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  • Going Green: A New Home for Beacon Press

    The new UUA and Beacon Press headquarters at 24 Farnsworth.

    The new UUA and Beacon Press headquarters at 24 Farnsworth.

    Over the past few weeks, the usual hush of paper rustling quietly amidst the gentle tapping of keyboards—the standard soundtrack to publishing houses everywhere—has given way to a clattering of boxes being filled and emptied, filing cabinets being rifled through, furniture and other miscellany being taken off to better homes. After many happy years in our Beacon Hill location, Beacon Press, along with the rest of the Unitarian Universalist Association, moved last week into shiny new headquarters right in the heart of Boston’s Innovation District.

    The move is fortuitous in a number of ways. Not only does it position Beacon Press alongside a host of other creative organizations and individuals—including publishing colleagues Da Capo Press and Cengage Learning—but the move afforded the UUA a terrific opportunity to design a new space from the ground up, incorporating the seven Principles of Unitarian Universalism into the design of the space itself. “Our goal,” said Rob Molla, UUA Director of Human Resources and chair of the new headquarters’ design team, “was to design a space that was elegant, efficient, modern, technological, but that was environmentally responsible.”

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  • The Real Roots of Prison Recidivism

    By David Chura

    Prison cell block (by Bob Jagendorf via Wikimedia Commons)

    Prison cell block (by Bob Jagendorf via Wikimedia Commons)

    Numbers are tricky. Studies are done. Reports are written. Statistics released. And then people take the numbers and run with them, waving them like protest placards claiming how the numbers prove or disprove some long held “truth.” The Right does it. The Left does it. We all do it. Maybe there’s a tiny toggle in the human genome that manipulates us to manipulate the numbers. That's why I've never liked numbers, never trusted them.

    I saw this all play out in a recent Boston Globe Op-Ed piece about the high rates of recidivism in U.S. prisons. Using the most recent data from the Bureau of Statistics, the numbers roll out: Within six months of being freed 28 percent of former prisoners were arrested for a new crime; three years, 68 percent; five years, 77 percent. Twenty-nine percent of the returnees had been arrested for violent offenses; 38 percent for property crimes; 39 percent for drug offenses; 58 percent for public order crimes. I think everyone would agree that the numbers paint a pretty bleak picture.

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  • Credit Suisse and the Other Type of Ethical Business

    By Fran Hawthorne

    Over the past few decades, public activism has—with growing success—pushed companies to act in more ethical ways. From Apple to WalMart, businesses are monitoring the working conditions at factories overseas, reducing energy use and carbon emissions, buying products only from animals that were raised humanely, using organic ingredients, and taking other socially responsible steps.

    All this is, of course, good for the planet, customers, neighbors, and employees.

    But in the glow of these achievements, have we forgotten a more fundamental type of corporate ethics? Ethical behavior that predates the Corporate Social Responsibility movement. Ethical behavior that applies even to executives who hate unions, love to drive SUVs, and don’t believe climate change is a problem.

    The ethics of basic honesty and transparency.

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  • 10 Facts You Didn’t Know about Immigration and the Undocumented

    Aviva Chomsky’s Undocumented: How Immigration Became Illegal is one part history lesson, one part human drama. In it, Chomsky furthers her mission to advocate for and educate on behalf of undocumented immigrants in the US, delving into their very real experiences from a legal, social, economic, and historical context. The result is as compelling as it is illuminating. As in her previous book, “They Take Our Jobs!” and 20 Other Myths about Immigration, Chomsky seeks to set the record straight, correcting common and egregious misperceptions about the immigrant experience, as well as introducing key facts (such as the ten listed below) about the impact—and importance—of immigration to the US.

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  • Why Stanford’s Coal Divestment Could Work

    By Fran Hawthorne

    Mount Storm Coal-Fired Power Station in West Virginia (by user Raeky via Wikimedia Commons)

    Mount Storm Coal-Fired Power Station in West Virginia (by user Raeky via Wikimedia Commons)

    “Even if Stanford [University] divested itself fully of all its stocks, both fossil fuel and nonfossil, it would probably take the market less than an hour to absorb all the shares. It would not lead the executives of the affected companies to engage in soul-searching, much less to changes in operations.”

    Ivo Welch, a finance and economics professor at UCLA, wrote those sentences recently in a New York Times Op Ed column, after Stanford announced that its $18.7 billion endowment would dump all holdings in coal-mining companies.

    But where else have we heard that refrain? Ah yes, about 30 years ago, during the movement to divest stockholdings in companies doing business in apartheid South Africa.

    Selling a few shares of stock won’t do any good, the refrain goes. Instead, you should do A or B or C…

    Back during the South Africa divestiture movement, skeptics said that people who really hated apartheid ought to keep their money in General Motors and other multinationals, and then use their clout to pressure those companies to improve conditions for nonwhite workers. For his part, Professor Welch says that Stanford should invest in “research and development of clean-energy technology.”

    However, these naysayers are proffering a set of phony choices and premises.

