Archive for the ‘Columns & Essays’ Category

Fantasy League

20Nov15

The irony of the moment was not lost on acting Planning Board chairman Bill Spaulding. “I do find it interesting that you’re questioning the parking – the amount of it,” Spaulding told Bronwyn Della-Volpe at hearing last week on Town Meeting Article 12, which was aimed at revitalizing the downtown with more mixed-use, residential-above-retail development. […]


by Mark Sardella (Wakefield Daily Item) One of the zoning measures that will go before the voters at next week’s Regular Town Meeting seeks to encourage a shift toward multifamily, mixed-use developments in Wakefield‘s downtown area. Article 12 on the Nov. 16 Town Meeting warrant would make it easier for developers to propose projects in […]


Next Wednesday is Veterans Day. It’s one of the few holidays left that hasn’t been consigned to the nearest Monday in order to create another long weekend for those who have the day off. If you’re not a public employee, chances are you have to work on Veterans Day. On one hand, I understand not […]


by Mark Sardella (Wakefield Daily Item) It’s not exactly the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum heist, but it appears that Wakefield may be dealing with an art theft mystery of its own. In the past year, a combined total of three paintings have gone missing from two of the town’s oldest institutions, located almost directly across […]


by Mark Sardella (Wakefield Daily Item) If there’s one thing that A Measure of Normalcy, the relentlessly manic 90-minute play by Lucas Baisch could use it might be a measure of normalcy. The play runs through Nov. 1 at Gloucester Stage, and it was written by Baisch, the theater’s 2015 Playwriting Apprentice. Normalcy follows an […]


By Mark Sardella (Wakefield Daily Item) Is there a parking problem in downtown Wakefield? The answer can depend on whom you ask. Some blame empty storefronts on a lack of downtown parking, while others say that parking in downtown Wakefield isn’t really a problem if you’re willing to walk a couple of blocks. But even […]


by Mark Sardella (Wakefield Daily Item) Wakefield resident Joanne Lima has a uniquely altruistic hobby, and among the principal beneficiaries are those that patronize the Wakefield Interfaith Food Pantry. “I’m a big couponer and I’m able to coupon at little or no cost,” she says. Whatever she thinks the Food Pantry could use and her […]


Everybody knows by now that there is a drug abuse crisis in the state, so naturally Massachusetts officials are doing everything in their power to make life easier for drug users and dealers and harder for the police. God forbid we do anything that might inconvenience the stoner community. It seems that hardly a week […]


by Mark Sardella There are no role models in Israel Horovitz‘s new play, unless you count liars, philanderers, extortionists and murderers among your heroes. But if you like your humor black with a touch of Coen brothers absurdism, you’ll enjoy Gloucester Blue, currently in an extended run at Gloucester Stage through Oct. 11.


Despite the insistence of the local online Fellowship of the Miserable that the revitalization of downtown Wakefield should happen overnight, in the real world things don’t happen that fast. But in the past week alone, we saw several hopeful signs that things may be heading in the right direction. Dare we say the word “momentum?”