Story Archives of 'Boston'

The recession is fueling a surge in enrollment at community colleges. Younger students are opting for less expensive two-year programs and older workers are heading back to pick up new skills.

At Bunker Hill Community College in Boston, enrollment is up 23 percent since last year. In response to this increase, and to accommodate working students, Bunker Hill is trying something new: midnight classes. Coffee cups in hand, more than forty bleary-eyed students take Psych 101 or College Writing on Tuesday and Thursday nights. Classes start at 11:45 p.m. and run until 2:45 in the morning.

It’s a bold experiment that community colleges across the country - many struggling to squeeze in more students – are keeping an eye on. We talk Colleen Roach, spokesperson for Bunker Hill Community College, and midnight student Tanneke Burns, a phlebotomist and mother of five who takes midnight classes in psychology and college writing at Bunker Hill.

(Photo by Tadeeej via Flickr/Creative Commons)

Youth reporter Elliott Memmi tests the Charles River for dangrous bacteria. But will his exposure to the river's water poison him?

The French have rolled with it. Now Bostonians want their turn. Later this week, the city of Boston will begin considering vendors for a massive bike-share program, slated to hit the streets by next spring. Like Paris, Boston is in the market to become a bike-friendly and bike-active city. Cycling promotes passive recreation, reduces vehicle traffic on busy roadways and alleviates already strained public transportation.

But can Boston counter many of the problems plaguing the parisian experiment? And, can Beantown – notorious for its bad drivers - be transformed into a place where you don’t risk your neck to bike to work?

It’s "green commute week" here in New Hampshire, and as part of our "next green thing" series, we’ve asked Nicole Freedman to answer these questions and more. A Stanford graduate and an Olympic cyclist, she is Mayor Menino’s director of bicycle programs. She joins us to explain why the city is ready for a full-blown bike share program.

Boston Globe: Is Boston Ready For a Revolution?

We also listen to "Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy" from Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker Suite, played on bicycle parts. Those are spokes and derailleur cables being plucked, brakes squeaking and chains being pulled. Here's the video:

Making Boston’s narrow streets safe for bicyclists might seem like a monumental task. Across the country, hundreds of bicyclists die on U.S. roads, most of them in collisions with cars.

These fatalities can send shock waves through the bicycle community, but family and friends are coming together to commemorate their loved ones, with something called "ghost bikes." These bikes are painted white and placed at the site of the crash, standing as permanent reminders of the life that was lost.

But not everyone likes seeing these memorials in their neighborhoods, day after day. From Portland, Oregon – a city known for its thriving bike culture - producers Mark Saldana and Hana Sun have the story. Listen to the story at the Public Radio Exchange.

(Photo of Boston bicyclists by Jenene; photo of ghost bikes by velo_city via Flickr/Creative Commons)

Search around even the most modern office and you're likely to find a typewriter gathering dust in a corner.

Like so many things, its primary function has been usurped by the computer.

But this doesn't mean that people aren't still using typewriters.

In Boston, Massachusetts, for example, there's an ensemble group of musicians - the Boston Typewriter Orchestra - who use the obsolete machines exclusively in their compositions.

NHPR Correspondent Sean Hurley went to a recent performance of the BTO and files this report.

The City of Boston has spawned its fair share of big-name bands, from The Cars, to J. Geils, to the Pixies. But it's also been home to all sorts of extraordinary musicians that never became household names. Tonight on the Front Porch, we'll look back at fifty years of the Boston music scene with music critic Brett Milano. He's the author of the new book, The Sound of Our Town: A History of Boston Rock & Roll