credit: Courtesy photos



Last Thursday the Friends of the Myrtle Street Playground hosted Jungle Jim, who treated children to extravagant balloon animals. The children wore balloon costumes made by Jim while they acted out “Goldilocks and the Three Bears.”

#1 Jackson Ward of Grove Street with his large balloon sculpture.

#2 Will and Ian Glick of West Cedar Street show off their balloon creations.

You may have seen them as you walk through the park on a Tuesday night, or perhaps you have just seen the results of their labors.

They are the Rose Brigade, an all-volunteer sub-group of the Friends of the Public Garden, which tends to the Garden’s four rose beds, and they are celebrating their 20-year anniversary.

They are a group that works hard at their chosen civic involvement, but they also require a light-heart and membership in the Friends of the Public Garden

“It was really Olga’s idea,” explains China Altman, co-founder and leader of the Rose Brigade, referring to Olga Marshak, a longtime member of the group.

According to Altman, her own tenure of volunteer service in the Public Garden dates back to 1982, after Proposition 2 ˝ had passed and the city eliminated the maintenance budget item for cleaning up trash in the Public Garden.

“Quite literally, all the clean-up in the Public Garden stopped and trash was piling up. It looked terrible and was getting worse,” recalled Altman.

After a meeting of concerned neighbors and Friends of the Public Garden a volunteer committee of cleaners was formed, and the group spent one day a week for the next five years cleaning up trash in the Public Garden.

In 1987, the city resurrected the maintenance line item for the Public Garden and volunteers were no longer needed.

“Tom Kershaw was the official leader of the volunteer group, but I had been the leader on the ground,” said Altman. “Once the city began cleaning up the Garden again the clean-up group disbanded. A year later I got a call from Olga (Marshak) and she told me she missed working in the garden.”

Altman told her she didn’t think there was any work for them to do, but Marshak said she’d noticed that the roses needed some work. It took a bit of prodding and a few meetings between the Friends of the Public Garden and the Parks Department, but finally, the two groups agreed to let the women work on the roses on two conditions.

First, they could only work on the roses after the professional gardeners had gone home for the day, and they couldn’t tell anyone they were doing it.

“We were sub-rosa at that point, from 1988 to 1999,” said Altman. “We were allowed to go public in 1999 when Roy Blomquist became horticultural superintendent for the Parks Department.”

The Rose Brigade has a standard membership of about 20 volunteers.

“We meet every Tuesday, from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. from June to mid-November,” said Altman. “Being the summer, there are usually members who are on vacation, so we hope for a turnout of about 8 to 12 each week. Our scheduled time is considered a window and people come down to work for as long as they can each week.”

Altman also explained that it is not uncommon for people strolling by to offer to help for the day and the group has even had the help of visiting tourists, young children and college students from time to time.

“We teach people if they don’t know how and we have all the tools necessary with us, so that people can come straight from work if they like,” said Altman.

Melida Demorizi is a new member, having joined the Rose Brigade this year, after being invited by Altman to help out one day.

“I wanted to give back to the community and it’s a wonderful group of ladies and gentlemen,” said Demorizi. “She (Altman) takes care of these gardens like they’re her own.”

“I joined because I used to walk by the garden every day and one day I finally said hello to them,” explained Melissa Scher, a nearly ten-year veteran of the Rose Brigade. “I should have said something sooner. (Volunteering this way) I actually feel like this is my public garden.”

Mike Rakita was volunteered by his wife one day when the couple, as they were walking by, stopped to compliment the group on the good work they were doing.

“It really is something special,” said Rakita. “You walk through the park and there is all the beautiful stuff that is done by the professional gardeners, but we’re a group of volunteers, so these just seem prettier, at least to me and those who appreciate the work we do.”

Julie Hahn, another volunteer, noted that the reward in the work the group does comes from the compliments and appreciation they receive.

“The thing that is the most fun is that people walk by and say thank you,” said Hahn. “In a big, busy world it is the little things that make a difference and to know that our work is affecting people (positively) who walk by and see it, that makes you feel good about what you are doing.”

The Beacon Hill Times follows the progress, or lack thereof, on Cambridge Street through direct observation and interviews with the project’s supervisor John Lepore.

Progress during the week of July 30 – Aug. 3

Traffic signals: Best Electric continues work on the traffic lights.

Street paving: The street is not only paved, it is mostly striped.

Street lights: Still off in the median, on all day along the Beacon Hill side of the street.

credit: Courtesy photo



Jane Wilson, founder of the Boston Women Communicators and a resident of Whittier Place, introduced a panel at her organization’s meeting last month that discussed "What's Age Got To Do With It?" and resolved the question of how to get hired when you're 45 plus.
Shown from left are Wilson, speakers Tee Provost of Operation A.B.L.E. at Tremont and Park streets, Priscilla Claman of Career Strategies on Beacon Street, and Janice Foley, president, BWC.

