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🌤️Sunnier but cooler, with highs near 50. Sunset is at 7:04 p.m.
Three performing arts recommendations for this weekend from Jared Bowen, host of GBH’s The Culture Show:
First: the musical “Suffs” at the Emerson Colonial Theatre, about the suffragist movement. “It’s written by Shana Taub, who made history herself when she won Tonys for the work,” Bowen said. “It takes us through the suffragist movement and their force, their contradictions within the movement, the history that propelled them forward, the history they made.” He called it “rousing and strong,” with great music and gripping performances.
Next: Pay-what-you-want performances of “You Are Cordially Invited to the End of the World!” at the Boston Public Library, in their final weekend. “This is a story of a man who’s married, who has a child, who comes to terms with the fact that he has late-stage cancer,” Bowen said. The end of the world in the title refers to the end of his life, but also to the effects of climate change. “Despite its very dark subject matter, this is at times very funny, also very rousing and very entertaining with an ending that will hit you in your gut,” Bowen said. The pay-what-you-want structure means you can attend for free or pitch in whatever amount you can.
And along similar lines: “Song of the Earth” at the Boston Lyric Opera, by composer Gustav Mahler. “In this piece, we meet three figures: the poet, the mother, and the lover,” Bowen said. “And the poet coming to terms with his demise and the people who are left behind.” It’s a good opportunity to check out the BLO’s new space in Fort Point, “which brings the audience all together in a very intimate way,” Bowen said.
Four Things to Know
1. Parents and caregivers of trans children in Massachusetts say they’re worried about their kids’ future access to gender-affirming medical care. Places like Baystate Health, Fenway Health and Outer Cape Health Services have stopped offering puberty blockers and hormone therapy to trans minors, and the Trump administration has been consistently investigating and threatening health-care institutions that continue to offer care.
One mother, who moved her family from North Carolina to Worcester in hopes of securing more reliable gender-affirming care for her trans child, said losing that source of care brings a great deal of uncertainty. “She’s a beautiful, happy child who is crazy and funny and sarcastic, and I don’t want to look at her and see that out of her eyes,” the mother said. “I don’t want to see her spark be gone because she can’t live her truth. I’m going to fight for my kid — whether or not someone thinks I should be allowed to.”
2. Malden residents on Tuesday will vote on a Proposition 2 ½ override — whether to raise their taxes to pay for city services. If voters approve it, Malden will become the first Gateway City — a mid-sized city with incomes and college attainment levels below the state median — to pass a Prop 2 ½ override since Holyoke in 1991.
Voters will have three options: raise taxes only by the amount allowed under Proposition 2 ½; raise them by $5.4 million over the levy limit; or raise them by $8.2 million over the limit. The median single-family owner would see an increase of $356 on their tax bill. Malden Mayor Gary Christenson said rising costs and a state mandate to spend more on education have stretched the budget to its limit. “Our revenues will no longer support our expenses,” he said. “If we do not take this step, city services will be greatly impacted.”
3. Obesity medicine doctors and patients who use GLP-1 medications for weight loss urged lawmakers to maintain insurance coverage of the drugs for state employees and MassHealth members. The state’s Group Insurance Commission decided to stop covering GLP-1s as a cost-cutting measure.
“Just like any other chronic disease — diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, rheumatoid arthritis — treatment with medication is intended for long-term use,” said Dr. Giovanna Leddy, president of the New England Obesity Society. “We would never consider withdrawing effective treatment for any of these other chronic diseases. Discontinuing obesity medication for patients with demonstrated benefit is bordering unethical.”
4. Boston Public Schools will begin teaching AI literacy to all high school students this fall. The initiative is getting a push from Paul English, founder of the travel website Kayak and a Boston Public Schools graduate, who donated $1 million to fund the curriculum.
“This programming is really holistic,” Boston Mayor Michelle Wu said. “It recognizes that every one of our students and every one of our community members deserve a good-paying, dignified job and a community grounded in human connection, with the tools to help support that in every way possible. And so part of the curriculum that [we’ve] already been planning and mapping out is really grounded in ethics, and grounded in understanding how to maintain and develop creativity [and] leadership and enhance the learning that’s happening, not replace or substitute for it.”
No March Madness here: Massachusetts men’s teams are on their way to an historic drought
College basketball fans will be glued to the NCAA’s Elite Eight games this weekend, with the Final Four set for next weekend and the championship game on April 6. But if you’re looking for local teams, you’re out of luck: just one squad, the Holy Cross women’s team, made it to this year’s tournament. They lost in the first round.
No men’s team from Massachusetts has played in the tournament since Northeastern in 2019. (There’s an asterisk to that — the Boston University men’s team qualified for the 2020 tournament, which was canceled because of COVID-19; and Merrimack’s men’s squad won its conference tournament in 2023 but couldn’t advance to the NCAA tournament because of restrictions related to its transition to Division I.)
So why is Massachusetts, a professional athletics powerhouse and the place where basketball was invented, struggling to field a men’s college basketball team that can make it through March Madness? GBH’s Esteban Bustillos talked to people who study the game to find out.
For one thing, many of the state’s colleges are smaller and private. Sports fans in the region are more likely to gravitate toward professional teams rather than college games.
“Massachusetts — for better, for worse — is a state that is just flooded with a lot of very renowned private schools,” said Marty Dobrow, a Springfield College professor who wrote a book on UMass’s basketball program.
That extends to top players from Massachusetts, many of whom leave the state for college. AJ Dybantsa of Brockton went to BYU in Utah; Terrence Clarke, a rising basketball star from Boston who died in a car crash months before the NBA draft, went to Kentucky; and Aliyah Boston, who grew up in Worcester and now plays for the WNBA’s Indiana Fever, went to college in South Carolina.
Dobrow said he’d love to see more locals give college basketball its due.
“There’s something about the college game that continues to be really drawing,” Dobrow told Bustillos. “And I think it would be great if we could find a way, at least occasionally, to bring back a team that could make a run.”
Read more of Bustillos’ story here.
Dig deeper:
-Boston Legacy players don’t just kick around soccer balls. They kick around nine languages, too.
-Fleet celebrate Olympic medalists as PWHL seasons get back underway
-NCAA President Charlie Baker talks about new rules that allow college athletes to be paid
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