credit: Dhan Shrestha
caption: Catherine Ferrigno, along with her puppy Charlie, both of Garden Street, received instructions for voting at the West End Branch Library.





Incumbent Democrat Dianne Wilkerson easily kept her Second Suffolk Senate seat last week, capturing 71 percent of the vote city-wide. But Hillers did not demonstrate such strong support — only 44 percent voted for Wilkerson. Challenger Samiyah Diaz was able to get almost 43 percent of Hill votes. Thirteen percent of Hill voters chose to blank in that race.

Many Hillers showed up at the polls, with 59 percent of registered voters casting their ballots. The city-wide average was 55 percent. Ward 5, precinct 5, which is on the flat of the Hill near Beacon Street, won the prize for the best Hill turnout — 66 percent of its 501 registered voters voted on Tuesday.

Speaker of the House Sal DiMasi (D) defeated his opponent, Kenneth Procaccianti, grabbing 62 percent of the vote in this neighborhood. Procaccianti received almost 28 percent.

Incumbent Senator Stephen Lynch (D) triumphed over challender Jack E. Robinson, with 69 percent of the vote. Robinson took 21 percent.

Both state Representative Marty Walz (D) and state Senator Robert Travaglini (D) were unopposed in last week’s election. Walz grabbed 76.7 percent of the Hill’s vote. About 22 percent of neighborhood voters blanked in this race. Senate President Travaglini received 72 percent of the vote and 654 (or 26 percent) blanks.

Christopher Iannella, Jr. and Michael J. Callahan both won their races for Governor’s Council.

A verdict is expected in the on-going trial of Victor Young, the man charged with first-degree murder after the 2003 fatal stabbing on Wayman Pearson in front of 250 Cambridge Street.

Young, 26, of Roxbury, was arraigned on murder charges on September 14, 2003, after allegedly stabbing Wayman Pearson, 18, of the Peter Faneuil House on Joy Street, in the back several times. He has also been charged with armed assault with intent to murder and two counts of assault and battery with a dangerous weapon.

Evidence from the office of Suffolk County District Attorney Daniel F. Conley suggests that Young and three friends drove up from Cape Cod in the early hours of September 14, 2003, to confront Calvin Goffigan, Pearson’s friend, about a personal dispute. Upon arriving at Goffigan’s residence at 250 Cambridge Street, Young confronted Goffigan’s friends Leonard Gibson, 28, and James Morgan, 27.

Young allegedly stabbed Morgan in the shoulder, neck and abdomen, and then stabbed Gibson in the hand. After allegedly witnessing Pearson fighting with a passenger in Young’s car, Young stabbed Pearson in the back repeatedly, according to Conley’s office. Goffigan was not injured.

Pearson was rushed to Mass General, where he succumbed to his wounds and was pronounced dead at 2:40 a.m. Boston Police investigators later found Young’s knife, which he left at the scene. Detectives arrested Young in Roxbury’s Orch
ard Park Housing Development at about 12:30 p.m. that day.

He was arraigned on a murder charge in the Boston Municipal Court that afternoon and indicted by a Suffolk County Grand Jury in November 2003.

The mandatory punishment for first-degree murder is life in prison without the possibility of parole, according to Jake Wark, spokesperson for Conley’s office.

credit: Laia Albaladejo
caption: DeLuca’s Chef Marrous, stuffed a turkey with cranberry walnut stuffing last week.




We used to sip red wine, nibble on cheese and swig water. Now we sip varietal wine, nibble on artisanal cheese and choose water for its degree of fizz and mineral tastes.

Given the distinctions that now lend status to other common foods, wouldn’t you expect to have designer turkeys? We do, right here in the neighborhood.

“The top of the line,” said Virgil Aiello, owner of DeLuca’s Market, “is Eberly, an organic, all-natural turkey from Pennsylvania.”

Like DeLuca’s other turkeys, the Eberlys have never been frozen. These turkeys are priced at approximately $4 a pound. DeLuca’s other turkeys are the Plainville brand from New York at $3 a pound. This turkey is not organic, but it has not been fed antibiotics or anything artificial and has been kept in a “reduced stress” environment. DeLuca’s least expensive brand is from Bell & Evans at around $2.50 a pound. It arrives in a chill pack, which is not frozen, but does keep the turkey pretty hard, according to Aiello. This one has a pop-up thermometer.

The Bell & Evans is the leanest type of turkey and has been bred for a large amount of white, breast meat, said Aiello. Because these turkeys are so lean, they dry out more quickly if they are over cooked.

What is Aiello cooking this year for his own Thanksgiving dinner? “I’m trying the Eberlys this year,” he said. “I’m expecting a full, satisfying flavor and a succulent, moist turkey.”

He said that freshness is probably one of the most important parts of taste. His turkeys arrive on November 20, three days before Thanksgiving.

Savenor’s birds all from one farm

Savenor’s Market carries only one kind of domestic turkey, but Ronnie Savenor says it is the best. “We use a small, independent farmer from North Carolina,” he said. The Savenor family found the farmer through their late customer, Julia Child. The free-range turkey comes in a wooden box packed in ice. It is fed natural products, but is not organic. Because of the speed of shipment and the direct connection, the turkeys are cooked and eaten sometime between nine and 12 days after they are killed. Savenor said this time frame appears to be ideal for taste. This turkey sells for $2.79 a pound.

