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February 1, 2010
Table
of Contents
Home @ Roofscape
About Roofscape
@ Play
Bikeways
Beans About Boston
Bird N-E-W-S
Book Bag
Cityscape
Cookout
Coop Confidential
Funk Shui
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Garden
Journal
Greenways
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Outside Office
Paths to the Past
Radio Roofscape
Roofscape News
Roofscape Realty
Roofscape
Views
Rooftop Movie Night
Screenscape
Siteseeing
Skyscape
Soundscape
Starscape
Streetscape
Street Scene
Thought for the Week
Urban Myths
Wild Lives
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South End Handyman
Serving Boston's South End, Back Bay and Beacon
Hill
We specialize in small jobs
No job too small
Free and fast estimates
Custom carpentry
Fine painting
Household repairs
Landscaping
We do anything
On time and in budget
30 years experience
South End Handyman
southendhandy@gmail.com
857-272-7500
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| Roofscape is devoted to the
enjoyment and enhancement of the urban outdoors around the world.
The magazine explores all aspects of outdoor urban living - nature
and the environment, history and historic city walks, sports
and recreation, gardening and landscaping, alfresco cooking and
dining, outdoor living and work spaces, plus the sky and stars
overhead. |
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Welcome! Now the pouting poet said that April
is the cruelst month, mixing memory and desire. But
February's seldom kinder, serving up lashings of snow and sleet
when winter's already overstayed its welcome. One bright spot
to watch for is the blooming of Witch Hazel. The large shrub
pictured above, cloaked in a mantle of fresh snow, flanks the
main entrance of the Fenway Victory Gardens on Park Drive in
Boston.
Another bright spot, throughout the year,
is Radio
Roofscape's weekly gospel show. Every Sunday we take it to
church featuring all gospel styles and eras. Keith Franklin,
The Mighty Clouds of Joy, Yolanda Adams, The Blind Boys of Alabama,
BB and CC Wynans, Albert Ayler and the Disciples of Christ are
all in the mix. Johann Sebastian Bach shows up sometimes too
to drop his heavy gospel grooves on us.
The other bright spot in frigid February is
that it's Black History Month. We're continuing to serialize
two articles, Dr. King in Boston, debuting
last month on Martin's birthday, and On
the Trail of Black History, a walk through time and spaqce
around Boston's Black Heritage Trail.
We've got three fresh features to get you
going in the garden this year. The Garden Girl and Mel Bartholomew
offer the Square Foot Gardening Tip for
February. Then we dig in with a pair of new articles -- The Height of Summer in the Depths of
Winter, about planning your twenty-ten vegetable garden and
Starting from Seed, covering growing
your own transplants.
Of course something's always cooking at Roofscape.
Every week after we've taken you to church we step into the kitchen
to make Sunday dinner for our hungry household. This week we're
looking at how to make that essential topping for soups and salads
-- croutons.
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Dr. Martin Luther King's time in Boston had a profound influence
on him. Malcom X's life and work was forged in Boston. Here,
Martin did his doctoral studies in Christian theology at Boston
University. Malcolm learned to read and created his own education
while imprisoned for burglary in Charlestown and other state
penitentiaries. Both sons of Baptists ministers preached and
ministered here, Martin in Baptist churches, Malcolm at Nation
of Islam temples.
We're going to look at the lives of both men
in Boston and also see what the city was like at the time, during
the postwar years and early 50's. Dr. King
in Boston begins January 15, on Martin's birthday, and X
in Boston starts May 15 to celebrate his birth on May 19.
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| Frederick Law Olmsted, following
his popul.ist inclinations, referred to his last and greatest
work, designed for his adopted city of Boston, as The Green
Ribbon. We're going to meet the man and follow his struggles
over twenty years to design and build what came to be called
The Emerald Necklace. |
| Charles's short stories regularly
appear in the Urban Myths section of the magazine. This is his
first work of non-fiction that we've published, a stroll around
and appreciation of Paris, sketchbook in hand. |
| Stock is the basic building
block for many good things constructed in the kitchen. Soups,
stews and sauces all often rise or fall by their stock. Now there's
store bought stuff called 'stock' that comes in cans or cartons,
or god forbid cubes and powders. Maybe it's better than nothing
but nothing beats freshly homemade stock. Join us in the kitchen
as we cook up two types of vegetable stock so good that they're
perfectly satisfying just by themselves. |
| Dedicated bike lanes are finally
appearing around our cities. This is promising, but there's also
peril - the dreaded possibility of dooring. Michael recounts
some hair-raising incidents and suggests how riders can avoid
this menace. |
| Chy-chy made up this fun new
take on hide and seek. Join her team! |
| The depths of winter are a good
time to think about the height of summer. It gives us a lift
when the skies are gray, temperatures freezing, earth mantled
in snow, winds biting and streets filled with slush. For gardeners the dead season also serves a very practical
purpose, that of planning for the upcoming growing season in
the garden. And just in time, with the year end holidays now
past, the new year's seed catalogs start to arrive in the mail.
