Michael Dalton

Principal at Avison Young in #Boston. Tweets are #CRE,#Boston, #tech, #Bruins, #Pats, #RedSox, Views are my own.

[Phil Stacey @PhilStacey_SN]

Another North Shore high school football 'History Lesson', this one featuring venerable St. John's Prep, appearing in print and on our website Friday: @sjpathletics @StJohnsPrepFB

[Ryan Goodman @rgoodlaw]

"The US Navy is working to rename an aircraft carrier under construction that was set to honor a Black sailor hailed for his heroic actions during the attack on Pearl Harbor ... there have been internal conversations about renaming it to honor Trump."

https://t.co/r3yj1t85MU

[Carl Quintanilla @carlquintanilla]

“.. You are on a bus called the 30-year bond and there is a cliff coming, but you don’t know if it is 100 meters away or 100 miles away,” he said. “You are hoping you can get off the bus before it crashes.”

@nytimes
https://t.co/oEvZdOyD92

[Michael Dalton @daltonmp]

@RahsaanSalaam Looking forward to your future - you were a star and Sirius would be smart to think host your content going forward!

[The Lincoln Project @ProjectLincoln]

Violation of religious liberty. All Christians should be fearful of this administration and the lengths they'll go to silence dissenters.

[Mr PitBull Stories @MrPitbull07]

There is a version of this story that is easy to romanticize. A famous man stays loyal to his wife. People applaud. The end.
But the real version is much harder, much quieter, and far more honest than that.
Jay Leno, 75, spent more than two decades as one of the most recognized faces on American television, hosting The Tonight Show night after night for millions of viewers. His wife, Mavis, stood beside him throughout all of it — not as a background figure, but as a woman of genuine accomplishment in her own right. She was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002 for her advocacy work supporting women living under Taliban rule in Afghanistan. She was fiercely independent, deeply curious, and someone who loved to travel and explore the world.
Then, in 2024, Jay filed for conservatorship over her estate. The reason was that Mavis had been diagnosed with advanced dementia and was progressively losing capacity and orientation.
Their life changed completely.
The restaurants they once visited together are now off the menu. The travel Mavis always loved is no longer possible. The conversations they used to have in the evenings have narrowed and shifted in ways that are hard to fully explain to someone who has not lived it. Dementia does not just take memory. It slowly changes the shape of every moment two people share.
Jay has spoken publicly about the hardest part of the journey, and it is not what most people would expect. For years, every single morning, Mavis would wake up believing she had just received news that her mother had died. She experienced that grief fresh, as if hearing it for the first time, every day. Her mother went through that process of dying over and over again, for about three years. Each time, Mavis cried. Each time, Jay held her through it. He described it as truly tricky, and genuinely hard.
But he did not leave.
He rearranged his life around her needs. He only takes work that allows him to be home the same day or at most one night away. He comes home every evening and cooks her dinner. They watch television together, animal shows and travel documentaries on YouTube since real travel is no longer an option. When he carries her to the bathroom, he has a name for it. He calls it Jay and Mavis at the prom, the two of them dancing back and forth down the hallway, and she thinks it is funny. She still laughs. He still makes her laugh on purpose, every single day.
She still knows who he is. She looks at him and smiles. She tells him she loves him.
When someone asked Jay if he was going to get a girlfriend now, he was genuinely surprised by the question. He told them he already had one. He was married. Forty-five years. That was not something he considered walking away from.
What he said next is the part that has stayed with people.
He said that when you get married, you take vows. You say for better or worse. And most people, he noted, never really expect to be called upon to actually act on those words. They say them and hope the worse never arrives.
For Jay, it arrived.
And he is passing the test.
He has said he hopes his situation draws attention not just to his own story, but to the 50 or 60 million people in America who are quietly doing the same thing for a parent, a spouse, a sibling, and doing it completely without recognition. Nobody sees them. Nobody is interviewing them. They are just showing up every single day for someone who needs them, because that is what love actually looks like when it is no longer a feeling but a choice you make again every morning.
Jay Leno still makes his wife laugh. She still has the fire, he says. She still growls at the television when something offends her. She still smiles when he walks into the room.
For better or worse is not a promise you make on a beautiful day in a beautiful place with everyone watching.
It is what you do on a Tuesday evening when you carry the person you love to the bathroom and call it the prom, just to make her smile.
That is the whole story.

[Boston Business Journal @BosBizJournal]

A million-square-foot office complex in Andover heads to auction as Greater Boston grapples with high vacancy rates and struggling commercial real estate. https://t.co/MdTyovhUIl

[Ron Filipkowski @RonFilipkowski]

Kash Patel in 2023: “I’m just saying Chris Wray doesn’t need a government funded G5 jet to go to vacations. Maybe we ground that plane. $15,000 every time it takes off. Just a thought.”

