Yvonne Abraham files a nice, simple, well told column on a Dorchester gangbanger who had an epiphany in jail and now is trying to get his life straight in college. Peter Gelzinis expresses angst about the really important things in life, but gets too tied up in knots and his head explodes in a paroxysm of random thoughts - at one point he started wagging his finger at us and telling us we all suck because we cared more about the Celtics victory parade than Curt Schilling's shoulder, which is enough to make the reader go "huh?" and wonder if maybe Gelzinis should stop downing entire six packs of Red Bull in a single sitting.

The Urban Paramedic is back from basic training and blogging again. And with his Boston job not resuming for another week, he has time to work up a head of steam over Yvonne Abraham tearing into the current president of the Upton Street Neighborhood Association in the South End for daring to call the Pine Street Inn "a very, very nasty place." The UP, who has been there, explains, in some detail that the Inn really is a very, very natsty place:

... The whole facility stinks of urine and body odor. The belongings of the residents are filthy. In fact, most of the residents are filthy.

Night is the worst time. The snoring of 400 people in varying degrees of health makes an incredible racket. Arguments break out. Residents sneak into the rest rooms to shoot up heroin. Others get drunk. They steal from one another. Violence is not unusual.

The staff is extremely dedicated. I give them a world of credit, because they try extremely hard to set rules that will give the homeless a decent place to sleep. But it's an uphill battle. Residents sneak needles and syringes into the shelter. And bottles of booze. And occasionally knives. ...

John Gonzalez weighs all three of the columnists and finds them wanting:

... In a city that needs bold opinions, particularly now that Bailey is gone, who among them is up to the task? Walker is inconsistent. So is Abraham, who just returned to writing this spring after spending much of her first year as a columnist on maternity leave. Cullen, meanwhile, exhausted much of his first year finding his chi. What kind of cattle prod does it take these days to make a Globe columnist earn his feed? ...

He also provides the rules for the Kevin Cullen drinking game. Yes, you get points for every Irish reference.

Yvonne Abraham breaks the news that Apple opened a store on Boylston Street last week and expresses her discomfort on learning that Apple is a for-profit concern and her amazement that, despite that, some people really like its products.

Humble suggestion: This is the sort of thing that would make a more worthy metro column.

That must explain why metro columnists at the Boston Globe keep writing about things happening nowhere near Boston (another example).

Then again, it's not like the paper's metro columnists could really write about the big local story, now could they?

With a cute column about becoming an American.

Yvonne Abraham in City & Region: Who knew Boston public schools are so great?

Michael Blanding in the Globe Magazine: Boston schools suck and are getting worse.

Now, Abraham does mention problems, and Blanding briefly mentions successes (mainly as a bridge to still more horror stories like one about parents taking their kid out of a public school because he kept getting bitten by a special-needs kid), but left hand? Meet right hand. Also: Seems very odd to have a magazine cover story about how Boston schools suck without giving the new superintendent, who supposedly is known for the sort of innovative programs the writer gushes about, a single sentence.

Ed. parent of Boston public school student note: The truth is somewhere between the extremes. We got lucky, our daughter's in a good school, seems to be doing well, and none of her schoolmates have ever bitten her. But the Boston Public Schools can be a frustrating, even terrifying experience for parents. We are, to be honest, scared of middle school and high school (although a bit less so now that her school's gone K-8): If she doesn't get into Latin (or if she does get in but we decide it's not for her), what do we do? If somebody has a good word to say about any middle school in the city, I'd love to hear it.

Her column on Harvard Jr., a.k.a. Allston, is classic McGrory: Set up a straw man to be demolished with a withering sneer. In her case: Argue that all Allston residents are 19th-century peasants who must not be allowed to stand in the way of Harvard turning the entire neighborhood into a Seussian village of Frank Gehryesque structures.

Michael Pahre explains just how wrong Abraham is, starting with her strawman argument that Allston residents only care about Harvard's architectural "vision," such as it is, as opposed to caring about traffic, maintaining a livable, viable neighborhood, Harvard's pisspoor record in dealing with the community to date, etc., etc.

... I think she needs to venture into the neighborhood and attend a meeting (or two) to see what is really going on. We have lots and lots of meetings these days in Allston-Brighton, sometimes up to five on a given night; she can take her pick. Or read the meeting minutes, which she could do from the comfort of her office on the other side of the city. There's a lot of pages of minutes from the last two months of meetings of the Harvard Allston Task Force; architectural design takes up very few of them.

Globe Editor Martin Baron has just told his staff that Globe staffers Kevin Cullen and Yvonne Abraham will be replacing Brian McGrory and Eileen McNamara on the left side of the metro section. Cullen could be a wicked cool columnist - he did a great job as police-beat reporter for the Herald and then the Globe (Abraham could be good, too, I'm just not as familiar with her work).

Baron's memo follows: