Massachusetts lost one of its more important thinkers earlier this month. The economist Alice Amsden passed away suddenly just as colleagues thought she was on her way to recovery. Like many intellectuals who have contributed much to our understanding of the world, hers was not a household name, certainly not in her homeland. This is no accident for several reasons: her work focused on the economic growth of other countries and, perhaps more significantly, Amsden debunked much of orthodox economic development theory. As a public intellectual, she will be missed in a presidential election year when we are sure to have our fill of free-market platitudes (see for example the conversation opened up by Representative Paul Ryan).

To do a dull thing with style is preferable to doing a dangerous thing without it. To do a dangerous thing with style is what I call art. - Charles Bukowski


Seven, maybe eight years ago, I brought Adam Aries with me to a house party in Hudson. I must have seen him at Denny’s or Bickford’s. Spontaneous as he was, he hopped right in.

My friends had solicited the services of a stripper whose name I can’t remember, but neither Adam or I had known about the strippers.

I remember Adam sitting outside during the strip-tease and the raunchy acts to follow. I thought it was pretentious at the time. But years later I realized that Adam was right in saying this was disrespectful to women. He was ahead of his time, ahead of his society, ahead of this world even.

BOSTON - Twenty years ago this December, the large Dorchester clan of Jerry “Judgie” Leary was, like many other telephone worker families in the northeast, not exactly flush with cash for Christmas presents.

Jerry and 60,000 other members of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) and the Communications Workers of America (CWA) had just spent four grueling, impoverishing months on the picket-line battling NYNEX, the regional telecom giant now known as Verizon (VZ).

Memories of that strike include first time-ever visits to food banks, the loss of job-based medical benefits because NYNEX cut them off, and the dismissal, suspension, or arrest of hundreds of union activists in New York and New England. In Westchester County, N.Y. a CWA picket captain with several young children was hit by a car driven by a scab and died of brain injuries; in New Hampshire, an IBEW striker was killed in an industrial accident, while trying to do an unfamiliar factory job to feed his family.

The first LP record anyone ever gave me was a gift from my grandmother of Carlin's 1973 "Occupation Foole." I was 14.