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Boston Globe
20-06-2025
- Science
- Boston Globe
Take me to the river: The many ways to enjoy the Charles this summer
Many bridges over the Charles get more attention, but the Charles River Dam and locks are the most critical pieces of infrastructure. They shut out the sea and modulate the height of the river's waters, turning otherwise tidal mudflats into the placid lake-like basin we know and love. The dam and locks, which were completed in 1978, definitely deserve a look. From North Station, walk past Lovejoy Wharf (with the flagship brewery and restaurant of Night Shift Brewing) through the parking lot to reach the footpath over the locks. When you walk across the dam from the West End to Charlestown you might even get lucky and see the locks in action. If not, you can still check out the massive gears that enable them to open and close. Before stepping into Charlestown, strike a melodious note on the gongs of Paul Matisse's 'Charlestown Bells.' It's the first of many public art installations you'll encounter along the river banks. Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up This playground in Paul Revere Park is on the Charlestown side of the Charles River Dam. David Lyon Advertisement The Zakim Bridge dominates the skyline here, yet some surprising green spaces have sprouted in its shadows. Paul Revere Park features playgrounds and ballfields, while the gracefully arching North Bank Bridge leads to North Point Park in Cambridge with another playground and spray pad. Directly under the elevated roadways, the scoops and ridges of the Lynch Family Skatepark boast a coat of colorful (and sanctioned) graffiti. Follow the water around a basin to Museum Way, which deposits you at the Museum of Science atop the original 1910 Charles River Dam and locks. Advertisement In the Museum of Science, the Yawkey Gallery on the Charles River offers interactive exhibits to learn about the natural science and the engineering of the river. David Lyon The museum is perhaps the ultimate destination for nerdy fun. There's no shortage of gee-whiz exhibits (such as the lightning bolts in the Theater of Electricity or a 65-million-year-old Triceratops skeleton), but the Yawkey Gallery on the Charles River holds its own. It may have huge windows on the river, but kids are more drawn to the interactive exhibits that combine natural history lessons with scale-model engineering puzzles about water quality and flood control. They can build variations on bridges and water control gates or even crawl around in a simulated sewer system. Cute life-size bronze statues of turtles, ducks, an otter, and a muskrat bring the river fauna inside. The bow of the ‶Henry Longfellow″ cruise vessel offers broad views of the Charles River. David Lyon ON THE WATER Feeling lazy? The Charles River Boat Company offers leisurely 70-minute cruises. Leaving from Lechmere Canal on the Cambridge side, the boat glides past rowers, sailors, and flocks of waterfowl up the river to the John W. Weeks Footbridge and back. You'll look from side to side as a guide points out landmarks along the banks, including the Back Bay skyscrapers and the 100-foot-diameter Great Dome of MIT. Keep your eyes peeled for the CSX Railroad Bridge below the BU Bridge, popular with graffiti artists. Many of the tags represent the logos of crew teams from various universities. Just upriver of the Harvard (Mass. Ave.) Bridge, the vibrant ‶Patterned Behavior″ mural by Silvia López Chavez along the multiuse path got a fresh coat of paint this spring. Advertisement Kayakers head out of Broad Canal into the Charles River basin toward the Longfellow Bridge. David Lyon If you'd rather move at your own pace, rent a kayak at Paddle Boston's Kendall Square location. You might not travel as far under your own power, but you'll be sitting inches off the water the whole way. Yes, you will get wet, but the water quality of the Charles has come a long way since the 1990s. This is the best way to admire the blue herons stalking prey in the shallows along the shores, to study the underbellies of the bridges, or to paddle through the lagoons of the Charles River Esplanade. Famed for the July 4 Pops concert, the Hatch Shell is a focal point of the Charles River Esplanade. David Lyon GREEN BANKS The Charles River Esplanade between the Longfellow and Harvard bridges is the best-known stretch of riverbank, thanks to the Boston Pops concert and fireworks on Independence Day. From the Longfellow Bridge, you'll pass Community Boating — another chance to rent a kayak, or, for experienced sailors, a small keelboat. The heart of the Esplanade, though, is the Hatch Shell. The Art Deco concert stage, which predates World War II, doesn't go dark after July 4. It's a summer-long venue for concerts and movies. Among the statues ringing the field in front of the shell, the presiding spirit is the bronze of philanthropist David G. Mugar, who introduced pyrotechnics to the July 4 Pops concert. He famously told legendary Boston Pops conductor Arthur Fiedler, 'You bring the music, and I'll bring the fireworks.' Cross any of the bridges over the lagoon to see the monumental bust