Published September 28, 2010

Six New Englanders, four of them from Massachusetts, became 2010 MacArthur Fellows today.

From top-left, clockwise: Jessie Little Doe Baird, Matthew Carter, Nergis Mavalvala, Annette Gordon-Reed (Courtesy of the John D. & Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation)

Each one got a surprise phone call with the news that he or she will get $500,000, no strings attached, for being a genius. Pretty sweet.

The Bay Staters are Jessie Little Doe Baird, an indigenous language preservationist in Mashpee; Matthew Carter, a type designer from Cambridge; Annette Gordon-Reed, a historian at Harvard Law; and Nergis Mavalvala, a quantum astrophysicist at MIT.

Carter invented the ubiquitous Verdana (a font I hate) and Georgia (a font I love, which you’re looking at right now). He designed the body text for the New York Times (the newspaper chose from among 19 alternatives) and the Boston Globe.

“There aren’t a great many people around the world who do what I do. It’s a very small profession. We’re not very numerous,” Carter says in a MacArthur video. “My job is to make type that’s readable. Also, I want it to have some sort of quality that is mine.”

Gordon-Reed is the Harvard Law professor who exposed the Thomas Jefferson-Sally Hemmings relationship more than a decade ago — subsequently proved true by DNA tests. “It started as a fascination as a child with Jefferson and Monticello and slavery,” she told NPR’s Ari Shapiro today on Morning Edition.

Gordon-Reed argues that white written history has long been given priority over black oral history. Her next book takes the Hemmings family into the 19th century in an exploration of race.

Baird, of Mashpee, is working to resurrect the lost language of the Wampanoag nation in Massachusetts, a tongue that has not been spoken for 150 years. She has produced dictionaries, phrase books and grammars to help pass on the language to children.

Finally, Mavalvala is a physicist who studies gravitational waves — “fluctuations in space-time curvature that propagate as waves in a pond” — to see further back into the history of the universe than ever before.

Nicholas Benson, a stone carver in Newport, R.I., and Sebastian Ruth, a music educator in Providence, round out the New England representation.

We’ll be looking at the work of these geniuses in greater detail today at 3 on Radio Boston.

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Update: In an earlier version of this post, I trashed Verdana in the same sentence I cooed in admiration for Matthew Carter — only to discover while listening to All Things Considered that Carter, in fact, designed Verdana.

Published September 27, 2010

If he did, the Republican gubernatorial candidate would know to skip this campaign stop:

Media Advisory
Public Events: Tuesday September 28th, 2010
12:15 P.M.        Charlie Baker will visit with voters
Coney Island Hot Dogs
158 Southbridge Street
Worcester, MA

As I learned just last week, Coney Island is closed on Tuesdays. And it doesn’t strike me as the kind of joint that would open specially for him.

9/28 update: The Baker campaign has sent out this revised schedule:

Media Advisory
Public Events: Tuesday September 28th, 2010
12:15 P.M.        Charlie Baker will visit with voters
The Boulevard Diner
155 Shrewsbury Street
Worcester, MA

Published September 25, 2010

In Ware, the central Massachusetts town with a fighting spirit, WBUR’s Morning Edition broadcast live this week from a vacant storefront on Route 9. Host Bob Oakes and reporter David Boeri, with producer Lisa Tobin, introduced the story while standing on the sidewalk. You heard what it sounded like. Here is what it looked like:

Continue reading →

Published September 24, 2010

It has been quite a week on the road for us at WBUR. From Pittsfield, the final stop on our Route 9 journey, Morning Edition host Bob Oakes shares his reflections on the many people we met and the stories we told. –AP

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The view from outside our window here at the The Colonial Theatre in Pittsfield (Andrew Phelps/WBUR)

Nobody pretends Pittsfield is perfect. But it’s not a “speed bump” anymore, either.

It’s the kind of place where you might want to spend a Thursday evening. And the kind of place you might want to come to, to see what’s happened while you were gone.

I also have to say, it’s kind of nice to see what has happened to Pittsfield’s downtown in recent years. It’s good for this city, and maybe, in a way, it’s a sign of hope for the other Route 9 communities we visited this week, worried about their own futures.

