Baseball’s October Bandwagon
It’s October and the Red Sox are once again in the post-season, so dust off that pink hat and try to remember where TBS is on your cable system. Because even if you have no idea what ALDS stands for, you’ll be watching anyway, rooting for the home team and hoping “we” go all the way this year.
Welcome back, casual fans. This is your time of year.
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Tags: baseball, Boston, fair weather fans, fans, Fenway Park, pink hats, playoffs, postseason, Red Sox, sports
Jack on Spring Street
My artist brother, Bob Sardella, painted this scene showing our chlidhood home on Spring Street in Wakefield, Massachusetts. In the foreground is Jack, the great dog we had for 15 years back in the days before leash laws, when dogs roamed free.
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Tags: Art, artist, Bob Sardella, dog, dogs, Family, Jack, painting, Sardella, Sardella Sign & Display, Sardella Signs, Spring St., Spring Street, Wakefield, Wakefield MA, Wakefield Massachusetts
Unique landmark in Wakefield, Massachusetts
I never got to see the castle before it burned down 35 years ago next month. But as a kid attending the Greenwood School, I certainly heard about it.
“Have you seen the castle?” was a frequent schoolyard inquiry. In that typical childhood way, the goal of the questioner was, as much as anything, to prove that he knew something before you did – as if being the first to know about the castle was second only to having built it.
Continue reading ‘Hoag’s Castle Burned 35 Years Ago’
Filed under: Columns & Essays, Community, Feature stories, History, Profiles, Wakefield | 11 Comments
Tags: Acorn Ave., castle, Castle Clare, castle Wakefield, Clarence Hoag, Greenwood, Greenwood Castle, Greenwood MA, Greenwood Massachusetts, Greenwood School, Montclare Estates, Wakefield MA, Wakefield Mass, Wakefield Massachusetts
Canoe race raises $660 for World War II Memorial in Wakefield, MA
It was billed as the “War on the Water,” a contest where youth would challenge age in a canoe race on Lake Quannapowitt, with the more “seasoned” Wakefield Board of Selectmen taking on the relatively youthful School Committee members.
In the end, age triumphed over youth; experience prevailed over innocence, as the aging selectmen’s team handily defeated their fresh-faced school board rivals by several canoe lengths.
But the real winner yesterday was the World War II Memorial fund, as the event raised nearly $700 in donations toward the effort to build a new monument honoring the town’s veterans of the Second World War.
The much-hyped regatta had been the subject of a good deal of competitive “smack talk” in the weeks leading up to yesterday’s showdown, led primarily by the School Committee’s 23 year-old chairman, Anthony Guardia.
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Tags: Anthony Guardia, Betsy Sheeran, boat, boats, canoe, canoe race, canoes, Chris Callanan, Daily Item, John Carney, Kevin Piskadlo, Lake Quannapowitt, Lisa Butler, Pat Glynn, Patrick Glynn, Paul DiNocco, Phyllis Hull, Quannapowitt, school board, selectmen, Stephen Maio, Steve Maio, Wakefield, Wakefield Board of Selectmen, Wakefield Daily Item, Wakefield Item, Wakefield MA, Wakefield Massachusetts, Wakefield School Committee, World War II, World War II Memorial, World War II Monument
Have We Forgotten 9/11?
In a column earlier this year, I apparently offended a few people when I offered the following observation. “For too many Americans the emotional memory of the horror and outrage of 9/11 has faded.” On the eighth anniversary of September 11, 2001, it seems an appropriate time to address the matter of how we remember 9/11.
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Tags: 9/11, American Airlines, New York City, September 11, terrorism, terrorist, terrorists, United 93, World Trade Center
Russell Nelson, Teacher
93 year-old WWII vet taught in Wakefield, Massachusetts for 30 years
The school calendar is so engrained in most of us that the arrival of September each year invariably evokes memories our own school days. It may only be a passing memory of a classroom, a classmate or a favorite teacher.
I took things a step further this year and decided to look up my 8th grade English teacher, Mr. Russell Nelson.
Mr. Nelson was born in 1916. He is a veteran of World War II and he taught in Wakefield (MA) public schools for over 30 years. He’s 93 years old, and I quickly realized that I was in the presence of the same sharp wit and playful sense of humor that I remembered from his classroom at Wakefield Junior High School in 1964.
“I was a pupil of yours?” he teased on the phone after I identified myself as a former student. He said he’d be happy to talk to me and invited me to come right over.
