Spending on police per person, fiscal year 2012

By Matt Carroll, Boston Globe | June 27, 2013

Click here to see a larger, interactive version of this chart.
Additional town-by-town snapshots.

By Jessica Bartlett, Town Correspondent

Hingham Police are warning residents to be wary of yet another phone scam, this time involving a person claiming to have relatives hostage.

According to police, a female resident came into the police station on May 24, saying she had received what she believed was a scam phone call.

The woman told police that the man on the other line asked if she had a brother or father. When the woman said she had a father, the man then said that her father had been in a serious motor vehicle crash.

The woman told the caller that her parents were in Bermuda. The caller then said he was also in Bermuda, and said he was holding the woman’s father hostage.

The caller demanded that the woman send $1,000 via Western Union or he would kill her father.

The woman contacted her parents and discovered they were safe before she went to the bank to transfer money.

According to Hingham Police, the call is consistent with other incidents in South Shore communities over the past few weeks, including those in Duxbury and Pembroke.

Residents are advised to be aware of any phone scams, and if they are contacted, to call Hingham Police.

(Wendy Maeda/Globe Staff)

Mayor Thomas M. Menino today at the proposed site of a handicapped friendly park near Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital in Charlestown.

Jeremy C. Fox, Globe Correspondent

Mayor Thomas M. Menino outlined a five-year capital plan today aimed at improving educational opportunities across the city, enhancing public facilities, and increasing accessibility for people with disabilities.

Menino submitted the $1.8 billion capital blueprint to the City Council in early April, along with a $2.6 billion budget plan for the next fiscal year. The council is required to hold its first vote on the capital plan, which calls for the city to borrow $177 million in the next fiscal year, by June 5.

In a speech outside the new Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital at the Charlestown Navy Yard, Menino provided details about the plan. It includes 341 projects over five years, with $214 million worth of projects this year alone. It would create about 450 construction jobs this year, he said.

Menino said the plan includes $20.5 million to transform the former Mitt Romney campaign headquarters at 585 Commercial St. in the North End into a new K-8 school.

“Imagine Mitt Romney thinking about [how] he’s getting involved in public education,” Menino quipped. “Maybe he’ll send some money to pay for it.”

The plan also includes:

-- Several West Roxbury projects: $11 million in improvements at Millennium Park; a $6.5 million overhaul of playing fields at West Roxbury High School; and $3.75 million for the Draper Pool.

-- $18.6 million to expand the Eliot K-8 Innovation School in the North End.

-- $10.2 million for street improvements in Uphams Corner and East Boston’s Central Square.

-- $16 million to replace granite with glass at the Central Library’s Johnson Building and build new areas inside for children and teenagers.

As powerful winds blew off the Mystic River, buffeting about 50 officials, hospital staff, and reporters, Menino highlighted a project that would turn an adjacent vacant lot into a playground accessible to children with physical limitations.

Proclaiming the waterfront area a “spectacular site,” he asked, “And you know what’s going to be even more spectacular, as we go forward over the next several months? Seeing children with disabilities play on the state-of-the-art playground right behind me.

"Watching people recover from health challenges here and build up strength to walk along the HarborWalk. Seeing families and their kids exercise and have fun along the harbor,” he said.

Menino thanked the staff of the new Spaulding facility, which opened late last month and included survivors of the Boston Marathon bombing among its first patients. He said he hoped to see the park completed by November, allowing him to attend its ribbon-cutting while still in office until January.

Jeremy C. Fox can be reached at jeremy.fox@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @jeremycfox.

By David Nyhan, Globe Staff

The late Globe columnist David Nyhan wrote the following column in 1987. Since then, it has been reprinted in the newspaper and online many times around this time of year. Nyhan died in January 2005.

THE REJECTIONS arrive this time of year in thin, cheap envelopes, some with a crummy window for name and address, as if it were a bill, and none with the thick packet you'd hoped for.

''Dear So-and-so:

''The admissions committee gave full consideration . . . but I regret to inform you we will be unable to offer you a place in the Class of 2012." Lots of applicants, limited number of spaces, blah blah blah, good luck with your undergraduate career. Very truly yours, Assistant Dean Blowhard, rejection writer, Old Overshoe U.

This is the season of college acceptance letters. So it's also the time of rejection. You're in or you're out. Today is the day you learn how life is not like high school. To the Ins, who got where they wanted to go: Congrats, great, good luck, have a nice life, see you later. The rest of this is for the Outs.