[Joe Scarborough @ScarboroughNow]

A general truth metastasizes into a campaign to destroy innocent lives while Republicans cheer the demon on. Tim Barnicle on the trail of destruction paved with McCarthy’s lies. (𝒔𝒆𝒆 𝒂𝒍𝒔𝒐: Kristi Noem)
https://t.co/tBomVm4BbN

[Michael Dalton @daltonmp]

https://t.co/ESreJ0PUhQ via @NYTimes

[Tony Seruga @TonySeruga]

Every Christmas Eve, I think about George Bailey.

He dreamed of escaping Bedford Falls—of shaking off the dust of a small town, building skyscrapers, exploring the world. Instead, he stayed. He ran the Building & Loan his father left behind. He sacrificed his college money, his honeymoon savings, his chance to see the world, over and over, because people needed him.

By the time the crisis hits, George feels like a failure. His life looks like one long series of missed opportunities, thwarted ambitions, and quiet resentments. He stands on the bridge, convinced the world would be better without him.

Then Clarence shows him the truth: a Bedford Falls without George Bailey is a darker, meaner, hollowed-out place. The people he quietly helped, the small acts of integrity he performed without recognition, the risks he took to protect others—those weren’t detours. They were the substance of his life.

The film’s deepest insight isn’t just that “no man is a failure who has friends.” It’s that real impact is almost always invisible in the moment. The lives you steady, the small kindnesses you extend, the responsibilities you shoulder when no one else will—these things ripple outward in ways you may never see.

A strong sense of purpose doesn’t erase pain; it transforms it. It doesn’t merely explain why hard things happened. It asks: What are you now responsible for because they happened?

Faith, at its best, does the same. It doesn’t promise that everything was “meant to be” in order to make suffering palatable. It invites you to look at what has been entrusted to you in light of what you’ve endured.

George’s story reminds us that meaning is rarely found in the grand escape, but in the faithful presence. The dreams we surrender don’t always vanish—they often become the raw material for something more enduring than we imagined.

If you’re carrying the weight of roads not taken, of dreams deferred, of a life that feels smaller than you once hoped—watch It’s a Wonderful Life again tonight. Not as nostalgia, but as revelation.

You may not see the full difference you’ve made yet.

But it’s there.

And it matters more than you know.

Merry Christmas, friends.

🎄🇨🇽🎅🦌☃️⛪️✝️❤️

[Christopher Hale @ChristopherHale]

NEW: The Trump-Vance White House has falsely accused an ally of Pope Leo — Sister Norma Pimentel — of illegal activity tied to migrant aid, and cut off all federal funding to Catholic Charities in south Texas.

Church leaders say it’s a targeted, political reprisal against Pope Leo and the Catholic Church. https://t.co/tnS95BxZvr

[Rick Wilson @TheRickWilson]

My God.

This @WSJ piece on Trump, Witkoff and Kushner's venality for Russian business deals from which they will personally profit at the price of selling Ukraine into Russian slavery and despair is devastating and ugly.

https://t.co/uAUaOkz5TR

[BigBlueVCR @BigBlueVCR]

1993: Not really a #NYGiants highlight, however 32 years ago today I was a soph at Boston College when BC went into ND & Tom Coughlin avenged the 54-7 loss on a last second FG by Gordon to win 41-39 & ruin ND's #1 ranking & National Title @MarkHerzlich @ChrisSnee76 @BCAlumni

[Boston Bruins @NHLBruins]

One of the most feared defenders of his generation.

[The Wall Street Journal @WSJ]

The “No Kings” protests Saturday brought together hundreds of thousands of protesters in cities, suburbs and small towns across the U.S. Take a look at how it unfolded. https://t.co/MR0rmquMGE

[Amy McGrath @AmyMcGrathKY]

This Saturday, October 18, Americans everywhere are standing up to say we’ve had enough. Enough corruption. Enough compliance. Enough excuses.

No Kings is about giving people the power to fight back, reminding Washington that voters are paying attention and we’re ready for change. This isn’t just a protest, it’s the people taking back their power. To find an event happening near you check out: https://t.co/J8e9mHAKBh.

[Boston Bruins @NHLBruins]

A big surprise for Big Zee.

An inside look at the moment he received the news about No. 33.

#NHLBruins

[Michael Dalton @daltonmp]

Howard Stern Breaks Silence on Jimmy Kimmel’s Suspension, Free Speech Battle: ‘Scary Time When the Government Starts Threatening You’ https://t.co/EuawbppkCt

[Michael Eisner @Michael_Eisner]

Where has all the leadership gone?  If not for university presidents, law firm managing partners, and corporate chief executives standing up against bullies, who then will step up for the first amendment?  The “suspending indefinitely” of Jimmy Kimmel immediately after the Chairman of the FCC's aggressive yet hollow threatening of the Disney Company is yet another example of out-of-control intimidation.  Maybe the Constitution should have said, “Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, except in one’s political or financial self-interest.” By-the-way, for the record, this ex-CEO finds Jimmy Kimmel very talented and funny.