My digs ... "Opposition House"

A few months ago I moved into a house which was (I didn't realize it until my roommate told me) an historical residence dubbed "Opposition House" when it was built in the early 19th century. I've been doing some digging into the history of it.

The landowner, Hon. Francis Dana, apparently erected the building in a couple days' time around 1807 to oppose the extension of Harvard Street through his very large property. "Opposition House" failed, the street went through, and the house was moved nearby (and probably reconfigured), and is now the duplex I live in, at 2-4 Hancock Place.

What I've found in hard-copy form is pretty neat, and I haven't put it online yet, but here are some Web sources:

• Wikipedia entry
• Cambridge history site about a series of "Blue Oval Historic Markers" throughout mid-Cambridge--apparently there's one at our place ...
  
• ... except it's listed as missing, according to this site
  

Fair housing & lending

I got interested in fair housing in 2006 when I lived in Milwaukee, Wis. You can see below that I was part of a predatory-lending project through Public Allies Milwaukee. In Boston, here in the summer of 2008, I've begun doing a little volunteer work for the Fair Housing Center of Greater Boston.

Public Allies Milwaukee, Class of 2007

I was a member of Public Allies Milwaukee in 2006-2007.

Here are links to:

• The main nationwide site
• The main Milwaukee site (with a photo of our class on opening retreat in Lake Geneva, Wis.)
  
• A little write-up about my work at the American Red Cross, where I was placed (with a photo of my best "presentation" pose!)
• The local fair-housing agency our Team Service Project group collaborated with to do predatory-lending educational outreach
• A MySpace page about Poets Monday at Linneman's Riverwest Inn, an open-mic event where I often read, and where I performed a feature on July 2, 2007. I called that feature "In the Company of Familiars" and it included guest performers Ken Woodall (who was the feature the very first time I went to PM in August 2006) and my friend Melissa Czarnik.
  

Old Blog

This is an old "blog" I kept during college. It was more of a place to store things I'd written. I thought about putting all of the information from that blog into posts on this one--but realized I didn't want to do all that work!

Something that didn't make it onto that blog is my senior honors thesis. I was looking for it online recently and came across it on the site of the Haas Center for Public Service. I thought I should keep a hold of it somewhere.