Boston Scenes

A couple holds hands as they make their way through a snow-covered Quincy Market in Boston on Friday, Dec. 19, 2008. Mother Nature battered New England all weekend, with some areas receiving more than one foot of snow. (AP photo/Steven Senne)

Dr. S. Allen Counter, director of the Harvard Foundation (right), attended the 2008 Nobel Prize Ceremony in Stockholm, Sweden, on Dec. 10. Counter was invited to the ceremony by the Nobel Foundation and the Karolinska Nobel Institute, where he received his Doctor of Medical Science degree in 1989. He escorted Malou Hansson, the first black Miss Sweden, to the ceremony. (Photo courtesy of the Harvard Foundation)

George A. Russell Jr., president of the State Street Foundation, speaks at a press conference convened to launch the new $26 million, multi-year StreetSafe Boston anti-violence initiative, held Dec. 17 at Sportsmen’s Tennis Club in Dorchester. Under the direct oversight of the Black Ministerial Alliance, StreetSafe Boston will field teams of street workers that will target five neighborhoods with statistically high rates of violent crime. (Photo courtesy of The Boston Foundation)

Through a collaboration of America SCORES New England and the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers, students at the Dearborn Middle School in Roxbury recently participated in a three-day workshop to write and record an original hip-hop song with artist Dagha, a.k.a. Dwayne Simmons. Back row: Keven Depina. Main row: Claudio Teixeira, Marcos Tavares, Danny Alves, Joao Rosa, Agmelo Pires, Jonathan Rosa. Front row: Simmons. (Photo courtesy of America SCORES New England)

At the New York Public Library’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture last month, Barbara Lewis, director of the William Monroe Trotter Institute for the Study of Black Culture at the University of Massachusetts-Boston (second from left), interviewed novelists John Edgar Wideman (third from left) and Terry McMillan (right) as part of the “Reading Room: Writers on the Cutting Edge” series, curated by poet and author Quincy Troupe (left). (Bob Gore photo)

State Sen.-elect Sonia Chang-Díaz (right) volunteered her time and gift-wrapping skills to The Home for Little Wanderers this holiday season, joining Home President and CEO Joan Wallace-Benjamin (left) and Mayor Thomas M. Menino at the Home’s Jamaica Plain Toy Room for “Celebrate the City Day” on Dec. 12. (Heather MacFarlane photo)

During YouthBuild Boston’s recent eighth annual Neighborhood Housewarming effort, more than 170 volunteers visited the homes of elderly, disabled and low-income Boston residents, insulating drafty windows and doors, and installing replacement windows in some homes. (Left): Carpentry instructor Axel Pepin prepares to install a new window. (Right): Instructor Elmer Boyd clears the way for a new window. (Andrew Padilla/YouthBuild Boston photos)

Boston Celtics guard Tony Allen (back right) joins some members of the Shelburne Community Center and Boston Showstoppers, two Roxbury-based squads that won the 2008 Boston Neighborhood Basketball League’s 15-and-under and 13-and-under championships, respectively. (Photo courtesy of the Boston Neighborhood Basketball League)