DigBoston 4.5.18

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APR 05, 2018 - APR 12, 2018

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BUSINESS PUBLISHER Marc Sneider ASSOCIATE PUBLISHERS Chris Faraone John Loftus Jason Pramas SALES MANAGER Marc Sneider FOR ADVERTISING INFORMATION sales@digboston.com BUSINESS MANAGER John Loftus

EDITORIAL EDITOR IN CHIEF Chris Faraone EXECUTIVE EDITOR Jason Pramas MANAGING EDITOR Mitchell Dewar MUSIC EDITOR Nina Corcoran FILM EDITOR Jake Mulligan THEATER EDITOR Christopher Ehlers COMEDY EDITOR Dennis Maler STAFF WRITER Haley Hamilton CONTRIBUTORS G. Valentino Ball, Sarah Betancourt, Tim Bugbee, Patrick Cochran, Mike Crawford, Britni de la Cretaz, Kori Feener, Eoin Higgins, Zack Huffman, Marc Hurwitz, Marcus JohnsonSmith, C. Shardae Jobson, Heather Kapplow, Derek Kouyoumjian, Dan McCarthy, Peter Roberge, Maya Shaffer, Citizen Strain, M.J. Tidwell, Miriam Wasser, Dave Wedge, Baynard Woods INTERNS Kuresse Bolds, Victoria Botana, Rob Katz, Murray, Brynne Quinlan

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ON THE COVER PHOTO FROM RED SOX WOMEN’S FANTASY CAMP VIA LEHIGH PHOTO SERVICE. READ THIS WEEK’S FEATURE

BY BRITNI DE LA CRETAZ, WHO TRAVELED TO FLORIDA FOR THE STORY.

©2018 DIGBOSTON IS PUBLISHED WEEKLY BY DIG MEDIA GROUP INC. NO PART OF THIS PUBLICATION CAN BE REPRODUCED WITHOUT WRITTEN CONSENT. DIG MEDIA GROUP INC. CANNOT BE HELD LIABLE FOR ANY TYPOGRAPHICAL ERRORS. ONE COPY OF DIGBOSTON IS AVAILABLE FREE TO MASSACHUSETTS RESIDENTS AND VISITORS EACH WEEK. ANYONE REMOVING PAPERS IN BULK WILL BE PROSECUTED ON THEFT CHARGES TO THE FULLEST EXTENT OF THE LAW.

SHARING IS CARING

& THE GOD BOMBS

W/ GRACE WEBER

Dear Reader, As you may know if you follow me on social media or check this column every week, I am one of those insufferable souls who constantly complains that people are reading and sharing totally useless, vapid clickbait and garbage, all while while ignoring demonstrably more important things. As a simple example of said phenomenon, I might point to the obsession with that poor deceased dog Puppy Doe, compared to, say, the utter lack of interest in topics like health care, campaign finance, homelessness, surveillance, and any number of other issues that, in my best guess, must be even harder for most people to acknowledge than animal abuse, or else we would hear about them daily.

So, why do so many folks shy away from sharing articles about controversial topics, or at least ones that have yet to be reduced and cheapened to a meme or blog post farted out by some venturebacked national news aggregator? For starters, we live in a society where it is an accepted cliche that one shouldn’t address politics or God around the family dinner table; with the mindset that we shouldn’t even challenge those whom we share holidays and genes with, people will always be quick to shirk their civic duty to engage with monsters, as well as the comfortably apathetic, when they are out in public.

While this hypothesis may dampen countless lessthan-funny late-night talk show punchlines and reactive observations about how contemporary cultures clash throughout the interwebs in fashions that were never past imagined, it nonetheless makes sense if you consider how most people will do anything to avoid confrontation in real life.

A similar but certainly distinct dynamic fueling passive attitudes toward sharing damning independent articles is akin to how pre-teens in middle school pretend they are stupid in class, largely out of fear that people will make fun of them for being smart and knowing stuff. It’s some juvenile shit for sure, but I also feel it is the primary hurdle in getting the brainier readers who truly admire the hard-hitting work that we do to then go and spread the good word. This planet’s run by animals and imbeciles, and there is nothing they hate more than people with brains and compassion who question their comfortable existences.

As a result, we share articles about how some guy broke into the home of Rob Gronkowski and about pseudo events that summon our wildest nightmares.

We ruminate for fucking weeks about the silly tattoo on Ben Affleck’s back, and of course share headlines such as “Drinking red wine mixed with prune juice makes you live a whole lot longer.”

Sounds like a lot of crap to me.

CHRIS FARAONE, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Need more Dig? Sign up for the Daily Dig @ tiny.cc/DailyDig

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NEWS+OPINION NUCLEAR DISASTER NEWS TO US

With controversial reactor down since storms, tensions run extremely high in Plymouth

BY MIRIAM WASSER For extensive background on the fight over nuclear energy in Mass, check out Miriam Wasser’s oral history covering 50 years of protests against the power plant in Plymouth at pilgrimsoralhistory.org.

As the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station in Plymouth remained offline for the 22nd consecutive day, supporters and opponents of the plant gathered about six miles away in the dimly lit ballroom of Hotel 1620 last week for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s annual assessment meeting. The federal agency often hosts an annual meeting in communities with nuclear reactors in order to brief the public about the status of the plant and talk about any oversight or safety issues.

Like in years past, those for and against the plant came with brightly colored signs and prepared speeches, and eyed each other cautiously from different sides of the room.

The Pilgrim plant has been plagued by mechanical and operational problems since it began producing power in 1972, and many in the public remain bitterly divided about whether the plant, which is slated to permanently shut down in 2019, poses a significant threat to public safety.

This year’s meeting was particularly fraught because a series of strong winter storms forced the plant to shut down—or scram—twice in the last three months.

Pilgrim remains offline as plant workers attempt to fix a transformer located between the electrical switchyard and the reactor.

Though the bulk of the 3.5-hour meeting was public comments—69 people signed up to speak—the night began with short presentations from the NRC and Pilgrim’s owner-operator, Entergy Corporation.

“Pilgrim operated safely in 2017,” said David Lew, acting administrator of NRC Region 1, as many of those in the audience holding neon green “Shut Pilgrim Now” signs groaned.

“The NRC noted some improvements in performance, but sustainably remains to be determined,” he continued.

More groans. “Overall performance warrants continued placement in Column 4.” (The NRC rates reactors annually on a scale of 1-5. Column 1 is the best and Column 5 means a mandated federal shutdown. Pilgrim has been in Column 4 since 2015.)

In other words, Lew said, the plant was getting better, but an upgrade would be contingent upon meeting and sustaining certain safety benchmarks.

Many in the anti-Pilgrim section sat with their arms crossed, rolling their eyes or whispering under their breath as representatives from Entergy’s management team took turns responding to the NRC’s comments about their performance last year.

“At Pilgrim we’re not just focused on compliance, we have a passion for excellence in what we do,” said Drayton Pitts, general manager of plant operations at Pilgrim.

“Really?” someone in the audience muttered, prompting laughs from the plant’s opponents and scowls from supporters.

Throughout the evening, the NRC’s pleas for decorum were mostly ignored.

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“Our focus has been, and always will be, on fixing the plant and preventing future failure,” said Bruce Chenard, Pilgrim’s operations manager. “In the past, we’d react to equipment failures, fix that, and then continue to run. …

Now we identify issues before they become problems.”

Lew from the NRC interrupted: “Certainly there are still some issues in work management and engineering problems.”

“We’re not saying that we’ve solved all problems,” Chenard responded. More laughter from the anti-Pilgrim side.

“I don’t mean to sound like a broken record here,” Lew continued, ignoring the audience’s response, “but we at the NRC are not just looking for progress and improvement, we are looking for the sustainably of that progress and improvement.”

Anyone who attended the meeting hoping to hear more than platitudes and the Cliffs Notes version of the NRC’s latest inspection reports was out of luck.

The process for getting out of Column 4 is long and technically tedious, and the timeline remains unclear.

(Also unclear is when the plant will finish maintenance updates and restart—“The plant is currently safely shut down and being monitored by NRClicensed officials,” noted Pilgrim’s senior resident NRC inspector Erin Carfang.)

From from there, the energy wound up dramatically, beginning with statements delivered on behalf of US Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey, Congressman Bill Keating, and Mass Attorney General Maura Healey.

“Pilgrim’s stagnation in Column 4 of the NRC’s safety rating system demonstrates that improving safety is not a priority and signals a greater concern for the bottom line than the people of Southeastern Massachusetts,” Warren’s spokeswoman said. If Entergy does not “fully and swiftly comply with federal safety regulations, the NRC must take the necessary steps to shut the plant down.”

Those in the room wearing “I Support Pilgrim” pins or Entergy shirts took a turn rolling their eyes and grimacing.

Markey, Keating, and Healey echoed the demand for improved operations and federal oversight.

When the officials were done, dozens of men and women from all over the South Shore and Cape Cod took to the microphone. In part because of an almost comically flawed system of organizing the speaker’s list, speeches went on for the next three hours.

Near-pandemonium broke out when one speaker refused to stop talking after her three minutes were up because, she said, she had unfairly lost time at the beginning of her speech. As the buzzer went off, she continued reading and the pro-Pilgrim side of the room began chanting, “Time’s up!” and “Obey the rules!”

The hostility continued as the night wore on.

Between calls for the plant to shut down immediately and forever, many on the anti-Pilgrim side railed against Entergy and the NRC. The litany of criticism included accusations of spinelessness, negligence, and a general abdication of duty.

“I thought [President] Trump had the market on alternative facts, but I think Entergy takes that hands down,” said Diane Turco, a Harwich resident

and president of the local anti-nuclear group Cape Downwinders.

“There’s a widespread belief that the NRC has put Pilgrim’s interest in saving money ahead of the public interest,” Jim Lampert of Duxbury said.

In response, those on the pro-Pilgrim side—many of whom work at the plant—thanked the NRC for recognizing improvements, and took swipes at the critics.

“You have people sitting in this audience who watch out for your safety every day. If you think we go to work every day and worry about safety, you’re correct. If you think we go and sit around all day to collect a check, you’re mistaken,” said Daniel Dove, a Plymouth resident and Pilgrim employee.

“I believe in nuclear power, and I find it unfortunate that we’re going to shut it down before the end of its life,” Dove continued, adding that he’s still holding out for another nuclear operator to buy Pilgrim from Entergy and continue operating past 2019. Pilgrim is technically licensed to operate until 2032.

“We’re not over until we give the license back, so buckle up because we’re here and we’re not going anywhere!” The pro-Pilgrim part of the room broke out into applause.

Some speakers struck a more conciliatory tone: “What everyone in this room wants is a safe community,” Plymouth North High School teacher Michael Bastoni said. “But we cannot achieve that if we continue with this adversarial approach. If we continue working at odds with one another we will not succeed in establishing the important lines of communication needed to achieve that.”

As one worker from the plant after another lined up to talk about the pride they take in their jobs, and the integrity and commitment of their colleagues, critics of the plant and the NRC grew increasingly frustrated.

“I’ve never seen so many Entergy people here to speak about their jobs,” Turco said. “But this isn’t about their jobs. The NRC doesn’t have any role in their job protection.”

“It’s been an interesting experienc[e] coming to his meeting and hearing from the people who work at the plant,” said local resident Bernard Graham. “It’s actually quite reaffirming to me to hear them speak this way. But I’m here because I live five miles north of plant in a town called Duxbury, and we just went through a couple of storms. These storms were of a nature that we were told to shelter in place. That’s all well and good, but there were roads that were impassable in our town and you couldn’t get through.”

Facing the panel of NRC representatives, Graham continued: “So I look to you, as an agency of our government—what is your role here? I don’t know. I’d like your role to be to protect us. We need you guys and ladies to be looking out for us. … We’re asking you to keep us safe and do your job.”

This article was written in collaboration with the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism. If you would like to see more reporting like this, please consider supporting independent media at givetobinj.org.

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DIGBOSTON DISPATCH UPDATE

News from behind the editorial curtain plus support for Saul Levine

BY JASON PRAMAS @JASONPRAMAS Seeking next group of working-class journalists

In November, I put out the word that DigBoston was looking for working-class Boston natives to write for us.

Specifically, I called for locals with three of the four qualities we look for in good journalists: ability to communicate, compassion, and deep local knowledge.

The fourth quality, formal journalism training, was something my colleagues and I were willing to provide at an introductory level to motivated applicants.

A very diverse group of 15 DigBoston readers hit us back, and we ultimately trained four of them in a free three-hour basic journalism workshop that Chris Faraone and I prepared for the occasion. Since then, two of the trainees have filed draft articles, and you can expect to see them published with us by summer.

So now we’re ready to accept new candidates for our next class of trainees.

And I’ll ask the same questions of interested audience members that I asked before: Are you a smart, compassionate, talkative person from one of Boston’s working-class neighborhoods? Can you put words in rows, and maybe take some pictures on your phone? Do you want to learn to be a journalist? Do you want to tell the world about the place you grew up? About its problems and its successes? About its corruption and its virtue? Its shame and its glory?

Yes? Then drop me a line at execeditor@digboston.com.

Let’s talk.

Comment on reader feedback

A few weeks back, I asked DigBoston’s audience to send in comments about what they thought we were doing well and what they thought needed improvement. We then got a bunch of responses—most highly complimentary. Which were nice to read. But some folks also included some very useful criticism about some of our various beats and how we could make them better. We took those to heart and are working to make the requested improvements.

Follow DigBoston on Flipboard

In an editorial a couple of weeks ago, I announced that DigBoston is moving away from Facebook. Not so much because of the ongoing Cambridge Analytica scandal, as that the social media platform has become a drag to use and expects us to pay it to reach our own audience.

Regularly. Naturally, the editorial was thin on specifics about how we would do without Facebook. I mentioned that Twitter was one logical place to focus our social media activity, but recognized that Twitter is not really so much different than Facebook that it will provide us with a longterm alternative.

However, there is one hot social network that can replace a big part of what news publications like DigBoston do on the internet… in a more equitable way for all concerned. While we participate in the movement to build the more democratic and decentralized social media we’d ultimately prefer to use.

Flipboard, which has been around for a few years, has more than 100 million users and growing, and provides a great way for people to share news articles with each other. And it’s perfect from our perspective because we don’t have to pay Flipboard to reach readers that follow us there. It pushes our latest articles to all our followers as part of its service.

After a couple of months’ wait, I’m pleased to announce that DigBoston has now been accepted as a Flipboard Publisher. And we invite all our readers to join 6

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Flipboard and follow us there. Here’s the link: flipboard. com/@DigBoston. You’ll find using Flipboard for your daily news dose to be a much more pleasant experience than using Facebook. And it’s just as social as Facebook with far more ways to share articles with your friends and family than the larger social network ever had.

Justice for Saul Levine

received coverage in Artforum, Boston Globe, IndieWire, and other outlets.

Dozens of fellow artists and civil libertarians from around Boston and beyond are rushing to his defense.

I strongly agree with them that MassArt’s treatment of him is unconscionable. I think the college should make a serious effort to bring him back. And its administration should put much more careful thought into how they handle similar incidents in the future.

NOTES AFTER LONG SILENCE can be viewed here: vimeo. com/73242778/. Levine’s video response to MassArt can be viewed at tiny.cc/saullevine/. I encourage readers to watch both. And if they agree that justice was not done, to join me and other supporters of Saul Levine in contacting MassArt Interim Provost Lyssa Palu-ay (paluay@massart.edu, 617-879-7782) and Director/Title IX Coordinator Courtney Wilson (cwilson24@massart.edu, 617-879-7751) and demanding that MassArt apologize to him and offer to reinstate him to his former teaching post immediately—removing any blemish to his record that may have resulted from this unfortunate incident.

Levine concluded: “I’m out of MassArt but people should protest the attack on free speech—which includes showing my film and the manner in which I speak.” The last comment in reference to his lifelong speech and motor disabilities that he feels the college administration used against him.

The Boston art scene was shocked last week when longtime MassArt film professor Saul Levine announced that he had resigned from his job after teaching there 39 years. Why? According to Levine, on the last day of his fall semester senior thesis class he was expecting students to present some of their work in progress. But they didn’t. Scrambling for something to discuss with them, he decided to review different editing constructions. He chose two of his short films to use as examples. One of which, NOTES AFTER LONG SILENCE, had a great number of fast cuts. He had shown the film every year in class since making it in 1989 and thought nothing of using it to make his points. The 15-minute film had some nudity and sex in it, but only a few seconds that go by so fast viewers typically barely notice it.

According to his friend, film critic Gerald Peary, in a Facebook post on Monday, at the end of the class one of the students asked Levine who was having sex in the film.

He said, “It was me.” Then, unbeknownst to him, at least one student anonymously reported him to the MassArt Jason Pramas is executive editor and associate publisher of administration for sexual harassment… or at least that’s DigBoston. He is also arts editor and holds an MFA in visual what the school claims. art from the Art Institute of Boston.

With no warning about what was coming, the administration called Levine into a Feb 8 meeting where he was “ambushed” and harangued for two hours by officials he felt sure had never watched the “offending” film. They apparently agreed with the anonymous student or students that his showing a movie in which he appeared nude and having sex (with a committed partner) did indeed constitute sexual harassment. Despite the fact that much of his body of artwork is very personal, and sometimes features him nude.

And the fact that he had every right to show his own very public and very well-known artwork in his own class for completely valid pedagogical reasons.

Artwork which is in no way prurient or pornographic.

Although he had a faculty union leader accompanying him in the meeting and was not fired immediately, Levine felt so pressured by the encounter that he decided to resign rather than wind up in a protracted and expensive legal battle with the administration to clear his name.

“I am a full professor in film and video,” Levine told me on Tuesday. “I am still teaching until 5/31. I chose to resign because I felt targeted. The 2/8 meeting let me know that they were gonna get me!”

Since making a video attacking MassArt last Thursday—excoriating the administration for effectively violating DIGBOSTON BOX IN PORTER SQUARE BY JASON PRAMAS his artistic freedom, his academic freedom, and his rights of free speech and expression—his situation has

DEMOCRACY IN CRISIS

DO #BLACKLIVESMATTER TO THE #RESISTANCE? While the press drools over Trump gossip, serious battles go unnoticed

BY BAYNARD WOODS @BAYNARDWOODS When reporter April Ryan asked Sarah Huckabee Sanders about the failure of authorities in Louisiana to charge the officers who killed Alton Sterling for selling CDs—only days after the police-involved shooting of Stephon Clark in Sacramento— Sanders did the thing that white people have always done to justify killing black people: resort to “local control” or “states’ rights.”

“Certainly a terrible incident, this is something that is a local matter, and that’s something that we feel should be left up to local

authorities at this time,” Sanders said.

Maybe another reporter could have backed her up: “You mean local in the same way that Jefferson Davis did or that George Wallace did?”

But all of the heroes in the White House press corps remained silent. So Ryan asked again. “But how does he feel about that? … What does he say about weeding out bad policing when you continue to see these kinds of situations occurring over and over again?” she asked.

Sanders again invoked a states’ rights argument. “The president’s very supportive of law enforcement but at the same time in these specific cases, in these specific instances, those would be left up to local authorities and not something for the federal government to weigh into,” she said.

If you take that apart, you see that the president supports the cops. And at the same time that he supports them, he doesn’t want to weigh in on anything bad they do.

Which equals: He supports them. It is as unambiguous as a dog whistle can be. And, in fact, his Justice Department, run by Klan-loving weed-hater Jeff Sessions, declined to press charges against the officers who killed Sterling back in May. But most of the national press didn’t want to recognize the dog whistle, because to them, Sanders was right. For them, those were “local stories.”

Neither are their white liberal audiences. There was a noted sigh of relief when the dominant “woke” hashtag shifted from #BlackLivesMatter, which forced us white people to question our privilege, to #Resistance, which means as long as you aren’t as terrible as Trump then you are OK. Why, nationally, aren’t we talking in the same way about the Movement for Black Lives and the disproportionate number of African-Americans killed by police? In order to get a sense of this, I called up civil rights activist DeRay McKesson, who came to prominence for tweeting out the uprising in Ferguson after the killing of Mike Brown

by Officer Darren Wilson.

“When I think about how I have changed in the last three or four years—like my lens towards analyzing what’s going on is that I now understand better the concrete structures in place that exist to almost guarantee officers don’t be held accountable,” said McKesson, who now hosts the popular podcast Pod Save the People.

McKesson said that when he went to Ferguson or protested in Baltimore he didn’t understand those structures—which are largely local.

“When you look at things like Stephon Clark’s killing and like it’s not a surprise, it is unlikely for the officers to be held accountable even if you get a good attorney general, you get a good prosecutor,” he said.

But, especially under the Trump DOJ, McKesson believes that most change will also happen on that level. “We believe that if we get a fraction of the largest police departments to create structural change, that will actually ripple across the other ones,” he said.

This ripple effect would work because of the “best practices” doctrine that allows a few endowed institutes or think tanks to design policy not only for policing but for most industries.

“You change some of the big ones, it will hopefully lead to change in some of the other ones, but this is really local,” McKesson said, both echoing Sanders’ deflection and turning it back on her.

Still, he recognizes that, in a situation like the Gun Trace Task Force trial in Baltimore, where eight cops were charged by the feds with widespread corruption, no one on a local level was equipped to deal with it.

This is the paradox. The right has, for a long time, seen the fight as local. They have been taking over school boards and other minor positions. But now that Trump is attempting to destroy much of the federal government, the serious work of the left is going to have to turn largely local, while all of the #Resistance pats themselves on the back as they wait for Mueller to save them.

Or Stormy Daniels.

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TALKING JOINTS MEMO

THE BRADY BILL

A look at this drunk-driving Mass pol’s positions on pot

BY DIG STAFF @DIGBOSTON

You may have seen the news reports last week. Here’s NECN summarizing the original State House News Service (SHNS) story:

This product contains zero THC

A Massachusetts senator is facing multiple charges after allegedly driving drunk over the weekend. According to State House News, Sen. Michael Brady, of Brockton, was arrested in Weymouth early Saturday morning while on his way home.

Brady’s office confirmed to State House News that he had been arrested. He pleaded not guilty during his arraignment Monday in Quincy District Court on charges of operating under the influence, negligent operation of a motor vehicle, and marked lanes violations.

In the time since, the senator, who was reportedly found “unsteady on his feet, glassy-eyed and smelling of alcohol,” has said he is entering “professional treatment and counseling for alcohol use,” according to the SHNS. Which means people are supposed to just forgive the guy and say nice things, though that doesn’t appear to be happening. As SHNS reporter Andy Metzger reported this week: Facing potential criminal repercussions for allegedly driving drunk, Sen. Mike Brady could also eventually face consequences in the legislative chamber he joined three years ago. Senators should discuss possible action, according to Senate Minority Leader Bruce Tarr, and Senate President Harriette Chandler said this week a decision over whether to take action in the Senate would follow adjudication of Brady’s case in the courts.

Cannabis advocates should do some adjudicating as well. Because as you may have guessed, Sen. Stumble Pants is no friend of trees. Imagine that. Here’s Brady in a Boston Globe magazine article from a year ago hobbling farmers who want to grow weed: In Massachusetts, “right to farm” laws exempted agricultural activities from local zoning restrictions. In other words, growing crops—including, presumably, legal marijuana—didn’t require a special permit. But that changed after Jeffrey Randall, a fourth-generation farmer, proposed a medical marijuana facility on his cranberry farm in Plympton last year.

While two of the town’s three selectmen at first supported his plan, a vocal contingent of Randall’s neighbors opposed it. That led the town’s state legislators, Representative Thomas Calter and Senator Michael Brady, to sponsor a bill that excluded marijuana from Massachusetts’s right-to-farm laws. Lawmakers passed a version of that right-tofarm exclusion late last year as part of a bill to delay by six months the implementation of the recreational marijuana program.

Brady told the Globe, “That bill was to support the residents in Plympton who don’t want this grown in their backyard.” Meanwhile, Randall [the farmer] told the Globe that “the bill sunk his plan to grow cannabis on his agricultural land. … They basically disallowed it in any place but commercial and industrial zones. … Basically this stops any agriculturalist from entering this industry.”

While the Cannabis Control Commission’s final regulations for “Adult Use of Marijuana” certainly open up more opportunities for farmers than Brady probably hoped for, it’s nonetheless a perfect moment to consider the goons who hold office in Mass, and to mock and scrutinize the prohibitionists among us. Brady is a joke, a politician who opposed Question 4. He can’t even be trusted to operate a motor vehicle, let alone participate in regulating an intoxicant that he clearly has a strong distaste for.

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KNOW THE REGS: EQUITY PROVISIONS TALKING JOINTS MEMO

The clock is ticking for those harmed by the war on drugs to get a leg up on licenses

BY DIG STAFF @DIGBOSTON

Majority of ownership belongs to people who have lived in areas of disproportionate impact for 5 of the last 10 years.

Majority of ownership has held one or more previous positions where the primary population served were disproportionately impacted, or where primary responsibilities included economic education, resource provision or empowerment to disproportionately impacted individuals or communities.

At least 51% of current employees/ sub-contractors reside in areas of disproportionate impact and will increase to 75% by first day of business At least 51% of employees or subcontractors have drug-related CORI, but are otherwise legally employable in a cannabis-related enterprise A majority of the ownership is made up of individuals from Black, African American, Hispanic, or Latino descent Face it. Unless you are already in the Mass cannabis industry, or have a concrete plan for entry, you’re probably not going to sift through the 73 pages of “Adult Use of Marijuana” regulations now published in the state register. Even if you do plan on digging in, we’re here to help—starting with the basics, like how you or someone you know can board the recreational train. Before getting into specifics, here’s the timetable for license and certification applications, via the Cannabis Control Commission (CCC):

April 2: Begin certification application for Priority Applicants April 17: Begin accepting license applications from certified Priority Applicants May 1: Open applications for: Cultivation, Microbusiness, Craft Cooperatives, Independent Testing Labs, Lab Agents June 1: Open applications for: Retail, Product Manufacturers, Transport What are the different kinds of licenses? Here goes:

An Indoor or Outdoor Cultivator “may cultivate, process and package marijuana, to transport marijuana to Marijuana Establishments and to transfer marijuana to other Marijuana Establishments, but not to consumers.”

A Craft Marijuana Cooperative “may be organized as a limited liability company, limited liability partnership, or a cooperative corporation under the laws of the Commonwealth.”

A Microbusiness “that is a Marijuana Product Manufacturer may purchase no more than 2,000 pounds of marijuana per year from other Marijuana Establishments.”

A Marijuana Product Manufacturer “may obtain, manufacture, process and package marijuana products, to transport marijuana products to

Marijuana Establishments and to transfer marijuana products to other Marijuana Establishments, but not to consumers.”

An Independent Testing Laboratory must be “certified, registered, or accredited by an organization approved by the [CCC].”

A Retailer “may purchase and transport marijuana products from Marijuana Establishments and transport, sell or otherwise transfer marijuana products to Marijuana Establishments and to consumers.”

A Transporter “may only transport marijuana products when such transportation is not already authorized under a Marijuana Establishment license.”

A Research Facility “may cultivate, purchase or otherwise acquire marijuana for the purpose of conducting research regarding marijuana products.”

Now here comes the especially exciting part… There are equity provisions designed to boost the chances of “people from communities that have been disproportionately harmed by marijuana law enforcement.” In order to help better understand these opportunities, we reached out to Shaleen Title, a commissioner at the Massachusetts Cannabis Control Commission who fought hard for such measures.

“People are conflating two different programs that we have,” Title told DigBoston. “One section is prioritized for applicants that have demonstrated that they promote economic empowerment for communities disproportionately harmed by prohibition. That’s what opens [this week]. … The other is called an equity program.

That is to reduce barriers to entry. … There may be some overlap. Once you get that [economic empowerment] certification and you get to apply with priority, then you will have the opportunity [to qualify for the social equity program].”

In order to become an Economic Empowerment Applicant, you must “demonstrate [at least] three of the following criteria”:

Owners can demonstrate significant past experience in or business practices that promote economic empowerment in areas of disproportionate impact.

Title also said the CCC is in the process of hiring a community outreach director, whose job will include getting the word out to women, veterans, small farmers, and other groups the state is trying to attract to the industry. “I feel like it’s a really good program in place,” Title said, “but it will only work if the communities we are intending to serve are focused on.”

As for overall application advice, Jim Borghesani of the Marijuana Policy Project said he “can’t really think of any tips other than the obvious … If you’re applying as a priority applicant, make sure you meet the required criteria; get your public meeting under your belt as soon as possible; start working on your host community agreement as soon as possible.”

And you’d better hurry up. The window for priority certification closes in less than two weeks, and as of Tuesday morning, more than 250 people had opened accounts in the CCC licensing system, with more than 200 of them starting applications.

If you’re applying as a priority applicant, make sure you meet the required criteria; get your public meeting under your belt as soon as possible; start working on your host community agreement as soon as possible.

Subscribe to our free email newsletter at talkingjointsmemo. com and get all of your New England cannabis news in one place.

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FULL SWING SPORTS

Playing hardball in Florida with Lil Papi and the other stars of Red Sox Nation’s one-of-a-kind women’s fantasy camp

BY BRITNI DE LA CRETAZ

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the double play turned on the field sure looks real to me.

---///--Approximately 100,000 girls play youth baseball. That number dwindles to less than 1,000 by the time they reach high school.

Take Mo’ne Davis. After making headlines at 13, when she became the first girl to pitch a shutout in the Little League World Series, she played for her high school’s junior varsity baseball team as a freshman. By her sophomore year, she had joined the softball team despite not having played the game since sixth grade.

Many girls, however, choose not to make the transition at all, either because the rules and mechanics are different and they don’t want to adjust or because they see softball as a consolation prize.

Those who continue to play baseball are up against a lot. They are the only girl, the exception, perpetually proving themselves. Some of the women describe the experience as a “lonely” one—not being able to be in the locker room with the rest of the team, being left out of bonding experiences. Camper Toby Whitney tells me about having to wait to shower back at the hotel, which denies her access to the laundry services that the rest of the players receive in the clubhouse, or sitting alone while all the male campers shower and entering the locker room only after they’ve all left, which could take hours.

Most boys will never be major league baseball players.

Up until now, though, no woman has ever been one. For men, it’s a long shot. For women, it’s a fantasy, something reinforced by the very name of the camp—a name that can seem both inspiring and insulting at once.

