Yvonne Abraham channels the ghost of Brian McGrory in Allston

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.