Snow Conditions
Despite the official arrival of spring on March 20, Old Man Winter issued a reminder this week that he hasn’t yet ruled out an encore performance of Let It Snow. Still, the deep blanket of white that many of us feared would still be with us in June has all but disappeared, along with the ice on Lake Quannapowitt. It’s hard to imagine that less than three weeks ago they were still iceboating on the Lake.
So as I prepare to revisit the ugly subject of snow, please remember that this is going to hurt me more than it hurts you.
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Tags: boards, Daily Item, Order of Conditions, Planning Board, plowing, Shaw's, Shaw's Supermarket, snow, Wakefield Daily Item, Wakefield Item, Wakefield MA, Wakefield Mass, Wakefield Massachusetts, winter, ZBA, Zoning Board of Appeals
A Wakefield Kid After All
On March 11, 2011, Scott Brown, the United States Senator who grew up in Wakefield, Massachusetts will be inducted into the Wakefield High School Alumni Hall of Fame. Even Sen. Brown, whose time growing up here was often far from idyllic, would probably concede that Wakefield wasn’t a bad place to grow up.
Just after the holidays, I pre-ordered a copy of Brown’s new book, Against All Odds, from Amazon.com using a gift card that I got for Christmas. As I awaited the Feb. 21 release date, I admit that my expectations were not high. Brown is a bright and talented guy, but he’s a politician, not a writer. I wasn’t sure how much Wakefield would be featured in the book, and I was ready for a fairly dry political biography.
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Tags: Daily Item, Mark Sardella, Massachusetts, Scott Brown, Sen. Scott Brown, senate United States Senate, Senator Scott Brown, US Senate, Wakefield, Wakefield Daily Item, Wakefield High School, Wakefield High School Alumni Hall of Fame, Wakefield Item, Wakefield MA, Wakefield Mass, Wakefield Massachusetts
Party Games
The release of his new book, an interview on last Sunday’s edition of 60 Minutes and assorted other media appearances to promote his book have thrust Scott Brown in front of the national media spotlight once again.
Not since his upset win over Martha Coakley in a special election just over a year ago to fill the US Senate seat left vacant by the death of Ted Kennedy has there been so much national media attention focused on Scott Brown. His book, Against All Odds, was released Monday, and it chronicles his time growing up in Wakefield, Massachusetts where he was a basketball and track star before graduating from Wakefield High School in 1977.
The book also talks about the physical and mental abuse that he endured at the hands of several step-fathers and episodes of sexual abuse that he suffered as a boy of 10 at the hands of a camp counselor at a summer camp on Cape Cod.
Being elected a United States Senator is a big deal. Other than president and vice president, there is no higher elective office than US Senator. Given that, it seems to me that there has not been as much of a fuss in Wakefield as one would expect over the fact that we have a United States Senator from our town.
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Tags: Against All Odds, Barack Obama, Daily Item, Democrat, election, elections, Item, Mark Sardella, political parties, political party, politician, politicians, Politics, President Obama, Republican, Scott Brown, Sen. Scott Brown, Senate, Senator Scott Brown, United States Senate, US Senate, Wakefield, Wakefield Daily Item, Wakefield High School, Wakefield Item, Wakefield MA, Wakefield Mass, Wakefield Massachusetts
Cabin Fever Notebook
You’ve probably heard that Mark Twain once observed, “Everybody talks about the weather but nobody does anything about it.” The quote was intended to humorously illustrate the obvious point that humans can’t control the weather – or at least they couldn’t in the time of Mark Twain.
Nowadays, scientists tell us that human activity not only can, but has, affected the average weather conditions over a period of years, resulting in climate change (formerly global warming). They further tell us that to save the planet we must institute sweeping changes in our behavior in order to reverse, or at least slow, the rise in global temperature that we have caused.
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Tags: blizzard, Climate Change, cold, Daily Item, frozen, Global Warming, ice, Mark Sardella, Mark Twain, NOAA, snow, snow storms, snowfall, snowstorms, storm, storms, Wakefield Daily Item, Wakefield Item, winter
Don’t hug me, bro!
Friday, January 21, 2011 is National Hugging Day. Participation is not mandatory, despite the dawning of our nation’s new Era of Civility.
