Editor’s note: Blast writer John Stephen Dwyer has been staying with Occupy Boston protesters since the beginning of the protest. He has been filing longer stories every few days with breaking news when it happens.

Main Street, Occupied Boston (Blast Staff photo/John Stephen Dwyer)

Two weeks ago, 300 people illegally seized a portion of the Rose Kennedy Greenway and set up tents. The mayor told the police not to stop them, and today the tent city still stands.

More than a campsite, it’s a well-managed shantytown complete with its own reflections of what you’d find in most communities — police, government, restaurant, hospital, school, theater, church and even a home goods store. Groups of grade school and middle school students take field trips here, and thousands of people of all descriptions visit daily. Many drop off donations of food or other supplies. Some stop to ask questions.

Many come just to tell at least one person “I think what you’re doing is great.”

This ragged community occasional fields groups of protestors to march around the city or, as they did earlier this week, engage in acts of civil disobedience such as blocking the bridge to Charlestown and stampeding through the interior of Faneuil Hall screaming for justice as both police and baffled tourists watched passively. This is Occupy Boston.

Part of something bigger

Occupy Boston is part of a movement that exploded in New York City on September 17 as a protest called “Occupy Wall Street.” It has since spread to dozens of cities across the U.S. CNN reports more than two dozen cities around the world, “stretching from Hong Kong to Buenos Aires, Dublin to Madrid,” will be joining the protest today, on what’s already being called “a global day of revolution.”

In a historical context, the Occupy Movement will be remembered as a response to worldwide economic problems that became obvious in December 2007 as well as a protest against a increasing disparity of wealth and a civil rights battle.

Like anything of its size, the movement includes people that don’t agree with each other about a lot of things. Some of its most devoted members are young radicals, whose ideas might shock the soccer moms and dads who stop their SUV’s on Atlantic Avenue to drop off food and blankets to the Occupy Boston community.

But one small sign perched on the curbstone at Occupied Boston says “it’s not radical to want love, equality and compassion for our fellow humans.” From the unbathed Maoist on day eight of an occupation, to the millions of apolitical people whose only affiliation with the movement is through social media, almost all people aligning themselves with the group seem to believe three very broad notions. First, they insist that hurting innocent people is bad. Second, they believe powerful corporations exert too much power on government and have hurt innocent people in numerous ways. Third, they think everyone should get involved in correcting that problem.

It does take some skilled organizers to strike the spark of protest and fan the fires in the desired, non-violent direction, but the Occupy Movement is still intensely grassroots. A handsomely-written and well-circulated text, “Open letter and warning from former tea partier to the OWS movement” is posted on the Occupy Wall Street website and describes how the Tea Party began as a diverse, well-intentioned populist movement before being hijacked by the Christan Right, the GOP and, ultimately corporations. It warns how the media will assist in a similar take over of this new movement and advises ways to navigate these issues.

Whatever its origin, the text reflects a general sentiment among the Greenway occupiers that donations from companies are suspicious, the media can’t be trusted, and both the Republican and Democratic parties can go to hell.

Close Quarters

There’s a pathway lined with metal barriers separating Occupy Boston from the paved area around the entrance to the Red Line. It’s been called “Music Row” and even “Tin Pan Alley” as it’s a popular place for people to gather, sit on the wide benches, and play musical instruments. Someone has set up a few tiki-like wood carvings here, and an immense statue of Ganhdi, made of relatively lightweight materials and property of the Peace Abbey in Sherborn, facing South Station.

“Main Street,” a path of wooded pallets bisecting the grassy area, starts here. It’s a precarious route, and the mud on either side gets to be several inches deep when it rains. It’s been muddy often these past few weeks, as the occupiers have endured days of light rain and several downpours. About 90 tents squat on either side of Main Street, 40 tents on the side bordered by Atlantic Avenue and 50 on the side where sparrows have been raiding a wilted sunflower garden.

A path runs past the sunflowers, connecting the welcome tent at one end of the park with the media tent at the other. This route was in place before the occupation, but only recently has someone erected a simple sign naming it “Sacco and Vanzetti Avenue.” As part of the effort to keep their community clean, volunteers have been combing though the gravel with rakes on a regular basis.

Occupy Boston is overcrowded and has been for at least a week. Tents are tightly packed, and there’s no room for more. Even finding a place to lie down in a sleeping bag is a challenge. There’s plenty of empty space around the park, but the Occupy Boston protest — while illegal because participants refused to seek permits — is an un-choreographed dance between the city and the protestors, as each tries not to overly piss off the other.

The paved area of the park (the end of it nearest South Station where at least two police officers are standing at all times) is therefore understood to be off limits. Nevertheless, Occupied Boston recently annexed a little sliver of it first occupied by ten tents that formed a sort of “student village” of protestors from local universities. At the opposite corner of the park, almost a dozen tents have spilled out along Atlantic Avenue along another strip of glass declared off limits by the mayor and the commissioner. While apparently no more or less interesting that any other part of the camp, this strip was named “Weird Street” over a week ago and the name has stuck. Weird Street has been an ongoing point of contention with the police from the start. The message conveyed to the police a week ago is that the protestors, as a community, can’t force the owners of those tents to remove them, and individuals in the community are likely to come to those people’s defense if it appears they are threatened.

According to patrolmen who spoke to Blast Magazine last weekend, police were planning on clearing Weird Street on Tuesday. Instead, they ended up turning their attention to a more significant expansion of the tent city that sprung up suddenly as police attention was diverted by hundreds of protestors blocking the bridge to Charlestown. As police demanded protestors leave the new site, Greg Housh, a 34-year old father serving in the center of many conversations between the occupiers and the city, explained “This place is full. We need to expand this site if we’re going to expand the movement. Other cities have expanded, we need to expand as well.”

During the six-hour standoff that followed, Occupy Boston received a visit from Nancy Brennan, Executive Director of the Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway Conservancy. Addressing the crowd with the call-and-response of the “people’s mic,” Brennan reminded protestors that the Conservancy had asked them not to expand onto a new portion of the park because of special concerns regarding a new irrigation system put into place and works on loan by various artists. But she ended her comments saying “…another thing that the Greenway stands for…is freedom of speech…and I ask, for as long as you are on this land, would you please help us take care of it?” Her smile beamed as the crowd chanted “Nancy! Nancy! Nancy!” in appreciation.

Despite these words of support from the director of the Greenway, hundreds of police marched into the area around 1 a.m. Tuesday. More than 160 people locked arms in a tight circle around their tent city annex and chanted slogans such as “the whole world is watching” and “this is a peaceful demonstration.” Starting about 20 minutes later, the police made 141 arrests and tore down all tents pitched in the new area. In the aftermath, protestors generally expressed the position that the police were just doing their jobs, but they could have done so less roughly. Many report cell phones, cameras, medication and the flags held by a veterans group were thrown away.

One woman, around 60 years old, said “the sight of the American flag being thrown in the trash will haunt me forever…if something like that happened to the Tea Party three years ago FOX News would still be showing footage of it.”

In the wake of the 141 arrests, Occupy Boston made international headlines and Weird Street was left untouched.

Missing the message

Most people passing through Occupied Boston are there because they support what they believe the protest stands for. Many can’t help expressing their solidarity to any stranger who will listen. There are also some, including many who meander in from the surrounding skyscrapers around lunchtime each day, who come just to gawk at the people and their signs. A few visitors — especially business school graduates in neckties — come to tell occupiers how they should be better getting their message across. The community isn’t very receptive to people broadcasting on this frequency as they insist there are multiple interrelated messages that shouldn’t be oversimplified for the benefit of the half-interested. More than one occupier said “either you get this or you don’t.”

Around 11 p.m. last Friday, a very well-groomed young woman with blonde hair stood near the Gandhi statue in a tense argument with several other people. No matter how broadly or how narrowly the small crowd tried to explain the purpose of their efforts, she continued to insist “I just don’t get it…I read the things online, like that thing from New York or whatever, and it doesn’t even make sense!” In sheer volume, hers was the loudest voice in the conversation as she claimed a genuine desire to understand. But it was clear that no useful communication was going back and forth between her and the others.

During the day, when traffic is heavy, beeps of support from cars passing on Atlantic Avenue get as frequent as three or four per minute. At night, this tapers off to a few honks an hour. There’s also the occasional jeer such as the “get a job, you fucking bums” yelled from a truck around 3 p.m. or the “cocksucking douchebag faggots” shouted from a car full of young men just after 2:30 a.m. last Saturday.

Occupy Boston, like many other occupation groups, has not released anything resembling a manifesto or list of demands. Participants don’t seem to care if this frustrates the mainstream media or confuses many of the people whose rights they say they’re fighting for. They’re acutely alert to anything that might serve as a wedge within the movement, and see decisions arrived at too hastily as the perfect example of this. As such, when it comes to defining their message, prioritizing their concerns and (eventually) proposing solutions, occupiers seem determined to proceed carefully even if it takes them a long time. Although individual protestors might be impatient, or frustrated about the lack of this or that, the overall spirit of the movement seems to be a that of patient resolve. “How long? As long as it takes!” is becoming one of the group’s many informal mottoes.

(Blast Staff photo/John Stephen Dwyer)

A few hundred people in Boston — 200 to 600 depending on the time of day and the weather — are illegally occupying Dewey Square Park, the portion of the Rose Kennedy Greenway directly in front of South Station. They’ve built a colorful community of about 60 tents in the shadow of the Federal Reserve Building, the skyscraper owned by Bank of America, and other symbols of financial power. During the day, they line Atlantic Ave with signs denouncing corporate greed. At night, they train each other in useful skills or gather for assembly, a sort of egalitarian legislature in which anyone can have a say and everyone gets a vote. They call what they are doing “Occupy Boston.”

It’s a diverse group with long lists of complaints about the way society is run, especially in regards to corporations and the power they yield. While members tend to be well left of center politically, most insist that what they are doing isn’t about Left or Right, Democrat or Republican. Noting the game-changing wealth the richest 1% of families have under their control, many like to call themselves “the other 99%” and insist that anyone within that same wide percentile is who they are fighting for.

Even in countries where no declared war is being fought, 2011 hasn’t been a peaceful year. The Arab Spring toppled regimes. In summer, parts of London burned. And in New York City, exactly three years after the especially sharp economic plummet of September 2008, thousands of people physically took themselves and their anger to the doors of Wall Street itself.

Who are the people “occupying” Boston and what do they want? What connection – if any – does this peaceful gathering on the Rose Kennedy Greenway have to do with the overthrow of leaders like Hosni Mubarak and Muammar Gaddafi? This is a story of Boston’s newest and smallest “neighborhood,” a small patch of dirt and grass some are calling “Occupied Boston,” and the story starts in Canada.

Origins of Occupation

(Blast Staff photo/John Stephen Dwyer)

Adbusters, an anti-corporate activist group registered in British Columbia way back in 1989, has been clamoring for social change ever since. But it wasn’t until this year, in the wake of the Arab Spring, that the idea for Occupy Wall Street started to really come together. On July 4, 2011, they registered the domain name “occupywallst.org.” Nine days later, a group of hackers devoted to civil disobedience via the Internet and calling themselves Anonymous, asked its members to join the demonstrations soon to follow. After two more months of planning, Occupy Wall Street exploded into a protest of more than 1,000 people on Monday, September 17, in New York City.

On day eight of this extended protest, many of those involved headed uptown, forcing the closure of several streets. At least 80 arrests were made that day, some of them roughly, and video of a New York City police officer chemical macing a group of young women intensified world attention on the event. On day 13, in front of South Station during Friday rush hour, Boston became among the first of many cities to field its own version of that same protest.

Occupying Boston

(Blast Staff photo/John Stephen Dwyer)

Compared to their compatriots in NYC, the men and women of Occupy Boston received a warm welcome from the city. Word came down from Mayor Menino that tents pitched outside South Station would be allowed despite lack of permits. Before hitting the streets, some Boston cops received reminders about what holds are less painful for the person being restrained. Whatever else Boston’s powers-that-be might think of the protestors and their complaints, it’s clear they wished to avoid a replay of the public relations fiasco caused by the violent arrests in NYC just two days earlier.

Folks gathered at the State House and then marched towards the Financial District. The Rude Mechanical Orchestra, a NYC marching band scheduled to be in town anyway for the HONK! Festival taking place in Cambridge and Somerville that weekend, was a conspicuous presence at the moment of Occupy Boston’s actual birth. Dressed in trademark black and green, bedecked with sequins and playing exuberantly sloppy Dixieland, they made what was happening seem more like a holiday parade that the wild-eyed images we received of Arab Spring protestors. It helped set the tenor for what was to follow.

The cops, apparently in a non-confrontational mood, seemed amused by the marching band and a few folks in costumes. As people flocked into Dewey Square Park, police and protestors exchanged nonthreatening looks and polite words. “Hello…hiya…hello…howyadoing?” Even “welcome.” According to one police officer, a 30-plus-year veteran of the Boston Police Department who spoke on condition of anonymity, “What they’re doing here? It doesn’t bother us…(but) a few people barged into the bank and were trying to get arrested. So we helped ‘em out.” At least two dozen people, largely middle aged folks who had lost their homes, were gently taken into custody.

Emerging from their workplaces, waves of people stopped to gawk at the spectacle or tap their toes to the sound of horns and drums before catching the next train home. Widely circulated estimates that this first night drew about 1,000 people don’t seem to take into account the number of individuals and groups coming and going during these first hours. Two thousand plus seems more accurate.

It almost didn’t happen. Local organizers were targeting the following Friday, October 7, to hit the streets. But planning went surprising well and consensus was reached on numerous issues earlier than expected. The Occupy Boston movement was able to mobilize on September 30 instead, the same day that local groups were showing up on Beacon Hill – each with its own specific grievances regarding housing, labor or other issues. Most left with the sunset, but a few hundred people now firmly identifying themselves with the “Occupy Movement” encamped for the first night of the protest. Even torrential downpours during the night couldn’t dampen their impression that Occupy Boston had gotten off to a very auspicious start.

Teyvan Lowe

Teyvan Lowe (Blast Staff photo/John Stephen Dwyer)

People came and went from the event throughout the weekend. By Monday, day four of the Boston protest, it looked like those in the camp were enjoying a decent level of comfort. Good planning meant that such essentials as the medical tent were in place from the start. People of various descriptions had dropped off carloads of food through the weekend, meaning a surplus had begun to be stockpiled. What had been a patch of turf was now a bustling shantytown of colorful tents in the gray shadow of America’s financial colossi. Some of its inhabitants – especially those with no roof over their heads before joining the protest – were already calling it “home.”

Teyvan Lowe, 18, was one of them. During the evening rush hour, as people held up various messages for the benefit of motorists, Lowe stood alongside them playing his guitar, dressed like a sort of bandito in a mask and stocking cap. Pulling down the bandana that covered the bottom of his face, he said “This is basically where I live. The streets.” He explained that trouble with his family and the lack of a job had given him no other choice. Lowe, who had arrived at the protest on Friday, said “I’m here mostly on behalf of the homeless population. As a community of homeless people, no one is going to take us seriously. It’s hard enough to find a job if you haven’t showered in three weeks and have dirty clothes.”

Arania Webb

Arania Webb, 47, of Wakefield, wasn’t much better off. “I was in investment bank law. I was in the legal profession for twenty-five years. I was good at what I did. I was laid off in 2008…when our clients went under, so did we.” Since then, she’s done everything she can to survive, “temp work, housecleaning, dog-walking, you name it. People who mock the unemployed by saying ‘get off your ass and get a job?’ There are no jobs. I have zero income. I used all my savings. I had to liquidate my 401K…now I am sleeping on the floor of my friend’s home office.”

