--Fires ran rampant yesterday. A mother and her son were injured last night in a fire in Somerville. One firefighter was treated and released at the hospital. [Boston Globe] --Another fire broke out in Haverhill last night, and people were injured jumping out of the windows. No one died in the blaze, but 24 people have lost their homes. [Boston Globe, Boston Herald] --The state Supreme Judicial Court is letting Heidi Erickson, who kept......

Last week, before we started shedding tears of sorrow for the Red Sox, Bostonist had overheard some stuff in the city. We asked if you had overheard some things to. Apparently you had. Crazy guy sitting alone at outdoor table by City Hall Plaza Starbucks As ugly as I am, people still love me! I'm not angry. Two twenty-somethings walking down Newbury Street First Girl: I'd rather have cancer than be pregnant. Second Girl:......

Clea Simon is a local author who has published four books: Mad House: Growing Up in the Shadow of Mentally Ill Siblings, Fatherless Women: How We Change After We Lose Our Dads, The Feline Mystique: On the Mysterious Connection Between Women and Cats, and her latest Mew is for Murder, is her lightest book to date, despite dealing with murder. After graduating from Harvard in 1983, Simon has been a committed member of the Cambridge......

If you read the Herald (poor, poor you), you found out today what Bostonist told you weeks ago: Heidi "the Cat Lady" Erickson is (still) conducting a one-woman protest outside the Supreme Judicial Court (not the Superior Court, as the Herald claims; that court is next door but is not the focus of Erickson's demonstration). The delightful picture accompanying the Herald piece also lets you know that Ms. Erickson has, of late, taken to wearing......

The Cat Lady of Beacon Hill is back. Readers may recall Heidi Erickson, who was ousted from apartments on Charles Street and in Watertown in 2003 after city inspectors discovered several starved cats and many many more dead ones (over 100 in all), most of them frozen, in her humble, urine-stinking abodes. (Wait - did we mention the Great Dane? There was a Great Dane too.) Aside from periodic, highly amusing court appearances - in......