Dance party at Bemis
Insight Boston, a not-for-profit organization that offers personal growth and development seminars for “teaching practical ways to live from your heart,” will host a rock ‘n roll dance party at Bemis Hall on Saturday, Jan. 28 from 6:30–10 p.m. Graduates of Insight Seminars, their friends and loved ones, and Lincoln residents are invited. This adult-only (18+) event is free.
There will be light snacks and non-alcoholic drinks available, as well as information about Insight seminars. Please RSVP and address any questions to Stephanie Kramp (stephkramp@yahoo.com).
Kindergartener families invited to learn about Girl Scouts
The Lincoln Girl Scouts will host a Kindergarten Daisy Launch on Monday, Feb. 13 from 6:15–7:15 p.m. in the Lincoln Public Library, Tarbell Room. At this free session, your kindergartener will have fun exploring the magic of space and creating a rubber-band-powered Daisy Cup Launcher while adults discuss when and where the troop will meet, parent involvement, and the goals for the year as well as fill out required paperwork. Click here to learn more and confirm your attendance.
Jane French Tatlock
Celebration of the life of Jane Tatlock on Feb. 18
The family of Jane French Tatlock will hold a celebration of her life featuring the Lincoln Bell Ringers on Saturday, Feb. 18 at 2 p.m. in the stone church (14 Bedford Rd.). In the spirit of Jane, attendees are invited to dress festively, and if you’d like to add a picture to a communal board, bring one along. Tatlock died on October 3, 2022 at the age of 81.
Boston Globe shines light on Sidetrack program
An interactive article on “The radical, forgotten experiment in educational integration that changed my life” by Lincoln native Peter Thomson recently published in the Globe looks back on a 1971 experiment in integration education.
“The kernel of the idea sprang in 1970 from an unlikely source — a fifth-grade teacher in Lincoln named Carol Kellogg, who’d grown disenchanted with the complacency of her wealthy, white, and largely liberal town. She felt that while she and others professed concern about racism, they were basically ‘sitting out here in our cozy little suburb not doing a darn thing,’ as she told Lincoln’s Fence Viewer newspaper at the time,” Thomson writes.
“Yes, there was Metco, a new initiative to bus a few Black kids from segregated and underfunded schools in Boston to better-funded ones in the suburbs, including Lincoln. But it carried an old-school air of condescension—whites were the benefactors, white culture was the norm, and the relationships between the communities involved were left largely unexplored and unchanged. Kellogg had heard about experimental schools that were directly engaging the social challenges of the time and hatched an idea for a radical alternative to Metco: a full-on collaboration in which equal numbers of white and Black junior high schoolers from Lincoln and Boston would spend equal amounts of time in each community, learning together and building relationships in and out of the classroom.
“She imagined that they’d shuttle back and forth in a train car on the commuter rail line and that the car would double as their school while it sat on a little-used track in Lincoln — a sidetrack. The train car idea proved a little too kooky even for free-thinking Lincoln. But the basic concept got traction. And the name stuck.”
To read the story on the Globe website, where you can mouse over teenagers’ photos to see their names, click here. Nonsubscribers can read a PDF here.
Bruno the serval thriving in Minnesota sanctuary
It’s the one-year anniversary of Bruno the serval’s relocation to the Wildcat Sanctuary in Sandstone, Minn., and the organization made this video about him. He’s in much better shape than when he was discovered hungry and injured in Lincoln in 2022, but he’s getting around fine on three legs. He’s also grown after getting plenty of food and has made friends with other servals.