What began as a youth group project several years ago has become a regular trip to Central America for members of the Trinity Church community.

In 2000, as part of its community outreach program, the church’s youth services group visited Honduras to help rebuild after Hurricane Mitch in 1998 devastated much of the country with serious floods. “It was such a great experience that they have returned every summer,” said Patricia Hurley, the church’s director of communications.

Inspired by the work of their younger members, the church decided to organize a trip for adults four years ago. Today the new outreach program is going strong, working directly with the Archdiocese of Honduras to determine what projects are most needed in the selected areas.

Recently 15 members of the church returned from a six-day trip to El Pedregal, a tiny, mountain-top village of 250 people with no electricity or running water, located outside the nation’s capital, Tegucigalpa.

“The team had been to El Pedregal last year and had put in cement floors in about eight of the homes,” said Hurley. “Because of health reasons, floors are a priority.

“This year they asked us to come back and help build a church; they had been worshiping in a little hut of slatted bark. On this trip, the 15 of us were responsible for digging holes that are the footings for the foundation of the church.”

The team also poured concrete into the newly dug holes and inserted supporting steel columns, said Hurley, who acknowledged the work was tiring, largely because of the rocks they had to contend with.

“El Pedegal means the stony place,” she said. “The holes that we dug were full of large rocks, it took a log time. We had to get down about three feet and we really didn’t think we were going to get very far.”

But by the trip’s end the group had completed six of the 12 holes needed for the church’s foundation.

Organizers hope the new church will become the basis for further development in the community, enabling the residents to eventually become self-sustaining. Currently El Pedregal has a sewing cooperative that operates out of the village’s three-room schoolhouse where women sew decorative pillowcases.

“[The churches] become gathering points in these small mountain villages and hopefully they will expand in micro economic communities,” said Jan Beaven of Beacon Street, who participated in the trip this year for the first time with her husband Doug. “The diocese wants to give the village hope and help them find ways to become self sustaining. It’s really changing lives, it’s transformations, it’s exciting.”

In addition to their own work during their stay, the group visited another village where a church had been previously built. There, a sewing cooperative, a bakery and a food program for school children had also been created.

The visits to other communities “helps us get a sense of where projects are going and where villages are going in the long term plan of the church,” said Kathleen Peets of Charles Street, who has participated in the trips since 2005.
For Barbara Duffy of Louisburg Square, who was part of the trip last year, the prospect of another week of challenging physical labor was daunting, but she persevered.

“My husband and I are going to be 78 years old and I said I am too old for this very heavy physical work,” said Duffy. “Jim was determined that he was going to go and he just kept nudging me.”

Duffy, who calls the trips “mountain top experiences” said the work and the camaraderie are all well worth the effort.

“Working with these people and seeing how they manage [with so little] — they seem happy, really happy, the smiles, lots of laughs, lots of children running around, and the satisfaction of seeing a building starting. You just forget about saying you can’t do anything because you find that you can once you are there.”

Hurley said the trips are inspiring.

“Though [the villagers] have so little, they are so generous with us. And for us to be able to help them and see their gratitude — it’s really an experience you never forget. When we come back it makes us so appreciative of what we have and makes us want to do so much more.”

credit: D. Harney


The 11th annual Gibson House Benefit Tea on Sunday, March 25, at the Fairmont Copley Hotel was a great success and included the annual men’s bow tie and women’s hat contest.

#1 This year’s bow tie winner was Michael Halperson, shown here with Christie Wyman.

#2
Mary Ann Marusich with her “Most Eccentric Hat.”

#3 Katharine and Anne Lusk, a daughter and mother team, won “Best Hat Ensemble.”

Community Boating Inc. will hold its opening day for the 2007 season Saturday with a day of sailing on the Charles River.
Tom Moore, program director of CBI, located at 21 David Mugar Way on the Esplanade, said the event will launch the adult sailing program for the season. The opening of the junior sailing program will be held on June 18.

Moore has been involved in Community Boating programs for 20 years, having worked for the organization while he was a student at Boston Latin School. Moore began competitive sailing at Latin and then continued his sailing career as a member of the University of New Orleans team.

Moore expects between 2,500 and 3,500 sailors to participate in the adult sailing program this season. There are approximately 1,900 junior members. Sailors from throughout New England take part in CBI activities and programs.

“It’s really a community atmosphere where, with the adult program, most of the classes are volunteer-taught – one member will teach other members how to sail,” said Moore.

The main fleet is Cape Cod Mercuries, which is a 15-foot boat for one to four people. “Most people learn how to sail on those boats and then, as they get more advanced, they move on to smaller and faster boats and bigger and more high-performance boats,” said Moore.

The smaller boats include 13-foot lasers, which are one-person boats; 14-foot 420s, which are two-person boats, wind-surfers and kayaks.

The adult program has a staff of 20 people, assisted by an additional 20 to 30 volunteers. The junior program has a staff of 15 instructors. Sailing lessons are included in the membership to CBI. A full-year membership for adults costs $199. A summer membership for the junior program (ages 10 to 18) is $1.

“You can learn the basics of sailing in a day and get out there and start sailing on your own,” said Moore.

The hours of operation at Community Boating are Monday through Friday, from 1 p.m. to sunset, and Saturday and Sunday, from 9 a.m. to sunset. There is supervision on the water and from an elevated dock. The CBI sailing area extends for an approximately one-mile stretch between the Massachusetts Avenue and Longfellow Bridges.

For more information about Community Boating, call 617-523-1038.

