After a long bike ride from Allston in the seventy-degree heat, the bay was absolutely alluring, glistening in the late afternoon sun. Short, deep blue waves rippled toward the shore and, my T-shirt soaked through in back with sweat, I was tempted to take a refreshing plunge.

Luckily, common sense got the better of me. It will be a few months before the water will have warmed to a tolerable level; even in summer, the ocean stays chilly. Plus the bay is uncomfortably close to the airport. And an industrial park. And Dorchester. Given the kind of runoff in the bay, I’m amazed no one has ever climbed from the water with extra limbs sprouting from their foreheads.

Still, the bay is one of my favorite places in the city. Though the beaches aren’t appealing—except on the hottest summer days, or after midnight bike rides—the scenery is incredible. The city skyline looms in the distance, and small islands lie scattered just off the coast. The bay is also home to Fort Independence.

Fort Independence, with the bay to the left, and the open sea to the right (Image courtesy of Google Maps)

Built in the early 1800s on the magically named Castle Island, the fort offers tours for the curious, and serves as a unique backdrop for picnicers. I mean, how many places have such intriguing names? Castle Island.

I remember a few years back when the participants of a midnight bike ride I attended were debating where to trek. Ideas were tossed out, debated, and ultimately shot down. Until a murmur broke out—Castle Island. Those of us who hadn’t been there before were immediately enthralled. Castle Island? Are there castles? And dragons? And how can we bike to an island?

Despite dozens of trips back, I am still delighted by the site of the fort seemingly floating out in the bay.  Riding there today gave me the same feeling, and, as always, I can’t wait to go back.

Yet even I’m having a hard time feeling good about the Bruins score-settling with the Pittsburgh Penguins.

Last night, the teams met for the first time since the Pens’ Matt Cooke blindsided Bruins Center Marc Savard with an elbow to the face that dropped Savad unconscious to the ice. Savard suffered a Grade 2 concussion and will miss the rest of the season.

Bruins center Marc Savard being attended to after suffering a Grade 2 concussion (Photo by Justin K. Aller/Getty Images)

Since that game eleven days ago, the Bruins publicly stewed over the questionable hit, and the league’s decision not to suspend Cooke; officials did not rule the hit a penalty during the game and, after a video review, the league decided not to level any punishment. Former Bruin Bobby Orr, who was honored last night along with other Bruins from the 1970 championship team, even said that had his team been tasked with retaliating, the retribution would have been so severe as to land them in jail.

So when the two teams squared off again last night, the Bruins wasted no time getting even. Five seconds after Cooke first stepped on the ice and Bruin’s resident enforcer Shawn Thornton  had his gloves off. Smirking, Thornton circled in, ripped off Cooke’s helmet and leveled him with a few vicious blows. Thornton’s manhandling was so determined—as officials separated the two, Thornton pulled Cooke close for a few parting jabs— that he was given a ten minute misconduct penalty in addition to the standard five minutes for fighting.

The near unanimous consensus is that the Bruins did what had to be done. They carried out hockey justice, a noble code of conduct never spoken of, and found only chiseled on the surface of a frozen pond somewhere in northern Canada.

The Globe’s sports section today had a full page of praise split between three articles, two of which jump from page one. And while the articles criticize the overall lethargy of the Bruins in last night’s shutout loss, they are unwavering in their approval of Thornton’s retribution.

This all seems incredibly brutish and unnecessary. I understand that violence is inherent in a contact sport like hockey. I understand the desire to protect teammates. And I understand the desire for revenge—I’m still plotting how to destroy my first grade nemesis.

But this sort of tough guy posturing is what makes me want to hate sports. A fast break trick shot? Awesome. Two toothless dudes jawing , wrestling, and falling to the ice? Not interested. I don’t care about inflated egos, and I don’t think cheap shots are any way to even up for cheap shots. If anything, they only encourage more of this stupidity.

There’s that great Gandhi quote, “An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.” To me, this is a lot like that, only with concussions and permanent brain damage.

©DirectoryofBoston.com

President Obama recently honored certain colleges and universities for their community service work.  Simmons College is one of 4 Massachusetts Colleges that received the Honor Roll with Distinction Award.

Through this LearnandServe program Obama hopes to foster more community involvement from the colleges and universities in the United States.

The award is set up so that you can be recognized for your contributions at 3 levels.  You can almost look at it like the Gold, Silver and Bronze.  The Gold is the President’s Award, the Silver is the Honor Roll with Distinction and the Bronze is the Honor Roll.  Given the amount of colleges being recognized and Massachusetts high amount of colleges I was surprised not to find some of the better known colleges and universities like Harvard, MIT and Boston University.