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  • Opening of New UUA and Beacon Press Headquarters Delayed

    By Kenneth Sutton

    The reception area and grand stair at the UUA’s new headquarters at 24 Farnsworth Street (© Dea Brayden/UUA)

    The reception area and grand stair at the UUA’s new headquarters at 24 Farnsworth Street (© Dea Brayden/UUA)

    The opening of the new Boston offices of the Unitarian Universalist Association, including Beacon Press, has been delayed until Thursday, May 22, as the Boston Fire Department evaluates two products used as sound insulation.

    “It’s disappointing that we were not able to all move in this morning at 9:00 as planned,” said the Rev. Harlan Limpert, chief operating officer of the UUA, on Monday, May 19, when the UUA had hoped to begin operations at 24 Farnsworth Street. “But in a project this size—the first move in almost 100 years—this three-day delay is small potatoes.”

    The UUA has been renovating the first three floors of 24 Farnsworth Street for use as its new headquarters since September. It moved staff out of 25 Beacon Street, its historic headquarters, and 41 Mt. Vernon Street late last week.

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  • Looking Back on Ten Years of Marriage Equality in Massachusetts

    By Catherine Reid

    Rainbow flag (via Wikimedia Commons)

    In November of 2003, when a Massachusetts court declared the ban on same-sex marriages unconstitutional in that state, Catherine Reid was left with an unexpected choice: to get married, or not. As the ten year anniversary of marriage equality in Massachusetts approaches, Reid, in this excerpt from Falling Into Place, takes us back to those heady early days of victory and apprehension after the first marriage licenses could be issued to same-sex partners.

    We have sixty days to take action before the marriage certificate expires, less than thirty before our blood tests will no longer be valid. We still have time to change our minds, and we consider backing out often, though now that we’ve agreed to do this with two other couples, we’ll be considered traitors if we develop a case of cold feet. Besides, my short list of excuses—how to deal with the bizarre notion of “wife,” or the difficulty in telling my ninety-nine-year-old grandmother, or the support this lends to the institution of the privileged—can’t compare with the number of reasons to go through with this, which became longer with an unexpected Sunday-night phone call.

    “As a father of two children,” the automated voice begins, “I am horrified at the changes about to take place in our country.” Despite my own horror, I don’t hang up; I want a phone number, I want to register protest. “We urge you to support Article 8,” the voice insists, describing a bill that will empower the legislature to repeal “activist judges” and prevent married homosexuals from tainting our nation’s moral character.

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  • Coyote in the Yard: The Predator Paradox’s New Answer to an Age-Old Question

    By Stephanie Mann

    Coyote portrait via Wikipedia Commons

    My mom gently shook me awake. It was 5 a.m. “Quick—you’re going to miss it!” she whispered excitedly, rushing out of my bedroom and downstairs. I was still half-asleep, but I followed quickly. This had happened before, and I knew I didn’t want to miss it.

    The coyote was back.

    Groggily, I scampered downstairs and sidled up against my mother, who stood with her face squished against a window pane at the front of the house, peering outside. I squeezed my face next to hers. Our noses pressed flat on the cold glass, spreading a fog of collective breath across the pane. I used the sleeve of my Red Sox pajamas to wipe it away. I didn’t want anything to ruin the view.

    The summer I turned twelve, this was a regular occurrence at my family’s house in Massachusetts. Our home, nestled in a heavily wooded housing development and closely bordered by horse farms, was no stranger to wild visitors. Still, the coyote was different from the deer, rabbits, foxes and even wild turkeys that frequently made cameos in our yard.

    His presence could draw a twelve-year-old willingly from bed at the break of dawn. He was majestic. His vaulted ears made him look like a king. And he was intelligent. His calculating eyes flashed yellow in the dusky dark as he assessed his surroundings.

    But above all, the coyote was dangerous.

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  • The Donald Sterling Dilemma: What’s an Ethical Fan to Do When Your Team’s Owner Is a Racist?

    By Fran Hawthorne

    L.A. Clippers (via Wikimedia Commons)

    The racist comments of L.A. Clippers owner Donald Sterling have been analyzed from a multitude of viewpoints—American culture, history, sports, free speech, even our obsession with celebrity. But to my knowledge, no one has discussed a critical aspect that directly affects more people than most of the other topics:

    What is the role of an ethical consumer in this kind of situation?

    I haven’t seen any suggestion, for instance, that Clippers fans should boycott the team’s games.

    (In the playoffs? Are you kidding?)

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  • Musings of an Interfaith Mama

    By Susan Katz Miller

    The author and her mother in 1961.

    The author and her mother in 1961.

    After touring colleges with my second and final child this spring break, I am suddenly aware that I am approaching the end of an era. Parenting has felt like an endless and all-consuming way of being for me, a role I took on with great joy in my thirties, after years as a journalist. In motherhood, I became a PTA President, a leader in our interfaith families community, the schools columnist for the town paper, and ultimately the author of a book on religion and parenting. I was the mom that other parents called for tips on negotiating the school system, or organizing an interfaith bar mitzvah, or finding the best music teachers.

    Somehow, I am only just now realizing that this excellent 20-year adventure in mothering may turn out to be, if I am lucky, only a small fraction of a long life. My grandmother lived until 98, my father is working on Bach’s Goldberg Variations at 90, my mother plays the ukulele at 83. So my own period of day-to-day mothering may only fill a quarter, or a fifth, of my lifetime. 

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