For those with adventurous taste buds, Savenor’s has two specialty turkeys. One is what they call a Turducken, which is a boned turkey stuffed with a boned duck stuffed with a boned chicken and layered with dressing. Its price is $6.99 a pound.

Another option is a wild turkey, priced at $8.99 a pound, which is lean, cooks faster and probably needs to be roasted in a baking bag to seal in the juices and keep it moist. “It’s awesome,” said Savenor. “It is basically all dark meat and shouldn’t be confused with domestic turkeys in taste.”

The wild turkeys come from a supplier out west.

Whole Foods has three types

Jason Pearsall, the meat coordinator for the North Atlantic region for Whole Foods, expects to sell about 1,500 turkeys at the Whole Foods grocery store at Charles River Plaza.

He said the most popular turkey is the Whole Foods Market brand turkey that sells for $1.99 a pound. “It’s one of the best turkeys out there at that price,” he said.

The turkeys are the Lovelace breed, which was developed on a farm in Orefield, Pennsylvania, where the turkeys are raised, ranging free, with vegetarian feed with no antibiotics. This turkey is Pearsall’s choice for his own Thanksgiving. These turkeys have a pop-up thermometer, but Pearsall cautions that pop-up thermometers tend to overcook turkeys. He suggests that you stick your own thermometer into the thickest part of the bird and roast it until the temperature reaches 165 degrees.

Whole Foods’ two other turkeys are also produced on family farms in California and Pennsylvania. They are fully certified as organic. The Holland White is the most popular commercial turkey breed, since it has a wide breast and short legs. It sells for $3.49 a pound.

The Heirloom Bronze Organic Heritage turkeys come from an old breed celebrated for their flavor, said Pearsall. They cost $3.59 a pound.

Construction on the Anna’s Taqueria at the corner of Garden and Cambridge streets has halted, as the restaurant waits for city approval to install a separate drain line. The restaurant now plans to open next spring.

“Because I’m in a multi-floor building, I want to do it correctly. I want to be a good neighbor,” said chain owner Michael Kamio of his decision to request a dedicated drain line for the restaurant. The 2,600 square foot restaurant occupies the bottom two floors of a condominium at 242 Cambridge Street. Kamio said that he wants to avoid inconveniencing the building’s residents with problems from the restaurant’s hood sounds and air pollution.
While Kamio said he knows that “people are clamoring for the much anticipated Anna’s Taqueria” on Cambridge Street, he said, “I’m not rushing to open this, obviously.”

Kamio has completed the permitting process for the 40-seat restaurant except for a standard food service and takeout license from the city’s Licensing Board. He plans to approach the board after installing the drain line.

Kamio announced plans to build the restaurant in December 2004, with a projected opening in spring 2005. After several delays, he told The Beacon Hill Times last August that he hoped to open the restaurant this fall. He also owns two Anna’s Taqueria restaurants in Brookline and one each in Cambridge and Somerville.

“We’re moving forward with it,” he said. “We’re still coming.”

The common wealth —finally

Deval Patrick’s campaign was short on specifics. This is what you can get away with when you are a handsome, articulate candidate.

Then, in his acceptance speech last week, he got very specific in one realm — our civic realm. He used such words as “civic life,” “a renewed sense of community,” and “common wealth,” not just commonwealth.

Then, instead of ranting about cutting taxes in a state where the bridges, parks and schools are falling apart, he talked about goals that we must accomplish as a community of citizens: a revived economy, better schools, better affordable health care, safer streets and more affordable housing.

How he will accomplish those goals is still to be learned. But, we’re not even sure it matters. ANY steps that he takes will be better than what we’ve had over the last decade, in which bettering the state has taken a back seat to our leaders decrying same-sex marriage, trying to reduce taxes on their mult-million dollar incomes, and trying to obstruct scientists from using embryonic stem cells to try to find cures for diseases. Efforts to make our lives better were simply forgotten.

But it looks as if the times are changing.

What we liked most about Patrick’s speech was that he articulated the situation we’re stuck with. More than six million of us live together in 351 cities and towns on 10,555 square miles.

Whether we are rich or poor, Democrat or Republican, tall or short, we operate in a public realm and having a good public realm benefits everyone. Even those who barricade themselves inside gated communities have to emerge onto public roads at some point. Even those whose own children attend private schools have to rely on the public schools to train the employees that staff their companies, law firms and hospitals.

A Longfellow Bridge that is in good repair helps all of us get home at night. A reclaimed Longfellow Bridge that is artfully lit at night makes all our lives more pleasant. A completed Cambridge Street makes traffic flow better for suburbanites coming into town, locals getting out of town and visitors who rented cars before they found out that it is easier to walk than drive in Boston.

There was a time in America when the citizenry seemed proud of the democracy they had created, and their public spaces showed it. One example is the Boston Public Library, designed with great fanfare as a temple to a new country providing education for all. All across the mid-Atlantic states and the middle west, there are Greek Revival libraries and town halls, built between 1820 and the Civil War, which demonstrate a community’s pride in its formation and place within the “last best hope for mankind.”

The founders of Massachusetts referred to it as the Commonwealth, demonstrating how they felt about the civic realm.
We’re not a state, we’re a commonwealth. The plain English says it best. The wealth we hold in common, whether it is the condition of a park or a road, a courthouse or a school, is the measure of how much each of us has been doing our part.

We’ve done it pretty badly over the last decade as everything from the Esplanade to the Longfellow Bridge shows. Perhaps now, with new leadership, we can better that public realm. It is a good first step to have our a new governor is talking about it.