You sort of felt it was coming. Your SAT scores weren't the greatest. Your transcript had some holes in it. You wondered what your teachers' recommendations would really say, or imply. And you can't help thinking about that essay you finished at 2 o'clock in the morning of the day you absolutely had to mail in your application, that essay which was, well, a little weird.

Maybe you could have pulled that C in sociology up to a B-minus. Maybe you shouldn't have quit soccer to get a job to pay for your gas. Maybe it was that down period during sophomore year when you had mono and didn't talk to your teachers for three months while you vegged out. What difference does it make what it was? It still hurts.

It hurts where you feel pain most: inside. It's not like the usual heartache that kids have, the kind other people can't see. An alcoholic parent, a secret shame, a gaping wound in the family fabric, these are things one can carry to school and mask with a grin, a wisecrack, a scowl, a just-don't-mess-with-me-today attitude.

But everybody knows where you got in and where you didn't. Sure, the letter comes to the house. But eventually you've still got to face your friends. ''Any mail for me?" is like asking for a knuckle sandwich. Thanks a lot for the kick in the teeth. What a bummer.

How do you tell kids at school? That's the hard part. The squeals in the corridor from the kids who got in someplace desirable. The supercilious puss on the ones who got early acceptance or the girl whose old man has an in at Old Ivy.

There's the class doofus who suddenly becomes the first nerd accepted at Princeton, the 125-pound wrestling jock who, surprise, surprise, got into MIT. But what about you?

You've heard about special treatment for this category or that category, alumni kids on a legacy ticket or affirmative action luckouts or rebounders or oboe players. Maybe they were trying to fill certain slots. But you're not a slot. You're you. They can look at your grades and weigh your scores and see how many years you were in French Club. But they can't look into your head, or into your heart. They can't check out the guts department.

This is the important thing: They didn't reject you. They rejected your resume. They gave some other kid the benefit of the doubt. Maybe that kid deserved a break. Don't you deserve a break? Sure. You'll get one. Maybe this is the reality check you needed. Maybe the school that does take you will be good. Maybe this is the day you start to grow up.

Look at some people who've accomplished a lot and see where they started. Ronald Reagan? Eureka College. Jesse Jackson? They wouldn't let him play quarterback in the Big Ten, so he quit Illinois for North Carolina A & T. Do you know that the recently retired chairmen and CEOs of both General Motors and General Electric graduated from UMass? Bob Dole? He went to Washburn Municipal University.

The former minority leader of the United States Senate, Tom Daschle, went to South Dakota State. The former speaker of the US House of Representatives, J. Dennis Hastert, went to Northern Illinois University. Dick Armey, the former House majority leader, took a bachelor's degree from Jamestown College. Winston Churchill? He was so slow a learner that they used to write to his mother to come take this boy off our hands.

I know what you think: Spare me the sympathy. It still hurts. But let's keep this in perspective. What did Magic Johnson say to the little boy who also tested HIV positive? ''You've got to have a positive attitude." What happens when you don't keep a positive attitude? Don't ask.

This college thing? What happened is that you rubbed up against the reality of big-time, maybe big-name, institutions. Some they pick, some they don't. You lost. It'll happen again, but let's hope it won't have the awful kick. You'll get tossed by a girlfriend or boyfriend. You won't get the job or the promotion you think you deserve. Some disease may pluck you from life's fast lane and pin you to a bed, a wheelchair, a coffin. That happens.

Bad habits you can change; bad luck is nothing you can do anything about.

Does it mean you're not a good person? People like you, if not your resume. There's no one else that can be you. Plenty of people think you're special now, or will think that, once they get to know you. Because you are.

And the admissions department that said no? Screw them. You've got a life to lead.

(MSPCA Angell)

Boston.com Staff

A local dog was rescued Friday for the second time within the past month.

Lani was first rescued from a hoarder home in Braintree last month along with a dozen other purebred Shar Pei dogs. The dogs were brought to the MSPCA-Angell animal adoption center in Jamaica Plain.

Teri DeFilippo adopted Lani on Tuesday, but when they got to DeFilippo’s home on Church Street in Wareham at about 5 p.m., the dog slipped out of her leash and ran toward Route 6, officials from the adoption center said.

A three-day search for Lani ended Friday when Alyssa Muro, manager of the MSPCA's adoption center in JP, brought one of the dog's litter-mates to the Wareham area to try to find Lani.

Using tips from people who had seen the missing dog, Muro went to the area where Lani had been spotted in the past and was able to lure her close enough to recover her.

"Thanks to her new family for all the work they put in!" Muro wrote on the MSPCA's Facebook page Friday. "In the end, it was someone who had been given a flyer by them this morning and called to let us know where Lani was."

