Five Fun Facts about Boston and Cambridge, MA

 

#1 is about the mayor that character Calvin meets!

 

Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino’s July 20, 2012 letter to the president of Chick-Fil-A became an internet sensation! It all started when Chick-fil-A President,Dan Cathy, told the Baptist Press that his company was “guilty as charged” in support of what he called the biblical definition of the family. Menino swore he would block the chain from opening in Boston because of Cathy’s opposition to gay marriage.

 

Here is Menino’s letter to Cathy:

 

To Mr. Cathy,

 

In recent days, you said Chick-fil-A opposes same-sex marriage and said the generation that supports it has an “arrogant attitude.”

 

Now — incredibly — your company says you are backing out of the same-sex marriage debate. I urge you to back out of your plans to locate in Boston.

 

You called supporters of gay marriage “prideful.” Here in Boston, to borrow your own words, we are “guilty as charged.” We are indeed full of pride for our support of same sex marriage and our work to expand freedom to all people. We are proud that our state and our city have led the way for the country on equal marriage rights.

 

I was angry to learn on the heels of your prejudiced statements about your search for a site to locate in Boston. There is no place for discrimination on Boston’s Freedom Trail and no place for your company alongside it. When Massachusetts became the first state in the country to recognize equal marriage rights, I personally stood on City Hall Plaza to greet same sex couples coming here to be married. It would be an insult to them and to our city’s long history of expanding freedom to have a Chick-fil-A across the street from that spot.

 

Sincerely,

 

Thomas M. Menino

Mayor, City of Boston

 

Side note: I worked as a foot messenger for a large, prestigious law firm library in downtown Boston in 1989 and 1990. In ten months, I walked roughly a thousand miles while running errands through the blustery winter of this seaside city. One errand I will never forget occurred in early November; I was dispatched to pick up a printed copy of the Gay and Lesbian Civil Rights Bill. We’re talking old school, pre-Internet days: it had been typed and then copied on special paper with a governmental seal! After a legislative battle of almost two decades, Massachusetts became the second state (My home state, New York, was the first!) to pass a law prohibiting discrimination against homosexuals in employment, housing, credit and public accommodations. Luckily for me, the envelope wasn’t sealed, so I stopped and read the whole thing, absorbing the enormity of it, before I returned to my supervisor with a few more rights and legal protections than I’d had in my state the day before.

 

Note: should I write the side note in the first person?

 

 

#2 Fiona and Pete’s first real conversation took place over Thai food. Apparently, the Boston Area loves Thai food!

 

In 2012, bloggers in the Boston Area named their favorite Thai restaurants, and Cambridge had four of the top ten!

 

#3 Ten things Boston parents should take their kids to do before they grow up. (8 year old character, Mack, would approve!)

 

1. Go on a behind-the-scenes tour of Fenway Park
2. Throw tea crates over the side of a ship at the Boston Tea Party Ships and Museum
3. Take in an IMAX movie at the New England Aquarium
4. Visit the Skywalk Observatory at the Prudential Center
5. Find a good spot to cheer on Boston Marathon runners (Apr)
6. Take a ride on the one-of-a-kind Swan Boats in the Public Garden
7. Take a Boston Whale Watch cruise—whale sighting guaranteed!
8. Watch the street entertainers at Faneuil Hall Marketplace
9. Swim in Walden Pond
10. Observe the night sky through telescopes and binoculars at the Coit Observatory at Boston University

 

Title:  PeopleFish

Author: Medella Kingston

Publisher:  NineStar Press

Release Date: January 23rd

Pairing: Female/Female

Length: 118000

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Synopsis

Her Cree grandmother called it the gift of seeing, but for Petra “Pete” Orvatch, knowing things in ways that defy explanation has made reality and fantasy blur in a world where the clocks literally go backward. Her fascinating and clairvoyant mind is a riddle that many doctors have tried to solve with medication. Love comes her way unexpectedly when she meets Fiona Angeli, a stunningly beautiful single mother. A risk-taker by nature, Fiona is not scared off by her new lover’s psychic abilities and eccentricities.

The two of them share passion and secrets on a magical and surprising journey, and their torrid love affair takes them to thrilling new places until betrayal divides them. Both these women fight battles within themselves; Fiona must gain control of her dangerous compulsions, and Pete’s onerous gift ultimately puts her at risk of losing herself in the gap between delusions and the real world.

PeopleFish
Medella Kingston © 2017
All Rights Reserved

 

Pete looked up from the mystery she was reading and scanned the faces in the waiting room. There was Tired Pinched Mom, with faded blond ponytail and dark roots coming in. She had one kid under control and was now quietly negotiating with the other. Next to this trio sat Man Too Large for His Seat, who seemed to be staring at his shoes or sleeping with his eyes open. In the corner was someone so nondescript she couldn’t instantly name her—then it came to her: Any Woman. This woman was neither thin nor large, short nor tall, and had a slightly exotic yet familiar face. She looked as if she could be from many different places, like Greece, Morocco, Central America, or New Jersey. She was text-messaging so quickly, Pete half expected her thumbs to spark and set fire to her phone.

Doesn’t anyone people-watch anymore? Was she the only person left who liked to read faces and create narratives? Maybe so. She’d never stop doing it. She’d been spinning this stuff since she was little—much to the annoyance of her mother. Instead of acknowledging the creative gifts of her child, or at the very least being entertained by them, she’d say, “God will punish you, Petra Marie, for thinking bad thoughts about people and making up lies.”

Some traits must skip generations, because Grandma Sweets had the right attitude. She’d join right in and embellish her granddaughter’s rough outlines of strangers’ lives with additions that could only come from a seasoned mind. If Pete said a passenger on the bus looked guilty, Gram Sweets would say, “Of course he looks guilty, he ought to! Instead of cooking a turkey for Thanksgiving, he cooked his wife!”

Her reminiscing was perforated by the staccato ring of a telephone.

“Cambridge Holistic Health and Wellness Center, please hold.”

Please hold? No one else is on the line; is this receptionista just fucking with the caller? Pete dog-eared the page in her paperback, closed it, slipped it into her bag, and decided to devote all of her energy to observing. She was just about to make up a story about the receptionist when her eyes landed on something strange. She hadn’t noticed the cheap plastic clock on the wallpapered wall before, but now she couldn’t take her eyes off it because the second hand was moving backward.

At first she thought she was seeing things, since her imagination was such a well-developed muscle. So she did something that made her feel seven instead of thirty-seven. She closed her eyes to reset, inhaled a long, slow breath, and then opened them, hoping this simple act could alter what she saw, or make things feel right again. She didn’t return her gaze to the clock right away, but rather avoided its face like you would dodge direct eye contact in a volley of flirt-and-stare with a stranger who’d caught you looking.

She panned her eyes evenly over all she had just taken in. Now the previously obedient child of the two was acting petulant, Man Too Large for His Seat actually was asleep, and Any Woman had stopped texting and was staring back at Pete. This startled her a bit. She looked away and then forced herself to look at the clock again. The red second hand was still moving backward and now instead of 2:27, it was 2:26, and the room seemed brighter to her than it had been just a minute ago.

“Petra Orvatch?”

She heard the automaton call her but she couldn’t move—she felt obligated to monitor the clock and confirm that it was in fact going backward, but knew she shouldn’t say anything about it. It was one of those times when she couldn’t expect people to understand her. These occurrences had happened ever since she could remember and could be confusing, amusing, or even downright dangerous.

Purchase

NineStar Press | Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Kobo | Smashwords

Medella Kingston fell in love with writing at an early age and published articles, poems, and stories when she was growing up. She wrote, performed, and sold songs for movie soundtracks, and continued writing short stories for her own pleasure. She currently sings in the band Omnesia, which has aired locally on UC Berkeley’s radio station and been heard as far east as Goa and the Mumbai University. She lives with her partner and their two dogs in the East Bay. PeopleFish is Medella’s first novel, and she is currently working on a new book.

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