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What a "Harvard Study" actually means...

I worked on a semester-long group project for my advanced budgeting class, which looked at the cost and efficiency of snow-plowing operations in Boston. We made our final presentation to the city staff on Monday and to Mayor Menino on Tuesday, the latter culminating in an end-of-class celebration at an Irish pub across from city hall. (Unfortunately, the mayor was not able to join us. We wanted to buy him some shots.) There was an reporter (and photographer) from the Boston Herald--God bless the hearts of print media people--present at the Menino briefing, which resulted in the two articles that were published today.

Harvard: Thomas Menino, You Can Fix This Mess

Boston's gas lamps spark high costs

It's funny how they summarized many months worth of reseach and analysis into, let's see, about four hundred words. But such is the nature of the business. We were lucky to be given a few inches. (What? No photo?) Even funnier, though, are the readers' comments.

And now I'm still waiting to know if my group from another class is going to present to the mayor of Somerville our study on the city's emergency preparedness plan. Somehow, I do not see a pub party at the end of that one.

Bicoastal

I have never lived in the west coast of the United States. I have called New York, Washington, DC, and Boston (Cambridge) home in the last few years and the east coast lifestyle and sensibility, however one might choose to define them, seem to suit me very well. However, I find that songs about California seem to have found space in my list of favorite songs. Two of them are Joni Mitchell and Rufus Wainwright songs. Joni Mitchell's 'California'  is probably in my top five. A track from Mitchell's superb album Blue, she accompanies herself on an Appalachian dulcimer while plainly singing about wanting to go home to California, a haven from the life she has been living. I love the simplicity of it--the lyrics, the sparse arrangement, and the purity of Mitchell's voice.

Oh it gets so lonely
When you're walking
And the streets are full of strangers
All the news of home you read
Just gives you the blues 

Then there is Rufus Wainwright's more lively song about California. Most of the lyrics do not make sense to me, and the song seems to be more cynical, even sarcastic--"Life is the longest death in California"--rather than sentimental. I like the playfulness of it anyway. (Besides, how many songs mentions Bea Arthur by name?)

And if anyone's missing the now defunct series 'The O.C.,' we also have the Phantom Planet's song, which served as the show's theme. Very pop but still enjoyable.

But what really inspired this post was Jill Sobule's new song, 'San Francisco,' from her album California Years.

"I like to go to San Francisco
I like to go
Put flowers in my hair
I like to go to San Francisco
I like to meet
Some people there"

And in Golden Gate Park
She'll throw a Frisbee
She'll bring a dog
And she'll meet a boy
And they'll fall in love
And she'll feel so free.

Listening to all these songs, especially Sobule's, makes me wistful for a place I have never lived in...