WBUR reports on a bill set for action in the state Senate today that would make it harder for school districts to simply purge books on the whims of the leather-lunged - and would protect librarians who selected those books. The Christianist Massachusetts Family Institute opposes the measure.
Joe Kenney of Abington reports he went up to the Esplanade last night and found the alligator that somebody dumped there - and took the not-yet-a-man-eater to someplace warmer:
With the cold temps, the alligator had very low chances of surviving. With some luck and a couple of bright flashlights after 15 minutes I found the Boston alligator. I was able to capture him safely and he will be warm and housed until we get more information and instructions on what’s next for this little guy.
Joe is not just your average, um, Joe. He runs Joe's Crazzy Critters, which "specializes in entertaining and educational exotic animal shows for audiences of all ages." So when NBC Boston contacted him last night to ask about alligators, he knew had to look for himself.
bibliopegy (bib-lee-OP-uh-jee) - n., the art of bookbinding.
Not to be confused with bibliophagy, the consumption of books, either literal or metaphoric. And because it gets far more of the top hits than straight up bibliopegy, yes, anthropodermic bibliopegy is a thing -- (highlight to view grossness) binding a book in human skin. [Fortunately, janni does regular bibliopegy as a hobby.] Coined around 1830 from Ancient Greek roots biblíon, book + pēgía, the stem of pēgnýnai, to fasten.
a follow up to my october 14th post, where I reported having forgotten all my morning meds. I have, in the interim, been prescribed a new medication that has to be taken half an hour before breakfast, and also worked out that if I put all but one medication on the bedside table, I can take them when I first wake. Which has the added advantage of meaning that the paracetamol has kicked in by the time I try and get out of bed, and lo! but it is easier to get out of bed.
Sadly, the one that can't be taken at that point -- because it has to be taken after eating -- is the anti-inflammatory. And today, I gave up and came home after lunch, because making it to 2pm when the next paracetamol was due was too much (I actually took said paracetamol at 1pm, which is the absolute earliest it was allowed, on the 6 hour interval, which meant it kicked in enough for the drive home to be possible). And found the anti-inflammatory still in its little bowl, waiting to be taken. Which might mean I also forgot my asthma preventer, which might also be associated with my chest being a little unhappy (also, I have some kind of reaction to being in a specific room in the library -- the last two times I've developed one of those biting coughs)
Which says that the anti-inflammatory is doing amazing things, and I'm going to keep taking it. Sadly, the new med is because it is possible that some of the other symptoms are a side effect of taking it daily, rather than the 'max 5 days in 7' I was allowed with the stronger dose (that was once daily, the lower dose is twice daily).
Vorkosigan Saga has an 8 foot tall genetically engineered super soldier werewolf babe and the only good art I can find of her is this compendium cover:
Why isn’t everybody drawing Sergeant Taura.
Taura is so awesome.
So. If you’re not familiar with the Vorkosigan books, aka the Vorkosigan Saga, they’re the (science fictional) adventures of Miles Vorkosigan (or his parents, Aral and Cordelia, or his brother Mark, or his cousin Ivan-you-idiot). Aral is the Great Man of his generation, a man who won a civil war/uprising against a child emperor, then was regent for the child emperor for more than a decade, then, when Emperor Gregor turned 18, actually handed the Empire to him. Cordelia is the power who stands next to him and keeps him true to himself, while pointing out the foibles of the Empire and its Vor ruling class. Miles is the son with the several disabilities, on a planet where disability, especially birth defects, are deeply taboo.
Some of the books are romances (including pastiches of Georgette Heyer, as well as enemies-to-lovers and a polyamorous romance (sorta)), some are military and/or spy SF (Miles spends several novels as a space mercenary, but he also works for an intelligence agency), some are capers, and more.
It’s 16 novels and 6 shorter works, and it is all excellent (though not all of it is to individual tastes). It follows the family from Aral and Cordelia’s romance to Miles’ decidedly nonstandard birth through his youth and onto his long and varied career, and swings back to Cordelia after Aral’s death. The series, as related above, has a lot to say about birth defects and disabilities, but also a lot to say about things like women in middle age, mourning, death, possible repercussions of future technology, and more.
