This is a web edition of GBH Daily, a weekday newsletter bringing you local stories you can trust so you can stay informed without feeling overwhelmed.
☀️Sunny and warm, with highs in the 70s. Sunset is at 8:16 p.m.
Let’s start with an infrastructure puzzle: You peek out the window or step outside after a storm and see a wire hanging loose from a utility line. Or maybe you see a utility pole leaning dangerously far into the street. Who do you call?
The answer is often just as tangled as the wires and cables that dot New England’s streets. GBH’s Marilyn Schairer spoke with Joshua Redstone, a Cambridge resident who spent five months trying to get telecom companies to lift low-hanging cables that drooped uncomfortably close to his house and the street after a tree branch fell on them. Part of the problem is that the wires and cables on a single pole can belong to multiple companies: the electric provider Eversource came to fix its wire quickly, but other companies were not so responsive, Redstone said.
“It makes a street feel a little crowded and busy and less open to the sky,” Redstone said. “I know that the regulations that I found just talk about fire safety, but there’s a cost to having these low lines that I think goes beyond just whatever safety is mentioned in the regulations.” Schairer also talked to politicians and utility companies about why the process is so complicated.
Four Things to Know
1. An update on a story we brought you Monday: members of the Massachusetts House said they expect to vote today on a bill that House Speaker Ron Mariano said will “put an end to protracted litigation” around Auditor Diana DiZoglio’s efforts to audit the Legislature.
The bill allows the state auditor to review the Legislature’s operations, but only in four categories: the budget process, audits, expenditures and monetary settlement agreements made with current or former workers. The bill also calls for creating a system for requesting legislative records, though it does not apply the state’s existing public records law to members of the Massachusetts House and Senate.
2. Lt. Gov. Kim Driscoll said Massachusetts is trying to step in and offset federal health care cuts, especially when those cuts make care more expensive or exacerbate inequalities. “We can’t replace every dollar. Like, not even close. You all know that,” Driscoll said in Springfield. “But I think we can commit and really be true to our beliefs. We stand for health equity.”
Cuts to Medicaid are already affecting the region: Last month, a nonprofit in Springfield announced it will end its community outreach program, which helps people navigate the health care system, because of those cuts.
3. World Cup commuter alert: Because the MBTA expects crowds of up to 20,000 traveling through South Station to Foxborough, it will close the area in front of the station — the stretch of Summer Street between Dorchester and Atlantic avenues — to cars for eight hours on four of the seven local game days.
That section will be closed June 13, 19, 29 and July 9. For the other games, cars will be able to pass through, but only on the westbound side — June 16, 23 and 26. Closing the street prompted disagreement between state officials, who wanted more room for World Cup fans, and Boston officials, who were concerned about normal commuter traffic. Gov. Maura Healey announced the agreement on GBH’s Boston Public Radio yesterday.
4. If you’re looking for a day trip this summer, just over three hours from Boston is the New England Accordion Connection and Museum Company in North Canaan, Connecticut. Curator and owner Paul Ramunni started playing the accordion as a kid, dropped the hobby in college, then picked it up again as an adult. He sought a used accordion from a seller in Vermont, who had a collection of accordions and concertinas he said were from the Nazi concentration camp at Dachau.
Ramunni said something changed for him that day. He started collecting accordions and learning the stories of their owners — stories of survival and attempts to create peace through music. “I thought I was collecting accordions,” he said. “And then I realized I was saving the stories.” You can read them (and see some photos of the museum) here.
‘You never give up’: Brockton great-grandmother inspires academic perseverance
Sheryl Royster, 76, just graduated from college. She earned a bachelor’s degree in sociology and a minor in African American studies from Bridgewater State University — a goal she has worked toward for decades.
Royster grew up in Brockton. When she was in her late 30s or early 40s, she said, a friend invited her to visit Howard University, a historically Black college in Washington, D.C.
“I heard a professor of color, which I had never met before, or seen, lecturing on theater,” she told GBH’s All Things Considered. “And I sat there — and he didn’t ask me why I was there, and I didn’t tell him — and when the class was over, I said, ‘Gee, maybe I’ll go to school, but I have to get out of Massachusetts because schools in Massachusetts don’t teach like this.’”
That lit a fire in her, she said. She started taking classes at Massasoit Community College, then attended the University of Rhode Island and UMass schools. But before she could graduate, she dropped out to care for her mother, who had cancer and was going through chemo. Decades later, when she returned to the classroom at Bridgewater State, she got into a car accident and had to take some classes remotely.
Her lesson: never give up.
“If you want something bad enough, you will achieve it,” Royster said. “Sometimes you have to take a break, sometimes things get in the way, but if it’s meant to be, if you watch for the door, it’s gonna open and you’re gonna go through. Just be ready for that door to be open. Be prepared and ready and don’t question it.”
You can hear her story in her own words here.
More joy:
-In just two years, this Falmouth robotics team made it to the global stage
-In Cambridge, students pass it on through a human chain of kindness
-A different kind of survivor story takes center stage in Boston film ‘The Prince Charming Theory’
GBH Daily
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