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Tags: Army, classroom, Ernie Pyle, Essex MA, Essex Mass, Essex Massachusetts, Ie Shima, Junior High, Junior High School, Leyte, Lincoln School, middle school, pupil, pupils, Russell H. Nelson, Russell Nelson, school, schools, student, students, tank, tanks, teacher, teachers, United States Army, US Army, veteran, veterans, Wakefield, Wakefield Auto School, Wakefield MA, Wakefield Mass, Wakefield Massachusetts, Wakefield Schools, war, wars, World War II
Rating Summer’s Performance
Season Fails to Meet Expectations
Welcome, Summer. Thanks for finally putting in an appearance here in the northeastern United States. Now that you’ve deigned to show up, step into my office. As you know, it’s time for your annual performance review. And you might want to loosen that tie, because things are going to get a little hot, no thanks to you.
Sure, knowing that this review was scheduled, you’ve gone all out in the last few days. But we’re not falling for it. Despite your recent blaze of activity, your performance since June has frankly left us cold.
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Tags: August, cold, Daily Item, dog days, heat, hot, Item, July, June, Labor Day, microburst, performance review, rain, season, September, solstice, spring, summer, temperature, Wakefield Daily Item, Wakefield Item, weather, winter
Cool Squirrel on a Hot Day
They say you should take it easy when the summer heat gets unbearable. This black squirrel is cool in more ways than one. First of all, he has a blond tail, a very eyecatching trait. Second, he is apparently seeking relief from the summer heat by stretching out on the cool metal of this fence next to the Post Office in Wakefield, Massachusetts. I’ve seen him in the area a number of times, and this time I was no more than 15 feet away, but he seemed unconcerned about my presence as he relaxed in the heat. I theorize that that blond tail gets him a lot of positive attention from people, and while far from tame, he seems less nervous around humans than most squirrels.
Filed under: Columns & Essays, Nature & Wildlife, Wakefield | 2 Comments
Tags: black squirrel, blond, blonde tail, cool, heat, hot, nature, rodent, rodents, squirrel, squirrels, summer, tail, Wakefield, Wakefield MA, Wakefield Massachusetts, wildlife
Claim that Carabetta Management is unresponsive
Residents of the Colonial Point apartment building on Audubon Rd. in Wakefield are not happy. They say that the building is poorly maintained and that their concerns are ignored by the company that owns and manages the building. And they point out that many of these issues are not new and have been going on for years.
The tenants’ grievances include a main entry door that currently locks only intermittently, parking areas that are poorly lit or have no lighting at all, a swimming pool that’s been closed for months and a trash room smell that was so bad last month when the building’s air conditioning went out for four days that the Health Department had to be called in.
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Tags: affordable housing, apartment, apartments, Bristol, Carabetta, Carabetta Connecticut, Carabetta Construction, Carabetta Development, Carabetta Malden, Carabetta Management, Carabetta Management Co., Carabetta Management Company, Carabetta Massachusetts, Carabetta Organization, Carabetta Revere, Colonial Point, Colonial Point Apartments, Colonial Point Apartments Wakefield, Colonial Point Wakefield, comercial developments, commercial real estate, Connecticut, Daily Item, development, Hartford, housing, landlord, landlords, lease, maintenance, Malden, management, Mark Sardella, Meriden, Middletown, New Britain, New Haven, Norwich, properties, property, real estate, rent, renter, renters, rents, Revere, tenant, tenants, Vernon, Wakefield, Wakefield Daily Item, Wakefield Item, Wakefield MA, Wakefield Mass, Wakefield Massachusetts, Wallingford, Waterbury, Willimantic
Close Encounter
of the Unbearably Cute Kind
I was standing waist deep in water, about to go for a swim in the pond behind my house (Sluice Pond – Lynn, Massachusetts), when two tiny ducklings and their watchful mom swam up and approached me within an arms length. Obviously, since I was about to go for a swim, I didn’t have my camera. They eventually swam off, and I took my swim. As I was getting out of the water, I noticed them heading back in my direction. I grabbed my camera and got back in the water. Once again, they came within three feet of me and graciously posed for pictures.
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Tags: bird, birds, duck, duckling, ducklings, ducks, fowl, Lynn, Lynn MA, Lynn Massachusetts, mallard, mallards, nature, pond, ponds, Sluice Pond, waterfowl, wildlife
Mark Sardella 