Credit: Hannah Goeke
Braille libraries offer community. What happens when funding cuts close them?
July 31, 2025, 5:00 a.m. ET|BOSTON
Marci Carpenter reconnected with her love of reading through her fingertips. When her vision became more limited, learning braille gave her a new way to experience the world. She still remembers how the words of Robert Frost’s poems came alive again through soft bumps embossed on thick paper.
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But it was the Washington Talking Book & Braille Library in Seattle that gave her a place to connect. (...)
Room for a dorm? How a Boston neighborhood and college cope with a housing crisis.
Aug. 26, 2025, 5:00 a.m. ET|BOSTON
Inside the Dewitt Center at Madison Park Village, residents of Boston’s Roxbury neighborhood gather for a game of bingo. As the cages spin, workers pass around slices of pizza and sip on Del’s frozen lemonade brought in from a heat break event across the street. The players, mostly older women, watch as Northeastern University students and staff break a sweat to hand out cool-down resources. On this hot summer day, the distance between campus and community feels shorter. (...)
Credit: Melanie Stetson Freeman
Credit: Alfredo Sosa
How a hippo and an octopus brought joy to this Boston neighborhood
Sept. 03, 2025, 5:00 a.m. ET|BOSTON
A gigantic octopus sits on the dock of the Boston Harbor in Charlestown. Children crawl all over it. They scale its arms, and playfully duck under its belly. A forgotten school bag dangles from
one of its bronze tentacles.
Nearby, a rabbitwoman and a hippo sip on coffee by an anchor. Ten members of the animal kingdom dine down the road under the Tobin Bridge.
These sculptures are the newest residents of Charlestown – part of the “Bridge of Joy” exhibit – and they've already become mini celebrities.(...)