Let's plan our twenty-ten gardens. |
| On the Trail of Black History is a walking tour through time along Boston's Black
Heritage Trail which winds its way around Beacon Hill, formerly
the center of the city's African American community. This is
a fascinating, tragic and eventually triumphant tale which has
never been fully told until now. Come walk with us. |
| Get your rooftop, backyard or
house party started with Radio Roofscape. Our sole mission, should
you accept it, is simply to shake your thing. R&B, jazz,
rock, house, hip-hop, soul, reggae, blues and gospel are all
in the mix. Whatever it takes to rock your body and the party
or power up your workout. |
| Square Foot Gardening Tips
for February | Garden Girl TV . 3
| Urban Sustainable Living |
| Patti Moreno, The Garden Girl,
and Mel Bartholomew, author of Square Foot Gardening team up
monthly to offer timely garden tips. January's show is about
starting a vegetable garden this year. Mel's advice - keep it
close to the house, right outside the kitchen window if possible. |
| So you think you know beans
about Boston? We'll see. Take our trivia test. Beans poses
a fresh question in each issue, carefully crafted by our crack
trivia team, on Boston history, culture, customs or driving directions.
If you think you know the answer email it to roofscape@gmail.com.
Check for the answer in the following issue. Then read the background
briefing that accompanies it - the information will help you
solve future Beans. |
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Old Beans ...
Martin Luther King, Jr. moved to Boston in
September 1951 to pursue his doctorate at the Boston University
School of Theology. Where were his bachelor quarters before he
married Coretta Scott in 1953?
A - B.U. campus housing.
B - Back Bay.
C - The Fenway.
D - The South End.
E - Kenmore Square.
F - Beacon Hill.
Answer ... D - The South End.
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Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
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Background briefing ...
In early September 1951 Martin Luther King,
Jr., ML as his father called him, packed his bachelor belongings
into a shiny new green Chevrolet and headed north for the thousand
mile drive to Boston. The Chevy, equipped with the recently introduced
Powerglide automatic transmission that he'd admired in a friend's
car, was a gift from Daddy King as his father, Reverend Martin
Luther King, Sr., was often called by his family and flock. It
was his reward for graduating at the top of his class after two
years at Crozer Theological Seminary outside of Philadelphia.
Upon his arrival King, from the apartheid
Jim Crow South, soon encountered the harsh reality of the segregated
North.
I remember very well trying to find a place
to live upon arrival in the fall of 1951 [in Boston]. I went
into place after place where there were signs that rooms were
for rent. They were until they found out I was a Negro and suddenly
they had just been rented. 1
After some searching he and Phillip Lenud,
a friend from Morehouse College where King did his undergraduate
work, found an apartment at 397 Massachusetts Avenue across from
the Savoy Ballroom. The Savoy has long since ceased stomping
(replaced by an apartment complex at 400 Mass. Ave.), but King's
digs still stand, a few doors down from the Orange Line T station
and marked with a small bronze plaque.
Source: Dr. King in Boston.
Roofscape Magazine.
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New Beans ...
On February 2, 1775, Abigail Adams wrote a
letter to her friend Mercy Otis Warren with this prediction which
soon proved to be all too true.
"... the die is cast." The King,
she wrote, was determined to implement "the acts passed
by the late Parliament, and to Maintain the authority of the
Legislature over all his dominions ... The Sword," she concluded
solemnly, "is now our only, yet dreadful alternative. We
know too well the blessings of freedom to tamely resign it."
What did John Adam's beloved wife so presciently
predict?
A - New England would develop a thriving munitions
industry.
B - Fort Sumter would soon be stormed.
C - The American Revolution for independence would soon break
out.
D - The colony's gambling debts from dicing would soon come due.
E - A ceremonial sword gilded with gold and a diamond encrusted
hilt must be spent immediately to England to appease King George
III.
F - Colonial weaponry would prove to be dreadfully designed.
If you think you know the answer email it
to roofscape@gmail.com. The correct answer will appear in the
February 15 issue, along with an accompanying background briefing,
this time provided by a special guest expert.
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The best remedy for those who are afraid,
lonely or unhappy is to go outside, somewhere where they can
be quiet, alone with the heavens, nature and God. Because only
then does one feel that all is as it should be and that God wishes
to see people happy, amidst the simple beauty of nature. As long
as this exists, and it certainly always will, I know that then
there will always be comfort for every sorrow, whatever the circumstances
may be. And I firmly believe that nature brings solace in all
troubles.
Anne Frank
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Images ... Witch Hazel in Snow. Fenway
Victory Gardens. Boston.
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