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☀️Foggy morning, sunny day, with highs in the 70s. Sunset is at 6:51 p.m.
The number of Americans reading for pleasure fell by 40% between 2003 and 2023, according to researchers at the University of Florida and University College London. The researchers’ data came from the American Time Use Survey, which asks people how they spend the hours in their day.
Boston Public Library Collection Development Manager Julie Roach has a suggestion for people who want to read more and instill the habit in others: read with the kids in your lives. Even reading your own book in front of kids can demonstrate that reading is something you can do for fun and relaxation, she said. “It’s something that you look back on and you have these fond memories about reading, and it helps sustain that as maybe reading becomes more challenging, or more academic growing up in school. You still remember it as a pleasurable experience when you were little,” Roach said.
Four Things to Know
1. Massachusetts lawmakers are again discussing whether to legalize supervised injection sites — designated spaces where people can use drugs under medical supervision with health care workers on hand to reverse opioid overdoses using medications like Narcan.
The state senate approved a similar measure last year, which failed in the state house and did not become law, GBH’s Saraya Wintersmith reports. An estimated 169 people died of opioid overdoses last year, a number 38% lower than the year before.
2. Congress will need to pass a funding bill to avert a government shutdown starting Oct. 1. U.S. Rep. Jim McGovern of Worcester said he would vote to avert it — if Republicans walk back some of the program cuts they passed in the law colloquially known as the Big Beautiful Bill earlier this year.
“If they want my vote, they’re going to have to meet me halfway,” he told GBH’s Boston Public Radio.- “They cut Medicare by a trillion dollars. Rural hospitals are going to close. People are going to lose their health care benefits. … I don’t share their values, but they control the House, they control the Senate, they control the White House. They’re basically in charge. If they want my vote and other Democratic members to vote with them, we’re going to have to get something. … Too many of my constituents are going to get screwed over by what they’ve done.”
3. UMass Amherst is getting its biggest-ever private donation: $50 million over 10 years, from Daniel Riccio, who graduated in 1986 and went on to become an Apple executive in charge of product design. He was involved in the company’s creation of the iMac, iPhone and iPad before he retired last year.
UMass plans to rename its engineering school after him. Here’s where the money will go: $12 million to recruit and retain eight professors, $10 million for undergraduate scholarships, $5 million for graduate fellowships, $5 million for deanship, another $5 million for a research innovation fund and $3 million for a biomedical chair. The remaining $10 million will go to a fund to “provide flexible support for the Daniel J. Riccio Jr. College of Engineering’s highest priorities,” UMass Amherst Chancellor Javier Reyes said, according to the State House News Service.
4. Andover took Sunday to celebrate a little-known piece of its history: a team of soccer players who a century ago won the National Challenge Cup and seemed unstoppable until a stretch of personal tragedies befell its main funder.
“If you asked the people in Andover ... whether they knew that in 1925, the Shawsheen Football Club won the National Challenge Cup and was the best soccer team in the country in that year, I think 95% of people would say, ‘I had no idea,’” said Austin Simko, Andover’s deputy town manager. “You had a company, you had Scottish immigrants, you had soccer enthusiasts, you had a community. And this story was only possible because all of those parts came together.”
District 7 Boston city council election heads toward recount
Every vote counts, and that’s especially true in municipal elections.
In Boston’s District 7, the city council seat that represents much of Roxbury, last week’s preliminary race narrowed the field from 11 candidates to two ahead of November’s general election. But the top four candidates vying for those spots all came within 100 votes of one another. The highest tallies went to 1,155 ballots for Said “Coach” Ahmed and 1,102 for Rev. Miniard Culpepper, both of whom, as of now, are advancing to November’s ballot. But the margins were narrow: 1,082 people voted for Mavrick Afonso, 1,057 for Samuel Hurtado and 1,054 for Said Abdirahman Abdikarim.
The City Council seat is currently empty after the district’s last councilor, Tania Fernandes Anderson, resigned from the council following her guilty plea to federal corruption charges.
Now Afonso, Abdikarimm, Hurtado and fellow candidate WaWa Bell, who has 380 votes, are all starting the process of collecting signatures for a recount.
“Essentially, we are requesting a hand count,” Afonso told GBH’s Adam Reilly. “Most of all, we want to ensure that … all of the voters from District 7 are represented at this moment.”
Though the four candidates were running against one another in last week’s election, Afonso said he hoped that turning to collaboration would better serve the district’s residents.
“For all the issues that we face in our communities, I think this could be a model for how we come together,” he said. “Even if we have differences of opinion, it’s important that we find synergy on issues and be able to work with each other. … And I will say, getting to meet and connect with the other candidates has been a pleasure, to be honest with you.”
Read Adam Reilly’s full reporting here.
Dig deeper:
-Josh Kraft ending mayoral campaign, clearing way for Wu victory
-Frank Baker trails incumbents in Boston’s at-large City Council race
-In Boston mayoral prelim, it’s Wu in a landslide
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