I will not be observing National Hugging Day. Partly by design and partly by default, I am not a hugger – not of people and most certainly not of trees. In this I appear to be in the minority. We live in a hugging society. People hug at the drop of a hat. It’s why I stopped wearing hats.
I’m speaking primarily of social hugging. It has become epidemic. The “hello hug” has become almost de rigueur in some settings. I avoid those settings.
I’m not anti-hugging. Some of my best friends are huggers. What consenting adults do is none of my business.
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Tags: Daily Item, hug, hugging, hugs, Humor, Mark Sardella, National Hugging Day, poles, utility pole, Wakefield, Wakefield Daily Item, Wakefield Item, Wakefield MA, Wakefield Massachusetts
College, Cops & Computers
New Year’s Day is the day on which many people embark on self-improvement programs. Not me. On January 1, I subjected my self-esteem to a beating by going to see The Social Network, the 2010 movie about the founding of Facebook by a brilliant Harvard student, Mark Zuckerberg, who has gone on to become the world’s youngest multi-billionaire.
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Tags: Campus PD, COPS, Daily Item, Facebook, film, films, Fox, G4, Harvard, Item, Jesse Eisenberg, Mark Sardella, Mark Zuckerberg, movie, movies, police, Television, The Social Network, TV, Wakefield Daily Item, Wakefield Item
The New York Times reported this week that WikiLeaks claimed to have obtained Santa Claus’s 2010 Christmas list and would release the names of millions of people worldwide and the gifts that they would be receiving on Dec. 25. It was unclear how WikiLeaks obtained the list, but it is believed that a low-level elf working in the North Pole IT department downloaded the vast database while pretending to be listening to Christmas tunes online.
It was not known if the North Pole maintained a backup database, but that question was rendered moot yesterday when WikiLeaks made good on its promise and published the list on its web site.
The action led to a blizzard of reactions on the eve of the Christmas holiday.
Continue reading ‘It’s Beginning to Leak a Lot Like Christmas’
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Tags: Christmas, Daily Item, Humor, Mark Sardella, North Pole, Santa, Santa Claus, satire, Wakefield Daily Item, Wakefield Item, WikiLeaks
Nativity Seen
Being a Wakefield native isn’t what it used to be.
Not so very long ago, being able to say that you were born and raised here was seen as something special – a distinction that one could lord over those who moved here, for example, a mere 20 years ago (tourists).
Of course, it’s always been an unearned distinction, conferred by parents at birth by happenstance of geography. There are those who would argue that since the virtual extinction of home births in the last generation or so, there are no more true Wakefield natives being minted. All birth certificates list the town where the hospital birth took place, making many of us technically natives of Melrose or Winchester.
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Tags: 128, Bandstand, Daily Item, Hiker, Mark Sardella, Rockery, Route 128, Wakefield, Wakefield Daily Item, Wakefield Item, Wakefield MA, Wakefield Mass, Wakefield Massachusetts
Old School
The town is preparing to accept bids from developers that will determine the future of the Franklin School, and if things go as expected, another of a generation of nine schools that the town built around the turn of the 20th century will enter a new phase in its long existence.
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Two Partings, One Huge Loss
When all was said and done after this long campaign season, Tuesday’s election directly impacted Wakefield, Massachusetts in a couple of key ways. Two of Wakefield’s longtime representatives in the state legislature will no longer be there.
Running for Lt. Governor as Charlie Baker’s running mate, Wakefield’s Sen. Richard Tisei suffered the first loss of his long political career. His senate seat will be assumed by current State Rep. Katherine Clark of Melrose, who defeated Malden’s Craig Spadafora. We’re going to miss Richard Tisei.
State Rep. Mark Falzone was upset by fellow Saugus resident, businessman Donald Wong. Falzone’s district includes half of Wakefield and he was my State Rep.
I can’t say I’ll miss him.
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Filed under: Columns & Essays, Opinion, Politics, Wakefield | 1 Comment
Tags: Charlei Baker, Donald Wong, election, elections, Mark Falzone, Massachusetts, Politics, Richard Tisei, Saugus, Scott Brown, State House, state representative, State Senator, Wakefield, Wakefield MA, Wakefield Mass
Mark Sardella 