Seeing a chance to again put her professional skills to good use, Webb joined Occupy Boston’s legal team six days earlier. “Where else could I be?” she asked. She then referred to those outside the top 1% saying, “if you were in any way touched by the market crash, you are the 99 percent…if you are one illness or hospital stay away from bankruptcy, you are the 99%…this is a nationwide movement turning into a worldwide movement.”

Some at Occupy Boston found it difficult to articulate their topmost demands, while others said that capitalism itself must be forced out of existence. Webb fell into neither category, and her demands were surprisingly simple and modest: single-payer health care, FDR-esque work programs, and “some kind of campaign finance reform.” When asked how long she’d tough it outdoors, Webb said “We will stay here as long as necessary. We will stay here through the snows. We’ve started to acquire warm weather gear already. We will be here as long as it takes.”

They came because they’d read a story.

In November 2007, a group of Bostonians converged at the Irish Immigration Center in downtown Boston, the workplace of Irish-born opinion columnist Thomas Keown. Some came because they’d been inspired by Keown’s article entitled “Give a Little Bit” which had appeared in the Metro two months prior. Others came because they’d received an email from Keown with the subject heading, “Our very own Irish Potato is starting a nonprofit.” Both the article and the email told the story of Anthony Mulongo, an up-and-coming Kenyan journalist whose life was forever changed by a girl named Gift.

As a teenager, Mulongo was chosen by the Kenyan government as one of the eighteen brightest students in the country to be enrolled in an intensive journalism school. He began a successful career as a reporter for national television and newspapers. Like all Kenyans, Mulongo saw street children frequently, but he never felt moved to do anything to ease the plight of these poor children whom most believed to be pests, until he met Gift and witnessed her story.

Six-year-old Gift was skeletal, her stomach protruding from starvation and malnutrition. Dirty and exhausted, she was carrying her infant brother on her back. Her mother had died of AIDS, so Gift had no choice but to dig through the trash to try to scrounge up food for her baby brother and herself. When Mulongo met Gift, he lifted her little brother off her back, only to find that he had died at some point in their journey. Gift had no idea until that moment.

This was a critical moment for Mulongo. He knew he wouldn’t be able to live with himself if he didn’t do something to help. The choice he made changed the course of his life—as well as the lives of Keown and the others in the Irish Immigration Center. He decided to adopt Gift and raise and educate her as he would his own daughter. Additionally, he gave up his career as a national journalist and instead wrote advocacy pieces about street children.

When Keown visited Kenya on vacation in the summer of 2007, his plan was to spend time on the beach, see exotic animals, and drink cheap beer. But his friend Dave, who had done some pro bono legal work in Kenya, suggested that he look up Mulongo. Using quarters and a pay phone, Keown called Mulongo and the two men made plans to meet for lunch.

Keown got on a train from Nairobi to coastal Mombasa, the city closest to where Mulongo lived. When the train arrived in Mombasa, Keown was overpowered by the stench of rotting filth. He looked out the window and saw street children just like Gift who were digging and pawing through a mountain of trash, scavenging for something to eat.

When Keown found out that Mulongo was doing something practical to help children like those he had witnessed on the train to Mombasa, they connected instantly. Over a meal of bony chicken and watery soup, Mulongo told Keown how he had adopted Gift and, by this point, over 30 other street children as well. He and all the children lived in a small, three-bedroom house with a tin roof called “Mudzini Kwetu,” which means “our home.” Each of the girls living there had chosen her favorite color of paint and tattooed the house with her painted handprints, marking it as her own. The house’s walls were covered with bright yellow, red, and blue handprints, as high as the girls could reach. Mulongo’s goal was for these children to feel that they were part of a family and that the little tin house was where they belonged.

Keown went with Mulongo to see Mudzini Kwetu for himself. He met Gift, who was now 13 years old and acted as an older sister to the 33 girls and one boy who were living in Mudzini Kwetu. As the first child to be adopted by Mulongo, Gift was happy and healthy—living proof that a loving family and a good home can heal even the deepest scars.

But some of the other children, who had recently been rescued, were still physically and emotionally wounded, such as the three sisters who, for privacy, are known as K., A., and R. Like Gift, they had to forage for food after their mother died of AIDS; K. was 12 years old, A. was six, and R. was just a year old. After six months of living on the street and fighting for survival every day, they were discovered by the police. But the police didn’t help these girls; they turned them over to the authorities and they were sent to juvenile prison just for living on the streets. When Mulongo heard about the sisters’ plight, he and a pro bono lawyer fought to get them released into his care. They had to fight especially hard to get K. released because she was considered destructive and dangerous. When Keown met her, she was indeed bitter, angry, and mistrustful, as much from her months in prison as from her time on the street. The youngest sister, R., was still bony and malnourished.

The seven-month-old twins, Agnes and Macharia, were two other newly rescued street children. Agnes and her brother Macharia, the only boy living in Mudzini Kwetu, were found by the police starving and screaming in the slums of the nearby town Mtwapa. Residents of Mtwapa said the infants had been there for three days. Unlike the officers who stumbled upon K., A., and R., these officers knew about Anthony’s home for street children and brought the twins directly to him. Shortly thereafter, they found the twins’ mother, drunk on cheap liquor. “Save the girl if you want,” she said, “but throw the boy in the dustbin. He’s not going to survive anyway.” While at Mudzini Kwetu, Keown held Macharia in his arms; six weeks later, despite receiving the best care and medical treatment available, the little boy died.

Though these children came to Mulongo broken and abused, he believes that they will be the seeds of change that will break the cycle of poverty and injustice in Kenya. As a network of educated Kenyans who grow up together, they will enter industry and government, asking themselves and each other, “How do we make life better for children who are living on the streets like we were at their age? How do we build schools, provide clean water, and create good homes for them? How do we change the systems of injustice that contributed to their lack of resources, put some of them in jail, and made others live as sex slaves?”

Mulongo’s vision resonated with Keown. Up until that point, Keown had spent much of his adult life feeling cynical about large charitable organizations whose efforts didn’t seem to produce any tangible results. Sitting in Harvard Square with his friends, he had had many conversations over $3 coffees or $6 beers, discussing how there must be better uses for their beverage money but not knowing where to give it so that it would make a real impact. But Keown saw the difference that Mulongo was making. He was providing a home, a family, and an education for children who had suffered abandonment, starvation, disease, physical and sexual abuse, imprisonment, and neglect. And more than that, he was proposing a plan to equip these children to confront the country’s systemic injustices.

When Keown returned to America after his Kenya vacation, he continued to be inspired by Mulongo’s decision to devote his life to helping street children. He wrote his next Metro article about how everyone should follow Mulongo’s example and give up a little of themselves to make a positive impact on others’ lives. “Mulongo sacrificed everything,” he wrote, “but if we all give a little, no one has to give it all.”

MIAMI — "Regards from Tuna Ville, where it’s always 420" was how Robert Platshorn, one of the largest marijuana smuggler from the 1970s, signed off on an e-mail to me.

Along with his other numerous entrepreneurial accomplishments, Robert Platshorn should be known best for being an accomplished fisherman.  Instead, it’s his affiliation with being the leader of the infamous ‘Black Tuna Gang,’ that gives him the most recognition. Back in the 1970s, he and a number of other individuals, were responsible for flooding the states with an abundance of high quality marijuana from Colombia. The ‘Black Tuna Gang’ were the most notorious and sophisticated smugglers of their time.

It was May of 1979 when an indictment was issued by a Miami Federal Grand Jury charging Platshorn and his Black Tuna Gang with operating a marijuana smuggling ring that had allegedly brought into the States 500  tons of Colombian marijuana during a 16-month period. It was this indictment and subsequent conviction that led to Platshorn being placed in federal prison for 29 years. A bounty had been put on his head by President Jimmy Carter’s attorney general, Griffin Bell.

Platshorn’s recently released  first novel, “The Black Tuna Diaries,” is a fascinating depiction of personal stories, along with accounts of the inner working of the well-oiled machine of smuggling, life in prison, what the government did and did not know, and more.

Platshorn and his exploits were also prominently featured in the 2006 documentary “Cocaine Cowboys.” The same film company, Rakontur, is now in the process of editing a documentary called “Square Grouper, a film based on Platshorn’s novel that also features DEA agents, prosecutors, defense lawyers, and the other surviving members of The Black Tuna gang. The film is scheduled to be released this fall.

I had the pleasure of meeting Platshorn recently when I attended a special exhibition at the Miami Historical Museum of Southern Florida that highlighted the city’s intimate and unique relationship with crime.

That night, as I walked around the exhibition, I spotted Platshorn, standing by his display, intently reading the captions under the photographs. After he identified himself, we chatted a bit, and he briefly told me about his life as a marijuana smuggler. We planned to meet on a later date for an interview.  Intrigued, I bought his book before leaving the museum and immediately began reading it.

On the afternoon of our interview, a Friday, I arrived a little early and was informed that Mr. Platshorn was already inside. He stood right by his display in the exhibit, the only person separate from the small group of about 10 people around the corner listening intently to their museum guide. I approached  Platshorn, who was dressed in slacks and a navy blue colored Hawaiian button down shirt, and quickly apologized for having kept him waiting. He waved off my apology, announcing, "I’m always at least an hour early wherever I go."

The Platshorn display was set up directly across a mock demonstration of a police line up. His portion of the wall was a small shrine to his involvement with crime: a couple of framed newspaper articles, a small gold necklace that the government accused Platshorn and his gang of using to identify themselves as members of the smuggling gang, and a beautifully-crafted  hand-made wooden boat that Platshorn informed me that was done by his partner Randy, in jail.

The mention of Randy triggered Platshorn’s memory, and he quickly jumped into the story of how he had recently heard from his old partner after many years of silence. They reconnected for the first time a couple weeks ago and went fishing.

During our conversation, Platshorn seemed like the type of person who belonged on a fishing boat rather than behind bars. His outdoorsy, casual appeal evokes a Jimmy Buffet song. His demeanor isn’t one of a hardened criminal that spent 29 years in jail; but rather, the type of individual that you want to drink beers with and listen to, an eccentric individual you can picture taking a hit off a joint with. He’s charismatic with an inviting nature to the point where I almost wanted to relocate this interview to an outside bar, and ask him questions over a cold beer or two.

Platshorn is a talker. His stories are long, elaborate and specific, complete with first and last names, dates and locations. He is a natural storyteller, and a damn good one at that. I had initially planned to film Platshorn standing by his display, but it soon became evident we had to change locations. The museum tour guide’s voice not only dominated the calm quiet of a room that only museums and libraries possess, but the echo of her voice made it impossible for us to conduct our interview there.

Before we settle on a new location, two young men of college age stand in front of Platshorn’s display and ask for me to take a picture with their iPhone. They don’t realize they’re standing next to the captain of the Black Tuna Gang, himself. Platshorn points to a couple of the framed newspaper articles behind them and chuckles. "You would never believe that I use to be that skinny, would you?" The young men quickly look at Platshorn, and then back at the photo. "Yeah that’s me, part of The Black Tuna Gang." They do one more double take, and immediately ask Platshorn if he would mind being in the photo. He is more than happy to oblige.

Before we head out, the former smuggler takes one last look at his wall. He stands proud, in front of his well-documented contribution to Miami’s checkered past, and is quiet for a couple seconds. He looks at his life, all laid out on display for people to see and judge.

Outside the museum, we settle on an empty table in the vast courtyard area across from the main Miami Public Library, and resume our conversation.

Platshorn’s necklace, a simple gold chain with a dime sized replica of a fish, is nestled in a little chest hair, shines in the sunlight. It’s the same medallion that initially caught my attention when we first met. Apparently, the government also took particular notice of his necklace: it helped served as evidence in his case to put him and his gang behind bars. It was suspected to be a symbol of involvement and alliance with his pot smuggling gang. Platshorn vehemently denies this, and claims the only symbol this necklace represents is that it was solely made for his "fishing fools, to celebrate our ‘Grand Slam.’" I believe him.

(Media credit/J. Weissmahr via Flickr)

For decades, it was common for old, majestic pianos in the corners of living rooms around the country to come alive every afternoon after school. Whether producing the rambunctious clatter of boisterous children’s tunes and scales with one too many mistakes, or more elegant whispers of "Fur Elise," and "Moonlight Sonata," children faithfully practiced day after day.

Today, many of those pianos — their pedals and keys now cloaked in cobwebs and dust — stand silent. For many children, as they grow older, their interest in the piano fades for a number of different reasons. Whether their parents forced them to practice every day and they grow to associate the piano with discipline, or they become immersed in other activities like after-school sports, or they simply do not enjoy playing, pianos often become little more than nostalgic reminders of simpler times for a lot of adults.

According to the Bluebook of Pianos, piano sales have declined by 83 percent in the last 100 years. In the past 50 years, our population has also multiplied more rapidly than ever before, growing from 2.5 billion people in 1950 to over 6.5 billion people in 2005. More recently, in the past 20 years, piano sales have declined by more than half — from nearly 175,000 in 1987 to about 62,500 in 2007.

Yet while these staggering numbers may lead some to believe that the piano’s role in society is becoming non-existent, it will never be replaced in classical and jazz music. And while many pianos across America are suffering the dreaded fate of serving as mere pieces of furniture, they are still hugely popular first instruments for children. While this instrument’s importance in family homes may be diminishing, its role in society is actually just shifting to fit a smaller niche of professional musicians and music enthusiasts.

Over the years, owning and playing an acoustic piano has come to stand for a lot more than simply music. In the past it has represented dedication, wealth, and family togetherness. Learning an instrument takes time, and when children sit down at a piano, they learn patience and the value of hard work.

David Estey, owner of Estey Pianos in New Jersey, has been buying, selling, tuning, and restoring pianos for 35 years. According to him, one of the great values of the piano is the self-esteem boost it provides for beginners. "The piano takes effort," he says. "This is why it is so important for a child’s (or adult’s) self-esteem when they do learn to play. They have accomplished something of value."

Before the days of television and even radio, the piano was a gathering place for the family, giving them somewhere to congregate and something on which to focus their attention. The act of singing along while someone was playing a piano served as a way to bring groups of people together. Suzanne Davis, a jazz pianist and associate professor of piano at Berklee College of Music in Boston, observed the piano’s still-present role as a gathering place when she played at one of her son’s school productions.

"I’m playing the piano a little bit and people are gathered around," she remembered, "and other kids started playing the piano, and Mike says to me, ‘You know, what I like about the piano is that people gather around when you play.’"

Today, Davis heads the Suzanne Davis Quartet, which plays all over New England and in New York City. Her free, modern style epitomizes the range of emotions that can be conveyed by the piano — from peppy high notes to slow and moody lows. While the piano’s power has changed over the years due to the rise of television and the Internet and the subsequent reduction of attention spans, its large size and its ability to play a variety of musical genres has always brought people together.

A key question about the piano’s role in modern culture is whether it still stands for all the values it has been associated with in the past. And if the piano still signifies culture, wealth, and hard work, does its decline signify a shift in our culture’s values? Much of the decline in piano sales can be attributed to pragmatic reasons.

"The only hindrance to it being more popular is the cost of the piano and the space issues," says Davis, sighing. While many people would love to own and play a piano, many times the cost (up to $8,000 for an upright and $24,000 for a grand) prohibits them from doing so. A Steinway & Sons concert piano (9 feet long) costs more than $100,000, according to the Bluebook of Pianos.