Taura is someone special. She was genetically engineered to be a slave-supersoldier, was the last survivor of that project, and was imprisoned in a dank basement with only rats to eat.
SPOILERS: Miles found her, was supposed to murder her, decided to bring her out with him instead, and she rescued him as much as he rescued her. Then he hired her and made her a sergeant.
Go read the books if you haven’t already. And draw Sergeant Taura.
Boston Police report arresting a woman who tried to rob a convenience store on Blue Hill Avenue near Woodrow Avenue, but left empty handed yesterday afternoon, walked down the street, got into the driver's seat of some guy's car and, when he objected, shifted into drive, crashed into the vehicle in front of her, waved her knife at him, then drove - only to be arrested a little more than a half mile down Woodrow Avenue.
Jenisteen Tomlinson, 31, was arraigned today in Dorchester Municipal Court on one count of armed carjacking, one count of armed robbery and two counts of assault with a dangerous weapon, according to court records, which showed Judge Erika Reis set bail at $2,500, which Tomlinson couldn't meet so she was ordered held at the Suffolk County jail.
According to police, sometime before 5:20 p.m., Tomlinson "entered a convenience store, displayed a knife, and attempted to steal items. When confronted, she allegedly waved the knife at the victim before fleeing toward Ansel Road." Shortly after 5:20 p.m., she got into the driver's seat of a vehicle whose owner was working on its brakes, a few doors down from the convenience store.
When the victim tried to remove her, attempted to drive off, striking another vehicle in front of her. Tomlinson then exited the vehicle and reportedly swung the knife at the victim before fleeing the scene toward Ashton Street.
Officers obtained a description of the suspect and located her a short time later near 67 Woodrow Avenue, where she was taken into custody without further incident.
Pandemic life My mother-out-law's birthday dinner on Sunday was my first meal inside in a crowded restaurant in a long time.
Previous poll review In the "Time is" poll, 48.9% of respondents answered "relentless", and 31.9% said "elusive". In ticky-boxes, "blue-haired punk red pandas" and "colouring in" tied for second place (51.1%) after hugs (72.3%).
Reading Finally finished Five Red Herrings. It was fine -- I mean, it kept me reading till the end. I missed Bunter being more active, though. Now I'm a quarter of the way into Have His Carcase.
In audio, I'm still listening to Inventing the Renaissance by Ada Palmer, read by Candida Gubbins, and I've also started Katabasis by R.F. Kuang, read by Morag Sims and Will Watt, which is fun so far, though I'm slightly perplexed by the choice to have Alice's dialogue be American but her inner narration to be British. Also, I was hoping Will Watt would get more to do; I've really enjoyed some of his other performances.
Still dipping back into Take Off Your Pants! by Libbie Hawker. And I forgot to mention last week that I tore through Alison Bechdel's Spent! a while ago, before returning it to the library at the last minute.
Kdramas Typhoon Family is getting a bit "this script was written in crayon", but I'm engaged and I like the main characters. I miscounted the Mystic Pop-Up Bar episodes; we finished yesterday. It was good but didn't quite hit me in the feels. (I'm a bit neutral on Hwang Jung-eum.)
Other TV Nobody Wants This -- season 2 is less of the cross-cultural stuff and more "addressing psychological quirks", which isn't as interesting to me. Oh well.
Half of the latest season of Slow Horses -- the episodes always feel so short! I guess this is what successful pacing is like. A bit grimmer than earlier seasons, but I'm enjoying Ho a lot. (It helps to have read the book, I think.) We're finishing that tonight.
All of You (Apple+) -- a movie starring Brett Goldstein and Imogen Poots, which maxes out on the "pining while fucking" concept. Great chemistry and Big Feels. Spoilers. Contains infidelity and an unhappy ending.
Rewatched some Bluey, plus a couple of episodes of Krapopolis season 3. :-)
Audio entertainment Writing Excuses, Letters from an American, Tech Won't Save Us, and Ex Urbe Ad Astra.