---///--Women’s Fantasy Camp is a four-day, immersive experience at the Red Sox spring training facility. It can be overwhelming: There are 53 players, 13 coaches, four teams, and four days to take it all in. Campers have access to the team’s locker rooms and the clubhouse, the whirlpool, and the Red Sox trainers. They receive personalized home and away jerseys, and they train with an assortment of experienced coaches and former professional players, including Trot Nixon, the scrappy, beloved outfielder who helped break the curse with a World Series win in 2004.

Among the women who have come to play ball are several former collegiate softball players, a member of the Michigan Sports Hall of Fame, and two members of the Connecticut Hall of Fame.

There are also women who have never worn a glove in their lives. I’m somewhat surprised to find out that the average camper age is 47.

“I didn’t know I could play,” Sue Presby says. A 59-yearold in her third year of camp, she has attended every year it has existed. She’s one of the most enthusiastic campers,

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The sun is overhead, so bright it’s easy to lose a baseball popped high into the sky. It’s January, but Florida January, which means I’m comfortable in just a long-sleeved T-shirt.

The smell of grass and dirt is inescapable.

There are approximately two dozen people scattered around the green outfield and orange-red infield. The air is filled with the unmistakable crack of a wooden bat making contact with a cowhide-covered ball, and then, a voice yelling, “I got it!”

Everyone but me is wearing red, white, or navy blue.

Some have eye black smeared on their cheeks. Most wear the words “Red Sox” across their chests, their last name and a number on their backs. At JetBlue Park in Fort Myers, Florida, where the team’s spring training is set to begin in a little over a month, it looks like some players have gotten an early jump on their season. A mini version of the famed Fenway Park Green Monster looms in left field at the ballpark known to players and fans as “Fenway South.”

But the people in the jerseys aren’t Jackie Bradley Jr., Mookie Betts, or David Price. They can’t possibly be Red Sox players, because they are all women.

I have come to Red Sox Women’s Fantasy Camp to watch women live out their dreams in a major league baseball park, but even after months of planning and anticipation, it takes a moment for my brain to comprehend what I am seeing. It’s something I never thought possible—a squad of women getting down and dirty and playing hardball in Red Sox unis. Fantasy or not,

along with Amy Modglin, her best friend. Modglin is known for dancing up on anyone passing by her and heckling the pros every chance she gets. The two met in 2008 at a Red Sox destination weekend at Fenway (trips hosted by the club where fans can meet each other and sometimes rub elbows with players) when they were randomly seated next to each other at the Red Sox-Orioles game. “Our husbands couldn’t have cared less, but in Amy I found a soulmate,” Presby says. She still has the ticket stub from the game. The two bonded quickly over their shared love of Boston baseball. This year, she and Modglin are the two “ambassadors”—camp veterans who are there to guide the rookies and make sure they feel welcomed.

There is a maternal presence, particularly from Presby. She knows everyone’s name and is constantly checking in on the other women to make sure they’re OK— are they eating enough?

Drinking enough water?

Having fun? Feeling rested?

A retired lawyer from New Hampshire who now owns the Cog Railway with her husband, Presby had never played baseball before when she started her fantasy camp journey. “I’m angry about all the history I was never taught, all the opportunities I didn’t have growing up,” she says. This is a feeling I understand. As a baseball writer, I feel almost embarrassed to tell people that I’ve never actually played the game. I grew up watching it with my dad, who played minor league baseball, but I never saw myself on the field.

It’s why I write about it, because I never thought I could play it. As Presby talks about wishing she had played baseball as a girl, I’m right there with her.

This women’s camp is a shorter version of the weeklong camp the Red Sox have been running for over 30 years that attracts primarily men. Camp director Tom Kennedy estimates that at the week-long camp, five or six of the over 100 campers are women. The Sox retreat for women is inspired by one in Tampa hosted by the Yankees, the only other major league team that offers such a fantasy camp.

The Boston version is different, though, as the club has expanded its camp to include as many women as possible, from the players they bring in, to the coaches, to the allwoman umpire staff.

“The Yankees may have started the first women’s fantasy camps,” says Kennedy, a tall man in hipster glasses who makes himself readily available to the campers. “But we believe our Red Sox camp experience is second to none.”

“We tell these kids, ‘It’s your craft. Take it seriously.’”

---///--Everything is a potential bonding experience at fantasy camp, beginning with the optional practice on Wednesday afternoon. The women quickly bestow nicknames on each other—Alexa Hopkins is “Lil Papi” because she sports David Ortiz’s number, 34, on her back; Michelle Lagares is “Chica,” a nod to her Dominican heritage. It is these names, not the ones on their uniforms, that are yelled from the dugout when they are up at bat. When someone swings and misses, campers yell, “Nice cut!” When a ball is bobbled on a play, it’s a “great effort!”

“When I got my first hit, you would’ve thought it was a grand slam based on how my team reacted,” says Caroline Peters, a senior at Macalester College in St. Louis, Minnesota, halfway across the country from her family in Weston, Mass. “The same happened to my mom; she caught two pop flies during practice and everyone went crazy.”

Peters arrived at camp with no idea what to expect. The bubbly 22-year-old with big eyes and a brown bob hadn’t played softball since middle school. She decided to come for a bonding experience of her own.

“I read through the information that my mom sent me and couldn’t believe it because it sounded so amazing,” Peters tells me at an evening social event on the main field

at JetBlue Park. She’s tired from a full day of playing, like everyone else. “My mom was really excited about it; if it weren’t for her I wouldn’t have signed up.”

A first baseman makes a great play to get the out, and the runner arrives at the bag and high-fives her, despite being called out herself. Modglin, who came into camp three years ago with zero baseball experience, cleanly fields a ground ball to third and throws home to successfully get the force out. She celebrates, as does the runner who was tagged out at the plate.

---///--The last arrival to camp, getting to the hotel just before the welcome banquet on the first night, is Andrea Costa.

The 51-year-old has a day job that involves working for a company in the midwest where she is responsible for designing corrugated boxes for companies like Papa John’s, Pampers, and Hershey’s.

Costa’s also no stranger to the ballfield, and in addition to holding an evening job as a hitting instructor, the hard-playing infielder played Division III softball at Eastern Connecticut State University, where her team won national championships in 1985 and 1986. “Not that I’m bragging,” she jokes. Costa is in the ECSU Hall of Fame, something she didn’t offer up herself. For all her affected bravado, she doesn’t brag nearly as much as she could—or perhaps should.

I mingle with the campers during the open bar portion of that first evening, Presby taking me by my elbow and making sure I’ve met everyone. Some of the women know about me; we’ve spoken over email prior to camp. Others are sizing me up. “Do you like baseball?” Derreth Adams asks me. You can cut her Mass accent with a knife, and she is wearing rubber duckie earrings. I tell her I’m a baseball writer. “Yeah, but do you like baseball?” The postal worker from Westborough is looking at me over the top of her glasses frames, trying to see if I belong there or I’m just some journalist sent there to write a women’s interest piece. I assure her that I do and crack an infield fly rule joke; she doesn’t seem convinced.

The welcome banquet, held in a hotel ballroom with stackable chairs, is important because it’s where campers will find out which team they’re on. There are four teams, and the coaches have drafted their players prior to the event. I’m told that the drafting process takes into account a player’s age and experience so teams are relatively evenly matched. Family members and friends who came to camp together are also kept together so they can play on the same team.

The coaches walk to the podium, two by two, and read out their team rosters. When it’s Nixon’s turn, he saunters slowly up the stairs. He’s slightly pigeontoed, and he carries a potbelly that was absent in his playing days. He mumbles off the players who will be the Comets, including Peters and Costa, looking like he’s more comfortable playing baseball in front of a crowd than speaking in front of one. This is Costa’s second year at camp, and her experience as a coach and player makes her something of a leader among the group.

The Comets say they feel like they have a lot to prove, as they’re almost all camp rookies. There are only four veterans anchoring the 10-rookie roster. As a coach, Costa describes Nixon as “upfront and honest.” His players refer to him as “Jimmy Dugan,” a reference to

Tom Hanks’ character in A League of Their Own. ---///--As camp gets into full swing on Thursday, the days become a blur of throws and catches, hits, and outs. This is a grueling schedule, particularly for people who don’t train regularly—over the next three days, campers will play six mostly coach-pitched games on top of training and running drills.

The coaching staff is accessible, encouraging. Despite the fact that they are players many of these women grew up watching on TV, there’s no barrier between coaches and campers. The pros make themselves available, sharing stories, asking questions, and forming relationships.

Dave “Smitty” Smith, who was formerly an instructor with the independent Worcester Tornadoes, is invested in helping the women improve not just during camp, but year-round as well. He holds practices at batting cages in Worcester in the months leading up to camp. The kind of genuine care and connection that many of the coaches build with the players means a lot to the women. “The Red Sox make all of us feel like we are part of their family and are important,” says Costa.

Smith says the improvement is evident in the women who have worked out with him. “They’re taking better swings, making better contact.”

One of those women is Annette Headley. I first spotted Headley at the welcome banquet. She stood out in her skinny black pants, heels, and black leather jacket covered in flower appliques—nearly identical to the jacket I was wearing. Headley is another camp veteran, attending with her daughter for the third year. While her daughter Katie is one of the better players on the field, Headley didn’t have any baseball experience before her first year at camp.

“I’m not athletic,” Headley tells me the morning after the banquet. We’re in the batting cages, and she has her navy blue helmet on. Her blowout’s been replaced by braided pigtails that make her look younger than her 56 years. She steps up and takes her stance. Headley swings the bat, reaching a bit for the ball, but manages to make solid contact nonetheless. When she finishes her turn, she

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ducks under the netting to stand next to me again.

“You should give yourself more credit,” I tell her.

Presby explains why Headley—and many of the other women—underestimate themselves. “I think that’s because women generally don’t play competitive baseball,” she says. “So when we get here, it’s in our head, ‘We’re not athletic.’ Or even, we have trouble taking compliments without brushing them off.”

Later, during a game, Headley successfully fields and hustles a ball back in from the outfield, holding the runner to a single.

---///--As camp progresses, the players are finding the cadence of the game—running on contact with two outs, jogging back to the base in synchronized fashion on a foul ball. They’re beginning to look choreographed. It took some time, but the women find their groove, shake off the rust, and feel their teams begin to gel. With each game, the level of play goes up.

