Published July 9, 2010

It’s a culture fest in the Bean this weekend. Whether you’re letting your inner Francais show through or downing all the Greek food you’ll ever want, the world’s at our feet — let’s just hope it doesn’t sizzle on the pavement.

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Published July 9, 2010

Hubbub host Andrew Phelps here. WBUR’s Sonari Glinton covered Thursday’s fire at Deluca’s Market, one of Boston’s oldest grocery stores. It was a four-alarm fire that took five hours to extinguish. The story led Sonari to a yarn from a colleague who worked at Deluca’s more than 40 years ago. Here’s Sonari.

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After spending hours watching the market smolder, I couldn’t help but wonder about the thousands of stories inside those walls. I posted a few photos of the fire on Facebook, and then one such story came to me.

I got this intriguing e-mail about Deluca’s from my colleague, Art Silverman:

My second home from 1967-71.  Had all the free roast beef I ever needed. Quit meat after that. When punks beat the crap out of me on Beacon Street, Virgil Aiello came to my rescue. Fond memories

Art works with me on NPR’s All Things Considered (my real job — I’m only moonlighting here in Boston). Art is sort of ATC’s mad radio scientist/genius. If there is something kooky, interesting, weird or funny on our show, there’s a pretty good chance Art played some role in it. This dude has stories, so I had to call him.

Art was a stock boy at Deluca’s from 1967-1971. It was his first full-time job. Here’s Art’s story as he told it to me, with some editing:

I occasionally made deliveries, which is where you really made the cash. The customers they had were some of the wealthiest people on Beacon Hill and Back Bay.

You got to drive a car, and it was all banged up and they didn’t care if you put new dents in it. It was impossible to drive this van without bumping into something.

I remember delivering, among the customers, Ted Kennedy, Al Capp (the cartoonist of Lil’ Abner fame). I remember delivering to Ursula Andress’ sister.

This was 1967. I was on the way back with my long hair, about 8 in the evening. A car pulled up, and I would count six to eight guys got out of a dark Chrysler and just set upon me. Beating the the pulp out of me with their hands, kicking me in the head. I was bleeding, somewhat unrecognizable. I ran to Deluca’s Market and pounded on the door, and Virgil Aiello, one of the owners — he’s an ex-Marine — he said, “What the hell happened?” I told him. He got a meat clever. He went running after them down Beacon Street.

Virgil patched me up with butcher’s aprons and took me to Mass General. I’m forever in their debt. They were just good people.

I knew I didn’t want to be in retail. In 1970, I stopped eating meat. And I still haven’t, I’ve never gone back.

Art said he’d seen the insides of enough chickens and cows for a lifetime. But he was glad to have worked for Deluca’s, taken in some of that Italian-American culture — danger and all.

Published July 9, 2010

New research out of UC Riverside (go UC!) shows college students study less, way less, than they used to. And I can’t say I’m surprised.

As WBUR’s resident millennial, I wasn’t graduated from college all that long ago. It seemed like all of my college peers either had ADD and took Adderall for it — or didn’t have ADD and took Adderall to stay wired on exam nights.

Radio Boston intern Huw Roberts, who recently earned his degree from American University in Washington, says a friend ran an Adderall ring in freshman year.

I remember that studying was rare, often in groups, and disrupted almost constantly by instant messaging and stupid video-watching. A distracted generation, we were.

We mastered the art of the BS — a skill acquired in high school — and the art of repackaging old work into something new. (But not cheating. I didn’t cheat.)

Thing is, we all skated by. Often with good grades.

I talked about this with Hubbub intern Talia Ralph, an incoming senior at Emerson College:

I don’t study too much. The library at Emerson is definitely one of the campus’ most under-used facilities, at least until finals week — and even still, most people in there are clamoring for a computer, not a study cubicle.

But ask any Emerson student what we’re up to, and we’ll run off a list that makes a lot of people’s eyes get wide (I’ve seen this happen in person: I work at the admission office, and we scare parents and kids away all the time simply by answering their questions about our schedules). I have friends that run radio stations, direct and edit feature-length films, create full-scale marketing campaigns for major corporations – and go to school full-time.

It’s true. I was working full-time as a journalist while going to school. It made my head spin, but my career was too important — more important. And for many of my peers, that job financed their very education. (Thankfully, I attended a state university and have generous parents.)

Huw will be on the show today to talk about this phenomenon, along with the study’s lead author and the president emeritus at Harvard. It’s a perfect topic for this university town.

How much do/did you study? Tell us your habits — bad or good — in the comments.

Published July 9, 2010

The short answer: It’s not entirely clear. This ruling is more important in what it sets up than what it does.

Here’s what you need to know going forward:

First, gay marriage continues to be legal in a handful of states (including four of New England’s six states) and illegal in dozens of others.

U.S. Judge Joseph Tauro ruled that parts of DOMA — the 1996 law signed by President Clinton defining marriage as between one man and woman — are unconstitutional. He ruled that married couples in Massachusetts — gay and straight — are entitled to federal marriage benefits. While it’s a major opinion from a high-level judge, Tauro’s ruling carries weight only in Massachusetts.

“This is a decision from a trial judge in the federal court. Unless and until the First Circuit decides to weigh in — and/or the Supreme Court of the United States, it doesn’t have any binding precedent on other states,” said David Frank, a senior reporter for Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly, on Morning Edition.

“Other courts will look at this opinion and whether it’s persuasive they will start including its reasoning in its own opinions,” said Kent Greenfield, a Boston College law professor. “But it only has the weight a court chooses to give for it.”

Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley, who filed one of the two suits decided yesterday, said the ruling would bring benefits to Massachusetts’ same-sex couples — and to the state’s coffers.

“In a monetary sense, it’s a boon for the commonwealth because our own state budget will get the kind of federal reimbursement for married couples that we should have been getting all along,” Coakley said.

“There’s a range of differential benefits, from Social Security to Medicare to other health benefits that you are entitled to if you are married, filing your income tax that the federal government has just not recognized, because it has the restrictive definition of marriage,” Coakley said. “This decision should change that.” But how immediate that change would come is not yet clear.

[pullquote]Coakley said the ruling will bring tangible benefits to same-sex couples — but only in Massachusetts. How quickly? Not clear.[/pullquote]

The U.S. Justice Department, which serves the president, will appeal in the First Circuit Court of Appeals, because the executive branch is bound to defend the laws passed by Congress (even though President Obama opposes the law).

Main Justice has 60 days to appeal Tauro’s ruling, but the case would not likely not proceed until late fall or early winter, Frank said. Pending that appeal, all the laws on the books are likely to remain unchanged.

Depending on the eventual outcome of that case, an appeal would be brought to the U.S. Supreme Court, which could decide to take the case or not.

If the SCOTUS does hear the case, gay-rights proponents — liberals, people who believe gay people should be allowed to marry — would be fighting for the right of the states to determine which marriage benefits go to whom. Meanwhile, opponents — conservatives, people who normally seek limited federal power — would be fighting for the federal government to make sweeping determinations about marriage law.

“This case exactly flips everybody’s intuition and everybody’s ideology,” said Greenfield, the BC professor.

The battle over gay marriage — and, for that matter, what effect this ruling will actually have on gay marriage — is hardly over.

Further reading:

• WBUR’s Sonari Glinton reports
• NPR’s Tovia Smith reports

Disclosure: I am not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Still have questions? Leave them in the comments.