Jamaica Plain News (https://www.jamaicaplainnews.com/category/jamaica-plain-people)
Jamaica Plain's Susan Krantz has been working with textiles since she was a teenager. At 9 years of age, her grandmother taught her to knit to distract her from being fidgety. Krantz then took sewing lessons while in high school from a woman who studied in Paris. Quilting was a spontaneous undertaking after purchasing a copy of Georgia Bonesteel’s first book Lap Quilting. Forty years later she is an avid quilter.
You still have time to see the an art show at the Arnold Arboretum featuring two Jamaica Plain painters. "Artists Redux" is an exhibit at the Arnold Arboretum’s Hunnewell Building Gallery in the Visitors Center through March 13 featuring work by JP painters Ginny Zanger and Lizi Brown. The Hunnewell Building is open every day 10 am to 4 pm
Mass Center for the Book recently hosted winners of three years of Massachusetts Book Awards winners at the State House last week (January 18). On Jan. 18, Jamaica Plain residents Ethan and Vita Murrow, were honored for their 2021 Mass Book Award Honors in the Picture Book category for Zero Local: Next Stop: Kindness. The Massachusetts Book Awards recognize significant works of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, translated literature, and children’s/young adult literature written, illustrated, or translated by current Massachusetts residents.
Around the neighborhood you may have seen flyers advertising JP Improv. Wanting to know more, Jamaica Plain News asked Jamaica Plain resident Myles McDonough scripted questions in which he provided prepared answers. Q: Why did you want to create JP Improv? McDonough: I'd previously taught improv while at graduate school in Knoxville, TN, and I missed the community that grew up around that troupe. In addition, I saw that there weren't many nearby opportunities for people to try improv, and wanted to fix that.
Just in time for Valentine's Day, Jamaica Plain resident Jay Hutzler is starring in the Curtain Call Theatre's I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change!. The musical comedy is about ",,,everything you’ve ever secretly thought about dating, romance, marriage, lovers, husbands, wives, and in-laws, but were afraid to admit." The musical stars and is being led by locals. Dorchester's David Costa (Dorchester) is directing and choreographing, and music directed by Roslindale's Dan Moore. This production stars actors Chinatown's Bowen Huang, Malden's Stephanie Charlton, Hutzler, and Needham's Michael Herschberg.
Book and lyrics are by Joe DiPietro and music by Jimmy Roberts, will be performed February 10-19.
The Massachusetts Chapter of the National Academy of Elder Law Attorneys (MassNAELA) honored several individuals for their advocacy of elder services and their commitment to raising awareness of legal issues affecting seniors during its annual meeting including Jamaica Plain's C. Alex Hahn. Held on Dec. 8, the John J. Ford Litigation Advocacy Award, which honors a member’s efforts to educate the chapter membership relative to litigation strategies, was bestowed to C. Alex Hahn, for his dedicated efforts with drafting amicus briefs in appellate cases that pertain to elder law issues.
The Food Project welcomed Jamaica Plain resident Jeff Wojtowicz, a retired biopharma senior executive, to its Board of Trustees. The Food Project is a nationally recognized youth development model that employs teens to work alongside adults and strengthen local food systems.
Growing up outside of Chicago, Wojtowicz remembers consuming many canned vegetables. After he met his wife, whose family owns a farm in southern Illinois, he was exposed to more fresh vegetables with their enhanced flavor and nutrition. He first joined The Food Project as a member of the nonprofit’s development committee in 2018, helping to promote and execute the organization’s annual gala. This provided his first taste for how The Food Project works to build the next generation of leaders who will transform local food systems.
Bringing more than three decades of leadership, strategy, and project management experience to the Board, Wojtowicz looks forward to generating awareness about the power of disease prevention through greater access to nutrition.
Jamaica Plain resident Michele Courton Brown has been named chair of the YouthBuild USA Board of Directors, making her the third person in the global nonprofit’s history to take the role, as well as the first woman and the first Black woman to lead the body. This appointment creates a diverse, majority-female Board leadership — a first in its history — and advances the organization’s commitment to its mission by better reflecting the diverse population it serves.
Longtime community activist and Franklin Park Coalition member Jean McGuire was in the hospital and stable after being attacked while walking her dogs in Franklin Park. She was attacked on Oct. 11 around 8:30 pm and was found unconscious near White Stadium along Playstead Road near the Bear Dens and Long Crouch Woods by Boston Police. She had been stabbed several times, according to a Boston Police Facebook post. She was attacked by an unknown suspect(s), and was transported to a hospital and treated for non-life threatening injuries. McGuire, 91, has walked her dog safely and night for decades, according to an email by Rickie Thompson, President of the Franklin Park Coalition board of directors
"Jean, plucky as ever, fought off her attacker.
Jamaica Plain cellist Leo Eguchi's new solo project Unaccompanied features immigrant and first-generation American composers telling their own personal journeys of America. Unaccompanied features eight new short solos commissioned and performed by Eguchi, which echo his experience as a first-generation Japanese-American growing up in the Midwest. The show features world premieres by composers with backgrounds from the Middle East, Latin America and Asia, and each piece will be introduced by a short film about the composers and stories of their lives in America. “My young life in a small town was a split-screen existence. The experience was very different depending on whether I was out in public with the white or the Japanese side of my family,” said Eguchi.