Archive for the ‘History’ Category
157 candles
Today would be Curtis Guild’s birthday. Who the hell is Curtis Guild, you ask? How soon we forget. He was a three-term Massachusetts governor, from 1906 to 1909. If you’ve never heard the name Curtis Guild, apparently you’re so confused by the striping on the Route 129 Rotary that you’ve never taken a right onto […]
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Tags: blueblood, Camp Curtis Guild, Charlie Baker, Cuba, Curtis Guild Jr., demonstration, governor, guns, Harvard College, Harvard Crimson, Harvard Rifle Corps, Massachusetts, National Guard, pink pussy hat, protest, Russia, safety pin, Spanish American War, Theodore Roosevelt, white privilege, William Howard Taft, Yankee
All in the timing
With the various measures they pass on the federal and state level, lawmakers come up with some interesting ideas when it comes to their own powers. They even think they can control the weather by passing climate regulations. (I wonder what the Supremacy Clause under Article VI of the Constitution says about the doctrine of […]
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Tags: adolescent, clock, day, Daylight Saving Time, government, laws, Mark Sardella, Massachusetts Legislature, night, sleep, students, sunrise, sunset, teenagers, time, time zones, timepiece, Wakefield Daily Item, Wakefield High School, Wakefield MA, watch
Standing up for US
It’s cool to be patriotic again. It hit me at last week’s Veterans Day observance in Veterans Memorial Auditorium at the Galvin Middle School. I sensed that something was different when I walked in and saw the huge crowd, many of them with red poppies in their lapels. And not a single safety pin in […]
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Tags: America, Colin Kapernik, flagVeterans Day, Galvin Middle School, John Bohling, Mark Sardella, National Anthem, patriotism, Pledge of Allegiance, protest, red poppy, safety pin, soldiers, United States, Wakefield Daily Item, Wakefield High School, Wakefield Massachusetts
Surly voting
Call me old fashioned. Call me a slave to tradition. But I’ll be voting on Tuesday, Nov. 8, on what used to be known as Election Day.
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Tags: apathy, ballot, candidate, drivers license, early voting, election, Election Day, fraud, ID, identification, MA, Mark Sardella, polling place, Sudafed, turnout, vote, Voter ID, voting, Wakefield Daily Item, Wakefield Massachusetts
Primitive Social Media
Wakefield is getting good at hosting really big parties: Festival Italia, the Holiday Stroll and Independence Day are prime examples. Soon to take its place alongside those is the upcoming Halloween spectacular, “Haunted Happenings.” But what if you can’t make it for some reason? What’s the next best thing to being there?
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Tags: books, Climate Change, comedians, Cyrus Wakefield, Facebook, Festival Italia, Fourth of July, History, Holiday Stroll, Humor, Inaugural Exercises in Wakefield Mass., Instagram, Internet, John S. Eaton, Mark Sardella, media, newspaper, Opinion, Paul D'Angelo, phones, poetry, Politics, press, social media, South Reading, Tritter, Wakefield, Wakefield Daily Item, weather
The 8.8 percent solution
It’s even worse than I thought. A couple of weeks ago, we discussed Voter Fatigue and the steps that our state and local governments are taking to aid us in performing that onerous civic duty known as voting. But until Thursday, September 8, I had no idea that for more than 90 percent of us, […]
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Tags: elections, Fenway Park, flyers, Humor, lawn signs, Mark Sardella, Massachusetts, Opinion, Phyllis Hull, Politics, primary election, selectmen, voter, voting, Wakefield, Wakefield Daily Item
Fine print
Lately, I don’t feel like my week is complete until I’ve been lectured by a millennial about one thing or another. Usually it’s about the evil of plastic bags or how many genders there are or how the Founding Fathers all smoked hemp, dude. The usual venue for these sermons is social media, where I’m […]
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Tags: Baby Boomers, citizenship, civics, education, Facebook, First Amendment, Founding Fathers, Freedom of the Press, Great Depression, Greatest Generation, hippies, Invasion of Normandy, Mark Sardella, media, millenials, mosquito, News, newspapers, Olympics, peace movement, Politics, press, schools, social media, Stephen Colbert, Twitter, Wakefield Daily Item, Zika
Mark Sardella 