The Alewife

Peace River Films spool a love of nature

by Gretchen E. Meixner

The president and co-founder of Peace River Studios, which is located on Montague Street in North Cambridge, has a lot on his plate.

Besides engineering new technologies and methods of film and media at Peace River, John C. Borden works to instill meaningful messages about the environment in his work, and raise people’s awareness.

Borden started the studios in 1962 in Vermont, where he studied at Marlborough College. It was moved to Cambridge in 1969. It became a component of Peace River Films, which was created by Borden and Neil Goodwin in 1972.

Borden worked on Peace River Films with Goodwin until 1994, when he founded the studios with business partner and wife Joana Hattery.

Peace River Films still exists under Goodwin’s leadership, while Peace River Studios was launched to invent new media solutions, Borden said. The tag line of the studios is “Films and Beyond.”

In addition to film and video production, Peace River works on media exhibits in places like zoos and aquariums. Their projects mainly focus on environmental issues, he said.

The studios also design new technologies that they use and sell to compatriots in the filmmaking world, Borden said.

“It’s a little hard to make a succinct statement,” he said when asked about the main goal of Peace River Studios. “New tech, new digital imagery, new ways to show ideas.”

“I became very interested in natural history and environmental issues,” Borden said.
One of his main focuses his trying to display aspects of the environment to help other people understand it, he said.

An important aspect of Peace River is their use of a process called fusion filmmaking.

“We apply different technologies. For example, we use stabilizers and motion control time lapse,” Borden said.  Fusion filmmaking is a combination of interactive media, digital imagery, custom photography, and storytelling

One of the main technological accomplishments of Peace River is a device called the PixOrb, he said.

Borden said it is a universal computer controlled camera device. It can be used in photography and film.

According to Borden, and the PRS Web site, it can stitch large images together to create spherical and cylindrical panoramas, time-lapse movies, and be programmed for any number and size of pan and tilt increments. Large companies around the world are using the design. 

“We believe that is was used to film the world’s highest resolution image,” Borden said of the PixOrb.

Teacher vies for school committee seat

by Gretchen Miexner

A certified middle school social studies teacher and candidate for school committee spoke at the Sept. 28 contributors meeting of The Alewife held at the back table of Porter Square Books.

“I’ve been able to see what’s been going on in Cambridge Public Schools,” Nancy Tauber said. “I think the school committee needs leaders that aren’t just committed to public schools, but also understand them.”

Nancy Tauber

Tauber, who said she taught social studies in the Newton Public Schools for 12 years, wants to focus on the middle schools, teachers and principals.

She supports the current superintendent, Thomas Fowler-Finn, she said. “He’s a leader. He’s a strong leader."

Tabuer said she has heard negative and positive feedback on the superintendent, but she wants to put that discussion to the side. “I think the Cambridge Public schools are improving. To change the superintendent now would take the focus off what needs to be done. Focus on the teachers. Focus on the principals.”

Old Time Baseball returns Wednesday

by Gretchen E. Miexner

The local tribute to the national pastime, The Abbot Financial Management Old Time Baseball Game, will be played Aug. 15 at St. Peter’s Field with first pitch at 7 p.m.

“It literally happened by accident,” said Stephen D. Buckley, a sports writer for the Boston Herald who started the annual game in 1994 when major league baseball was on strike.

Buckley, who was hosting his “Quality Hang” for radio WEEI sports radio station at the time. In the course of the show, Buckley talked about the possibility of having a game, and was surprised when people called in and offered their help, he said.

“It wasn’t supposed to have more than that one game,” Buckley said. “It was never intended for it to be an annual thing.” The second game came about when William Novelline, the owner of Abbot Financial Management wrote a letter expressing a wish to support and be involved in a second game.

Novelline and his son Andrew are two members of the six-person committee that organize the event, which also includes Buckley, Marlinda Langone, Ben Wiess, and J.C. Bejoian. Bejoian owns Alba Press, the printing company that makes the programs for the game, he said.

Through donations, raffles, and concessions, Old Time Game raises money for different charities every year. The first game, in 1994, raised $6,000 for the children of Eddie Fitzmaurice, a local post office worker killed in a car accident. This year, the game will benefit the C2 Mission, a charity that works to benefit children and families affected by cerebral palsy and cystic fibrosis, he said.

“They did such a good job helping us help them that we decided to bring them back this year,” Buckley said of the decision to support the same charity as last year. Usually a small charity is chosen, one that doesn’t usually get a lot of attention.

“So much of the money is checks given to us beforehand by sponsors,” he said. “We’ve raised about $50,000 for the past few years, $40,000 before the game even starts.”

Buckley said the game only financially benefits the charities, and that no one involved gets any monetary compensation. “No one leaves our game turning a profit.”

“It illustrates all that is good about baseball,” City Councillor Craig A. Kelley said. “This is what baseball is supposed to be about.”

City Councillor Anthony D. Galluccio, who has his own section in right field known as Gooch’s Corner, said he goes every year.

“It’s a wonderful event for Cambridge,” he said. “Cambridge has a really deep baseball history. It’s really an honor to have the game here every year.”

Local First boosts neighborhood commerce

by Gretchen E. Meixner

The executive director of Cambridge Local First and member of Business Alliance for Local Living Economies spoke at the May 25 contributors meeting of The Alewife.

Karen M. Kelley said she believes in supporting local businesses and helping them make Cambridge a unique and vibrant place to live.

“If you don’t want to do it, don’t do it,” Kelley said, in regards to shopping in national chains, “We’re local first. Think about it. Hard.”

Karen M. Kelley

Cambridge Local First is an organization of independently owned businesses that are in no way part of a franchise or chain, she said.

To be a member, a business must be privately held and live in Massachusetts. Business owners must pay all marketing and rent costs and have no corporate headquarters or interference, she said.

“Bookstore owners were the big people involved. We were concerned about the number of chains in Cambridge and wanted to do something about it,” she said.

Conway: Let's elect our mayor

by Gretchen E. Meixner

A young North Cambridge political activist spoke at the June 9 contributors meeting of The Alewife about his petition for a popularly elected mayor.

“We were planning it over the spring when we saw what was going with Mayor Reeves,” James P. Conway said, making a eference to the criticism of Reeves in this paper and other media outlets about his spending on travel and his staff.

Conway, a political science major at the University of Chicago, said he is using his summer vacation to try and make an impact on Cambridge politics.

“We decided to look into it and see where past efforts had gone wrong,” he said.

Conway’s petition is currently not a formal organization and has only one other member, his friend Spenser Skates, he said.

Currently the city operates on a Plan E Charter, which means that the mayor is elected by the city council, and has a mostly ceremonial post, he said.

The main role of the mayor is to visit other cities and represent Cambridge, Conway said.

Worcester is the only other city in Massachusetts that still operates on a Plan E Charter, he said.

“Well, it’s just an issue or more accountability is what it comes down to,” he said.

If Reeves was directly accountable to the voters he might have handled things differently, he said. “I don’t think it was a grand crime that he committed or anything like that.”

Reeves: The Alewife does it right

by Gretchen Miexner

The city’s mayor spoke at the May 18 contributors meeting of The Alewife about local journalism and the reforms needed in immigration,  CORI-reporting and education.

“The Alewife practices journalism the right way,” said Mayor Kenneth E. Reeves, who was joined at the meeting by his education aide, John Clifford.

The other newspaper in the city does not serve the city well, he said.

Reeves said it frustrates him to be reported on and analyzed by people who have so little information and who allow their biases to influence their reporting.

"Their reporters don’t get out in the city, they don’t understand the city, they don’t understand the budget process,” Clifford said.

Earlier in the year, this paper and the Cambridge Comical reported on criticisms of the mayor’s use of his travel budget by Alewife columnist Robert Winters.

Winters noticed that City Manager Robert Healy was requesting an additional $20,000 for the mayor’s travel budget on top of the original $20,000, and he passed the information on to both papers.