of Fiedler. Night Shift Brewing operates a beer garden on the Charles River Esplanade. David Lyon Picnic tables and benches make this stretch an excellent area to spread a repast. Or check out the Night Shift Beer Garden, where there's often at least one food truck operating next to the beer taps. If you have kids in tow, you'll find a playground near the beer garden and another farther upriver closer to the Harvard Bridge. Advertisement Charles River Boat Company runs river cruises from the Lechmere Canal behind the CambridgeSide mall. David Lyon BUCOLIC BASIN It's a little more than a five-mile walk upriver from the Hatch Shell to Christian Herter Park in Brighton. For a less ambitious walk, start at the John W. Weeks Footbridge at the bottom of DeWolfe Street outside Harvard Square in Cambridge. You'll have great views of the winding river from atop the bridge — a prime viewpoint to watch rowing regattas. Cross to the Boston side, where the footpath skirts the roadway until you reach an underpass at the Eliot Bridge. Christian Herter Park is the largest park on the Charles River basin. David Lyon Suddenly, the narrow way opens into the sprawling meadow of Herter Park, the largest section of open parkland along the Charles River basin. It's big enough to include a playground and spray fountain, a large green lawn favored by volleyball and badminton players, a Night Shift beer garden, a 350-seat amphitheater for outdoor music and theater performances, and another Paddle Boston rental kiosk. Kayakers often rent here to explore the tranquil upper reaches of the river basin, where ducks, geese, and swans paddle on the water and red-winged blackbirds flit in the marshy borders. This monumental bust of Arthur Fiedler on Charles River Esplanade is constructed of stacked aluminum slabs. David Lyon This should be enough to fill several summer weekends in the city. And when you're done, the Charles continues upriver another 70 miles or so to Echo Lake in Hopkinton. Patricia Harris and David Lyon can be reached at . Paddle Boston's kayak and paddleboard kiosk in Christian Herter Park is a good place to rent a watercraft to explore the more tranquil upriver portion of the Charles River basin. David Lyon If you go … For schedule of Free Friday Flicks at the Esplanade see . For the schedule of Landmarks Orchestra performances at the Hatch Shell, see Advertisement For information on the July 12 Charles River Jazz Festival at the Herter Park Amphitheater see For more on public art, see Night Shift Brewing 617-456-7687, 1 Lovejoy Wharf, Boston Mon.-Thu. 3-9 p.m., Fri.-Sat. 11:30 a.m.-11 p.m., Sun. 11:30 a.m.-8 p.m. Charles River Esplanade Beer Garden Wed.-Fri. 4-10 p.m., Sat. noon-10 p.m., Sun. noon-8 p.m. Christian Herter Park Beer Garden Thu.-Fri. 4-10 p.m., Sat. noon-10 p.m., Sun. noon-8 p.m. Museum of Science 1 Science Park, Boston 617-723-2500, Open daily 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Adults, $31; seniors, $27; ages 3-11, $26 Charles River Boat Company 100 Cambridgeside Place (Lechmere Canal), Cambridge 617-621-3001, Sightseeing tours at 12:30 p.m., 2 p.m., and 3:30 p.m., daily through Sept. 1, Wed.-Sun. Sept. 23-28. Adults, $28.50; seniors and students, $25.50; under age 12, $19; under age 3, $5 Paddle Boston 617-965-5110, Kendall Square, Cambridge 15 Broad Canal Way Allston/Brighton 1071 Soldiers Field Road Check website for hours and weather conditions Kayaks, paddleboards, and canoes, $33-$85 Community Boating 21 David G. Mugar Way 617-523-1038, Kayaks and paddleboards, $40; keelboat for up to 4 people, $99 Check website for hours Silvia López Chavez's ‶Patterned Behavior″ mural brightens the Charles River walking/cycling path. David Lyon Patricia Harris can be reached at
Time Out
19-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Time Out
Music of the Cosmos
Courtesy Conductor Keith Lockhart and the Boston Pops bring audiences among the stars for a multimedia program on May 23 and 24 at 7:30pm that explores the intersection of music, space, and science fiction. Featuring the incomparable George Takei as your cosmic storyteller and developed in partnership with the Museum of Science, Boston and its Center for Space Sciences, the Music of the Cosmos concert will boldly go where no man (or woman) has gone before. Stay after the concert for a meet and greet with Takei and special guest Astronaut Sunita Williams. By entering your email address you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy and consent to receive emails from Time Out about news, events, offers and partner promotions. 🙌 Awesome, you're subscribed! Thanks for subscribing! Look out for your first newsletter in your inbox soon! Discover Time Out original video
Boston Globe
31-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Boston Globe
For the team behind ‘Utopian Hotline,' disagreement is ‘the space that's interesting to us'