With her team down by a run late on day three, camper Jacqui Reynolds steps up to the plate for coach Lenny DiNardo’s Blue Sox. He throws her a pitch and she takes it, waiting for just the right one. And then she gets the pitch she’s been waiting for. The 23-year-old shortstop squares up and swings, sending the ball over the heads of the Comets outfielders. Her teammate comes around to score as the ball rolls to the fence. Reynolds, who has good speed and baserunning instincts, sprints around the bases. “Go, go, go!” her teammates yell, and I find myself screaming and standing along with them. Reynolds slides safely into home, ending the game with a walk-off insidethe-park homerun.

These ball players layout and leap for catches, the full weight of their bodies hitting the ground. They slide into bases, risking twists, sprains, or breaks. They must go from standing still to a dead sprint in a split second out of the batter’s box. This reality takes a toll on the campers, who play as if they’re gunning for a World Series win. The clubhouse is filled with women with ice taped to their knees or to their shoulders; one broke her wrist backpedaling for a pop fly during a drill on day one of camp and never got to play a single out.

DiNardo’s coaching style shines through in the batting cages as he offers tips and adjustments to the hitters.

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The left-handed former relief pitcher and current NESN analyst demonstrates where a batter should be seeing a pitch if it’s thrown inside, down the middle, or outside by laying balls down on the practice plate. His advice to his team before their games is simple: “See ball, hit ball.”

When a camper makes solid contact in the cage and rips what would be a line drive out on the field, he jumps out of the way in an exaggerated motion and yells, “I’m scared of you!” The ball pingpongs off the nets behind him.

It’s DiNardo’s first time coaching the women’s camp, having done the week-long camp for four years. He says it doesn’t feel much different. “There’s something about the uniform. Put it on a guy or put it on a girl and the grit comes out.”

Coach Alan Embree, however, says there’s a difference between the two camps, citing better attitude and smaller egos among the women. Embree, a former Red Sox relief pitcher, has a coaching style that differs from DiNardo’s, too. He doesn’t offer adjustments or tips that are as helpful as the other coaches do, instead preferring to joke around with the women—sometimes at their expense.

His style is what I’d describe as “overly familiar.” The former Red Sox reliever uses pet names for the women like “beautiful,” “dear,” and “hon.” (I introduce myself to him as Britni and he replies, “Hello, Britni, dear.”). He’s handsy with the players: an unnecessary brush of a waist, surprise shoulder massages. Embree tells me he’d take the women’s camp over the predominantly male weeklong camp any day. “I came in the first year with a lot of preconceived notions, and those were blown out of the water,” he says, now in his third year of coaching the camp.

His dynamic with the women is a bit jarring to watch, but the Red Sox have an anonymous feedback system for campers to use if they have any concerns. “We take our camper feedback very seriously, and we use it to shape future coaching rosters,” says Kennedy.

---///--What is most significant about this camp is not the fact the campers get to rub elbows with former Red Sox players. The Red Sox have gone further than that: There is an all-female umpire crew, and they’ve brought in some of the most famous women to ever play the game to join the coaching staff. They are the names that come up when you Google “women in baseball,” living proof that women

can—and do—play the game. It is this detail that really makes the camp different from the Yankees version, the difference of a camp that feels like it’s for women versus by women.

Watching Ila Borders pitch is a revelation. The 43-yearold is slight in stature and her dark, wavy ponytail hangs down her back. Her hands, which have been shaped by a lifetime of holding and manipulating baseballs to her whim, are prominent. When Borders throws a ball, the effort she puts into each pitch becomes visible, the veins on her muscular forearms straining against her skin. It’s Borders’ first year coaching at fantasy camp. I first get to talk to her in the batting cages as she’s packing up after pitching to the women. “This is awesome,” she says, somewhat breathless.

Borders was the first woman to receive a collegiate baseball scholarship, pitching for Southern California College. But it wasn’t easy for her. When she shares her experience being the only girl on her college baseball team, she also tells the stories of being called names she doesn’t feel comfortable repeating, of not being allowed to bat after a while because she got intentionally drilled every time she stepped up to the plate, of five of her teammates jumping her in the outfield and trying to assault her.

But that didn’t stop her. She went on to pitch for the independent St. Paul Saints and the Duluth-Superior Dukes, becoming the first woman signed to a men’s professional baseball team since the Negro League. While there, she became the first woman to ever get a win in a men’s professional game. She retired from the game and became a firefighter. She wrote a memoir called Making My Pitch. And now, she’s at women’s fantasy camp, looking every bit as awed and excited as the campers themselves.

Joining Borders is Marti Sementelli, a Newton, Mass, native who plays regularly for Team USA in international baseball tournaments. At 15, she was the youngest member of the US Women’s World Cup Baseball Team.

She’s a fantasy camp veteran, returning for her third year as a coach. The 25-year-old pitcher connects with the younger campers, feeling more like a friend than a coach.

Rounding out the coaching staff are camp VIPs. Three members of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League—Maybelle Blair, Shirley Burkovich, and Mary Moore—have traveled across the country to join the campers. The women’s professional baseball league

existed from 1943-1954.

It was created during World War II, when most of the male ball players went off to war. The league was made famous by the movie A League of Their Own. Blair, the former pitcher, is perhaps the best-known of the bunch thanks to Madonna’s portrayal of “All the Way Mae” in the film. She is short and slightly hunched, and she walks with a cane fashioned to look like a baseball bat and signed by the cast members of A League of Their Own. The nonagenarian is having the time of her life, telling stories from her playing days. She plays catch with Borders, challenging her to throw the ball “harder! I said harder!”

By contrast, Burkovich only talks when she feels she has something worth saying. “The first year of camp, I got so overwhelmed,” she says. “There were times I didn’t think I would live to see an all-girls baseball team again.” We’re sitting in the clubhouse dining room as we talk, and she looks around at the room filled with women in dirt-stained uniforms. We fall quiet as the room buzzes around us; she doesn’t have to say anything else. We both know all the history she’s made, the years she’s waited to see other women have the chance she was given, the playing days she’s described as the happiest of her life. And now, she’s here.

The AAGPBL players are the true stars of camp. The campers cherish the conversations they get to have with these women, some of the few who are still living. Camper Betsey Alverson, a middle-aged woman with freckles that look like the result of a lifetime spent in the sun, hands me a baseball card with a black-and-white image of a smiling woman in a baseball cap. “That’s my mom,” Alverson tells me proudly. Her name was Noella Leduc, a pitcher and outfielder who played on four different AAGPBL teams. “A durable ball player who once pitched 14 innings of a game in 1952 and won! ‘Pinky’ was also the winning pitcher of the 1954 All-Star game,” the back of the card reads.

Alverson hands a card to each one of the coaches.

---///--It’s in the semifinal game on the last day of camp that college student Peters, affectionately nicknamed “Peanut” by her Comets teammates, “becomes a ballplayer,” says Costa. On day one, Peters couldn’t hit the ball past the pitcher’s mound and struggled to catch fly balls. By the semifinals on day four, “I watched her play defense and swing the bat with confidence. She made contact and hit a ball over the third baseman’s head for her first true hit,” says Costa. “Just watching her face, seeing how happy she was, brought tears to my eyes. I jumped up, screamed, and yelled for her.”

The batter’s box isn’t the only place where Peters found her groove. Nixon suggested she play catcher, a position she didn’t have much experience with. She gamely put on the gear and took her place behind home plate. The girl with the permanent smile maintained her enthusiasm while she took balls off her toes, off her face mask, as she chased down passed balls. By the end of the week, Peters is an anchor for her team behind the plate.

Peters’ two hits and Costa’s two hits help lead the team

to victory in the semifinals—and the championship game. Nixon describes his team as “being in a coma” for the first innings of their games, and they’re dubbed the “Comeback Comets” as their bats come alive late in the games—like when they played the Belles and rallied to score four runs in the top of the seventh inning for a comefrom-behind win. Nixon’s affect is generally flat but, as the team continues to perform well, his competitive edge begins to come out. Whereas he was yelling at the women to “take it easy” on pop-ups in foul territory early in camp, he’s telling them to “go hard!” by day four.

“He breaks things down for those that don’t know the little things of the game,” says Costa, of Nixon’s coaching style. “He takes the time to listen to his players and give them good advice. He knows how to make it fun but yet keep the killer instinct in his tone. For those of us that were more advanced players, he spoke to us like ball players.”

She pauses. “He didn’t hold back—I love that.”

---///--At the main field at JetBlue Park, about 100 fans file in for the championship game, a mix of other campers, family members, and people who are arriving for the week-long camp that begins the next day. I’m in the stands between the home dugout and home plate on the third base line.

Next to me is Ila Borders. From behind me, I hear someone shout, “Hey, Ila! You coming back next year?” Borders smiles and yells back, “You kidding? Heck yeah!”

On the field, everyone stands for the anthem. After it’s over, the Comets huddle together and sing “O Canada” for their Canadian teammate. They have the loudest cheering section thanks to several incredibly enthusiastic husbands in the stands who have been screaming, yelling, high-fiving each other, and generally making a scene from the bleachers all week. It’s a close game, a pitchers duel, if that’s what you’d call a low-scoring, coach-pitched game at a fantasy camp.

Costa is on first base when her teammate hits a ball up the middle. On her way to second, she sees the defense bobble the ball. At that moment, she tells me later, all she could think was, “Make something happen. Force them to throw you out at third.” Costa runs at the third baseman, who is just off the bag, and then cuts back toward the base, sliding in safe.

Nixon stands by third base cheering her on. The coach asks, “Did you try to get in the way of the throw?” Costa NEWS TO US

answers in the affirmative, and his response is what Costa calls “every player’s dream to hear”: “Hell, yeah! I love that shit!”

Nixon then high-fives his player and turns to his next batter in the box.

The game is scoreless until the fifth inning, when the Comets score the only two runs of the game. As the team rushes onto the field to celebrate with a champagne shower at the mound, “We Are the Champions” blares over the stereo system. For the players, it’s a win that feels validating.

“Since many of us were rookies, we wanted to prove that we were capable of winning,” says Peters.

“We didn’t rely heavily on any particular individual but had a nice distribution of talent, which made winning feel like a true team achievement.”

