King treated blogger's son like royalty

News of former governor Ed King's death last week makes Mike Ball of Jamaica Plain sad. He writes on Mass Marriers that he didn't agree with King's politics, but recalls that King was always very nice to him and his young son when they walked through the State House on the way to day care:

``When baby Aaron was on me or tucked into my bent arm, Ed would invariably approach and speak with us, no not us, Aaron. He was the big shot and certainly didn't have to do that, but he always did. He too was sensible about it -- no baby talk, rather he used adult words with him as we did and Aaron was quite comfortable with our governor. Eye to eye, tiny head to big head, they were chatting buddies."

When Josh Ourisman was getting ready to move from San Francisco to Cambridge, he couldn't understand all the outrage on Boston blogs directed toward the MBTA, which to him seemed far superior to San Francisco's BART. But after a month of dealing with the T's current dual token/CharlieTicket setup, he reports on his On the Other Hand that he's beginning to understand:

``Even now, at least a month into the transition, if I want to go to Harvard Square (as I did on Saturday) I have to buy a $1.25 CharlieTicket to get there, then a $1.25 token to get back. Of course if I didn't realize that Harvard Square didn't have their CharlieTicket machines installed yet I'd probably end up getting a $2.50 CharlieTicket thinking I could use it to get home only to be surprised when 1) I couldn't, and 2) they only have one window open selling tokens at Harvard Square on a Saturday afternoon so there's an enormously long line. Long story short, I walked home to Central Square."

With all the changes at channels 56 and 38, Steve Garfield of Jamaica Plain wonders: Why can't Channel 38 bring back ``Ask the Manager?" On Off on a Tangent , he writes:

``I used to love watching Ask the Manager. The station manager would answer viewer mail and it was a low production show with high comedy."

Recent news that the Back Bay is infested with giant rats has one Back Bay blogger worried. On Pasquinade , the blogger, who goes only by Amy, recounts a recent attempt to get to sleep:

``I began to relax and doze off. Just then, a thumpthumpTHUMP went across my ceiling. Since I had the earplugs in, I couldn't tell if it was happening in my upstairs neighbor's apartment or in the ceiling. It sounded like two creatures fighting and chasing each other, and it ended with a CRASH and an honest-to-God speck of ceiling falling onto my bed. I let out a scream, deathly afraid it would be a mouse head on my bed, and got up to take a Tylenol PM to drug myself into sleep."

Rob Noyes of Somerville writes on his Derspatchel that he recently walked around Massachusetts General Hospital's Ether Dome , where dentist William Morton first used an esthesia on a patient in 1846 .

``The place was well-kept, brightly lit, and clean, and the steep seating and plain white wooden gallery reminded me of many a Yankee Congregationalist church. It was also eerily quiet, and the acoustics were such that even quiet words of no importance carried much reverential weight. Even my cameraphone's shutterclick noise reverberated importantly throughout the room.

Knowing that surgical procedures were performed there for decades prior to the advent of anesthesia, Noyes notes it ``was difficult to contemplate. What screams must have echoed through this chamber, I thought, while Learned Men of Medicine sat in the oddly-shaped seats, peering down at the blood and gore, taking notes or nodding approvingly."

Contact Adam Gaffin at adamg@gaffin.com. Find links to the complete items mentioned here at www.universalhub.com/0924.html