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🌥️Partly sunny and hot, with highs near 90. Sunset is at 7:39 p.m.
Sculptor Steff Rocknak designed an homage to “Moby-Dick” author Herman Melville standing with whale ribs, an homage to the temples of whale bones he wrote about in the book. She also made him with high cheekbones and a dapper three-piece suit. Call him Ishma-fine-as-hell.
“My sculptures are usually kind of funny looking. But I’ve always thought that Melville was handsome,” Rocknak told CAI’s Gilda Geist. “Always, even as an undergraduate studying him. He was particular about his appearance and he was well-groomed, so I wanted to capture that in the sculpture. And I’m thrilled that people are reacting that way. Hopefully he would have been glad, too.” You can hear their full conversation about her creative process here. The sculpture is near the Seamen’s Bethel, a church that served as the setting to a few “Moby-Dick” chapters and a stop on our recent Free Ride to New Bedford.
Four Things to Know
1. About 42% of parents in Massachusetts said they have concerns about their child’s mental health, according to a poll from EdTrust. While that number has fallen significantly since the start of the COVID pandemic, when 60% of parents said they had these concerns, parents still cited school bullying and the mental well-being of their children as major concerns.
And parents of Black students, Latino students, children with disabilities and multilingual students reported higher rates of concern. “Really, I think these aren’t peripheral issues,” said Jennie Williamson, state director of EdTrust-Massachusetts. “They’re central to whether kids can engage and succeed.”
2. The site of a former Girl Scout camp on Lake Winnipesaukee, New Hampshire — called Camp Menotomy — is at the center of a legal battle. The Girl Scouts stopped using the property as a summer camp when the COVID pandemic began. Now the land’s owners are trying to sell it to a developer for $18 million, but a trust outlining how the land should be used says they must first offer it up to someone else who wants to use it as a summer camp.
The dispute now involves the Massachusetts Attorney General’s Office and former Girl Scouts who attended Camp Menotomy. “Seeing places like Menotomy disappearing, it’s really heartbreaking because I really think that every kid should have an experience like that if they can,” said Jessie Trowbridge, who attended the camp as a kid and, as a grown-up, brought her own two children to the camp.
3. Rep. Katherine Clark of Revere was one of the congresspeople who went to Maine asking their Republican colleagues to launch a formal investigation into the killing of Johan Sebastian Duran Guerrero. An Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent shot him in Biddeford last month.
Rep. Chellie Pingree of Maine noted that agents were not looking for Duran Guerrero — they were looking for his roommate, and his roommate did not have a final removal order. “If ICE cannot accurately determine a person’s immigration status or circumstance before taking enforcement action, that is a profound failure of competence and accountability,” Pingree said.
4. We’re in the final stretch of this summer vacation, and a group called the Corey C. Griffin Foundation is running a back-to-school drive and giving away backpacks filled with school supplies in Dorchester.
“I can tell you that every year my favorite part is the parents and their gratitude, just telling us how thankful they are, how much they appreciate that they don’t have to worry about this aspect of preparing for the school year,” said Chandra Clark, the foundation’s president.
These Mass. nonprofits fight housing discrimination. New federal rules threaten their future.
If you believe a landlord or building owner is breaking laws against housing discrimination, there are nonprofits dedicated to fighting for your rights. Take the case of Linda Ramaglia, 72, an Army veteran who lives in Winchendon and uses a rollator walker.
There was a step outside her building that was difficult to navigate, and no curb cut or ramp available to her. Her building manager didn’t fix the issue — until a nonprofit called the Massachusetts Fair Housing Center intervened on her behalf.
“The asphalt company came down, put in a new walk — a new dip — so that I can just glide down and I don’t have to step onto anything,” Ramaglia told GBH’s Liz Neisloss. “There’s so many other people like me, and even worse than I am, that need the help.”
Fair housing organizations like the one that helped Ramaglia have historically received funding through federal grants. Now the Trump administration is changing how that money will be distributed in a way that will cut a lot of them off completely. Organizations will need at least a $5 million operating budget to qualify, and must receive at least half of their funding from sources outside the federal government. In practice, that means funding that once supported a few hundred smaller organizations will go to about five larger groups.
“It has been put together in a manner that will cause most fair housing organizations to shut down,” said Vineeth Hemavathi, executive director of the Massachusetts Fair Housing Center. “And without fair housing organizations to enforce fair housing laws, there is no one else left to fill that gap.”
You can read more of Neisloss’ reporting on this story here.
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