I realize that I’m crying as I watch these women celebrate, living out a dream that many of them have held since they were just little girls. Nixon sprays them with champagne, just like he did to his Red Sox teammates during playoff and World Series wins. For a moment, the women get a small taste of what it feels like to celebrate a championship in the middle of a major league baseball diamond.

“I have been lucky to have been involved in many world championships playing ball,” says Costa, who finished camp with a .583 batting average. “But this one was special. Yes, winning the hardware [fantasy camp ring] is great, but to be able to watch women that never got the chance to win something like this was priceless. For all my teammates who never won a championship, this one was for them.”

At the closing banquet afterward, Joe Castiglione, the longtime radio voice of the Red Sox, gives out awards to the players. It’s strange to hear his voice coming out of an actual human being instead of floating out of my radio speakers. Headley wins the “Most Improved” award and tears up as she receives the statue. Her hard work, both at camp and during the year between, has paid off.

For Headley, like everyone else I’ve been lucky enough to get to know over the course of the week, her camp experience has been incredibly impactful. “I was very much out of my comfort zone, having never swung a bat or thrown a baseball in my life,” she says. “The experience was life-changing for me as I realized how capable I was, and if I can play baseball, I can do anything.”

I’m sporting the leather jacket I wore to the welcome banquet, but this time I’m not a stranger to the women.

I’m a kindred spirit who has been along for the ride all week. Adams, who was skeptical of my credentials when we first met, asks me to explain my T-shirt, which says, “Dock Ellis threw a no-hitter on LSD,” a reference to a 1970 Pittsburgh Pirates game. I do, and she nods her head approvingly. “You know your shit.”

As we file out of the outdoor banquet space, signaling the official end of camp, Adams says, “So, I’ll see you next year, right? It’s your turn to play.”

This article was written in collaboration with the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism. If you would like to see more reporting like this, please consider supporting independent media at givetobinj.org.

FEATURE

DEPT. OF COMMERCE

ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT

13

BOW KNOWS FOOD EATS

The origin story behind Somerville’s highly anticipated food and art smorgasbord

BY BRYNNE QUINLAN

in this size unit.

PHOTOS BY BRYNNE QUINLAN | RENDERINGS VIA BOW MARKET

By May, it will have (hopefully) stopped snowing. And among the many other sweet rewards that come with spring, this year Greater Boston will be blessed with Bow Market, a new complex in Somerville that is shooting to have “30+ food, art, and retail vendors around a public courtyard in the heart of Union Square.”

We have hinted at and mentioned Bow several times, including because our friends from the Comedy Studio are moving there. But with opening day less than a month away, we sat down with the developer-operators, Zach Baum and Matthew Boyes-Watson, to retrace the years-long process it took to arrive at this point.

How did you get to this idea? Was it the space? What came first?

ZB: A little bit of both. … Bow Market is a superhero.

The origin story. It’s sort of a combination.

Matt and I first met four years ago when Matt was working on a project in Central Square, somewhat of a smaller scale of a similar concept—providing really lowcost easy opportunities for vendors to sell in the center of Central Square in Graffiti Alley—so he and I met when he was sort of in the swing of that and started working on what sort of vendors we might want to attract for something like that. Didn’t end up happening …

MBW: The city [Cambridge] was a little wary about it, just regulation.

ZB: We stayed in touch, sort of, and kicked around different ideas for working around Boston, Cambridge, Somerville in restaurant, retail, sort of public space capacity. That [Bow Street] building came up for sale, and we were approached by a group called SCC, Somerville Community Corporation. They had gotten under agreement that their offices were in the space, in the front of the building, along Somerville Ave. Their offices had been there, they were looking to buy their own office space to secure that for them, but didn’t know what to do with this big whole back portion of the space. They approached Matt’s father, Mark, who’s the architect whose offices have been here for a while, and said, “Hey, there’s this big building, do you think you’d want to do something with it?” It really just lent itself to the market 14

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DIGBOSTON.COM

concept, something that we had been interested in working on. The building came available, and the pieces fit together to make this happen.

Can you talk a little bit about the brewery and community roles the space would serve?

MBW: They [Remnant Brewing] are really excited about being a neighborhood brewery. That was kind of their vision for the space—really small, not a lot of production. They can make beer for the people who want to come and drink beer there.

How did you begin to seek out vendors? Did you have an influx of people wanting in?

ZB: A really good combination. When we first started talking to vendors about 20 months ago, we’re knocking on doors, trying to get in touch with people we just liked.

M.F. Dulock [a Somerville meat vendor] is one of the first people we talked to. I went in there, dropped off my name, and said we were doing this marketplace in Somerville.

Michael Dulock gave me a call back, and it sort of started from there.

We talked to [Dulock] and he gave our names to some people, and we started talking to other people. So in the start it was a good combination of walking the streets, pounding pavement, and then getting referrals from there. Once we had a vision and some imagery of what it would actually be like, we put that out, got some more inbound interest, so it’s been a good combination of reaching out to people telling them that we exist. Then a lot of word of mouth for a lot of people who are ready to take the step to brick and mortar.

MBW: The spirit of the market in Graffiti Alley was just to be really inexpensive for vendors to participate in.

I kind of was introduced to Zach as someone who knows all the cool retailers and food people. That’s how we first met and then fast-forward to now, the spirit of this whole market is to lower the upfront costs of the storefront.

Zach’s been very much heading up vendor outreach, and we never got to that stage with the first one in Central. I think [by early March] we had 30-32 spaces, depending on how you classify them, and we’ve had over 300 proposals.

So there’s just a ton of folks out there who are interested

Do you have the option if somebody really wants to stay for, say, five years?

MBW: We have some weird configurations like seven one-year extensions. We’re pretty flexible. We always said it’s not our intention to trap someone into a lease. We’re also interested in people graduating out into bigger spaces because they are very small. We’re not interested in kicking people out. We kind of did what people wanted.

Are you thinking of expanding this idea into other neighborhoods, creating these hubs? Is that something you’re really hoping for?

MBW: So we own the building. The developers and [we] are going to operate the market, so from a bandwidth perspective I think [we’re not going to jump] ahead.

What we are incredibly interested in is sharing our experience here and helping other people introduce similar concepts.

The market scene, which is blowing up, the number of pop-up markets and farmer’s markets and flea markets, craft markets, it’s almost exponential growth. Really low cost for vending opportunity.

The next piece, if you don’t have a Bow Market, is a standard storefront unit, which is like $90,000 to get started. So we’d love to see other people introducing stuff like Bow Market where it’s $10,000 to get in and $1,000 a month. So, I don’t know how directly involved we’ll be where we just go and pump these out.

There are perfect buildings all over the place and tons of capital going around. We’d love to see municipalities implementing zoning or city-owned buildings for something like this. Which I think they’re very interested in. We’ve had a lot of folks from Somerville and Cambridge and at the state level come and check it out saying this might be interesting.

ZB: This is a big project and the complete revamp of a large space, so we’ve learned a lot about how cities can help and how landlords can participate to do this on an even much smaller scale. So what could the city introduce from a zoning perspective that would allow for small vendors to get into a space easily, cheaply, and not lock in a zoning use for a long time, which is a big hurdle a lot of landlords face in terms of introducing new or slightly off-base zoning uses? If you want to put in a gallery that sometimes sells art and maybe has a class, how is that zoned? The answer is it’s not. There is no good way of zoning that.

MBW: God forbid they want food or drink in there as well.

What’s the plan for opening?

MBW: We’re working on a couple different ideas for how to roll this out. Probably a couple nights of friends and family. Once you have 30 vendors and all the construction people—tallying up how many people have significantly worked on this project, actually before dealing with our vendors, architects, and their general contractors, it’s like over 250. If we just want to invite everyone, we need two to three nights or days and nights of invite-only, wrap party type stuff. We’d love to do a Saturday ribbon cutting and then go.

NEWS TO US

FEATURE

DEPT. OF COMMERCE

ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT

15

LUCY DACUS WHEEL OF TUNES

Rising musician talks Lenny Kravitz’s scarf, gray hairs, and parents

BY NINA CORCORAN @NINA_CORCORAN series where we ask musicians questions inspired by their song titles. With Historian as the prompt, her answers reflect her kind and attentive personality, which she may or may not hide when headlining the Sinclair this Wednesday.

1. “Night Shift” Have you ever worked a night-shift job?

What’s funny is I’m working a night shift now doing concerts. I’ve gone to bed at 3 am most nights while touring. It’s extra funny because the relationship I’m talking about in the song ended and I started touring a lot. So essentially I wrote it when I began to take this socalled night shift that is playing music as a job.

2. “Addictions” Which of your addictions was the most difficult one to put an end to?

PHOTO BY DUSTIN CONDREN

Lucy Dacus wasn’t trying to become a hyped musician. The hype came to her. She still doesn’t quite know why.

After her debut album, No Burden, sneaked through the ears of the underground indie rock scene via CD, Matador Records caught wind and reissued it on vinyl in 2016. A whirlwind tour followed, and Dacus slowly trekked across the country, making a name for herself on intimate but confident songs. Thus what began as an art school project suddenly became a career, and her sophomore album Historian—another nod to the fact that she views herself as a historian, not a musician—proves she deserves it. On it, she catalogs the things, people, and places she sees in the world through lyrics, approaching her songwriting like a historian would instead of a cliche-ridden singersongwriter. The result is no less a form of poetry than what the latter would create, though, as she’s able to make detail-rich narration come to life over newfound horns, strings, and synths.

“I’m happy with how ‘Pillar of Truth’ came out because it’s about my grandmother without being too saccharine, too sweet, or too sad,” explains Dacus. “It’s … dignified and honorable, just like her. A lot of that song came from knowing her and observing her, and I’m happy I found a way to represent her to other people. Whether people realize it’s about her or not, it’s an easy one to resonate with. Capturing people is difficult. Representing them in a way they’d want to be represented is a huge task. It’s easiest when you love the person. And that song is a case where I tried my best to nail that.”

To explore her tendency to study the world around her, we interviewed Lucy Dacus for a round of Wheel of Tunes, a

In general, being addicted to people has been the hardest challenge. I’ve had trouble quitting my connections to toxic people because I have a lot of hope and faith that relationships could turn out well. A lot of the time, you need to just cut it. Not everything has to be healthy if it’s unhealthy. You just have to admit it. That’s still a growing process for me given there’s a lot of individual situations that need tending to.