However, it is also possible to find beat up, used pianos for as low as $250-500. These pianos can serve as great starter instruments, but they may have a lot of problems such as rusty strings and an inability to stay in tune. The cost of maintenance may also deter some potential buyers. For a piano to stay in good shape, it should be tuned twice a year, which costs $75 to $125 and takes about two hours. Also, every ten years or so, most pianos need more serious work done, such as leveling the keyboard or filling the hammers (the part of the piano that actually strikes the strings). This usually costs from $1,000-$3,000.

The piano’s large size also turns some people off to the instrument. People are a lot less willing to sacrifice space and money when there are so many smaller and cheaper options available now to provide entertainment.

Time also plays a contributing role. Estey observes that in our fast-moving culture, musical instruments are "competing — not so much with each other — but with video games, soccer, lacrosse, and a whole host of other things." He notes that this decline is not limited to the piano, and is evident in all musical instruments. It seems that the piano’s change in significance represents a culture where the emphasis on individual achievement is undermined by the ability to do 5,000 different things at once.

The ever-present electronic keyboard poses another potential problem for the acoustic piano, as it’s constantly threatening to outsell the traditional version of the instrument. Small, half-sized keyboards usually cost around $200, and keyboards that have all 88 keys can sell for anywhere from $550-$2,000, depending of course on the quality and brand. Keyboards are also cheaper to maintain, as they don’t require any tuning.

To Nick Gorman, who has played the piano since the third grade and now plays the keyboard in a contemporary rock band, the electric piano is an essential part of his music. While he will always enjoy playing the piano, Gorman acknowledges certain advantages of the keyboard, especially for someone like him who plays classic rock music. "The biggest difference that I liked was it was always in perfect tune," he says. "An acoustic piano, depending on weather and humidity, can go out of tune fairly quickly." He also notes how the keyboard "allows a player to change a key by transposing the key without changing the way you play a particular song." Gorman says he can spend hours a night just experimenting with different keyboard sounds.

Jazz pianists like Davis are also quick to recognize the keyboard’s value. "I don’t like to diss the keyboard particularly because there are certain things that keyboards can do that pianos can’t," she says. "And I like to have those sounds at my disposal." Keyboards also come in handy for other musical professions. Dave Gonzalez, a 2008 Berklee graduate and current film composer, is able to connect his keyboard to his computer in order to synchronize the music he makes with film. "What’s also incredibly helpful for me when writing with the keyboard is that I can write in direct synchronization with the film," he says. "Finding the right tempo is essential and the computer helps me find the timing and adjust it to make it feel natural even thought it’s very planned."

Yet despite the keyboard’s popularity, acoustic piano enthusiasts are confident that the traditional version of the instrument is here to stay."The acoustic piano will not disappear any more than the acoustic guitar did when the electric guitar came to be," Estey comments. While the popularity of electric guitars is also on the rise, there is still a market for acoustic guitar music, as there is a certain kind of music that would just not work with an electric instrument. The same thing rings true for the piano. "The sound of an acoustic instrument in general really can’t be duplicated successfully with digital sampling," Davis observes. "I don’t think so because the sound going through the air, through the wood, has a certain kind of sound, and it’s really not comparable [to that of a keyboard]."

Furthermore, the piano’s role in classical music will never be overtaken by the popularity of the keyboard. "A concert pianist wouldn’t and couldn’t play any keyboard on the face of this earth the way they can play a well-made acoustic piano," Estey comments. "It just ain’t happening."

The role of the piano will also always be integral to jazz; although, as Davis notes, most great jazz players are able to switch back and forth. "Herbie Hancock was one of the first people to really explore the possibilities of the electric piano. He was always able to go back and forth between the two, which is what I think most of us in jazz do," she notes.

As with any instrument, the choice between a keyboard of a piano depends on musical style and personal preference. Although, as Davis observes, "the soul of the instrument is in the wood." Despite his affinity for keyboards, Gonzalez expresses a similar sentiment. "The real piano feels acoustic," he says. "It’s real. I can feel its vibrations in my core."

The “cool” factor comes into play as well. The electric guitar has enjoyed a long history of being seen as "cooler" than the piano by many rock music fans, and their small size and price tag also makes them particularly appealing to consumers. While some children associate the piano with rules and discipline, they see the electric guitar as freeing and rebellious. According to the Music Trades Industry, a total of 3,302,670 electric guitars were sold for the year 2007 in the United States, compared to 62,536 total pianos.

Gorman notes that he quit playing the piano when he was a teenager because he didn’t view it as "cool enough." When he was 16 years old in 1968, all of his favorite musicians, such as the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, relied on electric guitars more than pianos or keyboards. However, Gorman returned to his love of the piano when he got older, purchasing an upright piano for his home and taking up the keyboard in his band. Gorman came to the realization that playing any instrument well requires time and discipline, so he returned to the instrument that he truly enjoyed more.

Another reason why the piano struggles to compete with the electric guitar is its association with discipline and perseverance, which steers some beginners away from it. Davis remembers how practicing the piano when she was a child was "a burden" at times. "I wanted to play music, not to practice it," she remembers. While practice is obviously required for any skill, many parents and teachers would force children to practice piano for long hours, thus discouraging them from the instrument. Modern society’s need for instant gratification is restricting the piano’s popularity more and more to professional musicians and people who are so passionate about music that they are willing to put in the time and effort it takes to learn something new.

However, Davis acknowledges that the tediousness of practice often gives way to the mastery of a skill — something pianists have long prided themselves on. Yet the stigma about strict piano teachers and parents has made some families hesitant about starting piano lessons. Estey notes some parents who come into his store and say in front of their child, ‘We don’t know if little Johnny will stick with it, because he rarely sticks with anything, so we don’t want to buy something of good value that will last.We want something cheap.’" Some families see an investment in the electric guitar as easier and less of a commitment, and that they state this in front of their child strongly discourages him from ever starting to play, Estey argues.

However, despite the competition from other instruments and extracurricular activities, professional musicians and piano players assert that the piano is here to stay. "I think it’s encouraging that a lot of people who do have an appreciation for classical music are teaching our kids, you know all that stuff, or taking them to composers, you know that’s really the way it has to be," comments jazz artist Davis. Teaching children an appreciation for the piano has certainly paid off, with students like Gonzalez demonstrating a clear appreciation for it. "The dichotomy between soft and simple to powerful and loud completely impresses me and gives me much respect for the instrument," he says.

The piano also still plays an important role in the development of young people. Estey points out that learning the piano has been associated with better math skills and greater spatial reasoning. Also, the piano has proven to be an important outlet for more reserved children. Davis, who didn’t enjoy performing or being the center of attention when she was a child, remembers situations as a child where she would play the piano for her parents’ friends and "they’d want to be singing. The more drunk they got, the more they started singing. All their college songs and all that stuff."

While our culture is rapidly changing — people constantly have the need to be doing three things at once — it is easy to assume that there is no place for the piano. Estey acknowledges the effects our changing culture has had on the this instrument: "We live in a society where instant gratification reigns supreme, and putting out effort to accomplish something of lasting value is not all that popular." However, he notes "the market will rise and fall with the awareness of the importance of music in one’s home."

With something that symbolized so much more than the actual music — a symbol of culture, of self-esteem, of hard work, and of family togetherness — this cultural shift may hurt the piano’s sales, but this nostalgic instrument is not going anywhere. "I hope people will always want to hear, same thing with violins or any other instrument, the real instrument," Davis says. "I’m hoping that people will always resonate to that sound, you know, and that people won’t forget.”

Gonzalez’s passion for this simple instrument conveys all the magic of the piano. "What amazes me consistently is how when you put those tones in a specific order, you can cry from sadness, joy, love, or recognition of a melody from the past." With its still prevalent role in classical and jazz and its ability to convey the gamut of human emotion in just 88 keys, the piano has solidified its place as a prominent instrument among professional musicians and music enthusiasts.

A research study has come out, trying to define the relationship between body art and deviance among college students in America.

Remember the days of the Hell’s Angels? Of Sid and Nancy and Billy Idol? Remember when a piercing meant you were bad, but a tattoo meant you were badder? When gangs of the most "different" sort of people brandished their body art and flew their freak flags high, laughing in the face of all that is good and wholesome about the college-educated middle class…

Neither do I.

But let’s imagine for a moment that the days of anti-mainstream subcultures are still fresh in America’s collective memory. Counter-culture extremists were easy to recognize by their flaming skull tattoos and facial piercings, and the "good kids" were clearly discerned by the sweaters tied demurely about their shoulders.

That is no longer the case.

This new study, conducted by Texas Tech researchers, takes a close look at how much the number of tattoos and body piercings a student has directly correlates to their deviant activities.

In a report titled "Body art, deviance, and American college students" (these science types are direct), the team compiled data collected from 1,753 students. What they found might surprise you. Or it might be exactly the results you were expecting.

The results

Specifically, the research "differentiates and measures the relationships between escalating levels of body art and social deviance.” Since social deviance is a largely subjective idea, the researchers were forced to define and categorize it as a variable.

In this case, deviancy was categorized as overtly illegal behavior, as well as legal behavior contrary to social norms. The team further narrowed the legal side of deviance down to cheating on school work, drinking to excess and having multiple sex partners. The illegal deviance included marijuana use, other illegal drug use and arrests other than traffic violations.

The researchers defined body art in three ways: First, an escalating number of tattoos; second, an escalating number of piercings (single earlobe piercings were not included); and third, relegated to their own category, were "intimate" piercings — piercings of the nipples and genitals.

The idea was that a higher number of body art (number of tattoos and piercings) would equal a higher level of deviant behavior — extreme body art (intimate piercings and multiple tattoos) would equal more deviant behavior.

But even with these defined variables, "deviant behavior" is still up in the air when it comes to college students.

“I think every college kid is involved in at least a little bit of deviant or illegal activity,” said Robert Vanderberg from Stingray Body Art, a tattoo artist with over 16 years of experience. “They’re college kids."

What the researchers found was that for some deviant behaviors, there was no obvious corresponding rise in body art. For others, there was a clear increase in deviant behavior connected to certain kinds of body art.

For example, binge drinking was roughly the same across the charts, regardless of the subject’s amount and type of body art. The report theorizes that this is because binge drinking is a "typical" college behavior, part and parcel of parties and the freedom of being away from parental supervision.

Cheating on college work and having multiple sex partners was relatively unrelated to the amount of piercings the subjects had. Levels of cheating on college work remained mostly the same no matter how many tattoos the subjects had or didn’t have.

But the results really got interesting when the variables increased by the amount of body art and the level of deviancy.

The difference in deviance between the un-pierced and the pierced subjects, when it came to drug use and arrest histories, was drastic. In the categories of "monthly marijuana use," "other illegal drug use" and "arrests other than traffic" the percentages mount steadily as the number of piercings increases. The more deviant subjects had more piercings. Similarly, when it came to tattoos, there was a noted difference in deviant behavior between those with tattoos and those without. Over 70 percent of subjects with four or more tattoos admitted to being arrested for something other than a traffic violation. To put things in perspective, only 8.5 percent of the subjects without tattoos admitted to being arrested. Again, it would seem that the more deviant students were acquiring more tattoos.

Subjects with intimate piercings followed the trend of the other two groups. When it came to legal deviant behavior, there was little to separate them from their peers. But in regards to the illegal deviant activities, the subjects with intimate piercings were well represented. Over 24 percent of the subjects with intimate piercings admitted to using illegal drugs other than marijuana. Not quite 6 percent of the subjects without intimate piercings had used illegal drugs. Similarly, over 39 percent of those with intimate piercings admitted to being arrested, but barely 12 percent of those without intimate piercings had been arrested.

The research successfully drew a statistical connection between body art and deviant behavior, according to the variables they set up: The more extreme the body art, the more deviant the behavior.

A total of 37 percent of all the test subjects were pierced and 1 percent% were tattooed. Few of the test subjects (4 percent) had extreme body art: an intimate piercing, four or more tattoos, and seven or more piercings. Even with a relatively small amount of the sample adorned, the trends are hard to ignore.

Take it with a grain of salt

The research team was careful to admit its own limitations. Their subjects didn’t exactly represent a wide cross-section of college-going Americans. The study included students from four colleges: two public, and two private religious institutions. It isn’t explicitly stated, but since the researchers hail from Texas Tech, it’s assumed that the schools in question are in Texas. All of the test subjects were enrolled in entry-level sociology classes.

The test also doesn’t take into account the design of the students’ tattoos, only the number of them. Though this variable might have been impossible to test for, there is a noted difference between a happy dolphin tattoo on the small of your back and a portrait of Charles Manson on your forehead.

Stingray is located near BU on Harvard Avenue. According to Vanderberg, about a third of their clientele are college students. But the tattoos they get aren’t exactly symbols of deviancy. "Kids at Harvard get ‘Veritas’ tattooed on their wrist because they think they’re special. MIT kids get math equations. They get a lot of lettering, quotes, and song lyrics. They want a fairy sitting on a moon with a poem, and half the universe in the background, the size of a quarter on their hip."

The research team was more specific about the piercings they included as body art. A single piercing in each earlobe was not counted as significant body art, since most female college students, regardless of deviancy, sport earrings. A piercing in the cartilage of the ear was deemed body art, as were other facial piercings.

Of course, the very fact that they’re studying college students limits the subjects to mostly middle- to upper-class Americans, with the funds and/or gumption to make it into college. According to their report, 78 percent of the test subjects were between the ages of 18 and 20. Sixty percent of the test subjects were female. And a whopping 79 pecent of the test subjects were Euro-American — white.

But no study is perfect.

What does it all mean?

The statistics above narrow the sample of subjects down to a very particular demographic. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, since it allows the conclusions of the study to be compared to studies of completely different demographics. In particular, it shows how these mostly 18-20, mostly female, mostly Euro-American, and all college-educated people compare to a traditionally different demographic: members of American sub-cultures.

Mainstream Americans have been getting tattoos for a long time. As Vanderberg put it, tattoos are in their Golden Age. "I think it’s great that something other than the counter-culture is getting tattooed. Really the upper-class or the higher middle class, those are the people who are getting the high dollar full body stuff, even though you never see it. New England is very liberal. It’s the Democrats’ Mecca. You can get a job with a facial tattoo. But the rest of the world is very uptight, and that makes you unemployable if you have any tattoo."

To quote from the study’s abstract: “With the increasing mainstream presence of visible tattoos and piercings among entertainers, athletes, and even in corporate boardrooms, we wonder the extent to which long-time enthusiasts and collectors regard the phenomenon as encroachment.”

How will sailors, motorcycle clubs, convicts, musicians, tattoo artists and other traditionally-adorned subcultures react to seeing their symbol of free-spirited individualism on the upper arm of a 19-year-old white college girl?

In other words, the connection between body art and America’s college students doesn’t make everyone happy, as you might imagine. But in this case it’s not simply their parents — the usual target of youth in rebellion — who are annoyed at the connection between body art and deviant behavior. This nuisance even goes beyond their concerned pastors or community leaders.

The research team posits that the people most offended by the body art of deviant college students are deviants themselves. Body art used to be a tried-and-true symbol of deviant behavior and counter-culture attitudes. It was so obvious a sign of the anti-mainstream, that a study like this would’ve been laughable.

"Bikers, whores, freaks, and sailors, that was it." Vanderberg said. "You had to have a pair to even walk in the front door. And no one was nice to you, no one helped to educate you."

Time was when a certain tattoo meant allegiance to a biker gang, military service, prison time or adherence to an extreme philosophy. Body art has been used by members of the straight edge movement to declare their abstinence from drugs and alcohol. It has been used as pictorial histories of convicts’ criminal exploits. Tattoos have been used as symbols of feats of bravery among sailors and the military. Perhaps the most widely-known use of tattoos is as symbols of identity among the motorcycle clubs of California.