Writing/making things I came up with a great title for a fic I'm working on and am now 20% more motivated to finish it up and post it. Other than that, I feel like I'm still juggling a bunch of things, but my general intention is to finish this one, bash out a flashfic for the FISH challenge on fan_flashworks, and then dig into my Yuletide assignment, for which I've been doing canon review.
Note to self: Don't forget about Guardian Bingo!
I bought a pack of coloured pencils yesterday and have been watching a few Youtube "technique" videos and practising blending. I still can't actually draw, but hey.
Life/health/mental state things Down Under writers' hour is currently at 10am New Zealand time (8am Melbourne time). In winter, when it's at 8am here, writers' hour is the first thing I do in the day; that means I get started early, spend most of the morning at my keyboard, and sometimes spud in for the afternoon too. In the transitions periods (when only one half of the globe has switched into or out of daylight savings), it's at 9am here, and I generally try to get the dishes done beforehand. This sets the tone for the day -- I do more chores overall, more offline stuff. Now writers' hour is at 10am: I get up and exercise, then sit down mid-morning to write. By the time I'm done, it's 11am, and if I have lunch plans, I have to get my skates on pretty quickly. And because I've primed myself to exercise, I've been going for walks more in the afternoon and generally being more active. Which is great, but... *grabbyhands at keyboard* tl;dr, I am controlled by scheduling.
Good things Coloured pencils, and colour generally. Guardian and the Slo-Mo Rewatch. Sleep. Podcasts. Kdramas. Biking, TV-watching dates, walking. Chocolate. You all, hi!!
Note: Poll results are private; please vote freely.
1. Weather change has knocked me over. That's possibly unfair to the weather change as I've been knocked over since I had covid in August. I should make a doctor's appointment about it, except I don't have the brain bandwidth to make it. I need to make several different doctor's appointments and just can't make myself do it. (ADHD and chronic fatigue make for a fun combination.)
2. Pulled down and uprooted the black eyed pea plants. They've been dead for a few weeks and I've been grabbing the pods as they dry out. No more pods for a few days so it's time for the dead plants to go. (Did find a few pods while pulling down the vines.) About a third of the vines got cut up and put into the composter. Stopped about there due to combination of blister forming on my finger and running out of room.
3. It's not seasonal depression when it's been ongoing for more than a year, but I've fallen deeper into the hole since the time change. ("this is not your grave, get out of this hole.") I'd been doing better. The backslide is hitting me almost as hard as the increased bad brain.
A federal judge today ordered ICE to release a man it's held since Sept. 9, since he has permission to stay here from the US Citizenship and Immigration Services.
Despite one branch of the government saying he could stay, ICE decided it would grab Jigneshkumar Vishnubhai Patel, a native of India, and, at some indefinite point, put him on a plane or bus out of the country.
Nope, US District Court Judge Richard Stearns ruled today: Like anybody else on American soil, Patel has constitutional rights, which include not being locked up indefinitely.
Patel arrived in Rio Grande City, TX without documentation on Jan. 19, 2011. The Border Patrol began removal proceedings, he somehow left custody and was ordered removed by an immigration judge in absentia one year later, Stearns wrote in his summary of the case. At some point, he made his way to the Boston area, and got a job at a South Boston convenience store, where, according to filings in an earlier case, he was attacked on Jan. 7, 2022:
Mr. Patel was threatened and kicked during an attempted robbery. The perpetrator also threw a snow shovel at Mr. Patel and knocked multiple items off the shelves behind the counter while swearing and screaming at Mr. Patel.
Patel, who is married and has a young child, cooperated fully with Boston Police, which gave him the right to apply for a special "Victims of Criminal Activity" visa - aimed specifically at violent-crime victims who cooperate with police, under a federal law passed in 2000, back when a majority of Congress still felt it made sense to encourage cooperation by immigrants with police as a way to stem crime.
Last year, after Patel sued because it was sitting on his application, the US Citizenship and Immigration Services concluded Patel's story - along with a form verifying his account and cooperation from BPD - was "bona fide" and declared he now had "deferred action status," which meant no action would be taken on the 2012 removal order.
