Green and Mean
I’m all in favor of being green – if only when it comes to the lettering of my car’s license plate. In a sea of white plates with red lettering, the old “greenies” have become something of a treasure among the dwindling number of car owners who still have them. The green lettered Massachusetts tags were issued before 1987. Whether that makes them antique or merely unique, many of their owners are loathe to give them up.
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It takes the Wakefield Independence Day Committee many months to put together the annual July Fourth Parade, and Monday’s parade was no exception. But even for mere spectators, attending the parade involves a good deal of advance planning in order to stake out a prime viewing spot. As early as Sunday afternoon there were so many plastic chairs lining the parade route that, as one local wit observed, it looked like South Boston on the day after a blizzard.
There have been longer Independence Day Parades in past years, but even at just over one hour in length, Monday’s parade was a feast of floats, flags, fire engines, marching bands, color guards, horses, costumes and uniforms.
Missing in action were the elected officials and politicians. Even native son Sen. Scott Brown, who brought his star power to last year’s parade, took a pass this year. Sure, our stalwart selectmen marched, as did State Rep. Donald Wong and Middlesex County Sheriff Peter Koutoujian. But unlike last year, there was no Continue reading ‘Even Sans Pols, Parade Packs Punch’
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A Month of Summer
Tuesday, June 21 was the first day of summer. I saw it on a calendar, so it must be true. Otherwise, how would anyone know? As long as the sun is out it feels almost like summer. But it’s late June and how many nights have there been when you could go out without a jacket?
By July, it will probably be warm enough to leave your windows open 24/7 for a few weeks, and we might even get a heat wave or two. But by the second week in August, the night air will again have that New England nip. Summers don’t seem as hot as they used to be but winters, as we saw this past season, seem to be getting worse. Continue reading ‘A Month of Summer’
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Challenge Your Future
My 2011 Commencement Address
Winter ended a week ago, and that means it’s graduation time. So I am happy to be here delivering my 2011 commencement address.
Graduates, distinguished members of the faculty, salutorian, valedictorian and vegetarians. I guess that covers everyone.
I come here today not to tell you how to live your lives; that’s the federal government’s job. But a commencement speech without a few words of advice would be boring – and it is my solemn duty as your commencement speaker to bore you to tears.
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Catering to Apathy
Note to 89 percent of the registered voters in Wakefield, Massachusetts: There was a Town Election on April 26, 2011.
Sorry you couldn’t make it.
Two selectmen, two School Committee Members and an Assessor were elected. And those were just the contested races.
It’s been noted that the 2011 Wakefield Town Election may have seen the lowest turnout in local history, with 89 percent of registered voters avoiding anything resembling a voting booth.
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Will close June 1 after 65 years on Albion Street in Wakefield, Massachusetts
The expression, “the end of an era,” has become a bit of a cliché. But when the Ox Bow Pet Shop, one of Wakefield’s oldest businesses and one of the few independent, family-owned pet stores in a market dominated by chain stores closes its doors for good on June 1 after 65 years in business, it truly will mark the end of an era.
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Sound Advice
We’ve all heard the expression “political echo chamber,” but until the recent debates who knew that the term referred to Wakefield‘s own Galvin Middle School Auditorium?
I don’t know what it sounded like to the live audience of a dozen people who packed the hall, but for those of us on stage there was more reverb than Phil Spector‘s recording studio.
In both the Selectmen and School Committee debates the candidates seemed to be having trouble understanding the reporters sitting 10 feet away from them. Candidates had to ask for questions to be repeated multiple times. The problem wasn’t volume – it was echo.
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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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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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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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Mark Sardella 