But now, with middle-class college students adorning themselves as part and parcel of their "deviant behavior" (read: cheating on tests, binge drinking, and smoking the reefer), what does this do to the traditional status symbol of the counter-culture? Vanderberg said, "There are tattooed people, and there are people with tattoos. Tattooed people are different." If a binge-drinking sorority girl can get a skull and roses tattooed on her thigh, what does that same tattoo mean on a 50-year old female biker who’s seen more than her fair share of deviancy?

Does this detract from the meaning body art? Or does this mean that more college students are considering themselves counter-culture?

The research team believes that the connection between the college students’ body art and their deviant behavior will force a response from the old-school deviants: “We propose that tattoo collectors, artists, and piercers must not only increase the number of tattoos and piercings they have in order to maintain a distinctive sub- cultural identity, they are also more likely to solidify their out-group status with higher levels of other anti-social behavior.”

Therefore, because mainstream young people are using body art to symbolize their youthful transgressions, members of the tattooed subculture must respond in kind. Not only must they take their body art to new extremes, but they must also increase their deviant behavior to be more deviant than the actions of supposedly bad-ass college students.

But does the counter-culture agree?

Neither main nor stream. Discuss

Stingray Body Art on Harvard Avenue won Boston Magazine’s Best of Boston Award for the best tattoo parlor in 2006 and 2007. The establishment is home to nine tattoo artist and two body piercers. Judging by Stingray’s work, their title of Best of Boston is well-deserved. But they didn’t get there by catering strictly to counter-culture tattoo enthusiasts.

The parlor advertises a 10 percent student discount. With their location in the heart of America’s college town, it’s no wonder a large portion of their clientele is college students.

But students aren’t the only mainstream business to walk through the parlor’s doors. Every day, Stingray sees clients from all walks of life. "You name it, we do it,” Vanderberg said. “From retired folks to lawyers, teachers, doctors, investment bankers… we do it all. We’re located near the teamster area, so we have a lot of those."

It’s a large, clean, professional-looking shop on a main thoroughfare, a far cry from the stereotype of the shadowy, back-alley, have-to-know-somebody-who-knows-somebody-to-find-it tattoo parlor run by outlaw biker tattoo artists. Surely that parlor still exists somewhere, but parlors like Stingray have become the face of the body art industry.

The idea is to make everyone feel welcome, regardless of mainstream or counter-culture affiliation. "My job is to take care of you, make it look cool and send you away with a good experience and a smile on your face. My job’s not to judge what people get," Vanderberg said.

Not everyone likes this style. The research team writes, "’Old-school’ tattoo artists, as well as long-time collectors and enthusiasts, have expressed dismay and disgust at the emergence of such ‘posers’ regarding them as late to the game and playing it casually." Perhaps the problem of body art and deviance among college students is a matter of respect. Are college students intruding on traditions that aren’t theirs to borrow?

Vanderberg doesn’t think the change is all bad. "I think that it used to be people who were on the edge that got tattooed, no one else did. But now it’s not like that. It’s fashion. It’s like Uggs or Doc Martins or anything else. Trends will change, and they’ll get different stuff, and keep our industry alive." The times they are a’changing.

Whether or not body art is a symbol of deviancy in college students, it still might be perceived that way. "I’ve had situations where if you had tattoos on your hands and a cop pulled you over, you were a scumbag and you’re getting a ticket. That’s like saying anyone who’s black likes watermelon, or anyone who’s Middle Eastern is a terrorist," Vanderberg said. "I don’t think it’s right to judge anyone for the color of their skin. It’s that little 1/16 of an inch that makes us all so different, tattoo or not."

Biker gangs, bad boys and rock stars used to be synonymous with tattoos. These days however, skin art is definitely becoming more mainstream with each passing month. With body art becoming the norm, and tattooed college students experimenting with social deviancy, where is there room for counter-culture symbolism? When a tattoo and multiple piercings is no longer a symbol of radical individualism, what will radical individuals do to set themselves apart?

"Body art, deviance, and American college students" sheds light on a curious trend among America’s college students, but asks more questions than it answers about the new meaning of body art and deviancy.

QUINCY — Home oxygen equipment is a lifesaver. A medical device, it allows patients with breathing problems to stay in their homes and lead a normal life. But like any medical device, it can be deadly.

In Massachusetts several fatal fires have moved investigators to look more deeply into the dangers of home oxygen, especially when people smoke with this equipment in the house.

The Massachusetts Department of Fire Services has launched an educational campaign around this issue. Stephen D. Coan, the state fire marshal and top fire official, says he considers the issue a top priority.

"Smoking in homes where people use oxygen starts many fires each year that cause deaths and injuries," Coan said. "These fires force whole families and other building tenants out of their homes, destroy a lifetime’s possessions, and cause hundreds of thousands of dollars in property damage."

Home oxygen is pure O2 — the fuel required for fire to burn. In the presence of an open flame or spark, pure oxygen can ignite. And if a fire is already burning, bottles of home oxygen can suddenly and violently explode or release their contents into the fire, giving it more fuel, and quickly turning a small fire into a massive blaze. These fires can be more deadly for residents and more dangerous for responding firefighters.

Fire needs oxygen to burn, and the more oxygen there is in the air, the easier and faster things — furniture, clothing, bedding — will burn. Normal air is about 21 percent oxygen, while home medical oxygen is 100 percent. It’s the difference between a beer and pure rubbing alcohol.

In Quincy a woman died on the morning of Dec. 26 after fire officials said she was smoking a cigarette while using home oxygen. Donna Marani, 62, brutally burned to death in a two-alarm fire in her high-rise apartment complex. In her tiny apartment, the first thing that was visible was her front door, down a long hallway, where a sign warned passersby that home oxygen was in use and that people shouldn’t smoke. But inside the apartment, the remains of a pack of cigarettes and a lighter were visible on a table. On the floor, Marani’s oxygen unit was a charred mess. Quincy Fire Chief Joseph Barron said she was found in a hallway, between a couch where the fire started and her bathroom. The couch was burned down to the springs, with only the tatters of a Boston Red Sox blanket remaining.

"The investigation revealed the cause to be consistent with a smoking-related fire,” Coan said. "And there was home oxygen in the apartment.”

Marani was declared dead at the scene. Across the living room, a bookshelf full of Christmas cards and old photographs gave a sad reminder of the humanity surrounding the preventable danger.

"She was a smoker,” said Jenn Fell, 31, who lives in the Marani’s building with her two sons. "Several people in the building have warned her about smoking while on oxygen. … Everybody lost a really good friend out of this tragedy.”

Fell was allowed to return to her home, but the entire building, some 10 stories tall, housing low-income, elderly, and disabled city residents, smelled of smoke. Water damage seeped downstairs. Smoke and fire damage hit adjoining apartments. Two other residents were hospitalized.

On May 16, a house fire burned so intensely that firefighters in full gear and air masks were unable to reach a 73-year-old grandmother in the town of Whitman, Massachusetts. Helena Drass died in a fire that was violently accelerated by her therapeutic home oxygen containers. Fire investigators believe she was smoking a cigarette while her oxygen equipment was in use.

Drass was living with her daughter, who was out of town that night. A babysitter was hailed as a hero for getting Drass’ four grandchildren out of the house safely, but there was nothing that could be done for the grandmother.

“The fire was so intense — it did more damage in 10 minutes than most fires do in 30 minutes,” said Whitman Fire Chief Tim Grenno. Fire crews from four neighboring cities and towns helped put out the 2-alarm fire.

Elsewhere in Massachusetts, on March 27, 2004, a 39-year-old Salem woman died after she was overcome by heat and smoke when her apartment caught fire. Her roommate was using home oxygen and lit a cigarette. Six other people were hurt in the fire. On January 13, 2004, the town of Holbook battled a massive fire in a single-family home. A resident on oxygen dropped a cigarette that ignited the living room cough on fire. The fire caused several oxygen tanks in the room to rupture and explode. A firefighter was hurt. In 2003, a Boston man on home oxygen died in a flash fire. Even though his oxygen was off, there was enough remaining in the air to ignite his clothes when he lit a cigarette. He died and his wife and daughter were burned trying to save him.

On October 28, 2002, an 8-year-old girl died when her father, a smoker with lung disease, dropped a cigarette while he was using home oxygen. The tank exploded, and the little girl couldn’t escape the house.

Smoking is the leading cause of fire deaths in Massachusetts. Statewide since 1997, about two-dozen people have died and nearly 50 people have been injured in fires caused by smoking around home oxygen. According to the Quincy-based National Fire Protection Association, 46 people die each year around the country from fires sparked by improper use of home oxygen equipment — namely, smoking around such apparatus.

According to a National Fire Prevention Association research study, from 2003 to 2006, 1,190 people were burned per year in the United States from fires associated with home medical oxygen. Seventy-three percent of those fires were caused by smoking and 89 percent of victims suffered facial burns.

Coan’s office is circulating educational pamphlets to local fire departments, including a step-by-step guide for firefighters to educate residents on the dangers of smoking around oxygen. Essentially, oxygen users are told they should not smoke and should stay away from candles, gas grills, stoves, and any open flames.

"It’s a very dangerous thing. This is an issue that is extremely dangerous in homes," says Lorraine Carli, a spokeswoman for the National Fire Protection Association. "But like most fires and burns, they can be prevented by people taking some very simple steps."

Coan says that his campaign will target more than just residents and patients. He said that health care providers also have to take responsibility.

"Before sending a patient home on oxygen, health care providers must make sure the patient understands the dangers of smoking in an oxygen enriched environment," Coan writes in a statement. "Smokers should be asked about their intentions. If they are unwilling to quit, the risk of fire can outweigh the benefit of oxygen therapy."

There are simple ways to reduce risks that firefighters and officials are trying to teach. Patient on oxygen should avoid matches, lighters, cigarettes, candles, gas stoves, major appliances, electric razors, hair dyers and space heaters. Oil-based products like certain lotions or lip balms can also be dangerous for oxygen users. "You should not smoke. Your family and friends should not smoke around you," Coan said. "No one should smoke in your home. The fire danger is too great."

Boston has two Athenaeums

Both on Beacon Hill,

One is for scholars with books by the score

The other for lads who seek life in the roar.

The Boston Athenaeum’s lights are bright

But the Howard Athenaeum’s locked up tight

Some Purist got himself a Jurist

And slapped a padlock on the door

– "Some Coward Closed the Old Howard" — song by Frank W. Hatch

The Howard Athenaeum caught fire around lunchtime, drawing crowds from around Scollay Square. It was an impromptu (or suspiciously coincidental) farewell performance for an audience kept out for nearly 10 years, ever since Boston Vice showed a clandestine film of burlesque divas Rose la Rose, Princess Domain and Irma the Body to acting Mayor Francis X Ahern. Outraged at the overly "mobile abdomens" and suggestive "sinuosity" of the dancers, the mayor ordered it closed on grounds of obscenity, declaring, "I positively will not tolerate any filthy or indecent shows in our city." For the crowd watching the roof give way to the flames, the old Howard meant much more. Its sturdy fa§ade of Quincy granite had served as a load-bearing wall for the community since before their grandfathers’ time. In an area known for its seediness and decay, the Old Howard spoke of better days, when Scollay blinged with diamonds, wore fur coats and literally shook (and shimmied) its moneymaker.

If some in the street shed tears that June afternoon in 1961, others in City Hall clinked glasses. The fortuitous destruction of the theater removed the last bulwark against B.R.A’s (Boston Redevelopment Authority) next ambitious plan, a shining new Government Center to wrest Boston from its urban decay and shed the drab, brick Dickensian image it was known for. As Scollay Square had acted as the rivet that held old Boston together, linking Beacon Hill, the port and the North and West Ends, it was also the ideal location for a new center, of a new Boston. By ‘59, the West End has been razed; the North severed and banished behind Boston’s other "Green Monster," the central artery. Now it was Scollay’s turn. A drive to restore and reopen the Howard was the last bastion of spirited defense against the gathering wrecking balls, which upon its destruction, moved in with speed and ferocity, pulverizing every other building, save one, on those 22 streets within three years. Thousands were robbed of their homes and livelihoods and the city robbed of its history.

"The story of Scollay Square is important," insists David Kruh author of Always Something Doing: Boston’s infamous Scollay Square. "Within the square is our whole history, from the puritans setting up the first settlements, to the rise of the mercantile society, the influx of the immigrants and how they changed the character of the city. It’s about urban decay and urban development. It’s how our approach to history has changed, which we used to discard it like so much garbage."

Scollay’s first permanent resident, Reverend Joseph Cotton, arrived just a few years after the city’s founding in 1630. Fleeing religious prosecution, he began gathering a new flock of followers and friends at his new estate at the base of Beacon Hill. By the end of the Revolution, most of the other Boston Brahmins had moved in as well making the neighborhood the center of genteel society. Postwar prosperity fueled business and an increasing demand for labor that brought new waves of immigrants to the city. It didn’t take long for the overflow of the North and West Ends to besot the stately Scollay’s, whose respectable classes, in an early version of white flight, either scampered up Beacon Hill or skedaddled to the newly filled Back Bay. Scollay’s new class of residents generated new kinds of business and demanded less morally conscious entertainment for their ungodly working conditions. Opera Houses like the Howard Athenaeum, raised hems, lowered necklines and told bawdy jokes.

Wanting in on the fun, the rest of Boston rode the expanding stage lines into the square, disembarking finally in front of William Scollay’s building. Scollay, a former member of the Sons of Liberty, colonel in the Boston regiment, and fire marshal had acquired the building in 1795 as part of his side job as a real estate speculator. By the end of the Civil War, the name was official and a new post war party had kicked off that soon shaped a new less than savory reputation of tassel dancers, candy butchers, baggy pants comics, artists, circus freaks, political agitators, and drunken sailors. The bash lasted well into the new century, roaring through the 20s before finally crashing with the stock market at the end. The Depression didn’t kill Scollay but certainly stripped away its glitz and precipitated the rate of decay. Likewise, the impact of the automobile began to be felt as buildings gave way to new parking lots. World War II offered a short reprieve as the square reaped the rewards of sailors on leave, but the war’s end put a quick stop to that and decay returned. The subsequent destruction of the West End and neighborhoods around the new elevated highway robbed Scollay further of its chief customers. By the time the Howard caught fire in 61, the area had indeed grown squalid and in serious need of rejuvenation, but it got an apocalypse instead.

"This was a city that was dying on the vine," Kruh reminds. "Back then, to revitalize a city, you tore down and removed that which was old."

Boston was by no means alone in its pursuit of the newly available federal money as communities around the country, flush with ’50s prosperity, and faith in scientific progress, followed a recipe of historical cleansing followed by mathematical design. It was also the philosophy of the B.R.A., led by Edward Logue, an urban planner, who claimed design skills learnt during his service as a bombardier in World War II. Word got out to the street, sending firefighters and insurance agents into overtime as landlords sought to cut their losses. Relocation officers followed, offering just $200 for moving expenses as the buildings were seized by eminent domain.

One man, George Gloss, refused to give in so easily. Owner of the Brattle Book Shop, he waged a one man media campaign that organized historians and academics in an effort to save the city’s historical book center on Cornhill, a street which ran in a parallel curve opposite the Sears Crescent building. Claiming ties to Washington, Edison, Franklin, Hawthorne, Lloyd Garrison, Beecher Stowe, among others, Gloss argued for the preservation of the neighborhood, especially the Sears Crescent. "Tearing down this building," Gloss prophesized, "will mean the end of the old type of bookstore." In the end, the building survived but Gloss did not, getting evicted with the rest.

