By Gwen Romagnoli, in the Boston Globe — 3/13/2011
Franco and Gwen Romahnoli at the 2007 studio tour
The refrigerator broke down and most of its contents went bad. As I was taking everything out, I noticed the row of medicine bottles on the door shelf and picked them up for the first time in two years. There were Franco’s insulin and a bottle of Epogen, the medicine that had given him enough strength to live as long as he did. I hadn’t ever wanted to touch them; I had wanted to keep them there, to remind me of him.
Franco died two years ago, and this was not the first time I had mixed feelings about what to do with his things…
The WGBH community mourns the loss of A. Beth DuVal Deare, the former producer of Say Brother (now Basic Black) and several award-winning documentaries, who died Mon, 2/21, in a fire at her home in Newton.
Beth, who was battling brain cancer at the time of her death, worked on Say Brother from 1978 to 1988, and won an Emmy Award for In the Matter of Levi Heart, a documentary about a Boston Police shooting — one of 13 Emmys and a Peabody Award she earned during her tenure at WGBH).
“WGBH is saddened by this loss. Beth was a very talented producer and someone who helped connect WGBH with others in the community,” says VP for Communications and Government Relations Jeanne Hopkins.
Dan Beach just rediscovered this image from a play by Gertrude Stein, “Yes Is For a Very Young Man.” It was shot at 125 Western Ave., and that’s me on the right. (It was while was living in New York, and was hired to come back to Boston for a few shows, so I’d guess at about 1965 or ’66.)
Gertrude Stein's "Yes Is For a Very Young Man" (1965 or '66)
WGBH and its 280 CWA union members are definitely not on the same channel.
Union busting at WGBH? How will that play during Pledge Week?
Labor-management relations at the World’s Greatest Broadcast House are sinking quicker than PBS ratings. At the end of October, management declined to extend its contract with the 280 members of the Communications Workers of America Local 1300, and now seems bent on putting the pesky communards out of business. A federal mediator has been called in, and doesn’t seem to be helping. This isn’t Mr. Rogers’s neighborhood anymore.
Update: WGBH/AEEF contract dispute