I have lived in Cambridge in my house since 1966 + 4 years in Baker House while a student at MIT in 1956-1960. From 1967-1986 I worked in a ~40 person Cambridge office of a computer company working on Multics, a very advanced computer sysem for the times – for the last several years I was the manager.

I have been involved as a volunteer in many organizations – often as a board member, and sometime as treasurer. Most of them are Cambridge oriented and have worked to make the city a better place. It has been interesting and fun as well. Some of them are LGBTQ oriented. As an out-gay person I have had the pleasure of helping make life better for LGBTQ people.

Partly because we are moving out of Cambridge to Brooksby Village, a retirement Community in Peabody Mass, and because I had enough of this I am no longer doing any of this.

Cambridge Political organizations

Cambridge Civic Association – CCA
CCA was formed in 1945 as part of the effort to change the city government to the current strong City Manager, system. It characterized itself as a good-government organization and focused on working with City Councilors, the Mayor, and other parts of the city government, It also endorsed a slate of candidates and helped support the election. I joined in the ‘70s and stayed until it ended in the late ‘80s. I was a board member and the treasurer for most of the time.

Cambridge Lavender Alliance – CLA
CLA was formed in the ‘70s and as a LGBTQ organization and worked to make the public and the government deal with issues faced by LGBTQ people. It endorsed a slate of candidates for school committee and Council. Some of us worked with other people in the city and helped form the LGBTQ+ Commission. I was a board member and treasurer. After the Commission formed it ended.

Cambridge City Government organizations

Cambridge LGBTQ+ Commission
I have been part of this organization since it was formed in 2004 and been co-chair most of the time – retired in April 2022. Commissioners are appointed by the City Manager. We work with organizations in the government – particularly police and health care and have worked with housing and healthcare organizations in the city to help them improve policies and practices with respect to LGBTQ people.

Technical Advisory Committee to the Election Commission
This group was formed to help the Election Commission switch from the time consuming hand count of Council and School Committee preferential ballots to electronic. The hand count took about a week and it was fun to hang around and chat with people who were observing, it. We studied other systems and made a recommendation which was accepted and implemented.

Library 21 Committee
This committee was formed when the City Council rejected a bad plan to extend the main library that messed up the park next to the library among other issues. The committee had city government employees, volunteers, and outside library experts to figure out the program of the expanded library. It was very interesting – we did a lot of research – among other things looking at other library expansions - I as well as some others did a lot of this and visited other libraries when I was traveling and went to a library conference. The plan was well received and got the OK.

Library Design Advisory Committee
This was formed to work with the architects on the details of the design. Again an example of city employees, resident volunteers and library experts working together. The resulting library expansion is wonderful and has been well received.

Silver Ribbon Commission
This was formed by the city to investigate various issues of aging in place and produced a good report. Unfortunately little was done about its recommendations. Another example of resident volunteers working with city employees.

Envision Cambridge – Mobility Group
Envison Cambridge was a set of working groups that looked at possible futures for the city. The Mobility subgroup was dealing with transportation and just getting around. I was a member of this. Most of the recommendations were ignored.

Miscellaneous

Cambridge Postal Advisory Committee
We met with the Cambridge Post Office management a few times a year to look at policies and practices and make recommendations for improvement. We got a prize from the US Postal Service one year for our work. It lasted for a few years but after several changes in the local Postmaster it died out.

Before the Cambridge Public library was renovated it had a multistory section that housed the stacks. After the renovation part of this space been repurposed as the Young Adult section. When I first started using the library in the 60s it was a closed stack; you'd look up stuff in the card catalogue and then fill out a request slip and someone would get your books. Later they made it open which was much more useful because you could browse, but some people did not like the potentially treacherous stairs and floors (especially not good for high heels).

It had a really neat system of flooring and shelving.



( four more pics )

Tonight I went to a reception/dessert party at the new Cambridge Library. I think its main function was to cultivate possible donors. The architects were there and there were mini tours where we got to talk to the tour guides, a few staff and some of the trustees - all of whom I know. I got a chance for a couple of one-on-ones with the chief architect and the two preservation architects as well.

I enquired about the possibility of a gender neutral bathroom - there is none; possibly they could deal with this. The GLBT Commission is interested in getting the city to address this in all the public buildings.

I did ask the Director about the history room because that is one if the things that we wanted to have in the program for the library. There is a room dedicated for it and they are attempting to hire an archivist to deal with the materials. I hope they do a good job of cataloging and indexing so that materials in the library as well as in the Historical Commission, the Historical Society, and some of the City archives can be identified and found.

They had this special cake to commemorate the building.

Here's the illustration on the cake with a nice diagram of the building:


( The whole cake - partially eaten )

This morning I met with Kathleen Gilroy, the person who recently founded a Cambridge Public Library social network that I'd recently joined to talk about what we could do with this network. She is a very interesting person - an entrepreneur who is the CEO of Swift Media Networks that is working on social networking tools for meetings and conferences, and we hit it off well. The objectives of the library network will be to support improvements to the library by helping to create an endowment fund, getting creative ideas for programming at the library, and creating means for community members to donate things or ideas to make the library better. One of the challenges will be how to properly work with existing entities: the Library Trustees, the library management (both of which support this concept and have joined the network) and the Friends of the Library Organization. The timing of this is good since the newly renovated/added-to library will be opening in the fall. For those of you who don't know me I started getting involved in that effort in 1995 and my involvement was quit intense so it will be a pleasure to see the new building open.

This afternoon I went to a meeting at Cambridge Rindge and Latin High School to participate in the first planning meeting of the response to a Fred Phelps visit on March 13. The meeting was mostly students and the basic idea is that they will decide what to do. Cambridge has a GSA, Project 10 East, that was the second such organization in the US (the first was in LA). I was there as co-chair of the Cambridge GLBT Commission who of course will support this effort. There were a huge array of ideas expressed ranging from making a big deal in the school during that week to various forms of non-violent, non-confrontational protests outside when the haters arrive (if they actually do). Representatives from the Police department were there to emphasize safety and the Principal was also there emphasizing safety and the educational aspects. (Note that the principal is a gay man - somewhat out! - but this is Cambridge). It was a great meeting with lots of participation by the students and no domination by the adults.