Boston Scenes

Boston Celtics star Paul Pierce (right) shares a smile with Zakim Smith of Somerville during a recent visit to Children’s Hospital Boston’s Martha Eliot Health Center in Jamaica Plain to spread some holiday cheer to the kids and families there. Fellow NBA champions Rajon Rondo, Leon Powe, Eddie House and Sam Cassell, assistant coach Mike Longabardi, coach Doc Rivers and Celtics managing partner/co-owner Wyc Grousbeck joined Pierce, singing holiday songs with the kids, handing out gifts, decorating holiday ornaments and visiting the center’s pediatric and adolescent clinics. (Photo courtesy of the Boston Celtics Shamrock Foundation)

Tavis Smiley (left) and Dr. Cornel West (center) talk with Kim McLarin, host of WGBH’s “Basic Black,” in this shot from an episode that will air in February 2009. Smiley was in town to receive the Du Bois Medal, an annual award given by the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research at Harvard University. (Tanit Sakakini photo)

Charles Stith (left), former U.S. ambassador to Tanzania and director of the African Presidential Archives and Research Center (APARC) at Boston University, talks with Mimi Goss, president of Mimi Goss Communications, during APARC’s sixth annual South African Wine Tasting, held Dec. 9. More than 100 members of the Greater Boston community turned out for the holiday gala. (Photo courtesy of APARC)

Footwear retailer Payless ShoeSource earlier this month launched its “Payless Gives Shoes 4 Kids” philanthropic initiative, a national grassroots effort to give $1 million of free shoes to children of families in need. More than 600 charity partners, including Homestart Inc., the City Mission Society of Boston Inc. and the Catholic Charitable Bureau of the Archdiocese of Boston Inc., received nearly 67,000 $15 shoe coupons to distribute. (Photo courtesy of Payless)

Dr. Ronald F. Ferguson (left), co-chair and director of the Achievement Gap Institute at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, shares a laugh with Boston Public Schools Superintendent Dr. Carol R. Johnson during a Dec. 11 forum on the use of expanded learning time in schools. (Tony Irving photo)