Making Movies

The shark in “Jaws” terrorizes tourists at an Edgartown beach… Jack Nicholson resides at an Ipswich mansion in “The Witches of Eastwick”… Richard Dreyfuss frequents an Arlington rotary in “Once […]

The first time John Janeczek was laid off — from a marketing job at Pittsfield giant General Electric — he scoured the want ads, fired off resumes and landed a […]

For someone who calls himself an “evangelist,” Ken Granderson looks little like the local preacher. Wearing a pressed white shirt, paisley tie and round tortoise-shell glasses, he clicks away at […]

The mystique starts with her name. Orit Gadiesh. How do you pronounce it anyway? Is she Arab? Israeli, then. Almost six feet tall in four-inch heels. Rumored to have been […]

Pat Cusick, a longtime fighter for the low-income residents of Boston’s South End, ought to know better than to get his hopes up. As executive director of the South End […]

The sign has been gone for a while. Route 128: AMERICA’S HIGH-TECH HIGHWAY, it boasted — the waymark of a boom that went bust almost a decade ago. Today, if […]

In the eyes of the political partisan, the world is made up of (1) the enemy, (2) crusaders against the enemy, and (3) compromisers, middle-of-the-roaders, and weak-kneed trimmers who defer […]

The Witch Doctors: Making Sense of the Management GurusBy John Micklethwait & Adrian WooldridgeTimes Books, New York, 1996, 369 pages. Dangerous Company: The Consulting Powerhouses and the Businesses They Save […]

A curious corollary to the anti-politics of the 1980s and 1990s — to the pervasive desire to throw the bums out — has been the wish to replace them with […]

There are any number of nightmares that disturb the average developer’s sleep: an environmentalist with a lawsuit; an unscrupulous partner with connections to the Cayman Islands; a crash-course familiarity with […]

Massachusetts has become, in some ways, a more affordable place to do business, according to research by the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation. In 1993, when MTF released its first report on […]

Gina Gonzalez was struggling to raise two children on welfare, food stamps and a loan from her sister when the flier arrived at her Lowell apartment last summer. A new […]

Term limits are a solution that cannot work, to a problem we do not have. Enacted by the voters in 1994, under prodding from the anti-government crowd, the law has […]

Congressman Barney Frank is one of our most able and progressive legislators. I usually agree with him, but this time he has it wrong–a New Bedford casino will not bring […]

The case in favor of a gambling casino in New Bedford run by the Wampanoag Indians is straightforward. This is a proposal to let adults do what they wish to […]

Not long ago, getting a license plate for your car was a simple matter of standing in a long line at the Registry of Motor Vehicles, and then exchanging a […]

You can’t buy a lottery ticket in Leverett, a tiny town about 10 miles north of Amherst, but the people there still come up winners. Leverett’s town treasury took in […]

Changing times: Citizens for Limited Taxation, a group that has been a factor in Massachusetts politics since the 1970s, has expanded its mission. Executive Director Barbara Anderson has merged her […]

Designed especially for policy wonks, activists, and civic-minded cyberspace cruisers, the following is a special CommonWealth Guide to the World Wide Web. Not all information is created equal; herewith are […]

Dian Chaisson knows what it’s like to lose a job–several jobs, in fact. The Gardner native was laid off three times in two years: once from her secretarial job at […]

Life Support: Three Nurses on the Front LinesBy Suzanne GordonLittle, Brown and Company, Boston, 352 pages.It’s a tough time to be a nurse. My downstairs neighbor, a registered nurse, drags […]

No equivocation, then. “The land where the gold grasshopper swings above Faneuil Hall to the bidding of a damp east wind,” in other words Boston, has never been decanted more […]