Four-leaf clovers are not so incredibly rare, but they sure are hard to find. Probably a few years ago now, I started to pay attention a bit more and I remembered how, as kids, we would sit on the ground and search for four-leaf clovers. Somebody always found one and at the time, I didn’t [...]
From the category archives:
Local to Boston
After I suggested a way to fix the Boston Public School lottery process here, I attended the first of a series of community meetings in Boston designed to make good on Mayor Menino’s promise to “[adopt] a radically different student assignment plan – one that puts a priority on children attending schools closer to their [...]
I remember reading Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery when I was ten or twelve years old. It’s a great story that cleverly foreshadows danger, building to the unexpected climax and conclusion: the “winner” of the lottery is stoned to death in a small town ritual to ensure a good harvest. In Boston, we have our own annual [...]
I got a job and this blog died. We moved and I really had no compelling reason to keep updating http://westwoodblog.org either. My life is pretty full but I do miss expressing myself and creating something here. Partly, I’m also in transition. As we adjusted to a new rhythm of job, home, schools, etc. I dialed back [...]
We bought a house in Rozzie, and we finally move this Friday. It was not an easy choice to leave the town of Westwood where I’ve been active in several town boards, developed many friendships, and started our oldest daughter in the school system. (And authored the Westwood Blog for the past 3 years.) It [...]
Several years ago, we discovered the First Church and Parish in Dedham. When we first attended, we were concerned that although the people were welcoming and the community was obviously strong, we weren’t sure if there was a critical mass of young families like us. We wanted our kids to be a part of a [...]
A few days ago I wrote about an idea for a web-based debate between candidates. When I met with other bloggers in our community, we had plenty of good ideas…but we kept looking at that calendar and realizing we had very little time and no guarantee the candidates would even respond. So we came up [...]
Yesterday, Patch (the hyper local news publisher funded by America Online) launched a Westwood, Massachusetts site–the 11th town so far in Massachusetts. I met the editor and am impressed that they are making an effort to cover the news in this town of 15,000–potentially filling the void left when the Daily News Transcript stopped being [...]
Significant changes to Massachusetts Open Meeting law take effect on July 1, 2010. The new rules do not directly promote collaborative technologies–e.g. how a town might use a wiki to improve governance, for example, but some common sense clarifications do open the door to removing some anti-technology sentiment. And I think the documentation requirements will [...]