Life inside Boston’s easternmost ring road, west of its massive suburban mosaic, is more than the meets the eye of Google earth.

This outer ring of habitation, tucked inside the burly bark of the interstate, is the next woody circle out from suburbia - exurbia – an as-yet unsung layer in the tree rings of the great trunk of metropolitan American life. Here, west of Boston and east of Worcester, tumbled grey stone walls still trace roads without sidewalks and the big yellow school buses lumber picturesquely past the odd apple orchard. Here is where middle-class New England families hunt acreage and the faded fantasy of small town community. Let me sing you the song of this exurban ring – some notes soar and others plummet. As Julie Andrews taught us, when you sing you begin with do re mi . . . . Read More »