The Glass Half Full, thoughts on Boston 2024

The Olympics coming to Boston? Well I hope so. Now before people get mad I want them because I love everything about Boston and want the City to be on a pedestal. Even if that means nine years of planning for two weeks of games.

Yes, we had a terrible winter that exposed some of the shortcomings of the antiquated MBTA, but seven feet of snow in a month, come on for its age it did pretty good. But like the misery brought on by the weather it also brought out a lot of negativity that got directed right at the Olympic bid.

First off I am not an employee of Boston 2024, but I am a Union Leader. I am also one that has not yet attended any of the public hearings. I do want good jobs for my members as well as everyone else that I think the games will bring. I really want it for other reasons.

One, it is a great city, by the way I don’t live in the city but have spent most of life in it. This city has been on an upward swing for some years and I don’t think we have even got real momentum yet. As a matter of fact I feel that Boston was a city that changed little over the previous one hundred plus years. It has been roughly over the past twenty or so that things have taken off.

Infrastructure upgrades over this time has been huge, some unknown or unnoticed but yet instrumental in the growth of not only Boston, but the whole Metro area. The Big Dig, Water Supply Upgrades, Waste Water Treatment Facilities, Logan Airport Expansion among others has helped to bring development to areas that could not be built before. The Convention Center has put Fan Pier on the map.

As someone in construction of course I think all of this is great and I can tell you that there were people that we very vocal about probably all of these projects. But after they were done the common good has outweighed the negatives. Yes I certainly have been a proponent of some jobs that certainly did not work out for the best interest of me and were killed or changed for the right reasons.

The No Olympics group out there bring an important element to the conversation. It is groups like this that will force change along the way and I encourage them to push forward. In the end though, I want the games here.

I heard Mayor Walsh speak about the fact that there has been no Master plan for the City since 1963. That is too bad because development and progress in general may or may not have had a sense of direction. I commend him for starting the process again. As a plan takes shape there will no doubt be a great focus on the needed infrastructure upgrades. As the conversation goes it will be these subjects that will get more interest than things such as open space, etc. Maybe rightfully so.

With that being said since we live in Boston some of those upgrades are coming with or with out the games. This is where I think the games are a positive for the city. If through a plan the citizens agree that certain trains and roads need to be fixed over the next twenty five years then lets use the games to push the changes here sooner than later. Have the games become the catalyst for the things we need.

I have heard that traffic will be a nightmare, it already is a nightmare. The T is running at capacity, time for a changed system. We have been living in a state of change in Boston for many years and the major changes we have invested in are only going to benefit those younger than us. The games put a time frame on changes that need to be done and in maybe a romantic way, an end or at least a break from this state of change.

I would love for the world to tune in for that month in 2024 and think wow what a beautiful city. I would love for people from around the world to come to Boston and walk this city as a venue like none other. I would love all Bostonians to welcome and enjoy the changes that the Games brought to the city not just as a sporting event but also as a deadline for the needs of the future.

I love the idea of Boston 2024, I respect the people of NO Boston 2024 for bringing out the hard and uncomfortable questions but as someone who sees this as a glass half full I say, Let the Games Begin.

People enjoying the public art of Boston recently
People enjoying the public art of Boston recently
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On the road again

hanson rail

7:15 I have to be on time for this. As we enter the parking lot for the Hanson Commuter Rail station I am thinking this because I live one minute from the station. After a usual night before of helping make sure we are ready we pull in with 10 minutes to spare.

Moving here twenty-five years ago there was no way to get to South Station other than driving to a connector station. Although every time I have seen the tracks, anywhere I might say, i think about where they come from and where they go. This will be the beginning of a day on the rails that starts from one minute away.

There is something. to me anyway, that draws me to the trains. Growing up on the Red Line I learned quickly that you can get around pretty good by rail. Once again having this available at a young age also lets the mind wonder.

Like many other people part of this nostalgia comes from the stories i heard from my very dearly missed grandfather about his days on the old Boston and Maine railroad. Once again it was the trains that brought that part of my family to Boston from Bath Maine. The freight lines that he spoke of readily moved so much of the domestic commerce of New England.

Riding in the coach today I think I could stay on here right across the country. The scenery that is available is second to none but it is the fact that these trains ride on the same tracks that millions have ridden before across these states. That rails allow the imagination to roam. I think everyone has the urge to roam. When you are in a car or an a plane your senses are trained to pay attention to other things. On the train you are allowed to roam, to the cafe or in your mind.

Another great thing about this ride is the whole northeast corridor. It is a rolling education of where America has been, where it is, and where its going. I love this rolling history lesson. One the about this track, it is a testament to the middle class. Places. Some old, some new, some just stuck. Looking at different sites, doing 50 mph, gives me just enough time to think about “What happened to that place?, Trade agreement, depression, no succession plan, who knows but you can’t think about these things from 35,000 feet or the middle lane of Interstate 95.

Today as we head to DC, I look at my beautiful wife and daughter and see that like everything else I see going by on the train it seems like a snapshot in time. I am not crazy about the snapshot of my daughter because it stunning to think of her when she was just my baby as to what she is now and that my wife and I were seemingly just kids when we got married. But time is just that and while seeing the snapshot of the geography of the train is nice it is the slow steady ride of my family that my has been and is the best ride.

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Water, what if there was none

Water, as a plumber it comes as no surprise that I think about it quite a bit. As a matter of fact I have been thinking about it a lot lately. The lack of it in certain parts of the country have me really concerned. Turning on my faucet and not having anything come out is almost inconceivable.

