The Boston Globe - 27.08.2019

B2 Metro The Boston Globe TUESDAY, AUGUST 27, 2019

By Steve Annear

GLOBE STAFF

A

bronze turtle sculpture at a popular Beacon Hill playground is

being moved to a shadier spot where children won’t climb on

it, after controversy erupted this summer when parents com-

plained to the city that it became dangerously hot due to the

sun.

Ryan Woods, commissioner of the city’s Parks and Recreation Depart-

ment, said Myrtle Street Playground, where the “Myrtle the Turtle” statue

is located, will remain closed through Labor Day as crews dig up the art-

work and lift it into a garden area at the park that will eventually be fenced

off. “It will be an element in the garden, instead of a playground structure,”

he said. The work, which began Monday morning and is being privately

funded, “is going to take the playground off-line for the week.”

The 4-foot sculpture is of a Kemp’s Ridley sea turtle. It was created by

Nancy Schön, the famed artist behind iconic works like the “Make Way for

Ducklings” statues in the Public Garden, and the “Tortoise and the Hare” in

Copley Square.

Schön, who unveiled the sculpture in May, objected to the move, calling

the complaints by parents “ludicrous.” “This whole thing was a knee-jerk

reaction to pandering to a minority of interests,” she said.

The statue is named after both the park and the popular green turtle,

“Myrtle,” who has long lived at the New England Aquarium. It was a gift

from the Beacon Hill Garden Club, which raised funds to pay for it to cele-

brate the group’s 90th anniversary. The turtle, which sits low to the ground

so children can climb on its shell, was first installed in the middle of the

playground in May. Soon after, it became the center of a heated debate in

the tiny neighborhood. In June, angry parents lodged complaints on the

city’s BOS:311 app claiming the turtle absorbed too much heat from the

sun, posing a risk to children who touched it.

“The metal turtle at the Myrtle St Playground was 133 degrees today,”

said one complaint. “Kids are getting burned. It is dangerous and should

not be in a playground. Please remove the turtle from the playground.”

Another person wrote to officials that their “5-year-old son burned his

finger on the turtle this morning.”

Parks officials told the Globe in June that they had also received tele-

phone calls about the temperature of the turtle, prompting employees to go

out with heat guns to measure it. Eventually, signs warning people that sur-

faces in the park could get hot were put up nearby.

At one point, two workers were seen wrapping the turtle in blue tape, to

ward off children. And later, the turtle was covered in a blue tarp.

The potential for playground equipment to get dangerously hot is a

known problem, according to the US Consumer Product Safety Commis-

sion. For a time, officials from the parks department were trying to figure

out next steps for the sculpture, including installing a canopy over it. After

several meetings with the Beacon Hill Garden Club, and members of the

Friends of the Myrtle Street Playground, it was decided that the turtle could

stay at the playground — but in an area safer for visitors.

Woods, the parks commissioner, said he was pleased that those involved

with the turtle’s presence came to a consensus.

Schön, the artist, was disappointed children won’t be able to interact

with it in the same way. “They were going to take the sculpture away be-

cause one kid hurt his little finger?” she asked. “It’s a very sad commentary

that we have to deal with this kind of thing, when there are people who

should be worrying about guns and people being killed rather than kids be-

ing burnt by a beautiful sculpture.”

Moving forward, Schön hopes the sculpture, in its new location, “will

give thousands of kids a lot of joy in the future.”

Steve Annear can be reached at [email protected].

Hottotouch,turtlegetsnewhome

NIC ANTAYA FOR THE BOSTON GLOBE

AROUND THE REGION

MAINE

USlobsterexportsto

Chinaslumpvs.tariffs

US lobster exports to China have fallen off a cliff

this year as new retaliatory tariffs shift the sea-

food business farther north. China, a huge and

growing customer for lobster, placed heavy tar-

iffs on US lobsters — and many other food prod-

ucts — in July 2018 amid rising trade hostilities

between the Chinese and the Trump administra-

tion. Meanwhile, business is booming in Canada,

where cargo planes are coming to Halifax, Nova

Scotia, and Moncton, New Brunswick, to handle

a growing bump in exports. Canadian fishermen

catch the same species of lobster as American

lobstermen, who are based mostly in Maine. The

loss of business has brought layoffs to some

Maine businesses, such as The Lobster Co., of Ar-

undel, where owner Stephanie Nadeau has laid

off half the 14 people she once had working in

wholesale. ‘‘They picked winners, and they

picked losers, and they picked me a loser,’’ Na-

deau said. ‘‘There is no market that’s going to re-

place China.’’ America has exported less than 2.

million pounds (1 million kilograms) of lobster

to China this year through June, according to US

data. The country exported nearly 12 million

pounds during that same period last year. That’s

a more than 80 percent drop. (AP).