It was striking on the road to find so many communities trying to find a new identity they hope will return them to some sort of prosperity as they struggle in this economy. In Framingham, retailers and restaurants are hurting as the town also tries to strike a balance on how it wants to treat its burgeoning immigrant population.

In Worcester, the city needs to convince the state to expand commuter rail if its new investment in downtown revitalization is to be successful.

In Amherst, public higher education tries to juggle its desire to gain national stature at the same time it deals with deep state budget cuts.

The most moving story of the week, though, came from the central Massachusetts town of Ware, where 25 percent of the downtown stores are closed, and the town’s immediate prospects are dim at best.

Still, it was the place we met some of the nicest people. Mike McCarthy, the longtime unemployed factory worker we profiled that day, came by after the broadcast to thank us for telling his very sad story. And he said he is still hopeful he will find a job soon.

And that is what is perhaps the most important thing we found this week — optimism, enduring optimism — in the face of all this uncertainty along Route 9 in Massachusetts.

Published September 23, 2010

You don’t get scenery like this on the Pike. Driving west on Route 9 today, toward the final stop on our road trip — Pittsfield — it’s clear that autumn is here.

Following Bob Oakes in WBUR's Route 9 caravan. Somewhere west of Goshen. (Andrew Phelps/WBUR)

Continue reading →

Published September 23, 2010

The pronunciation of Amherst is an emotional issue. As far as I know, the Amherst in Massachusetts (there are 14 in the United States) is the only one pronounced with a silent H.

AM-urst.

There’s even a T-shirt that proclaims: “Amherst, where only the ‘h’ is silent.” Yes, the people here are opinionated.

These T-shirts are for sale at Amherst250.org.

Still, I hear many students here at UMass pronounce the H — probably because they’re not from here. A cranky minority of residents actually dispute the pronunciation. One person told me it sounds elitist (maybe because the British tend to drop the H?) and another snapped that the town should drop the H if it shouldn’t be pronounced.

I even noticed some folks in our traveling crew pronounce the H in conversation — but not near microphones or around other people. Odd.

Back in May, Radio Boston host Meghna Chakrabarti — who suffers from her own silent H — made the fatal faux pas of mispronouncing Amherst a half-dozen times on the air. After the complaints rolled in, Meghna offered a linguistic olive branch to Amherstonians:

And how did I mispronounce the town’s name? In that dunderheaded inside-Route 128 way, of course. I said, am-HEARST, and not AM-erst, as Amherst should be properly pronounced.

I even called the Amherst College campus and recorded the phone greeting. Sounds like AM-urst to me, but you should listen for yourself:

For the record, official WBUR style is to drop the H.

Published September 23, 2010

University of Massachusetts Amherst (Andrew Phelps/WBUR)

What’s news on a cool Thursday morning in Amherst — where Morning Edition is broadcasting live from the campus center at UMass to discuss challenges for higher education in Massachusetts:

3 Teen Girls Charged In Prince’s Death Due In Court

Three teen girls are due in a Massachusetts court on charges of bullying Phoebe Prince, the 15-year-old South Hadley High School student who committed suicide. All three have pleaded not guilty. (AP)

Mass. Board Of Ed. Approves Anti-Bullying Rules

The rules, unveiled last month, require principals to notify the parents of victims and perpetrators of bullying, and to tell law enforcement officials if necessary. The state’s Board of Elementary and Secondary Education unanimously approved them Tuesday. (AP)

UMass Ranks Among Nation’s Greenest Universities

Three colleges in the Pioneer Valley have been listed among the most environmentally friendly schools in the nation,one being the University of Massachusetts. (The Daily Collegian)

Musante Named Amherst Town Manager

John Musante will be Amherst’s new town manager on Oct. 1 following a unanimous vote by the Select Board to appoint him to the position and forgo a national search. (Amherst Bulletin)

Memorial Set For UMass Marching Band Director

On the day Minuteman Marching Band director George N. Parks was laid to rest, the University of Massachusetts announced a public memorial service has been scheduled in his honor Oct. 16. (The Republican)

Death Of George Parks Brought Out The Best In Umass

The phrase “UMass community” gets used pretty often around here, particularly when there is a tragic loss. But as the passing of University of Massachusetts Minuteman Marching Band Director George N. Parks showed, such a thing does exist. (The Daily Collegian)

What are you reading, Amherst?