Though Massachusetts did not make the list of 6 that received the most distinguished award they had 4 on the list of Honor Roll with Distinction and 29 on the Honor Roll list.  The Honor Roll with Distinction winners are:

• Bay State College
• College of the Holy Cross
• Emmanuel College
• Simmons College

The colleges and universities were honored in two categories: general community service, which considers the scope and quality of an institution’s community service, service-learning, and civic engagement programs; and service to youth from disadvantaged circumstances.

The Boston area Colleges on the above list have structured programs designed to facilitate community service from their students.  Simmons College for example:

During the 2008-2009 academic year, the Simmons College Scott/Ross Center for Community Service engaged more than 2,600 students in community service activities. Through the Scott/Ross Center for Community Service, students took part in a variety of tutoring and mentoring partnerships with community schools and organizations. For example, last year management students created a financial literacy program for inner city high school students, presenting them with information about short and long-term savings, identity theft, and cell phone plans.

These are great examples of the intangible value that living in an area where we have so many higher education institutions.  The full list can be found here.  I for one know that we can do even better next year, both in representation on the list and in even higher honors.  Congrats on all who made the lists!

A much drier Saint Patrick's parade marches through South Boston in 2007 (Photo Credit: Javier Garcia-Albea)

So much for the luck of the Irish.

Despite torrential rain and 30 mile per hour gusting winds, Boston’s Saint Patrick’s Day parade stepped off right on schedule yesterday afternoon. And while all the moisture is sure to nourish some festive green back into the city, yesterday’s pervasive gray only made for a dour parade climate.

Thousands of marchers still splashed through South Boston, while the Irish by lineage and the Irish by Guiness looked on in celebration of whatever it was Saint Patrick did. Ah, Saint Patrick’s Day, a holiday that, like all major holidays, has had its original significance quickly forgotten and replaced by a loosely tangential, typically commercial, celebration.  So like Halloween, when children everywhere remember the deceased by gorging themselves on Pay Days, St. Patrick’s Day too now is now celebrated with cheap costumes and gluttony.

Boston is unique, though, in that it shows a sense of Irish pride every day, not only around St. Patrick’s. The city boasts rich Irish heritage and a still vibrant, if diminished, Irish community. Shamrocks adorn tourist merchandise; our basketball team is named the Celtics. While there are still those who gleefully celebrate what they see only as an honorary day for getting wasted, the overall sentiment feels more genuine.

Maybe that should be expected of the American city to have first celebrated Saint Patrick’s Day, in 1737. Or of the city that has spawned many major label acts, yet still prides itself most on being the hometown of the Dropkick Murphy’s.

So it wasn’t surprising to hear that the nearly 1,000 parade participants still marched 3 miles through the cold, soggy streets. Since it’s it’s inception in 1901, the parade has only been cancelled once—due to a blizzard in 1993—and while yesterday’s rain looked daunting, it wasn’t fully prohibitive.

According to parade organizers, some participants did drop out partway, and attendance was far below the roughly one million strong crowds in the past.

Yet a tip of the scaly cap is still in order to all those who paraded, vended, and watched in the rain. Where else can you find such determination and pride but here in Boston?

Bruins center Marc Savard being attended to after suffering a Grade 2 concussion (Photo by Justin K. Aller/Getty Images)

Violence is good for the business of hockey, yet it is terrible for the sport.

This distinction was made very clear, if only implicitly, by the NHL’s general managers this past week at a summit on proposed rule changes.  One of those changes, which would have banned blindside hits to the head—like the one that left Bruins center Marc Savard unconscious on the ice in Pittsburgh last Sunday—was met with a level of enthusiasm somewhere between tepid interest and total indifference.

In that instance, Pittsburgh enforcer Matt Cooke—who has a history of dirty hits, and who has already been suspended this season for a cheap shot—blindsided Savard with an elbow to the head. Savard, his head down and facing away from Cooke while releasing a shot, was spun around as his neck snapped violently to one side.  After a few minutes of lifeless twitching, Savard was carted off the ice on a stretcher. He was later diagnosed with a second degree concussion, and will likely miss the remainder of the season.

Given the brutality of the play, the GMs should have been quick to act on a rule change to make such hits illegal. Instead, the hot topic at the meetings was a proposed pre-playoff playoff in which the eighth place and below teams in each conference compete for the final postseason slot. In short, a proposal to rake in money off a pseudo important extra playoff round trumped the need to stomp out dangerous hits from the game.

The GMs did address the issue, however obliquely, saying that new rules would make some—but not all—head shots illegal. Making a blanket rule on such hits would, the GMs claimed to believe, make players more wary of delivering blows, and thus essentially remove checking from the sport entirely.