Through some brilliant accounting, the 180-million-dollar Government Center project only cost Boston $72,500 in cash. Architect I.M Pei was hired to design it and it was built in just five years. Architects and artists acclaimed it and new money began flowing into the city. Almost 40 years later, however, the accolades are few and far between. Most folks passing through Government Center today have no memory of its predecessor. But they do have a sense that all is not as it should be. Leave it to the professionals at the Project for Public Spaces, a nonprofit urban planning and design organization to put the gnawing into words, labeling City Hall "bleak, expansive and shapeless," and further declaring the surrounding brick "the worst single public plaza worldwide." Apologists still defend the renewal as a necessary sacrifice for Boston’s late 20th Century revival and they are not without the numbers to prove it. But that depends on whether you define a city by its tax producing properties or the people who inhabit them. Certainly Scollay’s demise was the city’s financial gain, but at the cost of the Crawford House, Joe and Nemo’s, Jack’s Joke Shop, Sal’s Barber shop, Marty’s Tavern, Patten’s restaurant, Tanya’s Tattoos, Epstein’s Drug store, Young’s, Huberman’s, Walkers, Cobb’s and the Old Howard.

That there were any survivors at all was a minor miracle considering the B.R.A’s scorched earth policy. Often mere fragments, Scollay’s relics can still interest those with a sensitivity and nostalgia for the past.

1. Scollay Under: Part of America’s oldest subway system, the old mosaics of Scollay Under can still be deciphered if you inspect the edges of the platforms of the Blue Line at Government Center. Almost Pompeian, the grimy, chipped mosaics are perhaps the most honest face you’ll find. Apparently more of the old tunnels exist, one section supposedly even serving as a storage facility somewhere in the basement of City Hall. Trying to find it, however, will only earn bemusement from the pencil pushers and suspicion from the security.
2. The Tea Kettle: After departing the station, look up to your right and you’ll find a big, dented, brass teakettle steaming away above the Starbucks. Originally hung by the Oriental Tea company in 1875 somewhere over today’s City Plaza, the kettle was once the talk of the town spawning much debate over its volume. (It was before TV!). Measuring day, January 2nd, 1875, was apparently quite the affair that opened with the crowd pleasing spectacle of eight boys and one man popping out of the kettle. Its volume can still be read on the Court Street side as 227 gallons, 2 quarts, 1 pint and 3 gills. But the tea pot is a replacement, the original having disappeared into history.
3. Governor Winthrop: For some time, had you exited the station you would have passed the statue of John Winthrop, Massachusetts’s first governor, high on a pedestal overlooking the square. Dedicated on the 250th birthday of Boston, September 17th, 1888, the statue was forced out by of Scollay by subway construction, eventually finding a home outside the governor’s religious alma mater, the First Church on Marlborough Street. During a fire in 1968, falling debris decapitated the statue which might have stayed headless if not for the quick arrest of the pilferer fleeing the scene. Once gazing into Boston’s commercial and cultural heart, the governor now stands in the shadows on a protruding concrete slab, the hollow underside of which apparently serves as a toilet for the city’s transient population.
4. The Sears Crescent: The only building to survive the demolition, largely through the efforts of George Gloss. The bow of the brick fa§ade reveals the shape of old Cornhill (NOT Cornhill Street!). Designed as part of an elegant entrance into Faneuil Hall from Beacon Hill, The building went up in 1841 becoming the epicenter of Boston’s book industry. As a repository for Boston’s intelligentsia, the building’s bookshops became the constant target of the city’s moral crusaders like the Watch and Ward Society who were especially successful in the ‘20s and ‘30s in book banning.
5. The Brattle Book Shop: Thanks to his son, Kenneth, the old type of book shop that George Gloss mourned for can still be found at the Brattle Book Shop on West Street. The old philosophy of "browsing as discovery" continues in the shop, as does the sincere love of antiquarian books. If you’re trustworthy enough and your reason is sound, he may even show you the family scrap books detailing first-hand the story of Scollay’s demise, a collection more valuable perhaps than any other book in the store.
6. Watson and Bell’s memorial: Bostonian pride generally stems from either sports or the Revolution but what about the telephone? Alexander Graham Bell’s famous first transmitted words, "Watson come here, I need you," were uttered in Scollay Square. The famous room itself was actually dismantled under Watson’s personal supervision and moved to Post Office Square in today’s Verizon Building where it was displayed for the public until a few months ago. Apparently it’s been packed up and indefinitely stored in some warehouse, perhaps next to the Ark of the Covenant. You’ll find a commemorative plaque just in front of the JFK buildings next to Government Center.
7. The Red Hat: Now a staple of low-budget local TV commercials, The Red Hat remains one of only three businesses still operating from Scollay. Although forced out like everyone else, the Red Hat moved only a few blocks north to the corner of Bowdoin and Cambridge streets, taking with it the stained glass over the bar and the original neon sign. While the walls offer a panoramic painting of Scollay Square in its heyday, the bar downstairs may give you the chance to hear tall first hand tales of Scollay from the old townies during happy hour.
8. Pemberton Square: Pemberton Square, once the choicest real estate in the city, is now possibly the saddest remnant of Scollay Square. Promised by the B.R.A as a viable public space, the brick no-man’s land sandwiched between City Plaza and the New Court House is utterly devoid of life save groups of huddled, exiled smokers. Nevertheless, it’s in Pemberton that you can find all that’s left of the old Howard, a circular plague mounted on a concrete slab bench on the Cambridge Street side, marking the old stage.
9. Perhaps more than any other American city, Boston is a city of squares, whose inhabitants subscribe to them as if they were a sports team. But few, if any, offer even a place to sit much less space to stand in. Instead they act as honorary conduits for the automobiles, trains and public that passes through them on to some other part of the city. George Gloss may have said more than he knew when he predicted the consequences of his bookshop’s destruction. Perhaps Scollay’s demise also signaled the end of the old kind of square, a public space of, by, and for the people.

Happily, the people seem to be coming back into the urban development of equation. Boston’s last major redevelopment project, the Big Dig, provides the strongest evidence that things have changed. Despite all the rancor over budget and mismanagement, no building was seized by eminent domain nor was anyone forced to move. The central artery was torn down, reconnecting the North End back to the rest of the city. Throughout the city, zoning laws have tightened and brownstones grown valuable. The government incentives refurbishment and city architects adorn new buildings with past motifs.

"Look at this structure here," David Kruh points out to a nearby commuter rail station. "Look what it’s made of. It’s made of brick, old fashioned roofing material. It’s got pinnacles on it like an old style building. Why is that? It’s because we’ve recognized that not everything that’s new is good. And that all that glass and steel that we built in the 60′s and the 70s look like crap and doesn’t stand the test of time."

The station also offers evidence of this paradigm shift that gives appreciation and respect to the past, as does the T’s new mascot Charlie, who comes from an old Kingston Brother’s tune, or the bookman fonts used at the green line stops. So why the change of heart? Is it just cheaper? The tourist dollars? Hopefully it was the memory of thousands of displaced families, destroyed communities, and discarded history. If so, than Scollay’s sacrifice may have saved the rest of us from new Government Centers, so long as memory serves.

TAMPA, Fla. — "I used to get banned from a number of the bars on the Beach, but now I’ve started to really mellow out,” Michael Mancini declares as we drive north on the Florida Turnpike.

"Without skateboarding, I would probably have gone down the wrong path, like many of my friends who ended up in prison, on drugs, or dead,” he adds calmly, flipping through songs on his iPod. "And the irony of it is that people’s perception of skateboarders is that they’re the delinquents, when it’s really skateboarding that’s keeping us out of trouble."

It’s 11:30 a.m. and pouring rain. After hours of working hard, the windshield wipers of the car can barely keep up with the deluge from above. I expect them to quit anytime. Barely anybody is on the road (smart) and we are surrounded by flat plains dotted with cattle huddling together rather uselessly for protection against the weather. At this point, we’re somewhere in between Miami and Tampa, and two and a half hours into the road trip. Mancini is behind the wheel, while his girlfriend of more than three years rides shotgun, and me, the plus one with a press pass, in the back seat.

The destination is Muvico Theatre in the Ybor City section of Tampa for the Hollywood-esque premiere of “The Dango is Dead,” a skate video that Mancini has been working feverishly on for the past year. As is the case with most skate videos, the filming required him to travel to different cities — the more gritty and urban, the better — to get good footage highlighting three generations of highly respected skaters, from teenagers to some in their late thirties.

"The old school generation, like me, focus more on refined skating and clean lines while the younger skaters are mainly doing things like wild stunts and maneuvers," explains Mancini, 34. "Also, you can see the difference between the two styles. Whereas the old school skaters have been doing this for 15, 20 years, it becomes more natural with the younger kids. The footage you see in the video, it’s usually the first time that they landed that trick. Don’t get me wrong, I mean, they’re doing really, really hard tricks. But style wise, it’s different."

Along with showcasing these athletes’ ability and distinct style, the movie also serves as another purpose: In this particular skate video, “The Dango” dies.

“Dango” is Mancini’s nickname among the skateboarding community. But, as much notoriety as the name gets, it’s something he’s ready to bury and start fresh.

"Now I’m ‘The Kleetcha’. It’s a spin on ‘The Creature.’ I have my own language where I tend to use a lot of ‘l’s." Mancini laughs. "I have an infatuation with skeletons, but if anybody calls me ‘The Dango,’ I’m going to correct them. It’s ‘The Kleetch’ for short."

So, in short, “The Dango” must die for a “Kleetcha” to be born.

Mancini said he first got into skateboarding at the age of 12, when a kid skated in front of his house on the street in Oviedo, Orlando, where he grew up. Mancini asked the youngster — who’s now one of his closest friends and is thanked in the credits of “The Dango is Dead” — where he could get one of those things. The following Christmas, his first skateboard awaited him. He has not stopped skateboarding since and gained recognition by word of mouth, mostly through his participation in competitions and posting skate videos on YouTube. Some skaters think posting videos on YouTube is controversial, but doing so has become a launching pad that has helped the underground skating community get noticed. The counter argument is that it takes away from the hard work of people behind the scene who video tape the skaters, when the clips become public online for free. Mancini doesn’t receive any royalties whatsoever from his videos.

"Skating is an outlet for me, not a sport,” says Mancini, who at a rest stop took note of some places — a ledge, some stairs — that would be perfect for tricks. “I don’t look at it like a sport, but more of an art form. To let out my anger or how I’m feeling. We took a board and a ledge and made a video from it. I just love to skate and see the end product. From nothing into something."

“The Dango Is Dead” is the fifth installment of Mancini’s DVD career, one that spans well over a decade. It’s being sold as a box set come this winter, along with his other four other videos: “Volume” (2002); “The Dango” (2004); “The Good Life” (2006) and “Last of the Mohicans” (2008). They’re being sold through The Westside Skate Shop (www.westsideskateshop.com and www.theoriesofatlantis.com), a well-respected store with headquarters on the outskirts of Tampa. It was John Montesi, the shop’s founder and a major player in the Florida underground skateboarding scene, who came up with the title ‘The Dango Is Dead,’ influenced by the hip-hop album “De La Soul is Dead.”

Mancini is no stranger to the underground skating community. He, along with many other skaters, prides himself on being “underground” or, better yet, the “underdogs.” With this video, Mancini also hopes to get skateboarding back to its roots.

"Ninety-five percent of skateboarding is bullshit to me. And you can quote me on that,” says Mancini, laughing, but with a stern tone. "I’m over the whole blown out, Mountain Dew, helmet, elbow pads … How hip hop was great in the 90′s, is how I feel skateboarding use to be back then. Nowadays with hip-hop and skateboarding, people unfortunately don’t pay attention to the skill or style. Anybody can land a trick, it’s just how you put your own personal flavor or spin on it."

For Mancini and a number of other skaters, there is a sense of pride, bordering on nobility, when it comes to skating strictly for the love of it and not for potential business opportunity and ventures that could make skating less authentic by making money off it.

But, strangely enough, as much as Mancini the obscure underdogs of the American skating community, he is anything but that in Japan. He’s very well-known there, he jokes, since “Dango,” means “sticky rice balls” in Japanese. In turn, the Japanese skateboarding community has embraced him with open arms. As Mancini says with a smile, "Whatever we love, the Japanese love a hundred times more."

The shallow corridors of Arlington Station provide a walkway for bustling businessmen, a means of transport for blundering tourists and the perfect acoustics for a classical guitarist who finds peace in his daily grind of playing to the passersby.

Playing with upturned lips, David Gonzales, knowingly picks at his guitar but without the pride of a man who has played for as long as he has. Rather, he shyly gazes upon the crowd with a humble smile, and you’d swear you’d known him for years. His thick fingers play soft chords and gentle rhythms that would soothe the most hurried of subway travelers. He first picked up the guitar at age 8. The music comes easily now.

A 3-foot blonde strolls by, dancing in her yellow raincoat. She can’t be more than four years old, but she is one of the few who takes notice of Gonzales. At that moment, he glances up and plays just for her, and they share a smile.

There is a stigma surrounding him simply because he plays music in the streets. “People can say what they say,” he offers. And while his guitar case stays empty for large parts of the day, a casual smile remains on his face. Gonzales plays because he wants to, not because he has to.

“It’s not about the money,” Gonzales says. “My God, you have no idea how much money I could make doing this is Europe, in Asia.”

Dressed in a pink and white striped polo with light-colored khakis, Gonzales has the appearance of a casual businessman. He owns 22 pairs of tennis shoes. “I am dressed like rich, and I play in the streets,” he says in his still thick Argentine accent, though he has survived in the US for more than eight years. “This is who I am. This is my life,” he says, without apology. “The key is, you must do something to survive.”

Gonzales grew up very poor on the streets of South America. In appearance, he is unlike most Argentinians, with dark skin and eyes the color of molasses. Because of this, Gonzales says he experienced discrimination very early, even by his own stepfather, who never offered him money or life lessons. So he grew up poor and without role models.

“I was born very, very poor. We were sleeping in a king bed, four people, maybe five. So I know how much value you can learn from life,” he says.

But that is all he talks of his past. Instead, he focuses on the future and on his place in society.

“Everything I want I can make true in my life,” says Gonzales. “It’s confidence. If you have truth, confidence and determination … everything is possible. I can decide and design the life I want and have it.”

And he has. Gonzales worked as a photographer for an international magazine for three years, he worked for Delta airlines, he learned to scuba dive off the coasts of Brazil, he played professional rugby in France, he’s worked as a personal trainer and he owned a landscaping company. “I like the difficult things,” he says. “Every part of history to my life is big.”

One of his bigger moments came, Gonzales says, when he began getting acclaim for his photography and seeing the seedier side of journalism. He once was asked to take a picture of a prominent South American lawyer caught in an affair. So on a Brazilian beach, he found them, and he photographed him holding hands with his mistress. The controversy surrounding the picture is what drove Gonzales out of the field. “I am a journalist. We are the worst people in the world,” he says. “Where’s the love man?”

Each job tells another story. And he is not finished yet. “There are many things I long to do,” he says.

When’s he not playing music, Gonzales still plays rugby for the Boston Irish Wolfhounds and has since 2003. He loves the game. “It’s a gentleman’s sport,” he says proudly.

One of his teammates, Mike Kerry, spoke of Gonzales in an excited Irish brogue. “He’s a good guy,” he said. “Workways, he seems to have always jumped around to different things. But he seems to have found his niche … seems to be happier playin’ the music.”

“I am happy,” Gonzales says. “It’s not only the music, it’s the way I am.”

“I like the guitar,” he says. And pauses to grin. “I like food.” And though he makes a living strumming the guitar, he plays for the love of it and for the people who listen. “It’s not about the money,” he says again. “It’s an exchange of peace.”