ICE, however, didn't care and nabbed him in front of his home.
Regime attorneys argued that, to start, Stearns had no jurisdiction, because judges in district courts are specifically barred from oversight of immigrant removal proceedings.
Stearns acknowledged the assertion he has no power over removal proceedings is true, but that that's not what he was ruling on:
At bottom, Patel does not challenge the government’s discretionary decision to execute a removal order; he challenges the government’s refusal to honor USCIS’s prior (unrevoked) grant of deferred action.
Stearns then continued by also acknowledging that ICE has the power to "discretionarily" grab and lock up somebody even beyond the 90-day period set under the relevant section of immigration law for somebody to be deported. But not without limit, he continued, pointing to a 2001 Supreme Court ruling that said the government can only hold an immigrant "until it has been determined that there is no significant likelihood of removal in the reasonably foreseeable future."
And that, Stearns wrote, is where Patel is now. Because the USCIS ruling in Patel's case still holds:
[T]he court finds that removal is not likely in the reasonably foreseeable future given Patel’s unrevoked [crime-victim] petition deferred action status. His detention thus is not authorized by § 1231(a)(6), and petitioner must be released.
He concluded:
The court ORDERS that petition be released from custody by 12:00 pm tomorrow, Thursday, November 13, 2025. The government shall file a certificate of compliance with the court’s order by November 14, 2025.
Ellie: well, theres democrats in the epstein files too.
Me: ok.
Ellie: its not just Donald Trump its other people. I heard Obama is in there.
Me: ok.
Ellie: so it would be punishing all kinds of people, not just republicans. Its both sides.
Me: -sigh- I do not care.
Ellie: what do you mean you dont care?
Me: i do not care. My friends aren’t in it. My parents arent in it. The people who are in it are not personal connections of mine. The closest I have to this is ive worked in buildings owned by Les Wexner. I do not care about the names. I care that a horrible crime has happened and I care that the victims get justice.
Ellie: …i… wow.
And frankly, if for some utterly bizarre reason, a friend of mine WAS implicated, I WOULD WANT TO KNOW.
Because then they wouldn’t get to be my friend anymore.
Twenty years ago, a teacher friend talked about how common the Aiden variations were in the contemporary high school demographic. To the point that my memory is that they said they had Aiden, Brayden, Jayden, Haiden and Cayden in one class.
And I've realised that it was a bit like that in the my high school years, but slightly less focused, with the -elle ending. We had Michelle, Eschelle, Narelle, Jenelle in the year group. Chantelle was the same era but I don't remember any. Gabrielle is, to my perceptions, younger. There might have been an Annabelle, but I think that was uni.
Can anyone help me out with groceries? I can't get to the foodbanks Even just $10 would help. We have nothing. Going to list some stuff on eBay Marketplace, but that's going to take a little while.
Paypal if anyone needs it: kimandmattg6794@gmail.com
1) Maybe given that Sunday morning's snow was light and disappeared when it hit the ground, no one was expecting it to stick. But it sure did. As a result, our complex had not salted stairs or sidewalks and had not plowed parking lots. And the local roadways hadn't been either.
The stairs had snow 2 inches deep on them, so I descended carefully Monday morning. The snow was very powdery so it brushed off the car easily. Funny thing though, the snow came from the southeast side. The other side of the car? Completely clear, no snow at all. ( Read more... )
I was thinking of how booking your own appointment online is rarely the convenience it's supposed to be. It's never worked for me at my medical group because I can't do it without inputting a mobile number. When I was trying to do it for car maintenance appointments, it would turn out the appointments didn't sync with the in-office calendar they had. And here, had I spoken to a person they would have known the doctor wouldn't be in on Monday at all.
2) Watched a multi-episode documentary on Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward. I suspect that the various revelations would be unlikely to emerge with any living subject, or without the sort of research that went into it while they were still alive. ( Read more... )
3) First posted over at tv_talk, Paramount has just cut 1000 jobs and 1000 more job cuts are expected. They want to reach "$2 billion in expense cuts across the company." That's more than most companies and some countries are worth.
