Well obviously I’m going to lightbulb-moth all over a record called Bury The Lede, and you might as well, too. This is the latest release from Dessa, who at 42 can still drop a banging album that both luxuriates in heartbreak and reveals new parts of her artistic sensibility. Typically, Dessa codes as indie, but she always seems to be trying new genres on for size, and what this album suggests is that she’s moving on from her rap era to pop. I’ll draw your attention in particular to “Tell Me Again,” a track that a friend of mine refers to as “Dessa Does Robyn.” That makes it one of the best in the batch — you can tell it’s where she’s having the most fun. Do you also like to have fun? Great news: you can.
Please tell me your reaction to this NYT headline: “In Pricey London, Parks Are A Cherished Haven.” Surely there must be something of substance there, right? An economic breakdown of how Londoners survive such high rents and such low salaries. A study on how abundant green space relaxes stressed urban minds. Nope. The gist of the story truly is that the people love the park, which, forgive me for being a jaded New Yorker, but no shit? “On any given sunny day in London’s outdoor living rooms, people date, celebrate and communicate with friends, strangers and nature,” reports the reporter. This is honestly the description an alien would give of life on earth, which I take it to mean that said reporter must have a very large personal yard.* Perhaps she’ll invite some of her neighbors one day, should they ever have occasion to interact. *To be clear, I know nothing about this reporter and she has done other good and serious work, and it is an editor’s job to make sure a story has a point. On that note, I would read more actual stories about parks!
Sorry if that was unnecessarily cranky, I really just wanted to talk about infrastructure. Let’s start fresh and see how they’re approaching it in New England, shall we? We all grew up hearing about what an embarrassment the Big Dig was: The most expensive public works project in American history, it was a textbook boondoggle, plagued by constant delays, cost increases, scandals and investigations. But once it finally got done, the results were wonderful: the Zakim Bridge, the Greenway, easy trips through downtown Boston and to the airport. Not to mention, the project was actually conceived by anti-highway activists who wanted to restore the livable heart of the city. So how do we square it when a project born out of idealism turns into a national laughing stock, then delivers on its promises, but remains a joke in the cultural memory even so? That’s the question that my buddy Ian Coss asks in his WGBH podcast about The Big Dig, which, for him, is the starting point for how we approach infrastructure in America. We tend to view big projects with cynicism, he says — that tendency to shake our heads and laugh every time we hear about a new delay in the California High Speed Rail, or another obstacle for the new Hudson River Tunnel. Why do we expect these things to fail? This being a podcast, we’ll have to look at history for answers. This story basically picks up where The Power Broker leaves off and gives you the next half-century: the end of the Interstate era, the rise of the environmental movement, the move towards privatization and small government. If you want to understand the way our country does and doesn’t build infrastructure today, get into The Big Dig.