Justin Nestor, co-artistic director of Theater Mitu, points at a projection on the Planetarium dome while fine-tuning "Utopian Hotline" at the Museum of Science Planetarium. He's joined by, from left, founding artistic director Rubén Polendo, guest artist Stivo Arnoczy, and company member Cinthia Chen. Brett Phelps for The Boston Globe The At the Planetarium, the group, led by Nestor and founding artistic director Rubén Polendo, adapts their original performance for a fitting — and much larger — venue. They spoke with the Globe during a residency at the museum in late March. Advertisement Where to find them: Ages: Polendo is 54. Nestor is 40. Originally from: Nestor's from Dorchester, and Polendo from Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. Live in: Brooklyn Rubén Polendo, founding artistic director of Theater Mitu, working on "Utopian Hotline" in the Museum of Science Planetarium. Brett Phelps for The Boston Globe Why Nestor says they're 'really annoying' to work with: When adapting a work for a new space — a more artistic than pragmatic process that he calls 'translating' — 'we're not good at ignoring anything.' How they started: Growing up in a 'very Mexican family,' Polendo said, he experienced 'a lot of gathering around a table to celebrate, to mourn, to be confused, to argue.' He went into science, and as a young biochemist, he missed that mealtime energy. It had 'a more emotional and impactful link into the questions that certainly were present in science,' he said. Polendo turned to theater. Four collaborators on Theater Mitu's "Utopian Hotline" pose for a portrait in the Museum of Science's Planetarium. From left, Rubén Polendo, company member Cinthia Chen, Justin Nestor, and guest artist Stivo Arnoczy. Brett Phelps for The Boston Globe For Nestor, an 'artist, maker and creative technologist,' per his Advertisement What they make : 'Communal experiences of shared time and space,' Nestor said. How they work : Collaboratively. Eighteen company members are crafting 'Utopian Hotline.' 'We begin with a large question that is both inspiring and at times burdening,' Polendo said, 'that brings us together not into a point of agreement but actually into a point of disagreement. That's the space that's interesting to us.' 'When we reach a level of conversation and argument that words no longer function,' he added, 'the only way we can continue the argument is to begin to make something.' Justin Nestor (right) with Theater Mitu company member Cinthia Chen and guest artist Stivo Arnoczy. Brett Phelps for The Boston Globe Advice for artists : 'The job of the artist is to stay in the attempt,' Polendo said. 'That's why artists have a practice. Because you're constantly attempting.' UTOPIAN HOTLINE By Theater Mitu, presented by ArtsEmerson and the Museum of Science. At Museum of Science, 1 Science Park, May 1-18. Tickets $25 general, $17.50 museum members. Rubén Polendo works on "Utopian Hotline" at the Museum of Science Planetarium. Brett Phelps for The Boston Globe
Boston Globe
05-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Boston Globe
Eight ways to celebrate Women's History Month around Boston
PORTRAIT OF A LADY The Harvard Art Museums are home to various portraits of 19th-century American women, including ' March 6, 12:30 p.m. Free. 32 Quincy St., Cambridge. Get Love Letters: The Newsletter A weekly dispatch with all the best relationship content and commentary – plus exclusive content for fans of Love Letters, Dinner With Cupid, weddings, therapy talk, and more. Enter Email Sign Up Last year's TogetHER panelists. This year's panel will be held at Legacy Place in Dedham. Haley Abram Advertisement LISTEN AND LEARN Legacy Place in Dedham is celebrating International Women's Day with TogetHER 2025, a panel of female industry leaders. Beginning with a pre-panel social event, ticket-holders are encouraged to mingle, snack on appetizers, grab a sweet treat, or sip on a cocktail, before panelists take the stage. Moderated by Kiss 108's Billy & Lisa co-host Lisa Donovan, the event will feature Courtney Cole, a WBZ-TV anchor; Liza Levy, a music industry professional and co-founder/president of the artist development organization product and merchandising officer of the shoe brand HEYDUDE. Those interested can buy tickets at the March 6, 6-8:30 p.m. $25. Showcase Cinema de Lux, 670 Legacy Place, Dedham. "Gardener at Day's End" oil by Andrea Petitto, who will be featured at Addison Art Gallery's "Artful Women in Song & Paint" event. Andrea Petitto ARTFUL WOMEN IN MUSIC AND PAINT The March 8, 5-7 p.m. Free. 43 South Orleans Road, Orleans. Advertisement A GLOBAL NETWORK The United Nations Association of Greater Boston is highlighting female leaders during its 'Empowering Environments' panel, bringing together a group of local women inspiring change. The lineup includes Phyllis Barajas, founder and CEO of Latino leadership network March 11, 5:30-8:30 p.m. $10-$20. Boston Public Library, 700 Boylston St. The Museum of Science will hold a Women's History Month celebration on March 22, highlighting various female STEM leaders with "Meet the Scientist" events. Ashley McCabe TILL YOU DROP Female entrepreneurs have brought vibrant storefronts, personalized products, and carefully curated services to the Boston area. At Boston Women's Market at Night Shift Brewing, more than a dozen vendors will set up shop — find everything from locally formulated skincare from March 15, 12-5 p.m. 87 Santilli Highway, Everett. Advertisement WOMEN IN STEM Women have been contributing groundbreaking ideas and work to the STEM field for centuries. The Museum of Science will celebrate these contributions with local STEM leaders for its Women's History Month programming in collaboration with the March 22, 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Museum of Science, 1 Science Park. WOMEN GO FAR Soon after the start of spring, an unsanctioned women-only 10-mile and 5K run will kick off at DICKS'S House of Sports Boston. Participation requires a March 30, 8:30 a.m. $35. 760 Boylston St. Marianna Orozco can be reached at