Job cuts after an acquisition aren't surprising. It usually happens in a frenzy, and some positions come back once the losses start leading to problems. But a line in this news story, as well as another article coming out the same day, made me start thinking about where big cuts are likely to come from.
"More than 800 people — or about 3.5% of the company’s workforce — were laid off in June, prior to the Ellison family takeover. At the time, Paramount’s management attributed the cuts to the decline of cable television subscriptions and an increased emphasis on bulking up its streaming TV business. In 2024, the company eliminated 2,000 positions, or 15% of its staff." (emphasis mine) ( Read more... )
4) Speaking of TV habits, a study about people's searching behavior finding content on streamers indicated 46% of those surveyed are having more trouble finding what they want, and are more willing to cancel their subscriptions because of the difficulties. Searching time can run from 12 to 26 minutes. Many users also use the Internet to find information rather than the apps themselves.
The answer for many companies is to embed more AI with an eye to making their services able to answer general questions as well as viewing related ones.
5) More streamers are using pause ads. Personally I don't mind these, especially if they only take over the screen as an opt-in feature. I pause stuff often for different reasons, and as long as the ads aren't interrupting my viewing, they can have the screen.
That said, there are plans afoot to use AI to tie ads into the show action as well as localize your viewing. "Amazon has begun to offer the format to local and regional advertisers, says Jenn Donohue, director of local ad sales at Amazon Ads. Commercials from regional banks or community grocery stores can often be extremely meaningful to viewers, she says, and “there’s nothing more important than making it very relevant to the experience that I’m having as a viewer.”"
Fic in a Box: I'm deep into the rewriting/editing and can't talk about any of it without breaking anonymity. *g* Reveals were supposed to be Saturday night, but we'll know by tomorrow morning whether there'll be a delay. It's looking very likely, and honestly, I'm not complaining.
Yuletide: Only a very vague idea so far. Once FIAB is over I'll do thorough canon revision (thankfully it's not one of the fandoms where that would take me fifty million hours), hammer out a proper plot, and then there'll be plenty of time left to actually write. It helps that December will be less busy at work again!
Five Figure Fanwork Exchange: Until today I only had a very vague idea of "I want to do something in that era of canon that my recipient mentioned", but today I went on a walk during my lunch break and a concept popped into my head fully-formed. I still need to figure out about half the plot, but that's for after Yuletide. (Unless it just pops into my head like this too! I wouldn't complain. *g*)
Other writing: Ahahaha, what other writing? I have no time and so many things to do. RL is so busy right now ... /o\
A Boston firefighter was arraigned today on charges he raped a girl and offered her up for sexual service between May, 2018 and September, 2024, the Suffolk County District Attorney's office reports.
James Corbett, 60, of Brockton, was arraigned in West Roxbury Municipal Court on one count of trafficking a person under 18 for sexual servitude, two counts of aggravated rape of a child, two counts of rape of a child, three counts of indecent assault and battery on a child under 14 and two counts of indecent assault and battery on a child 14 or over, the DA's office reports.
Judge John McDonald set bail at $25,000 - and ordered Corbett to home confinement, monitored by GPS, if released. The judge also ordered him to have no contact with children under 16 and to surrender his passport and any firearms.
Corbett is next due in court on Dec. 22.
The DA's office did not say where the alleged offenses happened. In addition to West Roxbury, West Roxbury court covers Hyde Park, Roslindale, Jamaica Plain and part of Mission Hill.
City payroll records show Corbett earned $262,086.18 last year in base pay, overtime, detail work, injured leave and retroactive pay.
West Roxbury court is where one-time police union president Patrick Rose was first arraigned on child-rape charges. He ultimately pleaded guilty to raping six children over nearly three decades and was sentenced to 10 to 13 years in state prison.
A Boston federal judge today ordered ICE to free a Lynn boat mechanic it's grabbed twice this year, the second time after the regime's Board of Immigration Appeals overturned the freedom he had been granted a couple months earlier.