When the City of Boston Licensing Board granted the Charlesmark Hotel an Innholder All-Alcohol License for The Lounge, its hotel bar and restaurant, in 2005, it imposed several conditions to make sure it did not become a late night on-street public bar. One of those conditions stipulated that no patron other than registered guests of the hotel could be admitted after midnight.

But some residents think it is already acting like a public bar. And on Wednesday, five years later, the hotel’s owners were back before the Licensing Board — this time petitioning to remove that condition from its license so that the public could be served along with its hotel guests until 2:00 a.m.

The opposition was significant. “The deal was made, and a deal is a deal, and the neighbors don’t want another bar,” Licensing Board Chair Daniel F. Pokaski told the owners after hearing a lineup of opposition from the Neighborhood Association of the Back Bay, neighbors, city councilors and even the Boston Police Department.

Mark Hagopian, co-owner of the hotel and lounge at 655 Boylston Street, told the board that he wanted the restriction lifted so that friends could meet hotel guests at the Lounge after midnight. “We just want to operate like every other hotel in the area,” said Hagopian, who thinks the restriction puts him at a competitive disadvantage with the other hotels.

But, NABB’s Licensing and Building Use Committee Chair Thomas High was less concerned about Charlesmark operating like every other hotel than he was about it acting like every other bar. First, he said, most hotel bars and restaurants have their principal entrance through an interior lobby, whereas the Charlesmark Lounge is entered directly from the street. Second, he thinks the 120-seat, street-level Lounge is out of scale with the 33 rooms hotel, and is clearly designed as a public bar rather than as a hotel guest amenity. In addition, there is a limited menu, and food is only available until 11:00 p.m.

It already operates like a public bar until midnight, said High, in an area where he thinks there is no public need for more bars. “Within a one block radius of the Charlesmark Lounge, there already are eight bars and restaurants with 2:00 a.m. all alcohol licenses, with an aggregate capacity of 1,985 customers, and another eight with a 1:00 a.m. license able to serve another 1,825.”

“The tail is wagging the dog,” Representative Marty Walz told the Licensing Board. “The Charlesmark Lounge is a bar with a few hotel rooms above. This is not a hotel with a bar below to serve hotel guests.”

Even Captain William Evans of the Boston Police Department wrote that his department “already has enough late night headaches to contend with,” he said. “Problems through the district keep us extremely busy at 2:00 a.m. without another liquor establishment allowing intoxicated patrons to spill out in the street for us to deal with.”

Hagopian insisted that it would never become a nightclub. “We’re in the sleep business,” he said. “We have rooms over the bar and rooms under it. We have to [keep quiet] to accommodate our guests.”

No one had any problems with the hotel’s owners, who have operated with a perfect track record for five years, according to Pokaski. “The Charlesmark Hotel runs a good hotel and appears to be highly thought of by those who have stayed there,” he said. “Why destroy something that is working?”

At press time, the Licensing Board had not yet made its decision.

Move that car

On April 1 the mechanical street sweepers return. That is also when frustration begins. It is the time when you must start moving your cars on street cleaning days.

It’s your neighbors who feel the biggest frustration. Then they get mad. Why aren’t you moving your car before the street sweeper comes?

Here are the reasons: you think it is cheaper to leave the car and get a ticket than to park it in a garage temporarily. It probably is.

You also think it is inconvenient to move the car when you want to sleep in or when you have to be at work early. You are right. It is inconvenient.

You believe the meter maids will ticket, but no one will tow. They threaten to tow again, but you know the city. They say they will do something, and then it turns out they don’t get around to it. So you might be right.

Neighbors don’t know the car you drive anyway, so even if you leave it on the street when street cleaning takes place, no one will blame you.

All these reasons are correct. But that begs the question.

Are you the kind of person who wants to live in a pigsty? That question is especially important since you have just plunked down several hundred thousand dollars for that attic space on the fifth floor of a handsome Marlborough Street building. Or you are paying thousands of dollars a month to live in a rental with good detail, high ceilings and one room. Sometimes you’re the one living in 3,000 square feet of space in a luxurious duplex with good views.

Since you’re a part of us, please try to be a good neighbor, not just a neglectful one. That means setting out trash at the proper time, keeping your part of the world clean wherever it meets the street, and obeying the street cleaning regulations. A lot of people in the Back Bay behave in such a manner. It’s called civilization.

And sometime, maybe not soon, but sometime, a neighbor will realize it is your car sitting in the street sweeper’s way. In case you haven’t noticed since moving here, neighbors can be very unneighborly toward such behavior. Don’t be fooled by their tolerance for different skin colors, sexual orientations and styles of life. It’s parking and trash offenders that make their blood boil.

Moreover, the city says it will tow this year, as it began to do last fall. You might want to believe them now that the transportation and public works departments have a new head, and several new resources came their way last September that enabled them to begin towing aggressively on street cleaning day.

Getting towed is truly terrible. It wrecks your day as well as your wallet. You have to get to some inconvenient place where they take only cash. You’ll miss all your morning meetings.

So move your car. The long, east-west streets are cleaned on Monday mornings between 8:00 a.m. and 12:00 noon, with the odd-numbered side swept on the first and third Monday of the month and the even side on the second and fourth Monday. The cross streets are cleaned either on Monday or Wednesday mornings. Newbury Street gets cleaned on Tuesdays. Just read the signs along the street that spell out days and times. Don’t rely on any published information about street sweeping, since the publisher is probably getting the information from the city, and the signs don’t match the information the city provides. If there is a fifth Monday or Wednesday, you can forget about it. You have to keep it up only until November 30.

After five months of no street cleaning and facing the debris that accumulates, even slovenly types might welcome that big sweeping machine’s return.