Boston Globe
07-02-2025
- Politics
- Boston Globe
The double helix of science and democracy
Get The Gavel A weekly SCOTUS explainer newsletter by columnist Kimberly Atkins Stohr. Enter Email Sign Up Put those dynamics together and one of America's greatest legacies — our ability to produce knowledge that leads to material progress — feels shakier than ever. Advertisement So Globe Ideas and the president of the Museum of Science, Tim Ritchie, asked Danielle Allen, director of the Allen Lab for Democracy Renovation at the Harvard Kennedy School, and David Kaiser, an MIT professor of physics and the history of science, Edited excerpts of the discussion follow here. Tim Ritchie : I think we all believe that if humanity is going to rise up to the big challenges we face, we have to have thriving science. But if we're going to have science bend itself toward goodness, we have to have good societies built by democracy, by people who know what is best for themselves and their communities. David Kaiser : I don't find it very helpful to consider science and democracy as separated spheres — 'Keep your politics out of my science' or vice versa. I don't know what that means. If science must necessarily be done by groups of people, then of course we're social and political beings and that should be a source of strength, not a source to run from. One of the roles for politics, among many, is resource allocation. How do members of a society come to agree on how to distribute resources among worthy causes? Science, which needs a lot of resources, has to be political. We have to make the case in a persuasive way about why this kind of activity is worthy of support and hopefully not subject to the turmoil of election cycles. Making a persuasive case — not as if support is our birthright or should happen just because we said so — is one of our most important responsibilities among many. This requires sustained political engagement. Advertisement MIT's David Kaiser at the Science and Democracy event on Jan. 9, cosponsored by the Museum of Science and Globe Ideas. Studio Nouveau Danielle Allen : Oftentimes we think that politics is all about material goods, resource allocation and the like. I want to say it's actually about something more fundamental. It's about human dignity, and human dignity resides in the capacity of people to be the authors of their lives. My school of democracy was my family's dinner table. I had extended family who were super civically engaged, across the political spectrum. There was this one incredible year in my youth, 1992, when both my aunt and my dad were running for office in California. She was running for Congress from the far left. My dad was running for US Senate as a Reagan Republican. So we had amazing dinner table conversations. My dad would argue for market liberties and for civic virtues, and my aunt would argue for public sector investment in every segment of society and experiments in living. And as I watched them, I finally realized that there were two things that they were sharing. One was just this clarity of purpose: They were both seeking empowerment for themselves, for their families, for their communities. Then they were having this massive argument about how to unlock human potential, how to convert empowerment into well-being. But while they had that argument, they never ever broke the bonds of love, however vehement they were in their positions. Advertisement I think this relates to science in that you can have debates that are really intensely felt, but you have to bring with that a willingness to use these shared decision-making mechanisms — the votes, the elections, the institutions — to yield a result that you're going to live by even if you don't perfectly love it, but you're going to come back to the conversation again the next time. In science, too, people will win debates at certain points in time, but that doesn't actually end the conversation. We think of science as this accumulation of discoveries, but actually even Einstein is having his theory of relativity be modified by contemporary work of all kinds. I think democracy has a special relationship to science because both are forms of human social organization that respect human potential. That's the point of the synergy. And because of that core shared commitment, there is a way in which democracy and science can flourish better together. Harvard's Danielle Allen at the Science and Democracy event on Jan. 9, cosponsored by the Museum of Science and Globe Ideas. Studio Nouveau Ritchie : Where are we telling the stories of awesome and wonderful