For those not fortunate enough to live along the leafy avenues of the Back Bay, the Esplanade is a perfectly lovely stretch of park you might walk through occasionally or visit to take in a summer concert at the Hatch Shell. But to the Esplanade Association, it’s “a vision interrupted,” a 19th-century masterpiece that now “looks like something from the 1950s.” Last night before a packed crowd at the Boston Public Library’s Rabb Auditorium, the association unveiled “Esplanade 2020,” an audacious first draft for a plan that would go far beyond re-sodding a few bits of grass — and remake the city almost as dramatically as the Big Dig.

Why now? Over the next 10 and 20 years, everything from the Storrow Drive tunnels to the Longfellow Bridge, sections of the MassPike, and the Bowker Overpass (the elevated roadway north of Kenmore Square that connects Storrow Drive to the Fenway) will require overhaul, expansion, or outright replacement. With an integrated long-term vision, the association’s experts argue, we have a “once in a century opportunity” to remake the Esplanade into what could be “the very best park in the world.”

The larger changes envisioned by the plan include, in no particular order, removing the Bowker Overpass to connect the Fens directly to the Esplanade, moving the garage at the Museum of Science and replacing it with a park, adding new Masspike exits to provide more direct access to the Back Bay and Longwood Medical Area, dramatically downsizing Storrow Drive to a low-speed parkway, and, just maybe, building a huge Ferris wheel somewhere in there. Somewhere along the way, the Hatch Shell, BU and Community Boating boathouses, and the Lee Pool would all get replaced or refurbished, and an indoor/outdoor cafe behind the Hatch Shell would also appear.

The Q+A portion of the meeting began with Sheldon Young, an grandfatherly Bostonian who commented that, since our memories were often bound inextricably with music, “May I suggest an original song?” He then added, “I have such a song,” and broke into a two-minute aria that suggested Moon River as it might be sung by Mumbles Menino. The audience gave Young an ovation, and it was perhaps the only part of the evening all sides truly agreed upon.

As with any Boston planning project, Esplanade 2020 was long on appeals on everything from Chicago’s Millenium Park to the High Line in NYC, the banks of the Seine, and of course, London. It’s perhaps a good sign that we’re shifting our locus of envy from our southern sports bete noire to the capital of imperial Britain, but the crowd of cantankerous bluebloods in attendance were decidedly skeptical. Back Bay resident Peter Sharon spoke in favor of “pristine space preserved” and worried that the plans on display would turn the Esplanade into an ersatz “Disneyland.”

Sharon’s comment was followed by John Winthrop Sears, whom the moderator introduced as “the venerable commissioner.” Speaking in a luscious Brahmin baritone, this last of the great woolly mammoths said that he saw “a little too much architecture in the pictures,” drawing sustained applause. Committee member John Shields replied that everything in the presentation, including the cafe, was “just a replacement” of existing structures or original parts of the park that had been let go over the years. Well, everything except for the Ferris wheel, which the panelists repeatedly reminded the audience was — like the rest of the presentation — just an idea.

While Shields concluded the meeting by telling everyone that this process could be one where everybody came out a winner and that everyone’s self-interest could be satisfied while advancing the overall objective, it’s clear that large and difficult questions remain. Aside from funding, the true requirements of which were not discussed, much of the vision revolves around a near-total re-thinking of Storrow Drive, which today carries as much traffic along the Charles as the much larger MassPike. Re-routing that volume of traffic won’t happen easily without major changes elsewhere, sure to spark Big Dig-like neighborhood objections.

And even if we can all agree on shrinking Storrow, the audience questions revealed a classic fault line between those who believe they’re defending a vision of the park as it always was. But as the discussion showed, the Esplanade of the past few decades is itself a significant change from the vast and lively turn-of-the-20th-century promenade it originally was.

So how’s that New Year’s resolution treating you? Yup, it’s February, which means that most of those high-minded goals you set for yourself on the first of the year have already been tossed aside (probably next to your pair of unworn gym shoes). But that doesn’t mean it’s too late to pick up good new habits. The key, they say, is starting small.