In his ruling, US District Court Judge Brian Murphy noted that both ICE and the board acted on a regime assertion that all undocumented immigrants are subject to a section of immigration law that only applies to people caught right at the border and so can be locked up indefinitely, despite the way that he and other federal judges keep telling them that no, somebody who has been in the country for nine years, like Roberto Vladimir Portillo Martinez, is not just "arriving" here, which means he has the same constitutional due-process rights as anybody else on US soil.
Petitioner's case features a complex procedural history. And multiple red-herring side-issues risk distraction and detour. But, at bottom, this case presents only a minor variation on a recent-but-widespread pattern of non-citizens' being improperly detained under the mandatory detention statute, which courts across the country have overwhelmingly rejected. Indeed, "[m]ore than 100 federal judges," appointed by every president since Ronald Reagan, "have now ruled at least 200 times" that the practice is illegal [source]. Having received near-universal rebuke on that starter theory for sweeping detention, it seems Respondents now seek to move the goalpost in a new way, by redefining "arriving alien." But words have meaning, and there is no sense in which Petitioner has been "arriving" since 2016.
According to Murphy's summary of the case, Portillo Martinez arrived at Hidalgo, TX in 2016 - when he was just 13. Border Patrol handed him over as an unaccompanied juvenile to the Department of Health and Human Services, which in turn handed him over to his abusive father, already in California. The next year, his mother got him and brought him to Massachusetts.
In 2019, a Massachusetts juvenile-court judge declared he had been abused as a child, which let him apply for Special Immigrant Juvenile status, letting him formally apply for asylum in the US in 2020.
Given these developments, on July 30, 2021, Petitioner moved the immigration court to administratively close his removal proceedings. On August 16, 2021, Petitioner's motion was granted.
And so he went about his life, eventually getting a job working on boats - until July 3, when an ICE agent spotted him near his Lynn home and got a warrant to arrest him as an "arriving alien" who should never have been given any right to stay here.
On July 21, he went before an immigration judge who, under the section of immigration law related to people on US soil, ordered his release - on payment of a $10,000 bond. But then DHS "unilaterally stayed that order, preventing Petitioner from immediately posting bond" and demanded the immigration revoke bail, on the grounds that she had no jurisdiction over "arriving aliens," Murphy wrote.
On July 29, DHS went, oops, never mind, rescinded its stay and the next morning, he posted bond and was released. Not content to leave well enough alone, though, DHS then asked the Board of Immigration Appeals to stay his release. The board agreed, but DHS and its ICE minions did nothing - until Sept. 8, when ICE grabbed him again and stuffed him into a cell at the Plymouth County jail.
As he did at the start of his ruling, at this point Murphy concluded the regime is simply wrong in its basic argument that a man who has been in the country since 2016 is still under the control of the "legal fiction" that he is not technically on US soil and so has no rights to seek release from imprisonment before the regime finally gets around to putting him on a plane to somewhere else.
Respondents' argument is somewhat unbelievable since, at the time of his detention, Petitioner had been living in this country for more than nine years, since he was thirteen years old. In what sense imaginable could he be deemed "arriving?" ... Petitioner certainly was not "coming or attempting to come into the United States" or "seeking transit through the United States" or "interdicted in international or United States waters" when ICE encountered him near his home in Lynn, Massachusetts. The merits of this case are truly just that simple - Petitioner was not an "arriving alien" at the time of his detention. Therefore, section 1225(b)(1) [the section related to people caught at the border] does not apply.
In a footnote, Murphy noted that both times that ICE grabbed Portillo Martinez, they had warrants to do so - something that is required under the been-here-awhile part of the law, but not under the at-the-border section.
ICE’s repeated issuance of a warrant for Petitioner’s arrest, as recently as September 2025, is evidence, at least, of ICE’s difficulty in keeping its story straight as to its basis for detaining Petitioner.
And so, the Board of Immigration Appeal issuance of a stay letting ICE keep him locked up was in error, and therefore, "Petitioner is hereby ordered released."