“Everybody is afraid,” he says, of the economy, of Iran, of the swine flu. Gonzales plays for them.

There is a man who passes him by often, a Boston judge, who once remarked to him, “your music gives me a lot of peace,” Gonzales said.

Gonzales, who believes in karma, says “peace and love” are the only things he carries, and distributes alongside the music.

“I have many good things to give. I don’t want one person to say I didn’t learn one good thing. Wherever I’m going, I’m bringing peace.”

It is up to him, where that may be. Perhaps a professional rugby coach, perhaps back to Delta. But one thing is for sure, Gonzales is not scared of anything,

“Each time you pull me down, I go up,” he grins broadly. “And when I die, I wanna be like this.”

One of the greatest parts of literature has always been its ability to transport people into other worlds.

In an age where people have films and video games to do the imaging for them, a new type of literature is emerging to bring the characters and stories into the reader’s world for a change. Sean Stewart, Jordan Weisman and Cathy Briggs, the co-authors, illustrators, and creators of a book series with a fully functioning understand the need for this change and have fused the gap between books, technology and their audience with their novels “Cathy’s Book,” “Cathy’s Key” and the upcoming “Cathy’s Ring.”

The “Cathy” series is part of a new genre dubbed “interactive fiction” and comes complete with working telephone numbers, websites and e-mail addresses — bringing the characters to life in the reader’s world. “Cathy’s” author, Sean Stewart claimed, “This kind of interactive entertainment will surely be to the 21st century what film was to the 20th in terms of being the defining art form.”

From what Blast has seen so far, there’s a definite possibility for this prediction to become reality.

The idea behind interactive fiction was born in 2001 when Stewart was hired to be involved in a project building a fully functional online world surrounding the Stephen Spielberg movie “A.I.” The project, dubbed “The Beast” due to its dauntingly huge list of requirements, entailed creating the world of this movie so that even five months before it came out, people could go to the website, which was according to Stewart, “literally hundreds or thousands of web pages deep”.

“You’ll go to a person’s blog and it’ll look like a real blog, except in the future . . . it’ll have a link of where they went to school, which then has links for 60 or so departments, all of which are up and running. When you e-mail these people, they will e-mail you back. We’re going to create a world and actually let you touch it. Instead of watching what happens to Lucy when she goes through the wardrobe to Narnia, we’ll let you go through the wardrobe yourself and see and touch Narnia as much as you can.”

The problem was, once the movie came out and the project was finished, it was left for dead. Stewart found himself and his colleagues saying, “that was really cool but now it’s over and people can’t play anymore because it’s over,” so they had no choice but to move on.

In creating “Cathy’s Book” and the subsequent sequels, Stewart and Weisman wanted to make sure that people could come across the series five years later and still play along. Running Press is set to release “Cathy’s Ring,” the third book in the New York Times bestselling teen trilogy. Despite the approaching end to the series, people will be able to enjoy the interactivity for a long time to come. The co-authors also wanted to make sure that it could stand alone as any other book would without the addition of its real-life communicative capabilities.

“We built it with a very simple premise: if all you ever did was just read the words of the book, that should be a great experience and you should feel fully satisfied, that by itself, should work as a book,” they said.

And it does. The story on its own is compelling and relatable, yet wildly fantastic — ready to compete with any other young adult series out there, complete with immortal boyfriends, Asian assassins, and witty banter. However, despite the inherent fantasy of the plot, opening the book itself brings you into a strange false sense of reality.

The series’ illustrator, Cathy Briggs, had a lot to do with this. Each page’s margins are covered in sketch-like illustrations, as if the artistic Cathy Vickers — the protagonist — drew these doodles while writing in her journal. Each drawing carries significance to what is happening on the particular page, and every now and then there will be little scratched in commentaries about what is printed.

Needless to say, Stewart and Briggs had to work together on this one. Stewart explained the process, saying “Jordan Weisman and I will usually talk about what we’re thinking of doing in a book and then I will go off and write the book and then send in a manuscript and we’ll go through revisions. Then I’ll sit down and write down some ideas for illustrations.”

After jotting down the ideas, Stewart and Brigg would collaborate on what drawings to include on each page, and were definitely on the same page about one aspect of the illustrations: they should not interrupt the reading of the story.

“A lot of the doodles and illustrations should be in the background and a second read, not a distraction, but yeah, we worked quite closely on developing what those illustrations should be,” Brigg explained.

Stewart conveyed the same idea: “It works the same way that a soundtrack in a movie does”.

Even as a background, it is hard not to consider how time consuming illustrating every page of a novel could be.

“It was quite intense,” Brigg admitted. “My hand was definitely falling off by the end. Some of them look quite sketchy — very crude, almost — but even so, they take quite a lot of time.”

You might have noticed the “Cathy” similarity as well – it’s no coincidence, Cathy the character is based off of Cathy the illustrator.

The names of subjects have been changed to protect their privacy and safety.

It was mid-day. Northeastern University student Sarah Alverston was sitting in the library staring blankly into a textbook that she couldn’t seem to focus on. She just had a fight with her boyfriend, and she knew she wouldn’t get anything done until she talked to him. So she sent him a text message.

“Sorry about earlier,” it said. “I’ve just been stressed out about other things. Want to meet me at the library? I want to see you.”

About 15 minutes later her boyfriend, Josh, walked up to her table on the second floor. He sat down and apologized as well for being stubborn. Then he gave her a look.

That look.

She knew what that look was for, and she whispered to him, “I can’t leave the library right now I have too much to do.”

But he told her it didn’t matter and winked. He motioned to one of the group study rooms. At first she thought he was crazy. There were people sitting right outside the room. Half of the door to the room was made of glass. There was no way. But then she got a rush of excitement and thought why not? It would be a great story to tell.

Alverston is certainly not the only college student who has performed sexual acts in public. One sophomore at Northeastern, who spoke under the condition of anonymity, said that part of her job when she worked at the library was to make sure no one was doing things “they weren’t supposed to be doing.”

Last year during Northeastern’s annual sex week, a magazine was put together full of articles about sex. The magazine was called “Stripped” and contained a list of “Top Ten Places to Have Sex on Campus.” The list included places like the college’s underground tunnel network and the saunas at the gym. Number one was the library.

“I know tons of people who have had sex in public places,” said Alverston, in a recent interview. “I thought it sounded fun but I never planned on actually doing it.”

Other students have admitted to similar sexual experiences, the scenes ranging from dorm showers to parking lots. Jordana Kerr, a sophomore psychology major at Northeastern admitted to doing the deed in one of the school’s indoor gymnasiums.

“I worked there life guarding,” said Kerr. “(My boyfriend and I) didn’t get a lot of alone time because we both had roommates. One night he came to visit me and we ended up having sex in the racquetball courts. It was thrilling and it was a fun experience.”

However, if someone were to get caught, the student conduct handbook mentions these types of incidents would be handled as “sexual misconduct.”

Despite prohibitions and threat of punishment, many popular television shows portray sex in public as a natural and desirable activity. An episode of Sex and the City deals with a man who can only have sex if he thinks he might get caught. An episode of Friends includes a discussion about the craziest place the characters had ever “done it.” Even Homer and Marge Simpson rekindle their sex life by doing the deed at a miniature golf course.

This generation did not invent the idea of having sex in a place besides a bed. The openness and in-your-face style however, is something new.

John D’Emilio, author of the book “Intimate Matters: A History of Sexuality in America,” thinks that every generation feels the need to be riskier than the one before it.

“It’s almost as if young people are pushing the boundaries one step further,” said D’Emilio. “Fifty years ago co-ed dorms didn’t exist, and now they do. And there’s no longer a curfew either. If you want to break the boundaries, you have to find a new way to do that.”

How Sex Has Changed

Public displays of affection are a pretty common sight around the streets of Barcelona. Media credit/mmoorr via Flickr

Alverston’s reason for having sex in the library was different from Kerr’s reason for having sex in the racquetball courts. Both of their parents however, probably didn’t think of performing a sexual act anywhere public, for any reason.

According to experts, each generation has had a different attitude about sex and adopted different ways of expressing themselves sexually as a reflection of the beliefs at the time. Sex in public did not used to be a normal practice. D’Emilio relates this trend back to the end of the 1800′s, when it was looked at with disgust.

“At the end of the nineteenth century there was public sex emerging,” said D’Emilio. “But it took place in neighborhoods that were deemed to be sex neighborhoods like red light districts where there was prostitution. This behavior was outrageous at the time.”

Those who were not labeled as outcasts of society kept sexual acts very private. It wasn’t until the emergence of automobiles and their growing popularity did that change. At a time when mobilization was much more plausible, couples began courting in their cars. Whether taking one another on dates to the movies or a remote place for privacy, sex began to move out of the bedroom for young people.

Sex was still relatively private though, and society built structure around this principle. Gina Ogden, a sexual therapist from Cambridge said sex was purposefully very repressed in the minds and practices of people in the past.

“Before and after the explosion of sex in the 60s and 70s, people were very constrained in their thinking of sex,” said Ogden. “There were male and female dorms. There was much less ability to be overtly sexual. During the Reagan years, I was a school psychologist at a boarding school. There was a big movement against ‘public display of affection,’ and people were getting expelled for holding hands. It was awful.”

The shift in how society views sex and also how people express themselves sexually has been a drastic one since then. D’Emilio thinks that societal acceptance plays a big role.

“What has really changed since then is that the assumption has become that young people will have sex before marriage. That’s just normal,” D’Emilio said. “It doesn’t push the boundaries.”

The filmmakers took a break between shots to adjust the camera and lighting for the next take. As they reviewed the previous shots, their star received a make-up touch-up. The bright lights were causing his white face paint and green hair dye to run.

When they were ready to resume, the actor once again repeated his lines, strutting around in his green vest and purple suit, flicking his tongue out over his lips in an awkward habit.

The filmmakers cut the scene and congratulated each other on the success. They were filming a new Batman movie that took place two months after the conclusion of July’s blockbuster, “The Dark Knight.” It was their first filming session, and the groups of filmmakers were making great progress.

Their star went to drink some water between takes and was greeted by the owner of the house they were filming in. “Nice makeup,” she said.

They were not on a sound stage or the lot of a billion-dollar production. The actor playing The Joker was not a Hollywood prima donna but mild-mannered 21-year-old Craig Deering of Illinois.

The house’s owner was Deering’s best friend and fellow film maker Allen Murphy’s great aunt Mary’s. While watching the filming, she told her nephew that while she always supported the arts and was glad to help, she had not expected college students running around her house dressed as Batman and an evil clown.

“She watched a little bit through a window and like peered in a couple time, and I think she might have freaked out a little bit,” said Deering.

“In my family, she should have known better,” Murphy, 20, joked.

With their initial success tucked away, the guys decided to venture into feature-length territory. (Photo by Dan Drake)

Deering and the rest of the filmmakers are part of Evil Iguana Productions. The group creates and posts their films on YouTube and suddenly blew up when they spoofed “The Dark Knight” trailer in the summer.

The filmmakers are a bunch of college kids who have been making movies together since high school with nothing but Deering’s father’s video camera and some editing software.

It wasn’t until July when the group released “The Dark Knight” spoof that they became stars. In the four months since its release, the video has received over 5 million views. Their new Batman movie is a follow-up to their spoof of “The Dark Knight” trailer that they released in July.

“I am like really happy that it is getting that good of reviews and like people are still watching because, honestly, when we were making it, and we were about to release it, I was so scared to release that video because I thought we were going to get shot down,” said Deering sitting down to chat with Blast recently. “(I thought) everyone was going to yell at us for like trying to spoof Batman and telling us it was crap, and I was expecting to take it down. But, all the positive feedback and stuff is great.”

Deering is the director and editor of all of the Evil Iguana videos, and also came up with the ideas for the “The Dark Knight” spoof, as well as the mockeries they made of “Twilight” and “The Number 23.”

–

After the success of their Batman spoof, Deering and the rest of Evil Iguana decided to venture into unknown territory — a 30 to 45 minute serious film about the Joker, set in Christopher Nolan’s Batman universe.

Deering said that making the drama was a challenge and a big change from their previous work.

“This is like by far the most professional we’ve been with a movie, which I thought was really cool, because usually we just get our camera and improvise a lot of stuff,” said Deering.

Two buds

“I was a total nerd (in middle school): big glasses, comb over. ‚ I think my graduating class was like 21, it was really small. I tried my best to fit in with the rest of the class, though‚ I was never considered one of the “cool” guys, but it was alright,” said Deering.

Today, Deering has people requesting to be his friend on Facebook whom he has never met but feel they know him through his Youtube series, “The Allen and Craig Show,” and his various film spoofs.

This is a Blast Magazine enterprise piece.

Robert Scholz took a deep breath as he carefully walked backwards up the stairs. In the distance he could hear shouts from the eager audience and the sound of the MC trying to hold their attention. Scholz tried to move a little faster, but his pace remained constant while friends assisted him from all sides.

He had to walk backwards up the stairs because he was on 10 inch stilts and could not lift his feet high enough to get up the stairs normally. He was off balance because his hands were partially attached to animatronics that controlled arm body armor. He was clad body armor because he was Canti, the friendly robot from the anime series “FLCL.” Scholz was performing in an animation masquerade competition, and the audience wanted their Canti.

Scholz reached the top of the stairs. The attendants in charge of the competition quickly helped him readjust his costume before he walked out onto the stage. They tucked the part of his ponytail that had fallen out from behind his LED mask into his headgear and straightened the jacket that covered his red chest plate. Some of the other contestants for the “master’s level” of the masquerade muttered under their breath about the duct tape being used to hold together Scholz’s leg armor, but all that mattered was that he was finally at the stage entrance in one piece.

Duct-tape or not, he was Canti, and the audience ate it up. Scholz/Canti had been so rushed getting up the stairs that his fingers were not entirely in the animatronic hand armor, making it look like he was giving the audience the middle finger. They didn’t care — they still screamed when he finally took the stage.

Scholz was performing in Anime Boston’s most popular event, the cosplay competition, called The Masquerade. To cosplay is to dress up as a character, — in this case from an anime – and act in their character. This was Scholz’s fifth year cosplaying, and he decided to sign up for the highest level of the contest.

It was only fitting that he wore a costume that took him three years to design and create.

The 5,000 audience members roared as Scholz performed his skit with his two friends. They were pretending that were playing Guitar Hero, and Canti was losing. Scholz accidentally dropped the toy guitar out of his hand because his arm armor had been put on too hastily. Instead of letting it ruin the skit, he just switched to the costume guitar that Canti always carried in the anime series.

By the time the skit was over, Scholz could barely see out of the costume’s visor, which cut off most of his vision. He was not focused on the noise going on around him. All that mattered was that he had finally accomplished what he had set out to do five years ago; compete in his Canti costume.

It took his friends’ wild gesturing at him to make him realize the MC was yelling to him.

“Hey, hey you! Giant red robot! Stop!” cried MC Michael Lee.

Scholz turned around to once again face the audience, and the lights in the auditorium suddenly went black. The audience gasped in wonder as the 204 LEDs attached to his outfit suddenly lit up and created a dazzling light show. By the time the house lights were turned back on, the audience was on its feet cheering for him.

“That’s why I cosplay from anime,” Scholz said, “because of how complete strangers give you praise for your skills at creating them.” 

Anime refers to Japanese animation, and is different from what most Americans view as cartoons. A popular example of anime is the smash hit from the 1990s, “Pok©mon”, which exemplifies what is broadly known as the anime “style.” The Japanese Times describes it as “exaggerated physical features such as large eyes, big hair and elongated limbs… and dramatically shaped speech bubbles, speed lines and onomatopoeic, exclamatory typography.”

