cub Scouts, we get to be front and center and lead the city in the Pledge of Allegiance every year as part of the event. And thanks to my political work in town, the mayor came right to me last night and sort of put me in charge of all the Scouts in town for the event, which was pretty neat.
In any case, this year was a little more festive than last year. Most of the vendors were still missing, but instead of the high-schoolers, we had the "Waltham City Chorus" singing our Christmas carols (very nicely, too!) and when the switch was thrown, we had City Hall, the memorial circle, and about a half-dozen trees lit up this year. Still a far cry from the past, but better than last year. Perhaps there's been a little bit of a budget turnaround.
Which leads me to the store. Yesterday, Bob wrote about Small Business Saturday. Today's the day; if you have to shop at all this weekend, please make sure a local merchant or two are included in your haul. As for me, I have mixed feelings about that....LL Bean is still considered a "regional" retailer, but before the recession, there were large plans to continue a national expansion. All of this has been been put on hold, and we still have just an East Coast base. Does that make us local? I've always thought so, but you folks in the Tyson's Corner area send that money 500 miles away to Freeport....and the trucks drive that far every few days from the warehouse to deliver the goods. There's a location in Skokie, IL,..over 900 miles from the 'mothership'. The trucks go there, too.
But do you have to shop this weekend? Living here in the "Athens of America", we're blessed by an embarrassing amount of cultural riches, not the least of which are our museums. You may have heard about the recent expansion of Boston's
Museum of Fine Arts. Like most museums, there's more in storage than on display. The new wing goes a long way toward addressing that.
Not to be out-done, our Museum of Science has just renovated the planetarium.
So whatever it is you're doing today....do try to keep it local. And if you can walk, cycle, or take public transportation....all the better!
About a year ago now, I wrote this blog about budgeting for Christmas and the impact of the recession on our city's tree-lighting ceremony.
Well, here we are a year later, so I think it's time to review what's changed and what hasn't. Of my wish list, I have a GPS now, which I bought myself during the after-Christmas sales last year for a pittance. Still waiting for everything else.
Again, we were at the city tree-lighting ceremony last night. Thanks to my work with the Cub Scouts, we get to be front and center and lead the city in the Pledge of Allegiance every year as part of the event. And thanks to my political work in town, the mayor came right to me last night and sort of put me in charge of all the Scouts in town for the event, which was pretty neat.
In any case, this year was a little more festive than last year. Most of the vendors were still missing, but instead of the high-schoolers, we had the "Waltham City Chorus" singing our Christmas carols (very nicely, too!) and when the switch was thrown, we had City Hall, the memorial circle, and about a half-dozen trees lit up this year. Still a far cry from the past, but better than last year. Perhaps there's been a little bit of a budget turnaround.
Which leads me to the store. Yesterday, Bob wrote about Small Business Saturday. Today's the day; if you have to shop at all this weekend, please make sure a local merchant or two are included in your haul. As for me, I have mixed feelings about that....LL Bean is still considered a "regional" retailer, but before the recession, there were large plans to continue a national expansion. All of this has been been put on hold, and we still have just an East Coast base. Does that make us local? I've always thought so, but you folks in the Tyson's Corner area send that money 500 miles away to Freeport....and the trucks drive that far every few days from the warehouse to deliver the goods. There's a location in Skokie, IL,..over 900 miles from the 'mothership'. The trucks go there, too.
But do you have to shop this weekend? Living here in the "Athens of America", we're blessed by an embarrassing amount of cultural riches, not the least of which are our museums. You may have heard about the recent expansion of Boston's
Museum of Fine Arts. Like most museums, there's more in storage than on display. The new wing goes a long way toward addressing that.
Not to be out-done, our Museum of Science has just renovated the planetarium.
Look up at the night sky and feast on more than 9,000 stars, twinkling in stunning clarity. But then seconds later, the sky reverts back to what it looked like 10,000 years ago. Then watch as the tiny dots that represent the planets suddenly mushroom, allowing you to float so closely above them that you see their surfaces.
Then it’s time to hit the heavens. After lift-off, the planets disappear in the rear-view mirror. So does our solar system as we move to the edge of the Milky Way, and on beyond our galaxy. As we travel further and further out, cascades of blinking green dots, each one a galaxy, flood the sky. Then huge, near-solid swaths of galaxies appear in an overwhelming array of different colors.
After years of offering visitors to its Charles Hayden Planetarium a static view of space focused mostly on stars, planets, and constellations, an entirely new, and more interactive, experience is scheduled to open at the Museum of Science on Feb. 13. The stars of the new $9 million creation are a powerful projector, the Zeiss Starmaster, which will show the night sky, and two Sony digital projectors that can simulate space travel. “We’ve got the Cadillac now,’’ says Darryl Davis, planetarium systems coordinator.
To buy the Cadillac, the museum used $3 million from the Charles Hayden Foundation, named for the Boston financier who built the Hayden Planetariums in New York City and Boston, and raised the rest from private donations.
The upgrades come at an important moment in Boston for cultural organizations whose survival hinges on attracting tourists and natives alike. Competition for visitors among Boston’s cultural institutions is growing more fierce by the month. The Museum of Fine Arts last week opened to the public its mammoth Art of the Americas wing. The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum is scheduled to open an expansion in early 2012. Also coming is the Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the United States Senate adjacent to the JFK Library.
So whatever it is you're doing today....do try to keep it local. And if you can walk, cycle, or take public transportation....all the better!
