The Boston Globe from Boston, Massachusetts • 14

A. -H Volunteering on company time. LivingArts, Page B7 I. CityRegion News Bl-4, 12 Lottery B2 New England News Briefs B2 Deaths CIO TVRadio B4 Student Newsline BjS Weather B12 The Boston Globe Monday, July 9, 2001 -m M(K1 0fD Adrian Walker ti i 1 1 ii 1 1 1 1 i i 1 1 i 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 ii iiiiiiiiiii iiiiii hum 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 i i iiiiiiiiiiini iiiniiii i 'It's just one of those places on the Cape you 'd never know about, but when you find it, it blows you away. It really is magicaU Bo Dandison, a retired book editor who lives near the tree Logan plane City Hall buffoonery alls at I The Boston City Council suffers from a vexing problem.

Our leaders have a bruised collective psyche. They feel that they lack respect. It's a slippery, elusive quality, yes, but anyone takeoff 1 A who goes to work every Pilot of Cape flight escapes with burns By Douglas BelMn and Matthew Brelis GLOBE STAFF Cape Air pilot Jason Watson crawled out of his plane with second-degree burns yesterday after the otherwise IP' r- Mry.f v- ri hm in ii ii i i iiiiii ii ril -n i in" "v-m i rf m'i -tt GLOBt STAFF PHOTO JONATHAN WIGGS Bo Dandison of Yarmouthport says he can see shapes and faces in the English weeping beech. The tree, thought to be one of the largest of its kind in the Northeast, is estimated to be up to 200 years old. ough wow Giant beech inspires awe in the few who know of it empty twin-engine Cessna he was flying wobbled after takeoff at Logan, fell from the sky, flipped, and burst intjo flames in front of horrified Sunday travelers.

I The crash, which was visible from a Logan terminal as well as the control tower, shut down one of three runways being used yesterday, and caused four-hour delays into the night The cause was not immediately known, but an aviation source said the tower gave Watson a wind advisory, and he elected to take off anyway, as was his right It is the second time this year that a Cape Air plane has crashed. In January, a Cessna heading for Martha's Vineyard smashed into trees three-quarters of a mile shy of the runway. TTie pilot and a lone passenger were burned. The cause of that crash has not yet been determined. Yesterday at about 12:13, Watson traveled between 2,000 and 3,000 feet down Runway 22R, lifted off, and lost control, the wings dipping to the left and then the right before the plane lost altitude, skidded and exploded, said John Duval, assistant director of aviation operations at Logan.

The plane came to rest upside down and facing backward in weeds 30 feet off the runway, a trail of broken metal on the runway about 100 yards behind it Moments after the plane crashed, Watson, 29, got out and walked across the runway. Several fire engines raced to the scene and firefighters extinguished the flames. Watson was taken to Massachusetts General Hospital, where he was listed in good condition. "Thank God the pilot walked away," said a shaken Cape Air president Dan CRASH, Page B3 By Francie Latour GLOBE STAFF YARMOUTHPORT-In the world of storybook magic, it doesnt get more basic or timeless than this: a boy and a tree. Boy discovers tree, boy climbs tree, boy and tree share the secrets adults can never know or understand.

But when a grown man white hair, weathered hand, and all can step under giant limbs and still wonder at the shapes and faces hiding in the bark of a tree trunk, if a moment of magic in the real world. Bo Dandison is such a man, and the English weeping beech is such a tree. "Did you see it? Did you see the elephant?" the 65-year-old asks a newcomer, tracing the face in the air with a finger. "If you look at the tree, and really stand there and you're very quiet, you can see the elephant's trunk. You can see its eyes." Tucked behind the local post office, invisible from the road that curls through town, the weeping beech is a keeper of secrets, and a secret unto itself.

No sign points to it, and no guidebooks promote it No one knows who planted it or why. The lore of what has happened beneath its boughs secret weddings, strange pacts cant be corifirmed or denied. It towers more than 60 feet high and its canopy arches nearly as wide, and if believed to be one of the largest weeping beeches in the Northeast Estimated to be between 150 and 200 years old, it has survived hurricanes and the near dear-cutting of parts of Cape Cod for firewood and building. Yet the dark, lush world it creates still remains largely unknown to most Cape visitors. But for some who have managed to stumble across it by accident, or at the end of an insistent, tugging hand the tree has become a place of pilgrimage, as hushed and holy as any chapel.

"If just one of those places on the Cape you'd never know about, but when you find it, it blows you away," says Dandison, a Lexington native and retired book editor who has lived next to the tree for seven years. "It really is magical." Where some might see mere roots, others imagine a prehistoric footprint Where some see raised bark, TREE, Page B12 day knows how critical it can be. There is good news to report this morning. The council has found a solution to its woes: Fire all the city's lawyers. In an act of City Hall buffoonery that may someday take its place among the most ludicrous, the council has decided to respond to a ruling in Suffolk Superior Court that it cannot hire its own legal representation by canning the office of the corporation counsel, the city's law department.

The notion that the council needs its "own" lawyer that is, one who would take its side in disputes with the mayor has been kicked around for years. (Dapper CNeil once led the charge on this, which says something about the cause.) But it's gained currency in the past year, as City Hall has become a hotbed of intramural legal wrangles. The pathetic upshot of this is that the council now maintains that it is illegal for the city to pay its lawyers because the councilors have defunded the law department's budget. The Menino administration seems to have found a loophole to render the council's actions moot, but the dispute drags on. The relationship between the council and Mayor Thomas M.

