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‘Tis the season to shop, sip, eat & play in Boston & beyond

Published Fri, 27 Dec 2024 11:16:48 GMT

Eat, drink, and be merry, that’s the go-to holiday motto. But we’re going to amend that. This year, how about: Eat, drink, shop, take classes, buy gifts, brunch with girlfriends, nosh with family, and yes — be very, very merry.The next few holiday weeks are filled with fabulous events spilling over with all that fun stuff.It starts as early as tomorrow, with a road trip for a smashing intimate in-person cocktail soirée and book signing with Jenna Bush Hager and Barbara Bush, to celebrate their children’s book, “Love Comes First.” (https://aubergeresorts.com/whitebarninn/experiences/prelude-cocktails). From 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. the celeb sisters will be hosting and toasting with cocktails and light bites in the elegance-meets-rustic dining room of The White Barn Inn ((The Bush Family compound is located just down the road apiece in Kennebunkport, ME). For a $55 ticket you can meet them, get the opportunity to buy copies of their book for your favorite youngsters, and luxuriate in t...

‘Eileen’ psyches out audience with labored slog

Published Fri, 27 Dec 2024 11:16:48 GMT

How does a film go wrong? The ways are many. But usually the screenplay and the director are to blame. In the case of the 1960 Massachusetts-set neo-noir “Eileen,” the actors also chew the scenery. The acclaimed actor Thomasin McKenzie of “The Power of the Dog” and “Last Night in Soho” plays the title role. Eileen Dunlop, 24, is the repressed daughter of retired Boston police chief Jim Dunlop (Shea Whigham). Jim is an angry alcoholic, whose daughter brings pint bottles of whiskey home for him every day. We also see Jim bring home a case of Stroh’s. Jim sits in front of the TV in his and Eileen’s dingy house in a wintry New England, drinking beer and whiskey, smoking cigarettes and handling his old service revolver. Sometimes, he wanders the streets of his neighborhood at night, armed and drunk and is brought home by a nice, young fellow cop.Eileen drives a 1950s beater that smokes so badly when the engine runs that Eileen is forced to keep the widows open. This is only o...

Lenny Kravitz rides Oscar buzz for ‘Rustin’

Published Fri, 27 Dec 2024 11:16:48 GMT

A four-time Grammy winner for best male rock vocal performance, Lenny Kravitz now sets his sights on a Best Song Oscar nomination for his work on the biopic “Rustin.”“The first thing that touched me about this wonderful film was how little I knew about Bayard Rustin – and I grew up in a family that taught me so much about civil rights,” Kravitz, 59, began in a Zoom press conference Monday.His father was Jewish NBC-TV producer Sy Kravitz, his mother the Black actress-activist Roxie Roker, who starred as half of TV’s first interracial couple in the long-running sitcom “The Jeffersons.”Rustin, portrayed by the out actor Colman Domingo in what’s predicted as an Oscar-nominated performance, was influential in befriending and strategizing with Martin Luther King. He was the architect of the historic 1965 March on Washington where King gave his “I have a dream” speech.  Because Rustin was gay, he was discriminated against and virtually erased from history.George C. Wolfe’s film aims to res...

Mastrangelo: Voters fear AI regulations aren’t enough

Published Fri, 27 Dec 2024 11:16:48 GMT

Artificial Intelligence is developing faster than many of us can imagine and is now becoming an integral part of everyday life. So far, businesses are the primary catalysts for this deployment. Studies show that in one year of introducing a new type of AI, one-third of respondents reported their organizations were using the technology in some form, and 40% expected to up their usage investments.As we saw with the development of computers, once the workforce gets a taste of advantageous technology, it’s likely irremovable. And that is why our policymakers must get off the sidelines in regulating AI.Despite AI’s burgeoning usage, Americans are just starting to warm up to the technology in many ways because of the “unknown” factor. In the same vein, they are skeptical that elected officials can get enough of a grasp on the gravity of AI capabilities to regulate. Recent polling found that 57% of voters said they were extremely or very concerned with the government’s ability to regulate ...

Dear Abby: Hubby banished from grandkids’ lives

Published Fri, 27 Dec 2024 11:16:48 GMT

Dear Abby: My common-law husband and my daughter don’t get along. Even though he is good with kids, she doesn’t want him around her children. The last time we were at her home, he got upset with me. He demanded we leave and went out to the car to wait for me. (I had told my daughter we were staying for two nights; this happened after one night.) My daughter felt he was disrespectful. She was upset and asked me what was going on. I became upset and my granddaughters saw me crying, which got them upset. My daughter then informed me she doesn’t want him around her kids again.Now, a year later, my husband still will not acknowledge any wrongdoing, nor will she. I’m stuck in the middle. He has threatened that if I spend time with her, he will spend time away from home. I am not choosing him over my kids. How can I handle this? — Just Wants Peace in CanadaDear Just Wants Peace: Handle this by stepping out of the middle. If you want to see your granddaughters,...

