Newton

BC official apologizes to residents for Saturday party that was supposed to end at 11 p.m. but instead raged on through the wee hours, the Globe reports.

Owen Byrne reports what happened after he took this photo at the Newton Highlands stop on the Riverside line last night:

The Massachusetts Appeals Court today declined to order a local sperm bank to hand over the identity of a donor to a London woman who moved to Boston after her insemination and birth to try to force the donor to pay child support.

The Massachusetts Appeals Court ruled today the owners of half of a two-unit condo can't build dormer windows without their neighbors' consent.

The ruling comes in the case of a former duplex in Newton in which the owners of one side wanted to extend their attic with dormer windows and a deck, but the owners of the other side balked. The dormer people sued, seeking arbitration, but the appeals court says state condo laws are very specific: The roof is a "common area" owned jointly by all owners and that if one owner doesn't want to modify it and change the overall size of the area, there's nothing the other owner can do:

... The condominium statute explicitly requires that all owners give consent before their percentage interest in the common areas is affected; all portions of the plaintiffs' proposal that would do so are therefore impermissible without the defendants' consent. ...

Complete ruling:

Hello out there in UniversalHub land. I have determined that what the internet lacks most of all is a personal blog about some schlub's experiences in and around [insert major city here]. I have decided to rectify that problem my moving my ramblings over here.

I will be blogging about Boston politics, the T, local music, dining, bars, sports, and life from the perspective of a 21-year-old Revere native now living in an apartment in Chestnut Hill, where I will be a senior this fall at Boston College.

Outgoing Newton Mayor David Cohen has waded into the battle over MBTA leadership, writing Gov. Deval Patrick that he fully supports current T General Manager Dan Grabauskas:

Ian Lamont posts copies of the two hand-written post cards he got, allegedly from Newton candidate Setti Warren.

Customers of the Needham Street McDonald's on the 7% they're being charged? They're not lovin' it, Wicked Local Newton reports.

Wicked Local Newton reports on a resident whose car "was covered in eggs, flour and salsa." No description of the bandito available.

D trolley vs. cellphone-using pedestrian at Chestnut Hill, shortly after 9 a.m.

Wicked Local Brookline reports the guy got lucky; slid under the trolley rather than becoming at one with it.

OurNewton.org.

Looks like the same basic idea as Boston's Neighbors for Neighbors.

NTSB investigators said this morning that they suspect Green Line trolley driver Terese Edmonds fell asleep as she drove out of Waban station, waking too late to stop the crash that took her life - and that the T is failing to do enough to keep workers alert on the job.

National Transportation Safety Board investigators said this morning that either of two possible fixes could have kept a Green Line operator from plowing her train into another train in Newton last May - while one board member suggested the federal government find a way to withhold money from the MBTA until it fixes its "failure in the safety net for transit riders."

What's left of the front of the trolley that smashed into another train in May, 2008. Source: NTSB.

Tomorrow, the National Transportation Safety Board discusses the May, 2008 collision on the Riverside line that left one trolley driver dead and a passenger with severe injuries. If you can't wait for the press reports on the meeting, you can listen in over the Web, starting at 9:30 a.m.

Doug reports (with photos) that the 1,000-car parking lot at the Riverside Green Line stop was manned by just one worker today as Red Sox fans arrived en masse to get to today's game:

... In a minature version of the Easter 2009 turnpike toll fiasco, insufficient staffing at the Riverside Green line terminal in Newton at noon on Sunday jammed traffic all the way back onto I-95/Route 128. ...

Blogger Chuck Tanowitz issues a call to action: He's calling on folks to do a little man-in-the-street interviewing to see how Newton residents really feel about the progress at Newton North High School, following City Hall's tut-tutting over Tab and blog coverage of the work.

Chuck Tanowitz talks to the Newton mayor's flack (yes, of course, the mayor of Newton has a PR person - you can't imagine the crush of press calls the mayor of the Garden City gets) about the flap over letting the local weekly take pictures of the under-construction Newton North High School:

... Solomon said that he would only change his stance when he felt public sentiment shift. While the writers on various blogs have been rather outspoken on the topic, Solomon laughed on the idea that these opinions mounted to much. "I read blog traffic, and I take it for what it is," he said. "I'm not certain advocating to alter public policy based on some blog traffic makes sense." ...

Wicked Local Newton photographs the oddest sidewalk you'll ever see (odder even than the marble sidewalk on Anawan Street in West Roxbury).

Sure sounds like David Cohen wants to get into the news business and decide what goes on the front page. Cohen, who isn't running for re-election in large part because of the costs associated with a new Taj Mahal high school, defended a decision to bar a Tab photographer from a "public" viewing of the still unfinished building because Tab photos wouldn't have been "essential" to reporting on construction progress, Wicked Local Newton reports.

Karen Wise explains why her entire family is now getting rabies shots, not that she knows for a fact that the bat that was flying around in her house was rabid, since her husband let it fly out, when, as they now know, you're supposed to trap it somehow and let Animal Control test it for rabies.

Steve Garfield was at the Chestnut Hill Mall at 7:05 this morning to get his new phone. In the report below it only appears like he's in a bunker to keep frenzied hordes of iPhone wannabes from overrunning him and taking his phone - we know Apple fans are not that crude:

No big deal, unless you happen to live next door to Jason Varitek.

Nothing like a little smash action during the morning rush (in this case, on the southbound side by Rte. 9) to slow things down.

Tom Nealon sings the praises of Baza, a Newton market dedicated to all things eastern European:

... Stand outs are the selection of herrings, smoked, dried, salted, and the salamis. I've certainly seen impressive arrays of salamis before - hanging from the rafters in salami enthusiasts basements or overhead in fancy meat markets, but here they are neatly arranged in the deli cabinet with their English names and prices easily visible (which can be a problem at other markets for those of us who learned all their Russian from watching A Fish Called Wanda). ...