Today's Papers: Small town life, urban renewal, and violence abroad and at home

A look at today's news might make you appreciate your own neighborhood a little more this morning--unless that neighborhood is ridden with gang violence, under attack by neighboring lands, or in middle-class suburbs that are losing their small-town atmosphere.

The most attractive place to live, though, based on today's papers, might be in the middle of what was once a traffic and construction nightmare. The Boston Globe reports on the transformation of the mess that was once the Central Artery into the first of the Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway parks, newly opened in Chinatown. Here is the first of today's articles worth reading. The lede is both informative and illustrative, drawing the reader into the article much the same way as one is drawn into the accompanying photograph, with its meandering pathway. The article's methodical structure describes the origin of the park and the design methods used to integrate it into the neighborhood before disclosing the catch that, like everything else relating to the Big Dig, this project was a long time in the making and is still incomplete. The kicker in this article, though, puts the emphasis right where it ought to be: on the enjoyment Boston's residents will share in the park for years to come. Finally, something to be happy about from the Big Dig.

Boston is not all sunshine and flowers, though, as a passing reference in a New York Times article on gang violence notes. The Times article discusses the newly draconian approach to gang violence in Charlotte, N.C., which has been influenced by that of the L.A.P.D. in the 1990s. The comparisons between Charlotte, Los Angeles, and Dallas seem aptly drawn, and the lede takes the reader to Salisbury, N.C., where gang violence claimed a teenager recently in circumstances of neighborhood rivalry that sounded surprisingly similar to those in L.A. a decade ago. The inclusion of commentary from Charlotte's mayor, Patrick McCrory, made the connection to racial bias among the city's police force in fighting gang crime, which comes as little surprise.

Far more disturbing than these reports of gang violence--and perhaps the best-written article in today's papers--is a report in the Washington Post on recent attacks on Kurdish villagers near the Iranian border of Iraq. The lede in this story is gripping and written with the grace of literature, but the article itself is a feat of journalism: how many papers today actually send their reporters to Iraq to share the intimate stories of villagers displaced by violence? The article quotes a Kurdish chicken farmer's observations on the shelling before turning to an official far removed from the reality of the situation, thus placing the emphasis on those who are directly affected by war. This is more than a newswire report: it is an illustration of what life is like for a nurse who sat at the breakfast table while her house was shaken by shelling and now tends to the "scorpion bites, fevers and stomach sickness" of her neighbors in the makeshift camp to which they have been displaced. As closely as the story is written, it also looks to larger concerns behind the violence by quoting the Iranian pamphlets that warn residents that Iran is responding to U.S. actions and will continue the shelling campaign in the days to come.

After such a moving portrayal of the horrors of being displaced by war, the Patriot Ledger's article on suburban mothers turning to the Internet to make friends just does not seem quite as important a concern to society at large. The article aptly points out that suburban neighborhoods seem to be losing their charm in an age when neighbors no longer "[chat] over fences while their children [play] together." It is refreshing that yet another article on the rise of online social networking forgoes the usual subject on college kids (and their elders) joining Facebook and instead looks to another demographic. The article covers the ground that a local newspaper should, focusing on the sense of community within several area towns in locations that cover most of the Ledger’s readership. The movement from the nostalgic lede to the kicker in which mothers discuss sharing parenting tips over email is effective, although I am not sure I am ready to believe the claim of one of the women interviewed that the Internet is the only way for a mother who works from her home to meet new people.

Still, I would prefer the boredom of suburbia--or better yet, the behind-schedule urban parks--to displacement by Iranian shells. Today's papers do nothing if not provide you with some much-needed perspective on American life.