Archive for the ‘Wakefield’ Category

High resolution

12Aug16

This week, the Wakefield Board of Selectmen passed a resolution opposing the legalization of marijuana, dealing a devastating blow to the local Cannabis Community. On the bright side, most of them were too high to notice. Dude, don’t the selectmen know that people have a Constitutional right to smoke weed? The Constitution was written on […]


Fine print

05Aug16

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 […]


By MARK SARDELLA Morgan Flynn is living her dream. The 2012 Wakefield Memorial High School graduate is the Directing Apprentice for the current season at Gloucester Stage, where she is getting to work directly with a series of professional theater directors, a job that she aspires to. “I went to school thinking I wanted to […]


Now that July 19 is behind us, can we finally admit that all the hand-wringing over the Special Election had nothing to do with it costing the town $10,000 and everything to do with politics and the person who filed for the Special Election? After Phyllis Hull collected the 200 signatures needed to force the […]


Things like the recent Independence Day celebration and the upcoming Festival Italia remind me that civic groups that actually do things are a lot more interesting (not to mention fun) than the ones that exist just air grievances and self-promote. If it’s true that after July Fourth, the summer flies by, then why do I […]


By MARK SARDELLA WAKEFIELD — With Lake Quannapowitt as the backdrop, Middlesex County District Attorney Marian Ryan stood shoulder to shoulder with a host of local officials yesterday to convey a life-saving message about water safety this summer. And to hammer the point home, the Wakefield Fire Department conducted a simulated drowning rescue, swimming far […]


By MARK SARDELLA They came to celebrate life and they came to reaffirm a commitment to defeat cancer. And they came to walk. More than 1,000 people made their way to the athletic field at Northeast Metro Tech on Friday, June 17, 2016 for Wakefield’s Relay For Life. They included cancer survivors, caregivers and participants […]


The town recently held an event called “Wakefield 101,” an orientation session for new residents to give them a chance to talk to representatives of town departments, community organizations and local businesses. The idea was to help new residents get the lay of the land and to give them a heads up on how we […]


As of this writing, we have eight people (and counting) running for Selectman in the July 19 Special Election to fill the nine months left on former selectman Betsy Sheeran’s term. This sudden surge of interest in public service is truly a wonderful thing to behold. My only question is, where were some of these […]


By MARK SARDELLA It all started when he purchased nine Pleasure Island postcards at a local church antiques show. Since then, Wakefield’s Robert McLaughlin has written five books and turned himself into one of the country’s leading experts on American theme parks. His latest book, Magic Mountain was published last week and tells the story […]