I tried a while back to document all the subsquares in Cambridge: Mark Sandman Square, Rick Modica Square, etc. Each of them is named after a local hero of some sort, but no one has documented who those heroes are. Sandman was the lead singer of Morphine, which played a lot at the Middle East; hence Mark Sandman Square is just outside of the Middle East. Modica was a friend of a friend of mine, who died in a car accident in Florida when there with his Princeton singing troupe. I dug around a bit and couldn’t find any explanation for why he’s honored in Cambridge: he appears to be from upstate New York.

So I contacted various departments within Cambridge city government, then contacted the city council. They were very generous and offered to let me come dig through their library to look at the minutes of Council meetings. I’ve not gotten around to that yet. It’s sort of surprising that those minutes aren’t already on the web.