A nurse’s fatal last visit to patient’s home renews calls for better safety measures

Published Fri, 27 Dec 2024 11:16:48 GMT

WILLIMANTIC, Conn. (AP) — The killing of a Connecticut nurse making a house call in October was a nightmare come true for an industry gripped by the fear of violence.Already stressed out by staffing shortages and mounting caseloads, heath care workers are increasingly worrying about the possibility of a patient becoming violent – a scenario that is too common and on the rise nationwide.Joyce Grayson, a 63-year-old mother of six, went into a halfway house for sex offenders in late October, to give medication to a man with a violent past. She didn’t make it out alive.Police found her body in the basement and have named her patient as the main suspect in her killing. Grayson’s death has her peers and lawmakers renewing their yearslong pleas for better protections for home health care workers, including sending them out with escorts and providing more information about their patients. The calls come during an era of increasing violence against medical professionals in general.“I u...

Vegas shooter who killed 3 was a professor who recently applied for a job at UNLV, AP source says

Published Fri, 27 Dec 2024 11:16:48 GMT

LAS VEGAS (AP) — Terrified students and professors cowered in classrooms and dorms as a gunman roamed the floors of a University of Nevada, Las Vegas building, killing three people and critically wounding a fourth before dying in a shootout with police.The gunman in Wednesday’s shooting was a professor who had unsuccessfully sought a job at the school, a law enforcement official with direct knowledge of the investigation told The Associated Press. He previously worked at East Carolina University in North Carolina, said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to release the information publicly.The attack was the worst shooting in the city since October 2017, when a gunman killed 60 people and wounded more than 400 after opening fire from the window of a room at Mandalay Bay casino on the world-famous Las Vegas Strip only a couple miles from the UNLV campus. Lessons learned from that shooting — the deadliest in modern U.S. history —...

An appreciation: How Norman Lear changed television – and with it American life – in the 1970s

Published Fri, 27 Dec 2024 11:16:48 GMT

NEW YORK (AP) — In many American living rooms, the 1960s didn’t really begin until Jan. 12, 1971.That was the night the comedy “All in the Family” debuted, almost instantly changing television and American society with it. Creator Norman Lear, who died at age 101 on Tuesday, was the man behind that transformation.The series introduced the brash bigot Archie Bunker, his “dingbat” wife Edith, his feminist daughter Gloria and his liberal son-in-law Mike Stivic. From their house in the New York City borough of Queens, they co-existed loudly and watched the world spin uncontrollably.Archie Bunker, portrayed by Carroll O’Connor, embodied the “American Way” — as most middle-aged white Americans understood it at the time — and watched in confused exasperation as “others” redefined it.Coming out of a tumultuous decade of fundamental change, and smack in the middle of a contentious war overseas, these realities were hardly foreign to most Americans. They just rarely saw them refle...

Texas judge to consider pregnant woman’s request for order allowing her to have an abortion

Published Fri, 27 Dec 2024 11:16:48 GMT

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Texas’ strict abortion ban will face an unprecedented test Thursday, when a judge considers a request for an emergency court order that would allow a pregnant woman whose fetus has a fatal diagnosis to have an abortion in the state.The lawsuit filed by Kate Cox, a 31-year-old mother of two from the Dallas area, is believed to be the first of its kind in the nation since the U.S. Supreme Court last year overturned Roe v. Wade, according to the Center for Reproductive Rights, which is representing Cox.Since that landmark ruling, Texas and 12 other states rushed to ban abortion at nearly all stages of pregnancy. Opponents have sought to weaken those bans — including an ongoing Texas challenge over whether the state’s law is too restrictive for women with pregnancy complications — but until now, a woman has not gone to court seeking approval for an immediate abortion.“I do not want to continue the pain and suffering that has plagued this pregnancy or con...

Wyoming may auction off huge piece of pristine land inside Grand Teton

Published Fri, 27 Dec 2024 11:16:48 GMT

CHEYENNE, Wyo. (AP) — Off and on for over a decade, Wyoming leaders have threatened to auction off large chunks of pristine, state-owned parcels of land within Grand Teton National Park to the highest-bidding developer to prod the U.S. government to step in and pay millions to conserve the properties.On Thursday, they might make good on those threats. Up for a vote is whether to auction off the last of those lands — and arguably most valuable of them all, a gorgeous, square-mile (2.6-square-kilometer) property with Teton Range views and road access — by the end of January.Auction is the recommendation of State Lands Director Jenifer Scoggin, who suggests a starting bid of no less than $80 million. In a report for the Wyoming Board of Land Commissioners that will hold the vote, she said state law requires her to get the highest value from state-owned lands to raise revenue for public schools.Scoggin works under Gov. Mark Gordon, a Republican who has been quietly nudging Interior Depa...