The JP Progressives will be honoring their Activist of the Year, Henia Handler, in a party on Thursday night at Doyle’s. Attorney General Maura Healey will give Handler her award.
Posts published in “Jamaica Plain People”

Frank Shea began work as Urban Edge’s fourth director in its new office space on Columbus Avenue on November 3.
It is the fourth office space for Urban Edge. He is also the first director who did not come out of senior staff at the agency in its 41-year history. Proudly he said, “I am the first director born and raised in Jamaica Plain.”
Born in 1961 as a small boy living in the St. Thomas Aquinas parish on Rosemary Street he saw the razing of large chunks of Forest Hills for I-95.
“There’s really a lot of good people here (in Jamaica Plain),” said Shea. He spent some time talking about his prime emphasis as director. The good people of the Egleston-Jackson crossroads of Columbus Avenue-Washington Street and Columbus Avenue-Centre Street. He wants very much to connect them to each other, to their neighborhood and to the agency.
And Shea knows about how important it is for neighborhood residents to be connected to each other.

Boston Police Officer Carlos Martinez, the beat cop assigned to Egleston Square, is well known around the neighborhood. The officer won recognition this week from the city’s top cop for his role in apprehending a man accused of squeezing off gunshots from a car.

In August of 1964 my entourage and I (OK, there were just two with me), all newly minted graduates of Framingham High School, went to the EM Lowes Centre Theater at 690 Washington St. downtown to see Bikini Beach with Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello (ahhh …sigh…Annette!!).
(Reader advisory: Unless you’re over 50, most of the names in this story will seem like a foreign country…so just Google it…)
A parade participant gets a kiss from, a reader tells us, Rhea the Deerhound. Credit: Heather Goldin.
One of the joys of Wake Up The Earth is seeing Jamaica Plain’s people in all their diverse, goofy and beautiful glory. Here’s a sampling of the faces we photographed during this year’s parade and festival.
Daniel Pérez Lacera, center, hugs his children (Lyric, 8; Lanaedjah, 7 and Daniel, 5, at his last JP Neighborhood Council meeting on Dec. 23, 2014. Credit: Chris Helms
Daniel Pérez Lacera, who was serving his second stint on the JP Neighborhood Council, resigned to make his move to North Carolina permanent.
A pastor and minister of music for First Baptist Church were among those who traveled from Boston to Ferguson, Mo. to protest the police killing of Michael Brown.