Photo Caption: Jane Burke, director of volunteers at Spaulding Hospital and “All-Time Volunteer” Albert Staples.

Thanks to elderly members of the state and the city-sponsored Retired Senior Volunteer Program, known as RSVP, Boston non-profit organizations such as hospitals, nursing homes and schools receive hours of much-needed service.

One volunteer, seventy-one-year-old Albert Staples of Reading, MA, has spent more than 10,000 hours at Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital over the past eighteen years filing, photocopying and handling the mail in their Quality Management and Compliance Office. He travels 44 miles round-trip to work four times a week and receives a small stipend and a voucher for lunch. At the hospital’s Volunteer Appreciation Day in April, he was recognized as the “all-time volunteer service record holder” for his hours of commitment and dedication.

Spaulding, which has employed several RSVP members in the past, currently has one other volunteer besides Staples working for them. Doris Dwyer, who is 94 years old, takes public transportation into the hospital and delivers books and magazines to patients around the facility.

The RSVP program is a true asset to Spaulding, according to Director of Volunteer Services Jane Burke.

“It is a win-win situation,” she said. “The volunteers make a lot of friends and they are just as valuable to us as employees.”

Founded in 1971, RSVP was officially accepted by Mayor Kevin White in 1972. It is sponsored by the Boston Commission on Affairs of the Elderly and the Corporation for National and Community Service.

It currently has 448 members and provides elderly volunteers to 104 agencies around Boston, including the Museum of Fine Arts, the Museum of Science and the State House, as well as many hospitals, senior centers and children’s programs. New options include practicing English with non-native speakers at the Chinese Center in Chinatown and spending time with children whose mothers are in prison.

RSVP is always looking to recruit new members, according to Director of Volunteers Francesca Johenne.

“People can call us up, and we will send them a packet containing a list of places looking for volunteers,” she said. “Seniors can then take time to pick where they want to work. All that we ask is that they are 55 years of age or older.”

Once they commit to an organization, seniors can choose the number of days and hours they feel comfortable with. They also receive health insurance and are recognized at a sit-down dinner with the mayor every September.

Johenne, who has been with the program for 25 years, said she has found the seniors to be dedicated beyond words.

“They go to their jobs with an incredible shine and enthusiasm,” she said. “I have heard many say that they truly love helping people.”

“RSVP is a program that offers something to everybody,” she added. “Seniors want to be needed, and RSVP has given them that chance.”

The dead of summer

It is the dead of summer – a moment when there is almost as much summer in front of us as behind. It is a relaxing, passing New England moment – the dead of summer - when we can take stock of ourselves while enjoying the warmth, which, like the summer, is fleeting.

We get only so many summers to live in a lifetime, so many warm days to wear short-sleeved shirts and dream about our lives. We don’t know how many summers we will have in a lifetime. That information is the work of fate, we suppose.

The summer of 2007 has been uneventful in this part of the nation. If summer were a notation on a baseball score card, it would read: no hits, no runs, no errors. We have been free of the natural disasters causing havoc in the great forests burning in the West. Except for a few days of uncomfortable heat and humidity, the summer has featured warm days and unusually cool evenings – great sleeping weather that reminds us that fall is never far away.

At the beach, on the Esplanade or wherever one might find himself or herself on a hot summer day, there is the typical dead of summer ambiance – babies in strollers with their bare toes peeking out; teenagers playing soccer on the low tide sand; college-age girls in their bikinis and thongs, many of them tattooed, sunning themselves on blankets spread on the grass with not much more on their minds but looking good, hooking up for a summer romance or simply killing time.

The summer of 2007 has been a summer to fall in love. It has been a summer to fall out of love. It has been a summer to get married and to begin the honeymoon, and it has been a summer to get divorced and to begin a new personal journey.

Babies have been born, old people have died. The sick have grown sicker and the needy remain, as always, needy. At the dead of summer, we are always reminded of the great Charles Dickens and his eloquent introduction to his masterpiece, “A Tale of Two Cities”.

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair. We had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way …”

As we meander through the remainder of the summer of 2007, we should attempt to appreciate each day as it comes, as each day of our lives on this earth might be our last. Each day of this summer might be our last … but then, this might be just another summer to be followed by 30 more.

Who knows? Who cares? It is the dead of summer of 2007. Life is treating the vast majority of us in such a way that we might justifiably say, “We wish this summer of our lives might never end. If only we could freeze ourselves in time at this moment in July, when the summer feels endless and so much more of it still awaits us.”