Columns & Essays | Mark Sardella

Archive for the ‘Columns & Essays’ Category

Weekend Warrior

11Oct19

As we head into the long Indigenous Peoples Day weekend, let us take a moment from our apple picking, leaf-peeping and farmers market excursions to reflect upon the true meaning of the holiday: to show how much more virtuous and woke we are than those who still call it Columbus Day.

Filed under: Columns & Essays, History, Humor, Opinion, Politics, Wakefield | 2 Comments
Tags: Berkeley, Board of Selectmen, CA, Christopher Columbus, Columbus Day, Europeans, farmers' market, FDR, First Peoples, football, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, History, holiday, Human Rights Commission, Humor, inclusive, Indians, Indigenous Peoples Day, Italian-Americans, Landrigan Field, Mark Sardella, men, Native Americans, Opinion, Politics, progressives, Roman Empire, Town Council, Wakefield Daily Item, Wakefield High School, Wakefield MA, Wakefield Warrior

Zoning out

04Oct19

So, now they want Zoning Board of Appeals meetings to be televised. The suggestion was made recently at a televised Town Council meeting. Misery loves company, I suppose. There’s nothing TV viewers would rather watch than deliberations over dimensional variances and nonconforming uses — unless you count the Watching Paint Dry Channel. To help promote […]

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Tags: cable TV, city, Climate Change, Community Television, Conservation Commission, developer, development, environmental issues, Envision, Greenwood Station, Humor, Mark Sardella, meetings, nonconforming use, opinion. politics, overdevelopment, public access, Special Permit, Television, Town Council zoning, variance, Wakefield Daily Item, Wakefield MA, Wakefield Station, WCAT, ZBA, Zoning Board of Appeals

The sounds of silence

01Oct19

READING — When brilliant, Radcliffe College-educated Henrietta Leavitt (played by Grace Sumner) receives a letter at her Wisconsin home inviting her to come and work for Edward Charles Pickering, director of the prestigious Harvard College Observatory, she is thrilled by the prospect of doing important astronomical research.

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Tags: astronomy, community theater, Demetra Tseckares, drama, earth, feminism, Grace Sumner, Harvard College Observatory, heavens, Henrietta Leavitt, History, Humor, Lauren Gunderson, Mark Sardella, Nancy Curran Willis, Nancy Finn, Nick T. Miller, planets, play, Quannapowitt Players, Rachel Furgiuele, Radcliffe College, review, science, Silent Sky, sky, stage, stars, theater, theatre, Wakefield Daily Item, womens sufferage

Pride of the Yankees

19Sep19

I was vaguely aware that John J. Round had been a town official way back at the beginning of the 20th century. But, like most people, I had no inkling about his more significant contributions to the town. I had no idea, for example, that he had purchased entire tracts of land in the areas […]

Filed under: Columns & Essays, Family, Feature stories, History, Opinion, Politics, Profiles, Wakefield | Leave a Comment
Tags: altruism, Anglo-Saxons, Arthur G. Walton, Bandstand, Cornelius Sweetser, Crystal Lake, Cyrus Wakefield, Galvin Middle School, Gardner Campbell, Greenwood, JJ Round Park, John J. Round, Lucius Beebe, Lucius Beebe Memorial Library, Mark Sardella, money, old white men, philanthropy, Pilgrims, Protestant, Sweetser Lecture Series, trees, Wakefield Common, Wakefield High School, Wakefield MA, Wakefield Town Hall, Walton Field, Yankees

All the rage

06Sep19

Well, our long, hot summer is finally over. OK, it wasn’t that long. Summer around here never is. But if you don’t think it was hot, tell that to the woman who had a cup of hot coffee thrown at her while sitting in the Dunkin’ Donuts in the Junction one morning last July. As […]

Filed under: Columns & Essays, Humor, News, Opinion, Politics, Wakefield | 1 Comment
Tags: anger, caffeine, cars, coffee, coffee shop, decaf, driving, Dunkin' Donuts, football, heat, Humor, Mark Sardella, Opinion, rage, road rage, stop sign, summer, tailgating, Toxic Masculinity, traffic, truck, Wakefield Daily Item

Just the facts

03Sep19

When is a fact not a fact? And how much does the pure, empirical truth matter? Those are the questions at the heart of the current Gloucester Stage offering, The Lifespan of a Fact. They are questions that have long concerned writers and readers (and not just since Nov. 8, 2016, contrary to partisan political […]

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Friendly advice

30Aug19

Summer is winding down. Conditioned by the school year, people are squeezing in that last bit of leisure time and resting up for the post-Labor Day ramp-up of activity. It’s also a truism that late August is a slow news period. That’s not the case at National Public Radio, where the news never rests, all […]

Filed under: Columns & Essays, Humor, News, Opinion, Politics | 1 Comment
Tags: boys, emotions, female, friendship, gender, Humor, Julia Furlan, macho, male, Mark Sardella, masculinity, men, Niobe Way, NPR, Opinion, patriarchy, Politics, research, society, Thomas Page McBee, Tom Brady, Toxic Masculinity, Wakefield Daily Item, women

Charging ahead

22Aug19

We’ve already established that the only thing keeping you from trading in your Subaru for a Schwinn is the lack of bike lanes. Now it turns out that all it will take to get you into a new electric vehicle is for the town to install a few public electric vehicle charging stations. So, which […]

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Tags: battery, bicycles, bike lanes, capitalism, car, cars automobiles, charging stations, Climate Change, cost, electric vehicles, electricity, EVs, fossil fuels, gas, gasoline, Global Warming, Humor, Mark Sardella, Mazda, money, Opinion, planet, Politics, supply and demand, Town Council, transportation, vehicle, Wakefield Daily Item, Wakefield MA, WMGLD

A simple plan

02Aug19

If you’re looking for someone to blame for bike lanes, look in the mirror. That’s in effect what the Massachusetts Department of Transportation (MassDOT) is saying in a recently released document called the Massachusetts Bicycle Transportation Plan. MassDOT has developed the Bike Plan “to be an actionable investment strategy to guide its decision-making and bicycle […]

Filed under: Columns & Essays, Humor, News, Opinion, Politics, Wakefield | 5 Comments
Tags: America, automobiles, bicycle, bike lanes, bikes, biking, cars, Climate Change, emissions, environment, Global Warming, greenhouse gas, Humor, Mark Sardella, Massachusetts, MassDOT, Opinion, planet, Politics, skydiving, soccer, solar, transportation, travel, United States, vehicles, wagonm Radio Flyer, Wakefield Daily Item, Wakefield MA, windmills, yoga

That’s entertainment!

18Jul19

“How do you do it?” is a question I am frequently asked. “How do you sit through all those boring government meetings?” I should probably answer that I selflessly attend these meetings in order to be your eyes and ears. I should say that I go to these meetings so that you don’t have to. […]