3. “The Shell” If you think of friendships as the act of someone slowly getting closer to your core, what’s the hardest exterior layer for someone to get through when they want to be your friend?

4. “Nonbeliever” What do you think is the most ridiculous conspiracy theory?

This isn’t really my scene. I do know that there’s a conspiracy theory about a mole king, though. You know that one, right? Basically, there’s a mole king that’s apparently the supreme ruler of the urban underground, I think in London but maybe in New York also. There’s the mole people. During the day, they live in the abandoned subways. At night, they come out and are very pale and scavenge for food. They’re moles, but people. And I don’t think I’ll ever believe that.

5. “Yours & Mine” Who is the last person you shared food with?

Oh, me and my band! We got juice for breakfast. All of us like to drink green, frothy liquids in the morning with bananas, kale, cashews, stuff like that. It’s a good way to start the day because it’s healthy and energizing.

6. “Body to Flame” Do you have any tricks to staying warm during winter?

I’m an especially cold person most of the time, actually. I guess wear a scarf that is also a blanket.

That way when you’re out in public, you can look normal while swaddling yourself like a newborn baby simultaneously. It’s one of those giant scarves, like the Lenny Kravitz scarf.

7. “Timefighter” When is the last time you fought very hard for something?

This is a super good question. Nowadays, I think the biggest barrier for making friends is people thinking I’m too busy. In some ways that’s correct, but I like to think I’m a really warm person. There’s just not enough of it to go around. So I’ve had a lot of friends say, “Oh, I didn’t reach out because I didn’t want to bother you. I don’t want to put more on your plate.” Trying to be respectful of my time winds up being a barrier. … But then they don’t ask for my time and I don’t spend time with friends. So it’s a strange, circular problem.

I feel like I should ask Jacob, who’s right next to me. [repeats question to bandmate] Yeah, that’s what I thought, too. I bought a house this year, and it was a horrible fight. It was months of fighting through the worst. We had a lot of jerks involved in the process, as the last owner of our house was really a pain. They promised to do a bunch of repairs that they didn’t do, and they stopped paying their bills so the utilities were cut off. It’s making my heart rate rise just talking about it. So that rattled me for a while this past year. But now I have a beautiful house in Richmond and my friends live with me, so energy well spent.

FIND THE REST OF THE TRACKS FROM NINA'S PIECE AT DIGBOSTON.COM

>>LUCY DACUS, AND THE KIDS, ADULT MOM. WED 4.11. THE SINCLAIR, 52 CHURCH ST., CAMBRIDGE. 7:30PM/18+/$16. SINCLAIRCAMBRIDGE.COM

MUSIC EVENTS THU 04.05

LEAN BUMMER POP MELODIES LADY PILLS + SHANE TRIPP + TODAY JUNIOR + DUTCH TULIPS

[Lilypad, 1353 Cambridge St., Cambridge.

7pm/18+/$10. lilypadinman.com]

16

04.05.18 - 04.12.18 |

FRI 04.06

SAT 04.07

[ONCE Somerville, 156 Highland Ave., Somerville. 8pm/18+/$20. oncesomerville.com]

[The Sinclair, 52 Church St., Cambridge. 8pm/18+/$15. sinclaircambridge.com]

BOSTON’S ALT-ROCK QUEEN JULIANA HATFIELD + ABBIE BARRETT

DIGBOSTON.COM

JOY DIVISION INSPO IN 2018 OUGHT + MAL DEVISA + KATIE VON SCHLEICHER

SUN 04.08

MON 04.09

[The Sinclair, 52 Church St., Cambridge. 7pm/18+/$15. sinclaircambridge.com]

[Great Scott, 1222 Comm. Ave., Allston.

8:30pm/18+/$10. greatscottboston.com]

MUSICAL CHEERLEADERS FOR THE WORLD THE GO! TEAM + BASEMENT REVOLVER

WHISPERY LVL UP SPINOFF TRACE MOUNTAINS + HORSE JUMPER OF LOVE + BEDBUG

WED 04.11

AN INDIE ROCK BLOWUP LUCY DACUS + AND THE KIDS + ADULT MOM

[The Sinclair, 52 Church St., Cambridge.

7:30pm/18+/$16. sinclaircambridge.com]

THE FOUR REASONS MUSIC

Why you shouldn’t miss Crumb

BY NINA CORCORAN @NINA_CORCORAN

| RESTAURANT | INTIMATE CONCERT VENUE | | URBAN WINERY | PRIVATE EVENT SPACE |

LIVE MUSIC • PRIVATE EVENTS

upcoming shows

4/5 - 4/7

Après Le Déluge: The Buddy Cole Monologues Scott Thompson brings his Lounge Lizard back to the limelight.

APRIL 3

4/06

Juliana Hatfield, Abbie Barrett

APRIL 4

yes, darling

ft. Ryan Montbleau & Hayley Jane

Local legendary singer songwriter

sam bush

w/ Danny Burns

4/08

The Ladies Rock Camp Boston - Showcasing nine new bands PHOTO COURTESY OF HAOYAN OF AMERICA You’re reading DigBoston because you want to know who’s who. Maybe you’re reading the paper because you don’t want a case of FOMO. Actually, did you pick this up?

Thankfully, you’re in luck no matter which one you picked. There’s an incredible show this weekend that probably flew under your radar. We’re here to make sure you remedy that.

Say hello to Crumb, a four-piece band that’s a hell of a lot chiller than the weather right now. Though they’re best described as an intimate, soulful, and psychedelic group, Crumb’s influences ricochet off the walls too quickly to be captured in a genre box. At one moment they fall into the bass-heavy grooves of funk. Elsewhere, they trail into the weed-tinted fog of your headiest psych pop. Most times, they’re tiptoeing along the brim of some truly innovative indie rock disguised as a jam session.

If, for some reason, you have yet to trust our word that Crumb’s music will blow your mind, here are four reasons why you shouldn’t sleep on them—and why you should snag tickets to their headlining show at Great Scott this Sunday before it sells out.

APRIL 8

APRIL 5

All proceeds go to the Girls Rock Campaign Boston programming.

James Maddock & Vance Gilbert

4/10

Simpson Trivia

Tommy Castro & the Painkillers

Quizzes and questions on everyone’s favorite TV family 4/11

The Moth True Stories Told Live Awards

APRIL 9

APRIL 9

Dan Navarro

in the haymarket lounge

Share your achievements, trophies, honors and gifts.

bossa blue An Evening of James Taylor Music & Wine Pairing

156 Highland Ave • Somerville, MA 617-285-0167 oncesomerville.com a @oncesomerville b/ONCEsomerville

SHOW SOME LOCAL LOVE The story of Crumb begins six years ago in the hands of singer/guitarist Lila Ramani.

Back then, all four members—Ramani, bassist Jesse Brotter, keyboardist/saxophonist Brian Aronow, and drummer Jonathan Gilad—were attending Tufts University to study music (Brotter and Aronow) and computer science (Ramani and Gilad) but weren’t quite friends yet, only bandmates. Fast-forward a few years and Ramani is sharing her songs with the three guys. Together, they expanded her vision into four lucid songs for their debut EP: “Plants,” “Recently Played,” “Thirty-Nine,” and “Locket.” Last summer, they uprooted to New York City, but they have Boston to thank for bringing them together and for hosting their first release.

AWARD-WINNERS (ACCORDING TO US) You don’t think we would let their type of genius go by unrewarded, do you? In December of last year, we rolled out the highly anticipated (and coveted, if we do say so ourselves) DigBoston’s Best Local EPs list. The annual list highlights incredible EPs that came out of the Boston music scene that year, regardless of genre or label status. Not only did Crumb’s debut EP, Locket, score a spot as one of the 15 EPs selected, but some of the band’s members appeared on the list yet again with Lenderson, a side project of Brotter and Gilad. Not bad.

APRIL 12 MARCH 22

Eric Andersen

APRIL 13

planet radio

in the haymarket lounge

in the haymarket lounge

APRIL 14

APRIL 15

Texas Troubadours ft.

Ruthie Foster, Jimmie Dale Gilmore & Carrie Rodriguez

The Gibson Brothers

APRIL 16

JUNE 1

Arrested Development

Kevin Nealon (two shows)

Beverage Events

4.17

4.11 passport to wine

GLOW UP FOR THE BLOWUP Trust us when we say Crumb are poised to make it big. The group already scored positive praise from the likes of NPR, Pitchfork, Nylon, Stereogum, Paste, and more behind their debut EP, Locket. Considering they weren’t signed to a label yet (and still aren’t, though we’re willing to bet the band signed but haven’t announced it yet), that’s pretty impressive. As more listeners discover their music, critics and fans alike are watching the band, eagle-eyed, waiting for more music to tumble out of their hands.

This hype train is just starting to leave the station. Now is the time to jump on.

agave for all

spain

A Tequila Tasting

Story Telling Series:

City Winery & Improv Asylum Present

4.19

5.12

Terry Thiese

Whose Wine Is It Anyway?

BOOK YOUR NEXT EVENT WITH US

FOR YOUR EARS ONLY So about that new music thing: It’s happening. Crumb are recording new material for their next release, but so far no recorded audio of such is available for public listening. The only way you can check out their unreleased songs is to catch them live.

