Posts Tagged ‘school’

We are right in the middle of the graduation season, and I am again available for a small stipend to deliver the keynote address at any commencement ceremonies. Or you can save yourselves the money, save me some time, and spare your graduates a few minutes of agony and just read it here. Graduates, distinguished […]


Largely ignored in all the excitement over the margin of victory in the June 9 Special Election was the fact that the decision to build a new Galvin Middle School was made by a minority of the town’s voters. Less than one-third of those eligible weighed in with a vote. If you count only the […]


Every time a special interest group manages to pack Town Meeting to ram their pet measure through, local government geeks find themselves wondering if there will be some long-term residual benefit, some lasting silver lining to this cynical exercise. Surely, they imagine, out of this great mass of people here to vote on their one […]


Pro-debt exclusion crowd dominates Wakefield, MA Annual Town Meeting The Monday, May 14 Galvin Gala was scheduled to begin at 7:30, but if you arrived later than 7 p.m., you may have found yourself parking, as I did, in Victory Village down off Richardson Street. Packing the Galvin Auditorium and the cafeteria, the crowd of […]


Snow Deal

08Mar12

One day last fall as I headed out for a morning walk, my neighbor stopped me as I strode past his house. “See this?” Ron asked, pointing to the contraption sitting in front of his garage. “It’s a snow blower.” Yes, I know,” I replied, suddenly feeling like I had walked into a Leslie Nielsen […]


The campaign to sell the town of Wakefield a new Galvin Middle School is already gathering steam and is likely to continue unabated through the May Annual Town Meeting and beyond. It’s going to be a hard sell. With a $74,740,254, price tag, building a brand new, state-of-the-art middle school is going to require the […]


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; […]


A recent incident at Wakefield High School in Massachusetts illustrates just how much our country has changed in just one generation – and not for the better. A few weeks ago, a substitute teacher at Wakefield High School, who is also the father of a soldier who gave his life in Iraq, reprimanded a student […]


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 […]


Almost unnoticed, an era ended in Wakefield, Massachusetts this week. Or at least, an era’s final tangible symbol vanished with the razing of the bungalow at 93 Montrose Avenue that was home to Hope Dillaway’s Studio School for Children in the 1940’s and 1950s. The property is slated to be developed as a five-lot single-family […]