BOSTON

DemandderailsUMass

BostonMBTAsubsidy

University of Massachusetts Boston students in

April did something their chancellor later called

“quite remarkable” — voting to raise their own

fees to further subsidize MBTA passes. “About

half of our students commute on the T. It’s a sig-

nificant expense for them,” interim chancellor

Katherine Newman said at a UMass Trustees

meeting earlier this month. “If there’s one thing

in the world I could move, it would be the cost of

their commute, because it’s really quite extraor-

dinary.” Three weeks after Newman made those

comments, so many students had set out to win-

now down their commute costs that on Friday

UMass Boston transportation officials informed

students that the new funding had been exhaust-

ed due to an “overwhelmingly positive response”

and the additional discount would no longer be

available. “Due to the high demand, the funding

for this program has been exhausted, and we are

no longer able to offer the 50 percent discount

for the fall 2019 semester,” UMass Boston direc-

tor of transportation services Chris Sweeney

wrote in an email to the university community.

(SHNS)

BURLINGTON, VT.

Drivergets30yearsto

lifeforquintuplefatal

A driver convicted of killing five teenagers in a

wrong-way crash nearly three years ago in Ver-

mont was sentenced Monday to 30 years to life in

prison. Steven Bourgoin was convicted of five

counts of second-degree murder in May. He apol-

ogized to the families during the sentencing

hearing. The 38-year-old Bourgoin has acknowl-

edged that the vehicle he was driving collided

with the car carrying the five teenagers in Octo-

ber 2016, but he argued he was insane at the

time. Prosecutors countered that Bourgoin was

troubled at the time of the crash, grappling with

custody of his child and relationship and finan-

cial issues, but he was not legally insane. (AP)

POLICE BLOTTER

RMURDERARRESTSTwo Lynn men were held

without bail at their Monday arraignments in

connection with a deadly shooting at a Lynn

playground during the weekend. Rogelleo Morri-

son, 43, of Lynn and Luis Falcon, 25, of Dor-

chester were taken into custody Sunday night,

according to a statement from Essex District At-

torney Jonathan Blodgett and Lynn Police Chief

Michael Mageary. Morrison was charged with

murder and armed assault to murder, and Falcon

was charged with accessory after the fact of mur-

der. Both were arraigned in Lynn District Court.

Morrison is due back in court on Sept. 16. Falcon

is due Sept. 4. The pair were arrested in connec-

tion with the shooting at the Warren Street Play-

ground Saturday evening. One of the victims,

Brandon Jesurum, 34, was pronounced dead at

an area hospital. Three other victims – an 18-

year old woman, a 20-year-old woman, and a 49-

year-old man – survived.

RCHUNGPLEANew England Patriots safety Pat-

rick Chung waived his arraignment scheduled

for Wednesday and has pleaded not guilty to co-

caine possession, according to a spokeswoman

for the New Hampshire Supreme Court. His next

court date is a dispositional conference sched-

uled for Nov. 8 at Belknap County Superior Court

in Laconia, court officials said. Chung is facing a

felony cocaine charge after police said they found

the drug at his $1.2 million home in Meredith,

N.H., near Lake Winnipesaukee on June 25, au-

thorities said. He was indicted by a grand jury on

Aug. 8 for possession of a controlled drug. Neigh-

bors said Chung kept a low profile and was rarely

seen in town. Prosecutors said that police re-

sponded to his two-story gray house following a

“call for service” and that “during the course of

that call, the police obtained the evidence which

has led to the current charges being filed.” Assis-

tant County Attorney Kevin Cormier would not

comment Friday on reports that the service call

was triggered by a burglar alarm. Chung wasn’t

arrested and it is unclear if he was at the home

when police arrived.