This all seems too reminiscent of the big NFL scandal last year, when the league denied for months that former players were prone to serious cognitive problems, such as Alzheimer’s, at a rate much higher than the national average. Jarring hits are a huge draw for both sports, and it’s understandable why neither league would want to rein them in.

Yet the players’ health is far too important to be defended with only half-hearted rules. Banning Intentional head shots should be a no brainer, but unfortunately the GMs seem content to let the elbows fly and the concussions pile up.

Maybe they, not the players, are the ones really suffering from brain damage.

Garciaparra, right, announces his retirement alongside Sox general manager Theo Epstein. (AP Photo/Steven Senne)

After five and a half years away from Boston, Nomar Garciaparra, returned to the Red Sox yesterday, if only for a few hours.

The legendary shortstop, whose first name (pronounced, affectionately, No-mah) was once synonymous with Boston baseball, announced his retirement shortly after signing a minor league contract with the Red Sox. In a jovial press conference, Garciaparra and general manager Theo Epstein said it was fitting to send off the Sox icon in his old uniform.

“The way this city, the fans and everybody, embraced me, I always just felt that connection,” Garciaparra said. “Red Sox Nation is bigger than any nation out there. And to be able to say I came home is truly a thrill.”

Epstein had nothing but praise for the shortstop he dealt away in a contentious mid-season trade in 2004.

“He’s a huge part of this franchise. He’s a red sock. And For a long time, the Red Sox really were Nomar Garciaparra.” Epstein said. “Nomar’s never held a grudge. I’ve never looked at it as something that I’d wanted to do,” he added.

Selected by the Sox in the first round of the 1994 draft, Garciaparra quickly broke into the big leagues; he won Rookie of the Year in 1997 while batting .306 with 30 home runs.  He made six All Star teams and twice reigned as AL batting champion, in 1999 and 2000.

But in 2004, an Achille’s tendon injury greatly diminished his fielding range. With the Sox in the thick of the playoff race, and with defense a serious concern, Epstein dealt Garciaparra in a multi-team deal that brought Gold Glover winners Orlando Cabrera and Doug Mientkiewicz to Boston.  That move ultimately proved successful, as the Red Sox went on to (finally) win the World Series that year.

Despite missing Boston’s title run, Garciaparra said he felt no resentment over the trade. Rather, he applauded the 2004 team for ending the 86 year championship drought, and the fans for never losing faith.

“When I was [in Boston], I always realized that there was something bigger than us as players,” Garciaparra said. “It’s winning the World Series for these people. These people that have bled, cried and cheered over the years. Winning a World Series in Boston is more than an individual player winning a World Series.”

The 36 year-old Garciaparra, who finished his career with a .313 batting average over 14 seasons, will not leave baseball entirely; he has already signed on to be an analyst for ESPN.

©DirectoryofBoston.com

Did you know that Jerry Remy was planning to open a restaurant?  I was clueless until I drove past it earlier this week when I was bringing my son to a pediatric appointment in the Longwood Medical area.

They are still putting together the last finishing touches to it.  There were still contractors working on the front of the building as of yesterday.  The restaurant is supposed to open next week with a lot of fanfare I am sure.

The Jerry Remy Name is sure to pull fans into the restaurant which is said to be outfitted with state of the art high definition TVs.  Hopefully the food will be good too.  The restaurant is on Boylston Street behind Fenway Park.  The economy is finally where the financing is available for this new venture.  Opening restaurants in a down economy can be pretty challenging.  Hopefully this new restaurant will pull more people into the Fenway area even after the baseball season.

The Fenway area has been undergoing a big development stretch in the last few years.  Starting with the development of the Landmark Center back in 2000 efforts have been made to make it more than just an area to go during baseball season.  Boylston Street itself has some big new buildings that house luxury apartments and other restaurants on the ground levels including for example Cambridge 1.  McDonalds has long since been gone and I am actually surprised the Burger King is still there.  On the flipside though I hope bars/restaurants like the Baseball Tavern survive.  The Baseball Tavern is across the street from the new Jerry Remy’s Restaurant.

In today’s Globe there is an article about Remy’s restaurant offering “season” passes where you get to cut in the front of the waiting line of the restaurant.  The passes will be offered with both home and away games for the Boston Red Sox and even for the Celtics and Patriots.  The passes will not include actual tickets to games so you will be paying for the “experience”.  This may seem like a gimick but in today’s economy the competition to survive is fierce so maybe this will give the new restaurant the boost it needs to survive.  Time will tell since the price tag is pretty steep at $500 per season pass.