Scholz said that he started watching anime when he was a kid. “But, like most of the US public we didn’t realize we were watching anime,” he said. “Rerun shows like ‘Speed Racer’ and ‘Battle for the Planets’ were some of the anime I watched back when I could actually willingly wake up before sunrise [to watch them].”

Scholz is the son of two German immigrants and a first generation American. He says because of that he tended to think “outside of the states” and that it was during his trips to Germany with his parents that he originally developed an interest in anime and manga. His parents supported his interest in a culture different from his own.

“I was the first person in middle school and high school to get onto the ‘Sailor Moon’ and ‘Dragon Ball Z’ kick,” Scholz said. When the animes were still aired on Sunday mornings, Scholz would set his alarm clock early enough to be able to watch them. After they were moved to weekday mornings, he learned to time driving to high school around them.

Anime originated in Japan in the 60s, but didn’t really begin to grow as a major cultural export until the 80s and 90s. While early hits began with “Robotech” and “Dragon Ball Z,” today’s American audiences are following hits like “Naruto” and “Bleach.”

These animes are more action-based, or “shonen,” animes and generally are geared towards young boys. They tend to focus around cultural aspects that are specific to Japan. “Naruto” follows the story of a boy who wants to be a ninja. “Robotech” and “Dragon Ball Z” both have to deal with select characters defending their worlds from alien invaders. They use advanced technology to achieve their aims.

Japan is well known for its advances in technology, and this obsession with machinery is evident in most animes. The weapons used in “Bleach,” such as the katana, mimick those used by samurai in feudal Japan. The fantastical elements and intense plot lines make it easy for young viewers to be drawn into the worlds created through these popular animes while accepting the subtle aspects of Japanese culture in them.

When animes are brought to American television, they are often altered in content to satisfy conservative television studios. The animes are dubbed English before they are aired, and the translation can end up being extremely different from the original dialogue.

For example, in one episode of the Japanese version of “Sailor Moon,” there is a scene where one of the characters is nervous about getting into a hot spring, but his parents convinced him it was okay because only family was in there as well. However, the English dub changed it so that the boy says the water smells funny, and his father replies with “That’s just the sulfur in the water, you’ll get used to it”, followed by his mother saying “It’s not so bad smelling like rotten eggs.” This changes the entire meaning of the scene.

Select scenes and even entire episodes can be cut from a series because the American distributors feel that it is unfit for children’s eyes. This was done infamously to Sailor Moon by the television distributor, DiC. In the first season, five of the original Japanese episodes were cut and two episodes were merged to one because of “excess violence”. Also, two of the characters who were lesbians in the original show became cousins in the American televised version.

Andrew Cocuaco, owner of the anime store Tokyo Kid in Cambridge, finds that anime addresses far more mature themes. “[Japanese] don’t have the same hang ups we do,” he said. “You see sexual themes addressed more in anime than you do in regular American television.”

Cocuaco finds that what tends to be aired on television stations like Cartoon Network are the more action-based and fighting animes, while the more intellectual animes like the movie “Five Centimeters Per Second” are left for viewers to discover on their own either from hearsay or via the Internet.

 ”[Anime] is written for adolescents with power fantasies,” he said.

Scholz watches whatever animes his friends introduce to him, be it the newest hit on Cartoon Network or an obscure title found on the Internet.

The UMASS Dartmouth student says that college life really increased his ability to watch anime. Not only did he have access to the internet on a daily basis in order to watch animes through file streaming and sharing, he also had the freedom to venture off to “indie places” in Providence.

He was first introduced to the idea of cosplaying in 2003 at the first Anime Boston convention. It was not until his friend suggested that he dress up for the next years’ convention that Scholz realized that anyone could cosplay, not just models hired for specific character advertisement. He decided to dress up as Vash the Stampede from the popular anime “Trigun”.

Backstage at the masquerade competition, Scholz was nervous about going out in front of the growing audience in his costume. When he peeked out from behind a pillar to look at the growing number of spectators, he was surprised at the screams of excitement his costume elicited from one group of girls.

After his performance, the masquerade coordinator took him aside from the other contestants and suggested that after he received his first award, he should run quickly from the stage because he would be receiving another. “This kind of took the fun out of waiting to find out if I won,” Scholz said. He received two trophies for his costume, as well as numerous prizes.

Anime Boston’s first convention in 2003 drew 4,110 people, including vendors and staff, and had only 14 exhibitors selling anime-related goods. The most recent convention in March drew over 14,000 with 66 vendors, including Cocuaco’s Tokyo Kid.

Scholz returned each year to Anime Boston with a cosplay costume bigger and better than ever. After over three years of working on the project, Scholz introduced his newest masterpiece: the robot Canti from the anime “FLCL”.

“Canti was an inspiration of both genius and insanity,” he says. “With the cosplay world increasing in talent and competing against my past creations I figured I’d go overboard.  I decided on Canti because it was challenging.  Oh, people cut out old computer monitors, but it wasn’t accurate in my eye and vision.”

Scholz pictured a Canti costume that was intricate and honored the anime’s depiction of the robot. In order to do this, he wanted to create a full body suit that would look similar to the metal body Canti had. Instead of the flimsy cardboard cutouts other contestants had used for heads, Scholz wanted to create a head mask that would be able to light up like Canti’s does multiple times during the series. He wanted to make himself into a robot.

The idea seemed brilliant when Scholz first imagined it in 2005. However, after being laid off from his job,  he did not have enough money to continue working on Canti. The fiberglass, plaster, and electronics were all expensive. Scholz was only able to work on building Canti for months at a time because the amount of time and effort it took to put together the pieces of the costume as well as his limited funds. That is why Canti took so long to complete.

“My parents didn’t like my cosplaying until after the first win and I started off to make the next one,” Scholz admits. “My friends enjoyed it; some were amazed by what I put into it. … But when I came to Canti and strived over those years when I had time from occupation and responsibilities, [my parents] found it fun to see it arise from its pieces and were happy to help here and there with electronics and fitting.”

Scholz says that Canti is still in progress, but he presented the costume for the masquerade competition at this year’s Anime Boston regardless. One of the judges said that they saw him as “a walking accessory”.

What the Canti costume did consist of were 204 LEDs, 20 of which were blinking, contained in 14 different sockets on the body armor. Scholz was stilted on 10 inches of piping and plywood covered in foam and fiber glass. He used basic hand animatronics to extend the arm lengths to keep them in proportion with the rest of the body. The body armor was constructed by making plaster shapes and fiber glassing over them.

The final height of the costume rounded out at about 7 and a half feet.

The future looks bright for anime lovers out there. Nickelodeon’s 2004 release of “Avatar: The Last Airbender” produced a show that was an American take on Japanese animation and ended up being extraordinarily popular with a large age-range.

“This equilibrium of thoughts and ideas has influenced a majority of US film and in return has sparked Japan’s creation.  I might be pushing it, but the world might be a better place when we have these medias intermixing,” said Scholz. “Not to say we’ll all become a bean pot, but I feel the growing generations in this time are more understanding and tolerant compared to past generations.”

“Maybe world peace will be found in the global sharing such as anime,” Scholz said. “Yeah, now there’s rambling.”

“I’m a big fan of blush. This right here is my secret,” the young man says, pulling out a small, circular tin from a cosmetics tray. “A little bit of this, just dab it on, it really adds a lot,” he says, running a large powder brush across the top of his hand.

In a tidy pinstriped suit, bright-blue shirt and golden geometric tie, this 24-year-old with long hair and light chin fuzz could be a grandson of the older woman resting inside the casket. But Tyler Pray is actually a young funeral director, the one who arranged this small service on behalf of an estranged sister who wanted to bury her broken relationship as soon as possible.

With the collar popped on his black trench coat, Tyler grasps a silver bar affixed along the side of a gray container. His father and grandfather help march it out a back door, balancing the weight within.

The three generations of Pray men stand in as pallbearers and family for the petite woman who spent her last few years in a wheelchair. Under soft, pink lighting, she appears asleep in such an unnatural position — hands crossed in front and glasses shielding her closed eyes. An assistant cranks the casket closed and the woman’s body slowly tilts back into place, her stiff, clasped hands freeze in the air as if reaching for one last handshake. The men lift her closed casket into a black hearse. Only 10 people show for the funeral. Two attend the burial.

Still, Tyler makes sure she looks great. He sets her hair in neat curls, dresses her in a stylish leopard-print blouse and brings her pale skin back to its natural glow. It’s a chance to do something for her that she can no longer do for herself.

“It doesn’t do anything to my skin, really, but something that’s really pale, like, look at our hands. They’re red. They’re fleshy. It just makes it look like there’s blood flowing through there again. Not that they’re alive, but just a more natural appearance.”

He flips the blush case over. “Oh god. This is so cheesy,” he says. “This is called Sparkling Wine.”

Reputation is important, not only in the bereavement business, but in this small community. The Pray family handles roughly 150 deaths each year in Charlotte, a town of 8,300 near Michigan’s capital of Lansing. Blunders in this small place don’t go unnoticed.

“I don’t want to put too much red on somebody … if they didn’t wear red lipstick,” Tyler says. “Same as with a man. I want to put color on his lips but look at my lips. They’re a pretty red. And I’m a guy not wearing any makeup.

“When I first introduce people to their person in the casket, a lot of times I’ll kind of read and listen to them, ask them if everything’s OK. And people say, “God she looks terrible. There’s too much red on her.’”

Families suffer the most intense episodes when they enter the home and see their deceased for the first time, he says. They hug and cry uncontrollably; some collapse. But that’s how they deal. And sometimes, the Prays are all that families have. Tyler is most proud when someone says their dead relative — not breathing, laughing, smiling like they once did — looks good.

“People who don’t get a chance to have this final moment always seem to be disconnected with what’s really happening,” he says. “Like it’s not true. Like they’re going to come home tomorrow. But they’re not.”

Tyler walks all of 60 feet to work through a back alley from an old, gray colonial, one of three houses the family owns. It’s a prime location for a job with no set schedule. And he’s made it a hub for his creativity. He stands at the kitchen table flipping through some poetry publications that arrived in the mail today. In another room, a guitar stands upright on display and an old typewriter rests on his desk, both ways for Tyler to turn out inspiration. He’s particular about his feng shui, too, demonstrating how the mounted flat panel TV looks cleaner when the DVD rack isn’t directly underneath. He says the spacious apartment is a peaceful getaway from the extreme hours next door.

This is a Blast Magazine enterprise piece.

Anthony* sits on his bed across from two friends in his Boston apartment. There’s a fan blowing next to his bed. Dave Matthews Band is playing in the background as he takes out his bong and begins to pack it with Salvia extract, a legal drug that grows in the mountainous region of Oaxaca, Mexico. Anthony purchased the drug earlier that day at Kang’s Corner, a head shop and convenience store located on the corner of Gainsborough Street and St. Stephen Street.

The senior music major at Northeastern University takes two hits from the bong and looks at his friends and shrugs. He hasn’t felt anything yet. He then packs the bong again and takes another two hits, this time inhaling more deeply, and for a few moments he appears to be in another world.

“Can I have a glass of water?” Anthony asks his friend. He grips the glass with both hands and seems to be struggling to bring it to his mouth, claiming that the fan is going to blow him away.

Anthony gives up on trying to drink the water. Still holding the glass, he is staring at his friends with a confused look. As he is clearly entering into a deeper stage in his trip Anthony asks, "Who put on the tribal music?"

His reaction demonstrates just some of the effects of smoking Salvia divinorum leaves or extract, sometimes know as Diviner’s Sage. Besides hallucinations, other effects include altered perceptions, change in body temperature and panic. Often among college students like Anthony, Salvia has recently become popular because of its unique effects. It’s also legal in almost every state.

“It’s like your mind is thrown into a centripetal force. Like it’s being pulled away from itself,” said Chris*, who extracts and sells Salvia on his Web site, www.salvialight.com.

Salvia is legal in most states. Other drugs like cocaine, LSD and ecstasy were once legal as well. They were used in a controlled manner for scientific, medicinal and therapeutic purposes. But once the general public got a hold of these drugs and began abusing them, they became regulated and controlled substances.

Dr. Ara DerMarderosian believes the popularity of Salvia has increased because other drugs are not readily available.

"Young people decided they’d get high on something else," said the professor of pharmacology at University of the Sciences in Pennsylvania.

The recreational misuse of Salvia might lead to increased regulations in the rest of the country, according to DerMarderosian.

"It depends on the generation. If enough people get hurt, eventually it will become illegal," said DerMarderosian.

Brett Chidester, 17, of Wilmington, Del., committed suicide earlier this year after smoking Salvia. He left a suicide note describing the experiences he had with Salvia, claiming he knew the secrets of life. Sen. Karen Peterson (D – DE) is now trying to get a bill passed that will ban Salvia in the state.

So far, Chidester’s is the only reported incident in which injury appears to be a direct result from using Salvia. For now, Salvia continues to be sold legally, mostly available on the Internet and in head shops.

In 2004, researchers conducted a survey on Salvia, which questioned 500 people and found that certain effects of the drug lingered in some people. For example, 47 percent of those questioned claimed to have increased insight. Also, about 32 percent of users felt like they were floating and claimed that things felt unreal to them.

"I expected it would have the same effect on the brain as LSD does, and was very surprised when they found out it did not. It was very different than anything we’d seen before," said Jay McLaughlin, a psychology professor at Northeastern University. "Right now, the psychological effects differ, but many people will suffer hallucinations.”

Why Salvia affects the brain the way it does remains a mystery to scientists.

About five minutes after Anthony took those last two hits from his bong, he came back to reality.

"Whoa. That was ridiculous," he said groggily, rubbing his eyes. He looks at his friends. "I swear you two turned into trees and I was walking through a forest in this like Tarzan outfit. I mean, I could feel myself sitting on the bed, but I was definitely not here."

Although not primarily popular in the United States in the past, Salvia has been around for hundreds of years, experts say.

Salvia is a plant native to the mountainous region of Oaxaca, Mexico, according to Eduardo Butelman, a research assistant professor at Rockefeller University in New York. Indigenous people use it for traditional medicinal practices, Butelman said.

Salvia has been associated with the Mazatec people, who likely used it in healing rituals, researchers say. According to Butelman, Salvia was used under specific conditions, prescribed in the form of a leaf. The Mazatecs used it to ease the suffering that the sick and dying felt. It was also used to treat certain medical conditions, including headaches, anemia and rheumatoidism, as well as in divination rituals.

Salvia has been found to grow specifically in the Sierra Mazateca region of Oaxaca. The Aztec people inhabited this region between the 13th and 16th centuries, so there has been some speculation as to whether or not they knew of Salvia as well.

"It’s a form of communication with a higher force," said Chris, who uses Salvia as well as sells it.

Editor’s note: The names of some interview subjects have been changed for their comfort and protection.

This is a Blast Magazine Enterprise piece.

Sitting up against a mound of pillows legs stretched over a deep blue comforter Mike and his girlfriend are like any other couple studying on a Sunday afternoon. She is frustrated that she hasn’t mastered her Italian flash cards and keeps repeating verb conjugations. Their feet are flirtatiously entangled while Mike stares intently into a large history notebook.

With a slam of a flash card she gives Mike a frustrated look and he intuitively reaches for a blue box that’s sitting on the nightstand. He pulls out a blue and green swirled pipe followed by a bag of marijuana. A smile crosses Mike’s face as he fills the pipe and passes it to his girlfriend. She lights it, breaths in deeply and the room fills with a thin fog of smoke.

Mike then lights the pipe, breaths in, chuckles and said, "I smoke every day and I make dean’s list. Smoking quiets everything in my mind so I can concentrate."