RFATALCRASHA 22-year-old man was killed af-

ter his car drove into the rear of a tractor trailer

on Route 128 in Gloucester on Monday morning,

State Police said in a press release. Johnathan Sil-

va of Gloucester was traveling north near exit 12

in a 2012 Kia Forte when he crashed into a 2000

Kenworth truck about 7:45 a.m., police said. He

was pronounced dead at the scene. The driver of

the truck, a 64-year-old man from Lawrence, was

not injured, authorities said. Police are still in-

vestigating what caused Silva to drive into the

truck, according to the press release.

RHOUSEFIREA Malden woman escaped flames

after a 2-alarm fire broke out at her home on

Sunday night, fire officials said. The woman had

reported to authorities heavy smoke inside the

house at 48 Rockwell St., according to Malden

Fire Captain Eric Deavilla. The woman was able

to leave the house safely and no one was injured.

GET SMART

By Martin Finucane
GLOBE STAFF
— Hey, there’s no need to fix me up with
that wonderful co-worker you’re always talk-
ing about. I’ll use the app instead.
— Sorry, Mom and Dad. I’d rather use the
app than go out with your friends’ daughter
(or son).
More and more Americans are likely say-
ing things like that, according to new research
from Stanford University, which found that
meeting online has become the most popular
way heterosexual couples get together in the
United States, surpassing introductions
through friends and family members.
“We find that Internet meeting is displac-
ing the roles that family and friends once
played in bringing couples together,” accord-
ing to a study published in the Proceedings of
the National Academy of Sciences.
“Traditional ways of meeting partners
(through family, in church, in the neighbor-
hood) have all been declining since World War
II,” the study said. Meeting through friends,
which was the leading way people met in
1995, has also been declining.
“The rise of the Internet has allowed indi-
viduals in the dating market to disintermedi-
ate their friends, i.e. to meet romantic part-
ners without the personal intermediation of
their friends and family,” the study said.
Researchers examined responses about
when people had met their partners and how
they had met, in two random nationally rep-
resentative surveys, in 2009 and 2017. A total
of 5,421 people were surveyed.
The survey found that online introductions
skyrocketed from 2 percent in 1995 to 39 per-
cent in 2017, while introductions through
friends dropped from 33 percent to 20 per-
cent, and introductions through family
dropped from 15 percent to 7 percent.
The percentage of people meeting in other
old-fashioned ways also dropped, including
meeting in school or college and in bars and
restaurants.
The rapid adoption of smartphones has ac-
celerated the adoption of online dating and,
as more and more people have met through
online dating, the stigma has waned and the
pool of potential prospects has grown, re-
searchers said.
The researchers noted that the dating apps
are replacing trusted people who could vet
and vouch for a potential dating partner, but
they said they’ve found the outcomes are the
same.
Michael J. Rosenfeld, chairman of sociolo-
gy at Stanford and the lead author of the
study, said, “Once couples are in a relation-
ship, it doesn’t matter how they met....
There isn’t a relationship between the way
couples meet and how relationships progress.”
“Just as relationships formed in a bar were
no less valid or successful than relationships
formed in the church, so, too, relationships
formed online take every shape and size and
every commitment level,” he said.
People may have been steered to each oth-
er by a computer, but “I don’t think it has any
consequences for the kinds of relationships
we’re in,” he said.
One advantage the dating apps offer is bet-
ter information on potential matches and a
broader pool of prospects than you could get
through family or friends, he said.
“Compared to your mom, who you’re prob-
ably safe to assume has your best interests at
heart, there’s no reason to expect that the cor-
porations behind these dating websites have
the same interest in your happiness....But
they do have the resources to help you meet
other people that only the Internet can pro-
vide,” he said.
If someone is searching for a particular
kind of potential partner, say, a mountain-
climbing vegan who is a lapsed Catholic, “it’s a
lot easier to find that person online than walk-
ing down a street,” he said.
Rosenfeld said the study is “not a knock on
moms or best friends,” but “for this role, it
turns out they have some structural disadvan-
tages the Internet services can improve on.”

Martin Finucane can be reached at
[email protected]

Datingappsvs.

old-fashioned

matchmaking

ADOBE STOCK

The MetroMinute

Steve

Archambault of

Watertown

(from left),

Nich Collito of

Dorchester,

Scott Martin of

Watertown,

and Ryan Sisca

of Rockland

removed the

“Myrtle the

Turtle”

sculpture in a

Beacon Hill

playground

after

complaints

that the

structure

became too hot

to the touch.