Jerry Remy’s Sports Bar is located at 1265 Boylston Street behind Fenway Park next to the Guitar Center.

That’s not to say the past few months have been horrendous. Winter had its moments, the occasional snowstorm brightening the otherwise drab, frigid days. And everyone had at least one holiday to celebrate, whether it was Christians gleefully unwrapping gifts on Christmas, or alcoholics counting away the decade’s last minute with slurps of spiked nog.  Ah, the warm memories—what remains of them.

But winter pales in comparison to spring, both in excitement and color tone.  The last remnants of gray slush have melted away, revealing grass that, while mainly an unhealthy yellow from its months deprived of sunlight, is still a more pleasant sight than winter’s frozen, frosted blades. Even the asphalt looks warmer and more inviting now, the potholes and cracks no longer ringed white with salt, that unmistakable sign of dry, frigid air.

Like Democrats the day after Scott Brown’s victory, Bostonians confronted the warm weather with a mix of bewilderment and trepidation; surely warm weather was on the way, but the sudden shift from freezing to pleasant still came as a surprise. Yet comprehension was quick in coming (we can walk outside again without shattering our toes!), and soon the parks were flooded with restless citizens eager to enjoy the warmth.

On Saturday in Stanley Ringer Park, at least four groups of Frisbee players claimed space around the craggy hilltop. Another group further down the hill languorously twirled hula hoops around their waists and arms. Basketballs whanged off the backboards below, while the less athletically inclined sprawled in the sun, drinking openly, boisterously, from paper bags, the gorgeous day suppressing any fear of arrest.

Knowing New England, this past weekend was only a teaser, a glimpse only of the weather to come. By Friday, we’ll probably have more snow. Lots of it. Then the week after, maybe a fiery meteor shower (not the fun to watch kind) or an onslaught of synchronized tornadoes.

So what’s the lesson to be learned from this unpredictable, though certainly enjoyable, weather? Enjoy it while it lasts: a monsoon might be on the way.

Courtesy of NECN

Tom Hanks premiered his latest documentary type film on World War II at the JFK Library in Dorchester.  Tom Hanks mentioned in one of the interviews that I saw that one of the reasons they chose the premiere of his latest HBO miniseries “The Pacific” was John F. Kennedy’s war experience.  The premiere brought out local World War II veterans as well.

Tom Hanks interest in history will continue with his next project which is going to focus on the John F. Kennedy assassination.  “The Pacific” looks at both the good and the bad of America’s World War II role in the Pacific and Hanks comments on similarities to the wars that we are waging today.

Tom Hanks wanted to bring the experience to life in an authentic and moving way.  He mentions Ken Burns Civil War as one of the documentaries that moved him.  He has always been interested in World War II as demonstrated by his other projects including another miniseries for HBO called “Band of Brothers”.

Recently due to the increasing movie projects being filmed in the area with the likes of Leonardo DiCaprio, Ben Affleck and Tom Cruise, Bostonians are becoming accustomed to seeing big stars like Tom Hanks in their backyard.  It is great to see a star that is also focused on bringing local stories like those of local veterans to the big screen.

Boston will always be a great historic background because of the history that can be found everywhere, from the Freedom Trail to the Boston Tea Party.  An honest look at history is also important as we tend to glorify and focus on all of the good things we did and learned from history instead of having a balanced review which also includes things we definitely could have done better.

“The Pacific” airs on HBO starting on March 14th.

Here is Tom Hanks at the premiere courtesy of NECN:

Here is the Trailer for “The Pacific” 10 part miniseries:

For 7 bucks a person not only did we experience a great basketball game but enjoyed the charged atmosphere that comes with small sports venues like the Case Center’s The Roof, where the women’s team plays.  You wouldn’t think there would be that much hooplah for such a game but every game has the BU dancers performing, as well as cheerleaders and the BU Band.

During breaks in the game the cheerleaders throw out team jerseys which the kids get a big kick out of.  The picture is of my son after he took the initiative of moving closer to the court so that he would be a better target for the cheerleaders throwing out the jerseys.  A picture is worth a thousand words…

BU is not the only venue that offers this type of experience.  Boston College also provides similar sports events as does NorthEastern.  We recently went to a BC- Maine Hockey game with the kids and they also had a blast at that game.

I am sure that there are plenty of other examples of sporting events at the local Boston Universities that serve as both fun and learning events for younger kids.  Check out the links below to see if there is something going on that fits the bill:

Boston University Terriers

Boston College Eagles

Northeastern University Huskies

Simmons College Sharks

Emmanuel College Saints

Don’t hesitate to add your ideas in the comments…