things in science? Whether it's on YouTube or TikTok — or Twitch or Rumble for that matter — people are getting their science and their view of politics online. Should Danielle Allen and David Kaiser be mixing it up with Joe Rogan? Should your smart colleagues be going to where people are on social media and be more robust and more brave out there? Advertisement Allen : Yes, for sure. We should be taking stories to where people are and sharing the wonder. I think there is so much good to share in the work of universities and the work of science. And I think the hard question is really how to support people in doing that. It's not necessarily the muscle that one develops after years in the lab or years in the archive and the like. There was the 19th-century habit of Ritchie : Let's go on the road and make science great again? Allen : Yes, yes. I will say yes to that. Ritchie : An audience member online is asking about the COVID vaccine, a fascinating example of democracy and science. A lot of funding there, lots of information, and lots of mistakes. What have you learned from the race to find a COVID vaccine and this relationship between democracy and funding and science? Advertisement Kaiser : I'll give one: How do we live under uncertainty? Not just live under it as individual thinking people, but how do we communicate it? How do we try to formulate public policies that will affect lots and lots of people without knowing everything we'd want to know up front? That's the world we live in, that's our condition. And how do we communicate a kind of intellectual modesty in the face of grand challenges? 'We don't know everything. We have compelling reasons why we're going to try this now.' That's different from 'Back off. The scientists are in town.' Allen : Politics is fundamentally about value judgments and about choosing a direction collectively. Science can't answer those questions. And so in that regard, I do think it matters that science and scientists enter into those decision-making moments precisely with that spirit of humility. 'No, we don't necessarily have the answer. What we do have is a lot of information about the choices, the trade-offs, the stakes of the different choices, and so forth.' I don't think we got that balance right in the time of COVID. Audience member : My question is about corporations. They provide lots of the funds, trained personnel, and time to do science. Are there ways that you think we should change how corporations are regulated or operated to be better for science and democracy? Allen : I think the COVID moment gave us a beautiful example of how in principle the public sector, the commercial private sector, and civil society can work together. We couldn't have had those vaccines if there hadn't been decades of public sector democracy investment in bench science, the discovery of mRNA. But bench science alone can't get you to unlock the full human good of a discovery. You need the capital that a Moderna or Pfizer has to scale up something like a vaccine. But those vaccines weren't getting into people's arms unless people trusted the vaccine. And here in Massachusetts that was a civil society effort — the Black Boston COVID collaborative, the Western Mass. COVID coalition. The point being you need public sector investment in science, you need corporations, and then you need civil society. And the hard question is: How can you have a regulatory or governance structure that keeps corporations serving the public, not converting everything that's public into something that's just extracted for private good? We are without any question living through a moment of real challenge around the question of what a corporation is, how it operates and the like, and whether or not democracies are masters of corporations or vice versa. That is the political question of the next decade, and I think the stakes are very high. Audience member : In a world where anyone can self-publish and information is shared through a multitude of modalities, is there a role for either a democratic institution or a private institution or otherwise to really ensure that anything that's labeled as science or fact is actually true? Kaiser : There's a fundamental First Amendment right in our country to be able to say what one wants within, obviously, some limits. If someone has a contrarian view about quantum entanglement — and many do, my inbox confirms that every day — I don't think there's any reason to block them from being able to share those ideas. One thing we can try to do is just do more of it ourselves. Flood the market. Let's go all in. If we know there are remarkably well-organized, often well-funded disinformation campaigns, I think saying, 'How dare you?' is an appropriate first reaction. The second reaction is, 'Well, that's a political campaign. We're living in a political world. What's our political campaign going to be?' I think it should be: Let's do more work getting things that we trust out there and explain why we trust it, as opposed to 'How dare you! Take it down. Censor that.' We don't need more martyr complexes out there. Brian Bergstein is the editor of the Globe Ideas section. He can be reached at