How convenient they’re playing Great Scott this Sunday where you can hear those songs loud and clear with a packed room of fans. Bragging rights? Why yes, absolutely, they’re all yours after you hear these songs before everyone else in the world.

email eventsboston@citywinery.com for more info

80 beverly st. Boston Ma 02114 (617) 933-8047 |www.citywinery.com/boston

>> CRUMB, PET FOX. SUN 4.8. GREAT SCOTT, 1222 COMM. AVE., ALLSTON. 8:30PM/18+/$15. GREATSCOTTBOSTON.COM NEWS TO US

FEATURE

DEPT. OF COMMERCE

ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT

17

MUSIC NEWS

NEXT UP: PLYMOUTH ROCKS PRESENTS

SECRET SOCIETY

A CANNIBUS & CBD INFUSED DINNER ON 4/20 (7710PM)

MIPSCARE IS PROUD TO ANNOUNCE THIS YEARS 420 (5) COURSE DINNER TO BE HELD AT A SECRET DOWNTOWN BOSTON LOCATION KEEPING IT CLASSY & FESTIVE

MENU

CHARMOULA SALAD

ENDIVE, ROASTED CAULIFLOWER, RED CHARMOULA INFUSED WITH CANNA OIL, FREEZE DRIED RASPBERRIES RICOTTA SALATA

MUSSELS

SMOKED CANNA BUTTER, TOASTED HAZELNUTS, MADD HERBS BASQUE CIDER, CHORIZO (SOME WITHOUT)

SKATE WING PICCATA

YUKON POMME PUREE, LEMON CANNA BUTTER FRIED CAPERS

HANGER STEAK

CHIMICHURRI INFUSED CANNA OIL BLUE CHEESE, MALT VINEGAR CHIPS

ICE CREAM COOKIE SANDWICHES CANNA BUTTER SUGAR COOKIE, BUTTERFINGER COFFEE ICE CREAM SPECIAL GUESTS

CORMEGA

REGISTER AT WWW.KCPROPERDOSE.COM THE PRICE FOR THIS PRIVATE EVENT IS $250 PER PERSON. YOU PAY FOR THE FOOD, THE MARIJUANA AND CBD INFUSIONS ARE ON US THERE WILL BE NO MARIJUANA FOR SALE AT THIS EVENT

YOUR PRIVACY MATTERS Worried about mass surveillance?

Want more democratic oversight?

Want to support local volunteers fighting for real change?

Longtime Mass radio DJ Mike Gioscia sparks South Shore festival

BY DIG STAFF @DIGBOSTON Mike Gioscia grew up in what he calls a “cow town” in Connecticut. For major concerts, he and his friends “would trudge to the New Haven Coliseum for late-’70s early ’80s rock shows like Van Halen, Ozzy Osbourne, and Cheap Trick.”

Those experiences led to him entering an amateur radio jock contest in high school in Hartford and eventually to DJing at the now-defunct rock station WFNX in Boston, where he first got on the airwaves in 1992, then several other stations.

“I helped make all the cool production pieces, station IDS, station promos,” Gioscia says of his early FNX days. “We had complete freedom to do whatever we wanted—the crazier, more off-the-wall stuff, like poking fun at WBCN. The culture was to be anti-corporate radio.

“I never watched TV in the ’90s. Radio was it. Rock shows were it. I played in a band, I started DJing. People would talk about Seinfeld, and I would have no idea.”

Having been there for innumerable iconic, massive shows, including Green Day at the Boston hatch shell in ’94—about that one, Gioscia says, “By the time I got down to the Esplanade, the show was almost over because it had hit its riotous conclusion”—he’s been in the biz of bringing people together through music for years, and of “being involved in something that is much bigger than me.”

Gioscia’s latest project is Plymouth Rocks, a startup film and music blowout that is currently slated for Oct 26 and 27. With a fundraiser for the festival coming up this Friday, April 6, at the Memorial Blue Room in Plymouth, we asked the organizer about his team’s vision for this expedition.

What do you see as the dominant music festivals around here right now?

Obviously I think Boston Calling came in and served the whole area for a downtown festival with big acts on multiple days. Out in Western Mass, Wilco’s Solid Sound festival is pretty cool, being off the beaten path and having not just obvious acts. And Levitate, down here in Marshfield, even though I have yet to go to one, I think that’s the motivating thing. I see that happening at the Marshfield Fairgrounds, and I thought, “Why can’t I do this?”

Why you?

I was just a guy who was very connected to Boston and Boston events who moved to the country, and I was finding these events and wondering why there can’t be something like this on the South Shore.

Why Plymouth?

Plymouth is cool. It’s funky, it’s still blue collar. I thought we should spend more time in our own community. That led me to sit down with a few other locals who also have music connections, including the owner of the record store in Plymouth and the operators of the [now-defunct] independent film festival. … That was mid2016 when we were talking about it, and most of 2017 was working on getting the paperwork together for a nonprofit.

What’s the ultimate goal with this thing?

We want to share proceeds with local school music programs. We feel that we can do cool things and help out younger artists.

Support Restore the Fourth in the DuckDuckGo Fundraising Challenge crowdrise.com/restore-the-4th Give by April 10 and help us win up to $50,000!

18

04.05.18 - 04.12.18 |

DIGBOSTON.COM

What’s the game plan to get there?

Memorial Hall is pretty big. It fits 1,500, so we can probably do 3,000 people over the weekend. … The plan is to have one night that is film-related, maybe a documentary followed by [an event with] the subjects. On night number two, we’ll do a dirty old rock ’n’ roll show.

For more info on Plymouth Rocks and this Friday’s fundraiser with the David Bieber Archives, visit plymouthrocksevents.org.

NEWS TO US

FEATURE

DEPT. OF COMMERCE

ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT

19

CASTLE OF MY DREAMS FILM

An interview with Valery Lyman

BY JAKE MULLIGAN @_JAKEMULLIGAN

PHOTO CREDIT: NICK MCKINNEY

Valery Lyman is a photographer, sound recordist, and filmmaker whose recent work has documented the Bakken oil shale region of North Dakota. Her photographs and recordings form the basis of Breaking Ground: An Immersive Meditation on the Oilfields of North Dakota, which will be exhibited at the Metropolitan Waterworks Museum this weekend (April 5-7). “Lyman’s images will be projected on to the towering 19th century engines and archways of the museum,” per a description from the Film Study Center at Harvard University, “accompanied by the sounds and voices of the North Dakota communities embedded in an unforgiving, industrial landscape.” Lyman spoke to me about her work following a prior exhibition of Breaking Ground last week.

Breaking Ground almost dances around the concept of motion picture art. It features audio tracks, which have a runtime. And it features photography loops, which, in a sense, also have a runtime. By moving around the space, you get something like editing. Yet the work is very defiantly not in that realm.

The photography loops were never translated into video, very intentionally. I never conceived of this particular work as a film. But I was talking to somebody recently, and she said, “It doesn’t sound like photography, it sounds

like a film.” And, well, I guess it is kind of like a film—if you smashed a film with a hammer, and its various parts fled to different corners of the room. And then, you enter.

It’s important to me to bring the body into the experience.

You’re not just sitting there. You’re entering, you’re walking around, you’re physically engaging, you’re wandering. Wandering is very important to me. So I want to give the audience that opportunity—and I want to give them the opportunity to curate their own experience, both visually and aurally.

I find that in a lot of visual/aural installations, you can walk around and choose what you want to look at, but there is one dominating central object, or one dominating aural rhythm. I didn’t want the audience to be dominated in that way—I want them to be able to choose their sound experience, in the same way they do with the visuals.

You see that in the visual arts sometimes, but you almost never get it with your audio—to choose your audio field, or your own mix of audio fields. Your own rhythms. I want this to be driven, to some degree, by the rhythms of the viewer. … That idea of physical engagement is something that’s very important to me about this work.

I noticed that the way the projectors are set up means there’s no way to avoid obstructing the projection. While I was in the space, I became intensely aware of the way that my body, or even just a part of my body, was interrupting the work itself.

That’s intentional. I put the projectors where I wanted to put them, regardless of whether they would be interrupted by people’s shadows—I like people’s shadows, and the way their bodies interact with the imagery. The whole thing is one archetypal landscape, wandered by subjects and viewers alike. There’s a collapse of past and present into one landscape—which could be past, present, or future.

You’ve spoken about your interest in the developmental cycles of boomtowns. And your work doesn’t seem to attach tragedy to that cycle—to the fact

>> BREAKING GROUND: AN IMMERSIVE MEDITATION ON THE OILFIELDS OF NORTH DAKOTA. METROPOLITAN WATERWORKS MUSEUM, 2450 BEACON ST., CHESTNUT HILL. EXHIBIT OPEN 4.5–7, 7–10PM. $12.

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that these spaces are probably destined to…

To die someday?

Exactly. To me the exhibit almost seems to frame it as a lifespan. In the front, we see images of trains, and hear one pulling in—one could interpret that as a kind of birth imagery. Then in the next stages of the space, we see development—workplaces taking shape, homes getting filled. And in the back corner, the photography loops display empty, desolate landscapes—almost like corpses, or skeletons.

And that’s why you hear the wind in that space. … Every 15 minutes, all the sound in the whole space turns to wind.

And it’s a different wind in each channel. Part of that is to give you a rest from the voices. But more importantly, it’s that the wind is all that will be left there—the wind is what’s left of so many other boomtowns that have since become ghost towns.

I read that there are 20 different channels throughout the exhibit.

I have 14 projectors running, and then six different audio pieces.

And the six audio loops must be synchronized, right?

For those moments where they “meet”—like when they’re all playing wind.

Well, it’s not exactly synchronization! There are five audio loops in the main room, and they’re each different lengths. So what I call the “arrival” section is only five minutes long—although I use the sound of a different train each time it replays, so there’s variance built into the loops, too. And what I call the “work” section is more like nine minutes. … Every 15 minutes, wherever these different pieces are in their own loop, they go to wind. It’s like an interruption. For one minute, wind sweeps through every audio channel. And then at the end of that minute, one of three stated lines is played. So a full “cycle” takes 45 minutes.

Your photographs have been exhibited in numerous contexts—in art installations, photography exhibits, and journalism, to name just three. I’m curious how you feel about the Waterworks Museum and how it functions as a new context for this work.

The Waterworks, being a site of former industry … not abandoned industry, because it has been preserved … that changes the work, and it changes the space. For me, it’s magnificent—the castle of my dreams.

I’m thinking about showing the work in places that aren’t so well preserved. Places that are in states of decay. …

I’ve always been interested in decayed places. They’re rich with psyche, they’re rich with memory—and you feel that when you enter them. That’s one of the qualities of oldness itself. After the Waterworks, I’m hoping to bring [Breaking Ground] to different industrial sites across the country—I have a few lined up already. And some people have said things to me like, “Oh, it’s so great that you’re rejuvenating these spaces,” or, “You’re enlivening these old spaces.” And I’m thinking, “No, these spaces are fully alive.” They’re very inhabited. I don’t think of them as dead at all.

Quotes in this transcript have been excerpted from a larger conversation and were edited for clarity.

Gregory Csikos, CPA csikoscpa.com

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