A Suffolk County grand jury last week indicted a licensing attorney for forging Boston liquor licenses in April, 2024 for a Brighton food hall, a Seaport restaurant and a Park Square hotel.
Lesley Delaney Hawkins, 41, of Weymouth, faces arraignment on Nov. 21 in Suffolk Superior Court on 12 felony counts of forgery, common-law forgery, uttering and common-law uttering - the Suffolk County District Attorney's office reports.
Forgery relates to the creation of a fake document, in this case, liquor licenses, while uttering is the act of distributing the forged documents with the intent to harm or defraud somebody. Each of the forgery counts alone carry maximum possible penalties of ten years in prison.
Hawkins was a partner at downtown law firm Prince Lobel, which fired her last June after news broke that she had allegedly forged a license for Craft Food Halls on Soldiers Field Road in Allston. The place had won a liquor license from the Boston Licensing Board, but was being held up at the state Alcoholic Beverages Control Commission when Hawkins gave them a license - which investigators quickly determined was forged.
According to the Suffolk County District Attorney's office, around the same time, Hawkins also forged liquor licenses for ZaZiBar, a cocktail lounge on Seaport Boulevard that recently closed, and the Hilton Boston Park Plaza.
Hawkins had been the attorney for the Boston Licensing and Cannabis boards before leaving to become a partner at Prince Lobel in 2021, where she quickly built up the firm's presence in liquor licensing - in a city where liquor licenses can go for $600,000 apiece and just a few law firms specialize in the opaque laws that govern liquor licensing and sales. She also worked on zoning cases for Prince Lobel, as did former City Councilor and firm partner Mike Ross - who took over some of her cases after she was terminated and before many of her clients moved to other firms.
Hawkins represented ZaZiBar when it went before the licensing board in June, 2023 to buy the beer, wine and liqueurs license from the creperie that had occupied the space it was moving into, Craft Food Halls in January, 2024, when it sought to buy the all-alcohol license from another restaurant in the space it planned to occupy, and BPP Investment Property, also in January, 2024, after it acquired the Park Plaza hotel.
Following her departure from Prince Lobel, Hawkins created a group called Sober & Curious Boston, which organizes hikes and other events for people "who want to connect, have fun, and stay active without the pressure of alcohol." She writes on what inspired her:
I had just returned from a three-day backpacking trip in the Pisgah National Forest, and whether it was sleeping on the ground or attempting the Appalachian bear hang, something shifted. Six months sober and deep in the woods with ten strangers, I doubled down on the fact that I hadn’t gotten sober to live a mediocre life.
Madisyn’s parole/probation officer, plus (I guess) a backup, showed up this morning, about 10a. Not surprising, because Megan called and left a message yesterday, and then called again (or he called her? I’m not sure). Anyway. Madisyn was taken into custody. Then, the way it was explained to me, she’ll be offered two options: she can consent to inpatient rehab (and if there are no spots available, she’ll be held at the detention center until one opens up); or she can finish out her sentence (about a year) in prison. Rehab will be anywhere from six to 12 months. It’s unlikely we’ll have any contact any longer. I don’t know about Matthew, but I’m going to see what I can find for him in the way of a counselor who can see him several times a week (ideally). Hell, a family counselor might not be a bad idea, at least initially.
We got chastised for the number of cats in the house; the overall condition of our home; the fact that so many of the cats look sickly, that I don’t have a clear path to the front door (Matthew’s been sleeping on the floor out here, and he hadn’t picked up his blankets yet). Megan, Donnie, and Matthew were all asked if they were employed – actually, I think they were asked if anyone in the house was employed, and then we could all feel the judging that happened.
It's been a fun morning.
Matthew’s so obviously hurting, and I hate that for him. Me? All I feel is relief. That we can finally relax a little bit and figure out what’s next. But I think we’re going to take a couple of days and just breathe.
![[syndicated profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/feed.png){kind=small}
universal_hub_feed![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
prettygoodword![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
fan_flashworks, and then dig into my Yuletide assignment, for which I've been doing canon review. 
