Happy Columbus Day!
Let me be the first to wish you and yours a happy Columbus Day.
This year’s holiday is doubly special because it’s not just the second Monday in October. Monday also happens to be Oct. 12, which is traditional Columbus Day. It will be exactly 528 years ago to the day that the great Italian explorer landed in the New World.
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Mailing it in
It’s adorable how people still refer to Nov. 3 as “Election Day.”
We’ve had “early voting” for a couple of years, which began the process of diluting the meaning of Election Day. Now, with the totally unnecessary concept of “mail-in voting,” we’re told that we may not even know the result of the presidential election for days or even weeks after “Election Day.”
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The worst summer
Monday is Labor Day, meaning that the Summer of 2020 will finally, mercifully, be over.
So long, COVID Summer.
Don’t let the door hit you on the way out.
It was the summer of face coverings, cancellations and quarantines, as opposed to concerts, camp and cookouts.
Everything was canceled, including local favorites like the Fourth of July Parade and fireworks, Festival Italia, Festival by the Lake and Movies by the Lake.
But at least it was warm, unlike the summer of 1816, “The Year There Was No Summer.” Snow fell in Massachusetts on June 7. People referred to 1816 as “Eighteen Hundred and Froze to Death.”
So stop your whining, put on your mask and listen to how good you have it.
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Tags: 1816, arctic, August, cancellations, climate, Climate Change, COCID-19, cold, concerts, Connecticut, coronavirus, crops, fireworks, fossil fuels, frost, Global Warming, heat, Humor, July, June, Mark Sardella, masks, Massachusetts, Mother Nature, New England, New Hampshire, Opinion, Parade, Politics, Red Sox, snow, summer, Vermont, volcano, Wakefield cold, Wakefield Daily Item, Wakefield MA, Waltham, weather
A cry for change
It’s taken far too long, but I now see the light. Change is needed. Now.
In the words of the old hymn, “I once was lost, but now am found / Was blind but now I see.”
Like many, I’ve resisted change. Change is hard. It forces you to think.
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Warriors forever
The writing has been on the wall for some time.
The space on the Wakefield High School field house facade where the Wakefield Warrior logo was once proudly displayed has been conspicuously empty now for at least five years. Ever since an ill wind supposedly blew the Warrior off the building, the School Department has been in no hurry to replace it.
And now, unless normal people suddenly find the will to stand up to the woke mob, I fear that we will soon be bidding a permanent farewell to the Wakefield Warrior name and logo in all of its iterations.
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Big bang theory
When is a firecracker just a firecracker?
If you were in Wakefield — or anywhere else in the country — on July 4 weekend, you probably noticed a dramatic uptick in the volume of amateur fireworks compared to other years. You were not alone. “Fireworks complaint” was far and away the dominant entry in the local police log over the holiday weekend. On social media, residents who have never come within a continent of military combat insisted that their neighborhoods were “just like a war zone” once darkness fell on Independence Day.
There has been much speculation, and a few conspiracy theories, over the reasons for this year’s nationwide pyrotechnic explosion.
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Tags: Abe Lincoln, America, Christopher Columbus, conspiracy theories, coronavirus, COVID-19, explosions, fireworks, Founding Fathers, Fourth of July, George Washington, government, holiday, Humor, Independence Day, July 4th, Mark Sardella, Massachusetts, Opinion, patriotism, Politics, shutdown, United States, Wakefield Daily Item, Wakefield MA
Reasons to be cheerful
If you approached the 2020 Annual Town Meeting with a touch of trepidation, you certainly weren’t alone.
There were several articles on the warrant that had the potential to make Wakefield a less safe and more restrictive community.
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Data-driven derangement
Who knew that rioters and looters were covered under Phase 1 of the re-opening plan?
High school graduation ceremonies with 260 students are still verboten, but if you and several thousand of your comrades want to get together and torch a church or flip over a few police cruisers, no one’s going to stop you — or even tell you to social distance.
To their credit, though, the peaceful rioters were years ahead of everybody else when it comes to wearing masks.
Meanwhile, as the rest of us slog through our phased, data-driven re-opening (my favorite kind of re-opening), it may be helpful to examine what “data-driven” really means.
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Cruel choices
The choice, apparently, is a binary one.
You can have economic devastation or death. You can have your livelihood or your life. There are no other options, so take your pick.
That’s the way it’s being framed by amateur epidemiologists on social media, who can always find some “study” on the internet to justify expanding restrictions and extending the lockdown until – well, that’s none of your business.
I used to laugh at those who likened our shutdown to martial law. But every time I’m sure that things can’t possibly get more restrictive, they get more restrictive. And our shutdown drags on without even a glimmer of light at the end of this long and very dark tunnel.
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