To the editor:

Take a 20-minute walk down Massachusetts Street. This place is so fragile, so out-of-time, so incapable of keeping up. In fact, its best defense is to be so out-of-time that its charm is impossible to ignore.

As main streets go, Massachusetts Street is a crown jewel. But the stone is about to fall out of its setting. Where were the Christmas lights on the buildings this year? What’s happening to retailers whose triple-net leases are passing on owners’ ever-increasing property tax (increases of 40 percent to 80 percent) and fire insurance rates (increases of 20 percent to 40 percent)?

Where are the tax abatements going? Shall we tack another $2 on a parking ticket? Retail on Massachusetts, the charm of shopping on Massachusetts, is endangered because it cannot compete with the size and scope of the redundancy “discounted” everywhere else. Unique is under siege by sameness. A dull, painful death is not a pleasant thing to witness.

We really have an “endangered species” in our town. Majestic as our winter bald eagles, as elegant as that giant snowflake, crisp as a winter’s morning and as valuable to some as the photographs in mom’s scrapbook. Collectively we could help it thrive, but it will take heart and soul, money and guts … and two or three property owners that love the entire street and see it really is more than “an extra dollar per square foot.”

Rudy and Angela Conrad,

Lawrence