Published May 28, 2010
Sounds of celebration in the streets of Boston, and not just for the long weekend, or the prospect of being tied up in endless Cape-bound traffic on Route 6.
The cheering, at least in our office, is for the three Friday Hubbub stories brought to Radio Boston today by our news-in-review panel.
Renee Loth, columnist at the Boston Globe, noted that independent gubernatorial candidate (and current treasurer) Tim Cahill has been proudly handing out checks to Bay State communities through the Massachusetts School Building Authority. It’s part of the treasurer’s office, and therefore Treasurer Cahill has been happy to talk about his efforts on behalf of schools. However, Loth points out that candidate Cahill is also in favor of rolling back the state sales tax and alcohol tax, two key funding sources for the school building assistance program.
Ken Cooper, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist formerly of the Globe, raises the foreign policy ironies erupting in the current unrest in Kingston, Jamaica. Christopher Coke, don of the Tivoli Gardens area, is wanted by the United States on federal drug and gun charges. Jamaican soldiers have been looking for him in Kingston, but gang members have been shooting back with guns that, Cooper says, might have orginally been supplied by the United States itself during alleged intelligence operations in the 1970s. The lesson here, Cooper says: Be careful who you give guns to.
My Hubbub was a bit more bubbly. Smoke, the grand dame of harbor seals at the New England Aquarium, turned 39 years old. Not bad for a species that usually lives into its mid-20s. There are only two other seals in North America known to be over 40, and Smoke still seems to be swimming strong. I was especially charmed by the fact that even with her limited vision, Smoke torpedoes around her exhibit using her whiskers to navigate. It’s also through that deft nose, capable of balancing balls, that she blew out her candles which were, appropriately for a seal, stuffed into the mouths of herring.