Lani is now back with her new owner, who expressed gratitude on Facebook.

"One million thanks is not enough!" DeFilippo wrote.

--
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DARREN MCCOLLESTER/GETTY IMAGES

A seawall breached in Scituate Saturday morning amid a lacerating nor’easter that kept pounding, dusk to dawn. Water poured onto Ocean Avenue and surrounding streets, spurring frantic calls from residents pleading for evacuation.

Town officials planned a 5 pm news conference to update the media on the damage from the snow storm. Here is a Globe video of high tides in Scituate, Plymouth and Hull.

Around the south shore, images and reports continued to come in regarding damage from the storm surge.

This video posted Saturday morning by Michael Page shows high tide coastal flooding in Hingham. Page reports by Twitter that Hingham received about 19-inches.

Scituate police sent this photo of a tree down to Your Town Correspondent Jessica Bartlett. You can follow Jessica's coverage on Twitter @jessmayb3.

According to Twitter reports collected by Bartlett Saturday morning, Duxbury is about 90% without power, many roads are impassable and it will be several days until full restoration. A couple hundred people in Hingham are without power. Power was out in Weymouth in the morning, but was later restored.

"Post island road in #Quincy doesn't have water in roads but marsh is full. In the meantime, folks having snow parties,'' Bartlett tweeted around 11 am Saturday.

The Globe's Metro Desk blog reported that more than 2,000 members of the National Guard have been mobilized and many are stationed in communities from Hull to Sandwich, evacuating residents or getting in position in case they need to do so.

“The surge and the flooding there is definitely an issue for us,” said Major General L. Scott Rice, commander of the Massachusetts National Guard. “We’re getting our high-water vehicles out there and in place to start moving people out of there.”

National Guardsmen were already helping to evacuate Hull, where officials had encouraged residents to leave; they are now moving to Marshfield, Scituate, and Weymouth, and Salisbury.

Here is our story posted last night. Globe reporter Akilah Johnson can be followed on Twitter @akjohnson1922.

Go to the boston.com homepage for more updates.

"This has been a top 10 storm for many people and the biggest snowstorm ever in terms of snow totals for others. Portland, ME set a new all-time snow total record,'' Boston.com Weather Wisdom blogger David Epstein wrote in a post that lists snow fall totals for the region.

Meanwhile, the AP reports that the U.S. Postal Service has suspended mail delivery and will keep post offices closed in all six New England states because of the blizzard that has dumped more than 2 feet of snow throughout the region.

Here's a Hingham photo Tweeted by Michael Page of Hinghamweather.com:

The With a huge snowstorm heading toward the region, the Valentine’s Dessert Tasting at the James Library and Center for the Arts, originally scheduled for Friday, Feb. 8, has been postponed until Friday, Feb. 15, at 8 p.m.

“All of our vendors were able to reschedule and will be here,” director Caroline Chapin said. “We’re rescheduling for the safety of our vendors and guests.”

All tickets will be honored for the snow date. To read about this event, click here.

For more information, visit www.jameslibrary.org.

Four master chefs from around the South Shore share their holiday secrets, bound to satisfy your guests — or yourself.

View recipes and pictures here.

Families with children in pajamas, elves in green and red, and Santa Claus himself took a ride on the South Shore Polar Express on Saturday, Dec. 8.

View more pictures here.

Photo by Bruce Rogovin

Elisa Rastelli of Norwell (left), Isabel Mallon of Plymouth (center), and Katy Connolly of Hingham will dance the lead role of the Sugar Plum Fairy in the South Shore Ballet Theatre's production of "The Nutcracker" this season.

Tchaikovsky's seasonal favorite will be performed at Derby Academy in Hingham at 2 and 6 p.m. on both Dec. 8 and 9. A total of 90 children will be split into three casts for the four shows.

The South Shore Ballet Theatre, located in Hanover, offers classes for dancers age 3 to adult. This will be its fifth annual production of "The Nutcracker."

Unlike many Nutcrackers, the SSBT doesn't use adult dancers for the lead roles, said Artistic Director Mathavan McKeon. Every part will be played by dancers age 17 and younger, except for the parents in the opening party scene.

"It's all about the students," said McKeon. "We don't water down the choreography; we make them work hard."

According to McKeon, this Nutcracker uses choreography that has been passed down from generation to generation, and mirrors the dancing seen in major dance ensembles.

"We don't want to be a professional company. We want to be a pre-professional school,'' said McKeon. "If they want to move on to professional careers, they have to learn these skills to be successful."

Tickets for the shows are $15, and all seats are reserved. For more information, visit the SSBT's website.