Editor's Note

Dear FM, Happy (almost) thanksgiving. Just in time for the holiday, we’re back with our penultimate issue. This week’s scrutiny — the last of the year and perhaps my favorite — is a profile of Cambridge’s Mayor. Everyone appears to respect E. Denise Simmons. The same facts permeate every discussion about her: her three-decade tenure as an elected official, her stubbornness, the way she champions affordable housing and advocates for the city’s Black community. Yet seemingly no one can agree on who, exactly, she is — or where she fits into Cambridge’s changing city politics. MHJ spent three months doggedly researching and reporting on Simmons, and you can tell. The resulting story gets to the heart not only of Simmons as a person but of Cambridge politics as a whole: its past, its present, and its future. The rest of the issue is brimming with fresh bylines. SEY and JK talk to Sara Jane Ho, the founder of a finishing school in China that teaches “Western” etiquette to its wealthy, primarily female students. JL (notably not either of the two seniors with those initials!) looks back on the history of Leavitt & Pierce, the tobacco shop that served as a quasi-social club for Harvard students in the late 1800s and early 1900s. In a particularly rhythmic introspection, NSK explains her fraught relationship with multiples of four, which have fascinated and tormented her since childhood. AJBS quits coffee for a week with exceptionally amusing results. Over in Allston, NSK and JK visit Looney Tunes Records, an eclectic store with an even more eclectic owner. If you’re looking to make friends, Cambridge native Alex Chueh has talked with a new stranger every day for over three years, and he tells MH all about it. ASM reflects on how counterfactual thinking shapes her life. CS, one of our steadfast Canaday compers, provides us with a guide to disposing of the pests that lurk in (River and Yard) dorms. CJ and AJBS attend a “Sip’n’Sniff” candle-making experience at Boston’s Sniffs of Adventure. Finally, in this week's endpaper, introspection queen RCG recalls the shock and wonder of experiencing Gabriel Orozco’s untitled piece of pinched and rubbed paper in an exhibit at MoMA. This being my last closeout and almost thanksgiving, I am feeling an exceptional amount of gratitude. Thank you to JND, OWZ, XCZ, LLL, BHP, for making Maestro such a blast and making our magazine so gorgeous. Special shoutout to SET & LJPE for making our dreams (glossies) come true. Thank you to MJH, EJS, and CY, for supreme dedication and helping us through our missteps over and over. FM Execs, thank you for making 14p my favorite community (if not physical space) on campus for the last 3 years. Thanks to everyone in previous guards who brought us up (particularly SSL & MVE). To KT, thank you for sharing this year with me, for dazzling me with your edits and dragging me along when I was falling behind, for being, in short, an incredible co-chair. Get some soup — you deserve it. Finally, I am grateful for the future. To our compers and all our new execs, I am so proud of you already. To YAK, you are our guiding light. I can’t wait to see what you make of this magazine. Read the issue here! FMLove, HD + KT