Menino degenerated from tense to testy to nasty a long time ago. The council and the mayor have now been legal adversaries three times in the past nine months. Some of the squabbles have been fun, like the fight over City Hall Plaza and the attempt to vote down the Fenway Park deal when the council had no bill to vote on. This latest is just dreary. In a strong-mayor system such as Boston's, it is important that the council stand its ground on key issues.

Unfortunately, that isn't what's going on here. In this case, the law department is little more than collateral damage in the war between Menino and Councilor James M. Kelly over the ill-fated South Boston Betterment Trust, a battle coming to a courtroom near you. One thing has become clear in this fight: This remains Kelly's City Council. In taking the administration to court over its legal representation, the council hired his choice for a lawyer, South Boston firebrand Chester Darling, and balked only when Kelly wanted to cut other departments as well as the law department.

While Kelly has directed much of this campaign, his putative successor as council president, Charles Yancey, has been reduced to mouthing platitudes about independence. Unfortunately, Kelly's judgment has been no match for his fury. Darling told the councilors their case was a slam-dunk. They've done nothing but lose in court, though Darling has pocketed $57,000 for the defeats. Though nobody on the council has anything to be proud of here, there are signs that at least some members are getting fed up.

In particular, this is a potential disaster for the three councilors pondering runs for district attorney next year, Daniel Conley (Hyde Park), Michael Flaherty (at large), and Brian Honan (All-ston). Voting to shut down a law department doesn't make sense for someone who wants to be a prosecutor. Attempting to close departments is bad government and equally bad politics as a number of Republicans in Congress will attest Basic functions of government cannot be treated like chips in a poker game. More to the point, the city's law office is not the council's to shut down. In its obsession with respect, it has forgotten whom the corporation counsel really represents, which is all of us.

"I think it is high time that we resolve it," Honan said yesterday. "We need to move forward on the many important sues that face the city and this is holding us back." Too bad most of his colleagues don't seem to feel that way. MllllllllMIMIIIIIIIIIIIIIMIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIMIIIIIirtllllllllllllltMIIIIIIIIIIIIIMIIIIIIIllll llllllirilllllllllllMlltlMMIIIIIIIIIIIIIlllllllllllllllllllllllllliri Cabdrivers vow to boycott high-crime areas home to many people of color has declined not because of crime but because of the draw of a more lucrative cab business in downtown Boston and at Logan International Airport The further reductions in service would affect city communities that badly need transportation alternatives, i The attack on Andre, 43, left him paralyzed. He had picked up three young men on Callendar Street in Dorchester and was shot as he dropped them off on Alwin Street in Hyde Park. No one has been arrested.

TAXIS, Page B4 pan, and Roxbury out of fear they too will be attacked. The informal boycott will intensify at night, when many drivers said they feel especially vulnerable. And, the cabdrivers said, they will continue to drive past teenagers or young men from those neighborhoods, especially if there are two or more in a group. "You meet some good people in Dorchester, I tell you," said Yves Gillis, a taxi driver who acknowledged avoiding the area after dark. "But ifs very, very dangerous at night in Dorchester." Cab service to these neighborhoods City officials decry move as racism By John EUement GLOBE STAFF Yves Andre spent 17 years picking up strangers before one of them shot him Tuesday night, leaving the Haitian immigrant paralyzed from the waist down and some of his shocked and grieving fellow Boston cabdrivers vowing not to pick up rides late at night in high-crime neighborhoods.

The drivers' declaration prompted an immediate riposte from City Council President Charles Yancey and other neighborhood leaders, who say that allowing cabdrivers to choose whom to pick up and whom to ignore furthers stereotypes of people and neighborhoods. For years, Yancey and former city councilor Bruce Boiling, among others, campaigned hard to restore taxi service to neighborhoods long shunned by drivers. But now, in the days since Andre's shooting, drivers have said in interviews they will avoid Dorchester, Matta- With its lease up, Tower faces the music row- ov By Jennifer Medina GLOBE CORRESPONDENT When Tower Records opened on Newbury Street in 1987, DVDs and MP3s were meaningless acronyms. Few people had heard of Starbucks or Urban Outfitters. And going to Newbury Street rarely meant heading toward Massachusetts Avenue.

But those days are gone. And now, so is the music store that became a Boston institution. At Tower's opening, people stood outside waiting to gain entrance to the massive store jammed with musical offerings in a quantity and variety never before seen in the city. Yesterday, shoppers looking for a last-chance bargain only trickled through the revolving doors of 360 Newbury St "I thought we would go out with a bang, but instead we're kind of going out with a whimper," said Dennis Arm strong, a manager at the store. The closing didn't come as a surprise.

The Virgin Group, headed by British entrepreneur Richard Branson, outbid Tower in February 2000 for the lease that expired last month. The first Virgin Megastore in New England is set to open in November in the now-familiar building designed by architect Frank Gehry. Like Tbwer, the store will sell compact discs, audio tapes, books, and videos. In a way, Tower was a victim of its own success. Its arrival on the dowdy end of Newbury Street near Mass.

Ave. drew a youthful, hipper clientele to the area. Trendy stores, and accompanying higher retail rents, quickly followed. Today, rents in the prime Back Bay area run as high as $100 per square foot, twice the asking prices in 1988. But while Tower is gone, its impact on the street will remain, according to TOWER RECORDS, Page B3 it GLOBE STAFF PHOTOJUSTINE EUEMENT Adrian Walker can be reached by e-mail at walkerglobe.com.

Becky Brooke of Boston looking for a last-chance bargain on compact discs at Tower Records on Newbury Street yesterday..