Which is why I was excited to hear about Waltham’s Small Actions campaign taking place this week. In collaboration with local nonprofit REACH, Waltham mayor Jeannette McCarthy launched “Say Hi to Your Neighbors Week” to encourage residents to reach out to one another. Seems nice enough, right? Sure. But the underlying message is that talking to your neighbors matters in that it can help create a safer community and stop the spread of domestic violence.

Waltham is angling to get 2012 people to say hello to their neighbors by this Sunday, and they’re letting people log their greetings on an online map (so far they’re just over halfway to the goal). Local businesses and churches are in on the action, too, offering coffee and cupcakes to facilitate more hellos. And the campaign is also digital with the @SmallActions Twitter feed and #sayhiWaltham hashtag.

“The personal connection to one another makes a difference — people will talk to someone they know about their problems before going to someone like REACH,” Allison Berry, the community organizer for REACH, tells the Globe. “Families and neighbors are the first people to know. It’s about building relationships.”

It’s said that it takes about two weeks for something to become a habit, so here’s hoping that Waltham’s small actions extend for much longer than Sunday. And just think: It’s a small action that the rest of us can take, no matter where we live.

In 1994, local jazz artist Russ Gershon was gifted an unassuming CD with a grandiose name: Ethiopian Groove: The Golden Seventies. Despite knowing little about Ethiopian music, Gershon quickly dug into the reissues of pop and jazz songs from the ’60s and ’70s. As the CD’s title suggested, those songs were recorded during the country’s musical golden age, which ended around the time Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie was deposed by a communist regime that eventually shut down the thriving nightclub scene.

The Latin-influenced, pentatonic scales haunted Gershon, a Grammy-nominated arranger. Joining the growing Ethiojazz movement, he went on to compose three songs in the style for his 10-piece band, Either/Orchestra. His works got the attention of Francis Falceto, who had rescued the original recordings from war-torn Ethiopia in the ’80s. A friendship developed, and Falceto helped get Gershon to Ethiopia. “We were doing songs with an American accent,” Gershon says, “and when we went, we learned how to pronounce the words a little better.”

After two more trips to the country, Gershon premiered “Collected Unconscious,” his just-completed Ethiopian-­influenced work, in New York last November. “It’s longer than a Mahler symphony, but when we played it in New York in November, nobody walked out,” Gershon says with typical humility.

On February 24, Gershon will lead the Either/Orchestra through its Boston premiere of his piece at the ICA. He and his band will also perform rarely heard selections by Nerses Nalbandian, the music director of the Haile Selassie National Theatre during the 1950s and 1960s. Expect two and a half hours of hypnotic world music performed by one of the nation’s most exciting jazz ensembles. “It’ll be a long trip,” Gershon says, “with a big payoff at the end.”

Russ Gershon and the Either/Orchestra will perform one night only at the ICA. $18, 2/24, 7:30 p.m., icaboston.org.

According to OSC’s website, the church is a “spiritual home to people from all walks and stations of life, believers and questioners, people from a range of backgrounds and faith perspectives.” While it then became clear that they’re trying to make a statement about being open and welcoming (by pointing out that there are still racial divisions that exist between religions), the way the words stand alone comes across as quite the opposite:

(Photo by Anne Vickman.)

A Ferris Wheel on the Esplanade?! Last night the Esplanade Association presented 10 ideas for the park — including maintenance and landscaping, adding a cafe by the hatch shell, turning the park into a public arts venue, adding a “fast lane” for runners and cyclists, and more. The biggest idea seems to be the consideration of a Ferris wheel by the Museum of Science à la the Eye of London … and Coney Island.  [Herald]

The Tim Thomas: Say A Lot, Then Saying Nothing At All. Exhibit A: Thomas’s explanation on Facebook for skipping the team’s visit to the White House a couple of weeks ago. And now, Exhibit B: another Facebook post, about which he says, “… that’s my personal life and it has absolutely nothing to do with the Bruins or hockey, and I’m going to use my right to remain silent.”  [ESPN]

Tom Brady and Kevin Youkilis Are Going to be Bro-In-Laws. Brady’s sister Julie is engaged to the Red Sox slugger. Congrats to the happy couple!  [Herald]

Today in Boston: 50°F; Tomorrow: 2-4 Inches of Snow. Needless to say, it’s been a very odd “winter” this year.  [Weather.com]