That seems to be the case in California these days and why the news does not pay more attention or devote more time to this is beyond me. A few years back there was another troubling drought situation in Georgia which seems to have corrected itself, thankfully. Recently the PIVOT Network just had a lot of programming around World Water Day.

Here in the greater Boston area there seems to be ample supply of water. Seven feet of snow and a very slow melt hopefully will replenish the reservoirs and aquifers for the upcoming summer. But looking at it from a plumbers point of view it is a commodity that is taken for granted.

When looking at California I become concerned that over the next fifty years this may happen here but more importantly it is an issue that will pit people against other people. Water wars seem like something out of the old west but if some have it and some do not, then watch out. We need to, at a time when we can, try to come up with ways to save water.

Plumbers Local 12 is a leader in water reuse technology. Our plumbers and apprentices receive hands on training in water re-use technology in our state of the art training facility. The Greater Boston area has numerous locations where plumbers have installed these water saving technologies. We have buildings that recover rainwater and reuse it for the flushing of toilets and irrigation. we also have full sewage treatment systems that employ grey water for some of the same purposes. At Gillette Stadium and Mall one such systems exits. as a mater of fact i have always suspected that this system would be used also as a source of water to help economic development near the stadium.

As we see the installation of these system increase one has to wonder when these types of reuse systems will be used in single family homes. it is my understanding that in places like Australia, where drought has been an issue, that many individual homes have at minimum a rainwater collection system. Did anyone know that for every inch of rain that falls on a one thousand sq. ft. roof, six hundred gallons of water can be collected. Over the course of a season that can add up to a lot of water. I think it would make a lot of sense to start to encourage this. This along with many other breakthroughs in technology will provide more work in the Green Economy.

Thinking of six hundred gallons, a visual could be having almost eleven fifty-five gallon drums. To someone in California today that most likely looks like liquid gold and it should as water means life. For something as important as water the technology has been slow to come. ROI on solar thermal has lagged behind compared to the PV panels and desalinization is tremendously costly and uses much energy. As a matter of fact some plants have been built and been taken off-line as water supplies returned to certain areas. Hopefully the new one in San Diego will provide product as well as complement their existing systems when adequate supplies return.

Soon the Environmental League of Massachusetts will have something on the Boston Globe editorial page that speaks to jobs in the Green Economy. Massachusetts being somewhat of a progressive state should embrace these technologies and support solid legislation that addresses water conservation through smart energy policy.

The Plumbers Union is ready to work!

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E. M. K.

Tonight I am going with my wife to the opening of the Edward M. Kennedy Institute in Dorchester. When I was thinking about writing something I thought back to when the Senator passed away and some of the impressions I had of the time.

As a guy who grew up in a politically involved family Ted Kennedy was already at the top as the Senator from MA. As a matter of fact the Senator was elected the year I was born in 1962. But it was what came out about the Senator after he died that reaffirmed to me what Congress should be about.

All of the members of Congress that spoke about the Senator said a lot of the same things. That outside of being on one side of an issue he genuinely cared about his colleagues and their staff. I remember hearing from Senator Hatch that as much as they fought for position he was always a friend. Shouldn’t that be at least some of the way in Washington. Wouldn’t all Americans be better of if it wasn’t a game of kill or be killed.

I know that he at times frustrated a lot of his own side hear in MA on occasion but maybe it was the cost of compromise for something better for the country as a whole. To really see him in action just you tube “Ted Kennedy Minimum Wage” it is one of the funniest, passionate,and caring clips of him.

I had the chance to be seated with him at a business lunch and he came back to his seat after his remark and asked us “well what do think” about his remarks. I said to him it was great. He promptly looked and replied “Well I could have used some applause with the unemployment comments”. He then laughed and talked to us plumbers and electricians like he was from the neighborhood.

One thing is for sure about him and his family. They probably never had to work but they spent their careers trying to empower many who had none and quite frankly it lives on today. I guess caring is what comes to mind and thats what I will be thinking about tonight at the event.

In my position over the last 15 years I have come to appreciate the man who knew how to work the art of the game.

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The Last March and Funeral of Cesar Chavez

Great story on so many fronts, Thanks

johnharte's avatarYou can't have my job, but I'll tell you a story

In this photo which has never been published until now, Dolores Huerta steps out of her dress shoes and into tennis shoes to participate in "The Last March" at the funeral of her United Farm Workers co-founder Cesar Chavez. In this photo which has never been published until now, Dolores Huerta steps out of her dress shoes and into tennis shoes to participate in “The Last March” at the funeral of her United Farm Workers co-founder Cesar Chavez in Delano, California.

The bulletin from the Associated Press flashed across the computer in The Bakersfield Californian’s photo department a few minutes after 9 am on Friday, April 23, 1993. I was alone and raced down the stairs to the third floor newsroom, where a group of editors and reporters were chatting. The day was just getting started, coffee was brewing, receptionists were handling what seemed to be a never-ending stream of phone calls that poured in all day long in those pre-email and social media days. Nobody else had yet seen the bulletin. “Cesar Chavez has died in Arizona,” I blurted out. “The AP just moved a bulletin.” And with…

View original post 3,168 more words

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Hello All!

Good Morning, My name is Harry Brett and I am from the Plumbers Union in Boston. Known as Local 12 we have over 1700 members and its my goal to be able to share with you the many great things about the local, its members, and the plumbing industry in general.

I really look forward to writing my (many) thoughts about this great industry and expose to any plumbers that have chosen plumbing as a career that to have it truly fulfilling, you belong here.

Thanks, and as I get beyond this first post (hopefully i can find it somewhere) i will post pics and make it as interesting as i can.

Thanks for reading,

Harry

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