The days of the “stoners” lying on the grass in hippie attire, munching on snacks and going nowhere with their lives has disappeared. The typical “stoner” has been replaced with a well-dressed, put-together college student who does well in school and blends in seamlessly with the rest of the student body. The magical marijuana that allowed the cast of the movie “How High” to ace their Harvard entrance exam may be closer to the reality then once believed. Students are smoking cannabis while studying, writing papers and taking tests and doing extremely well while they’re at school.

Scientist and doctors have been searching for data to back up this phenomenon, but have only come to a few contradicting theories. There is evidence to back up the hypothesis that marijuana has no negative long-term memory effects on a smoker, even a long-term user. Yet, there is little tangible evidence to the short-term effects of cannabis smoking.

"I have seen this claim made," said Dr. Lester Grinspoon author of several books on the subject including Marihuana Reconsidered and retired faculty member at Harvard Medical School. "I have come across it in anecdotal literature but there is little hard science."

The stereotype that intellectual cannabis smokers are diverging from can be seen in Kevin Smith’s infamous stoner characters Jay and Silent Bob, who hang out in front of a convenient store all day only moving to smoke a joint around back.

The "stoner" label can also be seen in the movie "Dazed and Confused" as the main character decides to throw away his chances with the football team, joint in hand.

"I think there is a stereotype that people who smoke pot are stoners, and I don’t consider myself a stoner," said Mike. "With the whole stoner connotation comes the idea that you are not able to do well in school when you’re high and I do very well in school."

***

Acclaimed as a gateway drug marijuana is the most common used illegal drug in the United States according to the National Institute of Drug Abuse. Marijuana, which attracted 2.6 million new users in 2002 alone, has no long-term effects or addiction.

"There is no physical dependency so you can stop smoking whenever," said James Scorzelli a psychology professor at Northeastern University who specializes in drug addiction.

Marijuana is an unusual drug because there is no withdrawal associated with quitting smoking marijuana. It also is an abnormal drug because there are no long-term effects other than the respiratory ramifications that go along with smoking anything.

"Marijuana does not have any permanent toxicity to the brain. It returns to the same as someone’s who does not smoke," said Harrison Pope, a professor of psychiatry at Harvard University, who has studied the residual effects, the effects of marijuana after you stop smoking, at McLean Hospital.

The general effects of marijuana can be harmful, but not everyone experiences the same negative or positive effects when smoking.

"In terms of the effects of marijuana there is an increase in blood pressure and heart rate, loss of precision skills, short term memory loss, paranoia, relaxation, calmness, a heightening of emotion," said Scorzelli. "If your happy then you become more happy if you are stressed then you become more stressed. Other effects are sleepiness, poor coordination, and increase in apatite."

***

There is no explanation for the increased concentration some associate with smoking marijuana.

Scientist have come across little consistency in their findings because the drug effects people in different ways. Some believe that marijuana works like Ritalin or Adderall and allows students who have attention deficit disorder to clear their minds and concentrate on their work. Others connect the ability to study while under the influence and then recall the information during an exam to a psychological learning theory called state dependent learning.

"State dependent learning is that if a person studies under a condition and takes a test some suggest that they would be able to remember that information while in that state," said Dr. Ethan Russo founder of Journal of Cannabis Therapeutics.

State dependent learning is a psychological theory that can be applied to studying information in any state whether under a chemical influence such as marijuana or an emotional state for example depression. The theory also states that if you learn information while under the influence of a drug then you might not be able to recall it again until you are under the influence again.

Some believe that this theory can be incorporated with the Q theory, another psychology term, in order to explain the effects of marijuana on learning.

"States of drug intake can be Q’s and the Q’s guide certain behavior," said James Stellar, dean of Northeastern University’s college of arts and sciences and psychology professor.

"If you do a certain drug with someone you begin to associate the drug with the person. Almost to the level that if person X always gives you a drug when you smell their cologne you can revert to the behavior of the drug.”

Therefore it can be inferred that the state of mind you achieve through smoking along with the smell and feelings that relate to the experience could work as a Q to remembering the information studied.

"For some people it is useful, for example a student who has hyperactive ADD syndrome," said Grinspoon. "I have several patients who suffer from the syndrome who have trouble organizing their thoughts."

Dr. Grinspoon has worked with many patients who suffer from this syndrome. The problem that people who have ADD face while studying is the inability to concentrate or focus on the task at hand.

"There is one case with a student who used marijuana and then was willing to not use marijuana for a few weeks. It is true, we took it away and it did impact his success in a negative way."

The science behind the intellectually beneficial effects of smoking marijuana may remain a mystery simply because the areas of the brain it is associated with, one being the endocrine system are newly discovered and are not fully understood.

"There are lots of very bright people who use marijuana and they have the impression this is useful to them," said Grinspoon."I find it difficult to say yah or nay on the whole, it can be less than useful for many youth… there is certainly not a dispute that some people have used it in a constructive way with their school work."

***

The main evidence behind the idea that students are able to study, take tests and write papers high on marijuana is based in the anecdotal testimony given by people who regularly follow this practice.

"When I was in college I started interning at high times, I went to classes high and took a lot of tests high and I did very well," said Bobby Black writer for High Times, a magazine based on marijuana culture. "One class I took was logic, mathematical and philosophical, and the teacher loved my input."

Black contributes some of his success in the class, scoring A’s on both his midterm and final, with the increase in concentration and efficiency he gained when smoking marijuana.

"Being high can help you even more because when your brain gets an idea, on an idea, it really runs with it, it can help you focus like you forget about everything else," said Black. He also point out that this practice does not work for everyone, "If your not used to smoking all the time then you can’t function, but if you do it everyday its your regular phase, it’s like a switch."

While some students study, take tests and write papers purposely under the influence of marijuana others have experienced the intellectual effects purely because of circumstance.

"It’s not something that I do on purpose. I know it helps some people focus, for me it’s I have to study and I am high," said Sarah, a junior political science major.

Sarah is an example of someone who is able to learn and recall information while under the influence of marijuana. This ability can be accredited to the state dependent learning theory. Smoking is not an essential factor in her studying, which can be the case for someone who suffers from ADD who uses marijuana to clear the head.

"Sometime I can relate to the material more, sometimes I have been procrastinating for a while and I just happen to be high. It’s sort of something I can do, not something I have to do to concentrate," said Sarah. "It is easier for me to write papers, the thoughts flow better."

Sean, a sophomore political science major, who does not directly attribute his academic success to smoking marijuana, has seen a decline in his grades since he was forced to quit for his co-op’s drug test.

"Its been six weeks since I quite smoking and my grades are lower, I don’t know if it is because I quit or my classes just got harder," said Sean. "My personal opinion is that it has no bearing on how well you do or how well you study. I don’t think it has an effect, negative or positive."

Though there is some ambiguity on their reliance of smoking marijuana while doing school work, all agree that smoking does help them clear their minds, focus on their work, and organize their thoughts.

"Don’t let anyone tell you that people who smoke all the time aren’t logical," said Black. "I work high all the time and I get everything done."

***

The legalization of marijuana is a debate across the country, drawing opinions from regular smokers, government officials, medical experts and the general public. Many organizations have formed for the sole purpose of legalizing marijuana.

"We support the decriminalization of marijuana for consenting adults," said Jessica Goshor, director or member service for The National Organization for Reform of Marijuana Laws called NORML. "We participate in lobbying on a state national and local level."

The future of marijuana, the people who use it and the ability to obtain it is unknown. Some people believe that the legalization of marijuana is imminent based on the lack of dependency and its popularity. Others believe the day when you can buy a joint at the corner store will never come.

"I think that it has the potential to help a lot of people," said Megan, a junior criminal justice major. "I also understand that there are a lot of other drugs that have been proved to be the same if not less harmful as marijuana that are still illegal. Like some of the studies that proved ecstasy is harmful have been disproved, so if you legalize marijuana you would have to legalize that too."

The decriminalization of marijuana means that first-time offenders found with a small amount of marijuana intended for personal use will not receive fines, prison time or a record. In Massachusetts where possession of marijuana is considered a misdemeanor the same offender can receive six months in jail and a fine of $500.

"12 states in the U.S. including states as close as Maine have already decriminalized 1 ounce or less of marijuana," said Bill Downing Director of the Massachusetts Cannabis Reform Coalition Inc. "They comprise almost half of the population of America, so half of the people in the US live in states that have decriminalized marijuana."

Downing explains that many first- time offenders in Massachusetts do not receive the maximum punishment. "Most people’s cases have been continued without finding for a period of time, usually 6 months, then it is usually dropped and the person will only have to pay court fees which is from $60- $100."

Where a person lives can determine the charges they will be faced with. Those in who live in a city are at a greater risk because of the close proximity to schools, elderly housing and public housing. This puts students in an urban school setting, like Northeastern at a greater risk for being charged with the crime of possession with intent to distribute.

"I think legalizing it is a good idea for a number of reasons," said Sarah. "It could be better regulated and taxed, so it could benefit the government; in some ways it’s like alcohol, lifting the prohibition helped. I think it will never happen because of the federal government and the Christian Evangelists who are running the show."

The new college "stoner" that has broken the mold could soon be able to smoke legally. The potential national legalization of marijuana may not be imminent, but there are many states that are working toward or have successfully decriminalized possession of marijuana.

"I think that it adds to my quality of life and my educational experience," said Megan, who regularly does her school work while under the influence of marijuana. "There are a lot of people who feel the same way and I think that will lead to the legalization."

This is a Blast Magazine enterprise piece.

From an actual Internet Conversation:

BOSTONCHIC:
What’s up for tonight? Any plans? Any idea how Friday looks for lunch?

MUSTANGXX:
Friday ain’t gonna work. I promised my wife I’d go into town with her tomorrow night to go to dinner with some of her friends.

BOSTONCHIC:
I understand about tomorrow. Let me ask you a question though and be totally honest, ok babe? Would you rather scrap the idea about meeting altogether? I feel like I’m badgering you.

MUSTANGXX:
Of course I want you to keep harassing me about getting together!!! Because one of these days, when the time is right, I’m going to absolutely surprise you and show up! I promise

Dana, also known as “BostonChic,” pulls her red Jeep onto a side street next to her South Boston apartment. "It’s nearly impossible to get this good of parking at night," she said, turning off the engine. Jacketless in November, she walks through the dark alley surrounded by mist and has her key ready when she reaches the front door.

Inside, the hallway smells of potpourri, powder and perfume. The light blue walls and twig wreath hanging on a nail on the front door are comforting signs of home. Keys still in hand, Dana unlocks her door and steps into a small but cozy, modern-deco apartment. She kicks her blue Crocs off in front of the stove, revealing a festive red pedicure–fit for the holiday season–and puts on a pot of coffee. Homemade corn bread sits on the wooden cutting block and she cuts two thick slices.

The picture of domesticity, she takes a seat at the kitchen table, pulls up the sleeves of her gray sweater and blows on her coffee to cool it. Later, after she’s settled in and calmed down from a hectic day working in downtown Boston, Dana will curl her legs under her on the couch, pop open her black laptop and continue a chat she started earlier that day with one of the married men she’s having sex with. There’s been X and Y and Z. Lately, she’s been thinking about adding Q. But tonight, she’s got her sights on her favorite, a man she calls K.

BOSTONCHIC:
Thank you so much for coming out and having lunch with me K. It was great meeting you after all this time. I’m looking forward to getting together again.

MUSTANGXX:
Hey sexy. Thanks for having me down. I had a great time, I’m sorry it took this long for us to finally get together. I can’t wait to do it again….

Thirty-eight-years-old and single, Dana is a savvy Internet guru when it comes to finding what she wants online: sex, especially with married men. Jaded from the dating world and countless first meetings gone awry, many people have turned to the Internet as the quickest and easiest method to fulfill physical needs without the strings.

With a temporary, self-imposed dating ban, Dana is simply looking online for companionship and someone with whom she could spend a few secret hours every once in a while. And the Internet has made her search for hassle-free, no-fuss sex easily.

"It’s convenient,” she admitted. “I don’t have time to go to a bar or a club and pick someone up.”

This is a Blast Magazine enterprise piece.

The youth of the 1960s made an indelible impression on future generations. They clung to ideals hoping to change the world. They reacted to the turbulent times they’d found themselves in by living in the moment. They couldn’t be contained or restrained or controlled.

Edie Sedgwick epitomizes all that was good and bad about growing up in the sixties. She is an icon for Baby Boomers and has become an idol for today’s “Echo Boomers.”

She didn’t consider herself a rebel. She considered herself a “life artist” and wanted to use her medium to tell a story to parents a generation above her.As Sedgwick once told The New York Times “It is not that I’m rebelling. It’s that I’m just trying to find another way.”

"The thing she wanted to say the most was that there was a lot of hypocrisy with the way things had been in the 50s,” said Melissa Painter, co-author of a new book, “Edie: Girl on Fire,” that includes an audio CD of the “Ciao! Manhattan” tapes, her last recorded interviews. “She wanted to be honest… in an outrageous sort of way."

Sedgwick was much more than aspirational stereotypes allow. She wasn’t simply a socialite; she was glitterati personified. She wasn’t a model; she was a fashion trendsetter and style catalyst. She was not an actress; she was a film star and a muse for filmmakers.

She was brilliant and beautiful beyond words; passionate, playful, spontaneous and reckless.

Today, Sedgwick entices men with her sexuality and her uninhibited soul. She attracts women who want to be like her. Yet she’s been dead for 35 years.

Edie’s History

Sedgwick was born on April 20, 1943, to Alice Delano de Forest Sedgwick and Frances Minturn Sedgwick. Both came from wealthy, well-connected families. Born Edith, she was their sixth child, and grew up in a ranch in California. Her artist father was an adulterous alcoholic; her eccentric mother turned the other cheek at his indiscretions.They sent Edie to boarding school at 13; at 18 she was sent to Silver Hill, a New Canaan, Conn. mental hospital, to treat depression and an eating disorder. When that facility didn’t prove effective, her father admitted her to notoriously strict Bloomingdale, a psychiatric hospital in nearby White Plains, N.Y. While out on a pass from Bloomingdale, she made love with a handsome Harvard man and got pregnant. Edie shared on the Ciao! Manhattan tapes, “I was pregnant and I had psychiatric permission, you know, I could get an abortion without any hassle at all. And then after that, experiences I had making love, I found I had all sorts of hangups.”

Eventually, she left Bloomingdale and headed to straight to Cambridge, Mass., fraternizing with Harvard students and graduates and managing to find ‘the Bohemian epicenter’ in that community.

In 1964, Sedgwick inherited a trust fund from her maternal grandmother and moved to New York. When she arrived in Manhattan, she enjoyed an exorbitant lifestyle, one that included heavy use of amphetamines and alcohol. She shopped, danced, and socialized in an outlandish and extravagant way. In no time, she earned herself a reputation as the party girl to meet and in so doing, attracted legendary singer/songwriter Bob Dylan and influential pop-artist Andy Warhol. She knew she had become both famous and infamous; she herself said on the “Ciao! Manhattan” tapes, “Wherever I’ve been, I’ve been quite notorious.”

Warhol and Edie fell in love platonically but intensely, and their mutually beneficial relationship became the talk of the town. By her side, Warhol found himself on the guest list of upper-crust soirees. With his direction, Sedgwick found herself appearing on film for the first time.

"Very soon," Warhol said of his favorite muse in the book, “POPism: The Warhol Sixties,” a collaborative effort between Warhol and his diarist Pat Hackett. "Edie would be innovating her own look that Vogue, Life, and Time and all the other magazines would photograph — long, long earrings with dime store t-shirts over dancer’s tights with a white mink coat thrown over it all."