LOCAL NEWS

Deval Patrick aide to lead state's immigration office

An aide to Gov. Deval Patrick who has been in charge of the governor's ethnic media outreach will be the new executive director of the state's Office for Refugees and Immigrants, Patrick announced last week. More »

Backstories amplify A.R.T.'s 'Porgy and Bess'

Before the opera came the drama. Some fans of "Porgy and Bess" may be surprised, but DuBose Heyward and his wife Dorothy adapted his own story about the titled Charleston, S.C. couple into a play eight years before the 1935 collaboration with George and Ira Gershwin. More »

Obama visits Ogletree's Martha's Vineyard home

OAK BLUFFS, Mass. - President Barack Obama put in a brief appearance Saturday at the home of his friend and one-time teacher, Harvard Law School professor Charles Ogletree, as he continued his Martha's Vineyard vacation. More »

'The Help:' Rebirth of a painful genre

For two years I managed to avoid reading "The Help." I didn't read it because I didn't need to. Whenever hordes of white women of casual acquaintance start coming up to me at cocktail parties or on the street and grasping my hand and telling me that I have to read this "wonderful" new book I can safely assume several things: More »