Boson, Massachusetts

 Bonfire of the Vanities A Saturday night/Sunday morning bonfire party at a home on the edge of the Easter Blue Hills Reservation was shut down over the weekend as a local man was arrested for refusing to disperse the crowd of guests numbering some three dozen people. Police arrived after neighbors had called to report a gathering that violated Massachusetts Governor Charles Baker's order to limit the number of people at any gathering to ten or less people.  Towards midnight Boson Police arrived at the wooded area behind the Steve Miller's home and ordered him to tell his guests to leave and to stay six feet away from each other. "The US Constitution affirms the right of the people to assemble peaceably," the Miller said.  "There is no 'except during pandemics' clause or restrictions.  I am exercising my rights.  You are using police state tactics for a medical problem." "Tell it to the judge," one officer said as they handcuf...

The outraged director of Boson Museum of Find Art has announced that late Saturday night or early Sunday morning miscreants had broken in to the museum's West Wing and spray painted slogans and painted mustaches on a number of paintings, and that the museum's copy of Venus de Milo had arms attached to her.  Because of the COVID-19 crisis the museum has fewer guards.  Dr. Farid Pazhoohi, who is married to Mayor Welsh's sister, has been Director of the Museum for a decade.  Under his leadership the museum has acquired a number of 'reproductions' of famous art works as a way to fill up the museum and attract more visitors.  Art critics complained that the museum was not showing original works, and a few museums whose works were copied sued for copyright infringement. "How can you copyright art that has been plundered from other countries?" the director famously said.  "Do imperialist thieves get to 'own' the ideas that steal?" Boso...

(Boson MASS) A column of tanks and reinforced military humvees with masked guardsmen set up a perimiter around Boson Commons on Saturday 28 March 2020.  Boson City Mayor Martin J. Walsh had urgently called the governor asking for basic medical equipment like latex gloves, face masks, and most importantly ventilators. People with sever breathing problems from the COVID-19 virus may need to be in a ventilator to stay alive. "Ventilators are not something the National Guard, or the commonwealth, just keep parked for emergencies," Governor Charles Baker said.  "We have tanks and helicopters and machine guns.  But, why would we stock medical equipment.  That doesn't make any sense when one is trying to save money on health care." The governor added.  "The Massachusetts National Guard is to keep public order with armed men and women.  They are not a medical corps.  They are fighting units.  Sure, we bring them out when the...

(Nurses at Mount Sinai West in garbage bags. (Photo: Facebook, Diana Torres) Every serious effort to deal with this coronavirus crisis, and to prepare for it, has been sabotaged by private ownership of the means of production. This is the basic issue: whether economic life is directed by the ruling elite on the basis of profit and the accumulation of wealth, or whether it is directed by the working class on the basis of social need. Capitalism or socialism. To the extent that private property gets in the way of saving lives, it must be swept aside. The vast technological and scientific advances and the enormous productive forces of humanity must be freed from the constraints placed on them by the profit motive and the nation-state system. In cities throughout the United States, hospitals are approaching capacity as the number of people infected with COVID-19 doubles every two days. On Friday, the number of cases topped 100,000, after nearly 20,000 new...

Local man, Pico Pablos, had been hoping to create a series of master works to finish his graduate thesis in Applied Art at Boson's Mass College of Art.  Locked-down in his apartment for over a week now Pablos has run out of drawing paper, and even regular paper. "I've turned to the white board and felt pens," he explained over a Skype interview with this reporter. "My kitchen bulletin board is covered in line drawings I've created using the backs of junk mail." "When I looked in my storage closet and saw that I had run out of clean sheets of paper to draw on I began to wonder about my priorities," Pablos said. "I ran out and bought toilet paper when I saw the lines and fights in supermarkets for sanitary paper.  But, what kind of 'artist' thinks about human waste when they should be thinking about art and creating new things and self expression through visuals."  He shook his head sadly.  "I've been drawing ...

BOSON, MA—-A wicker basket filled with seashells and placed on top of a toilet tank has magically transformed Dan and Paula Watson's small bathroom into a serene tropical oasis.   The married couple is self quarantined in their small apartment because of the state wide suggestion to 'shelter in place.'  While her husband has been spending time in the basement 'organizing his tools' and drinking beer, Paula has been cleaning and organizing the apartment.  "I can't believe the difference adding those seashells made," said Paula Watson, who had somehow been transported from a beige, run-of-the-mill bathroom to an unforgettable island paradise thousands of miles from the winter weather that greets each spring in Boson. "Every time I walk in here now it's like, 'Wow, where am I? Cancún ?'" With lots of time on her hands, the extraordinary transformation took place when Watson neatly arranged a handful of sea...

(Boson Mayor Welsh's home in the Pleasant Valley neighborhood)  (AP) In an odd twist of fate, Boson Mayor Welsh is staying at the Trump Tower Boson under self-imposed quarantine while the city's most famous 'fugitive' whistle blower Seth Rich is staying at Mayor Welsh's home in the Pleasant Valley neighborhood.  Seth Rich has confirmed that he is resting comfortably after testing positive for the CORVID-19 - corona virus. "I'm pretty healthy, generally, so I have mild symptoms so far," Seth Rich said to this reporter when visited at Mayor Welsh's home.  This reporter stayed on the lawn in front of the house as Seth Rich spoke from the front porch.  Both the mayor and his wife are at the Trump Tower, so Seth has the house to himself.  The mayor's children are staying at their cousin Vinny's. While initially under tight protection when he moved to Boson three years ago because of Democratic Party Clinton supporters anger and threats o...

The COVID-19 crisis, like the 2008 crash, has exposed the myth of capitalist individualism. It has made clear that the banks and corporations cannot survive without massive state support. If the capitalist class is unopposed in its efforts to make the working class bear the weight of the crisis, it will be at the cost of millions of lives. Mankind has reached a point where the most basic function of society–the preservation of human life–is incompatible with capitalism. As the pandemic spreads, the economic impact is acquiring dimensions that are without precedent in the history of the United States. As people are being instructed to “shelter in place” and practice “social distancing,” the economy is shutting down. While deceitful and cynical lip service is being paid to protecting workers, the only purpose of the negotiations in Washington is to protect the wealth and profits of the superrich corporate-financial oligarchs. On a scale even greater than the bailout ...

(UPI) In an unhappy reverse of fortunes Neponset Drive-In Movie Theatre took a turn for the strange in the last few days.  The initial welcome of the opening of the riverside drive-in by people who could not go to shuttered movie theaters because of state wide business closing due to COVID-19 turned in to an unhappy situation as they found they could not leave.  People with children especially liked having a place to take the children in the family car after being home alone with the kids for a week.  But when Massachusetts Governor Charles Baker announce the forced closing of all non-essential businesses and an advisory to 'shelter in place' under lock-down the Massachusetts State Police blocked the exits to the Neponset Drive-In.  People were told that they must shelter in their cars until the police clarified if they could return to their homes. "We want to stop the spread of this virus," Sergeant Jay McTeague said.  "Under the Commonwealth of Massach...