• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to secondary sidebar

The Lincoln Squirrel – News, features and photos from Lincoln, Mass.

  • Home
  • About/Contact
  • Advertise
  • Legal Notices
    • Submitting legal notices
  • Lincoln Resources
    • Coming Up in Lincoln
    • Municipal Calendar
    • Lincoln Links
  • Merchandise
  • Subscriptions
    • My Account
    • Log In
    • Log Out
  • Lincoln Review
    • About the Lincoln Review
    • Issues
    • Submit your work

arts

My Turn: Welcome back, Lincoln Review!

March 24, 2025

By May Ann Hales

Editor’s note: You can see the last two issues of the new Lincoln Review here. Learn how to submit your work for the next issue here (the deadline is April 4).

One morning I read in the Lincoln Squirrel that the creative arts section called the Lincoln Chipmunk would be renamed the Lincoln Review, in honor of the print predecessor by the same name. The Review was part of our little town from 1977 to 2019. For all those years, various people contributed written pieces, art, and illustrations on a myriad of things from and about Lincoln.

I had participated in a small way and was so sad when it ceased publication. Our town had lost something small but wonderful. Now my heart rejoiced to know that it would be rejuvenated. I was also surprised to discover that back issues from 1977–1980 can now be browsed and searched online here thanks to our library staff, and every single print issue (plus an index) can be perused at the Lincoln Public Library. Not only is modern technology grand, but so are the efforts of numerous people who made this possible for us.

The Review was an important outlet for Lincolnites who wanted to express their creative or civic thoughts in print. You could purchase a copy at the grocery store or subscribe and receive your issues in the mail. Town Meeting editions were distributed free to all attendees. It was an important part of our creative lives.

It was surprising how ideas germinated and took root from the pages of the Review. For example, in 1982, Suze Craig wrote a piece titled “The Garden as Day Care” about how children and adults explored her garden. That article became the inspiration for the name of our still-flourishing Magic Garden. Imagine that.

I look forward to new inspiration from the online pages of the creative section of the Squirrel now appearing as the Lincoln Review. The late Betty and Harold Smith, the major publishers of the old Review, will be looking from the Great Beyond with the pleasure of succession. I am excited to see what blooms anew in our cultural life through the pages of the Lincoln Review redux.


“My Turn” is a forum for readers to offer their letters to the editor or views on any subject of interest to other Lincolnites. Submissions must be signed with the writer’s name and street address and sent via email to lincolnsquirrelnews@gmail.com. Items will be edited for punctuation, spelling, style, etc., and will be published at the discretion of the editor. Submissions containing personal attacks, errors of fact, or other inappropriate material will not be published.

Category: arts, My Turn

Doo-Wop Team hits it out of the park

August 20, 2024

The Doo-Wop Team from the Lincoln Council on Aging & Human Services sang on the field at Polar Park in Worcester before the WooSox minor-league game on August 16. Group member Peter Stewart plays the organ at Polar Park twice a month and encouraged the group to come and sing. Members also took a moment to sing “Happy Birthday” to member Harold McAleer, who turned 94 the next day. The Doo-Wop team has performed several gigs and donated the proceeds to the Lincoln food pantry over the past year. Left to right: Priscilla Leach, R.L. Smith, McAleer, Mark Faulkner, Stewart, Candace Foster, and Jessica Bethoney. Not visible in photo: Carol DiGianni and Lynne LaSpina.

Category: arts, seniors

Welcome to the Lincoln Review (version 2)!

August 6, 2024

As subscribers probably know, the Lincoln Squirrel has published the Lincoln Chipmunk, an online arts periodical, for the last several years as a successor to the print-only Lincoln Review (1977–2019). This summer, I’m welcoming Barbara Rhines as the new editor of the publication, which is relaunching with a new design but the old name. It will still be published for subscribers on the Lincoln Squirrel website. Here’s the newest issue:

lincolnsquirrel.com/the-lincoln-review

An important new section for crafts is now part of the Lincoln Review. In future issues, we would also like to include a section showcasing the creative endeavors of Lincoln high-school students. And to further honor the storied history of this town and prior contributors, we hope to feature vintage submissions selected from the past issues of the Lincoln Review/Lincoln Chipmunk. 

Check out the Lincoln Review’s submission guidelines. Be creative and send in your work! The next deadline is October 11, 2024. Please tell your friends about this vital new journal of literature, art, and craft. (And by the way, you can still see back issues of the Lincoln Chipmunk here.)

Alice Waugh
Editor, The Lincoln Squirrel
Publisher, The Lincoln Review
lincolnsquirrelnews@gmail.com
617-710-5542 (mobile)

Category: arts

My Turn: Check out famed cellist Helen Gillet on Friday

June 26, 2024

By Mimi Borden, Sara Mattes, and Rachel Marie Schachter

This Friday night, we have a unique opportunity to hear a gifted, boundary-breaking artist — cellist Helen Gillet — in a rare New England performance. She will take the stage at 8 p.m. on Friday, June 28 at Bemis Hall.

Helen has played notable venues around the world including Lincoln Center, NPR’s Tiny Desk, and TEDx stages. She performs most often in New Orleans, her current home, where her packed performances at the New Orleans Jazz Fest are consistently met with standing ovations.

Helen has a unique approach to music. She sings in English, French, and other languages while accompanying herself with multi-layered sounds that she records and loops as she performs. Her eclectic palette, technical prowess, extended techniques, and artistic daring combine to create an other-worldly experience. It’s one not to be missed. This is a sample of what you’ll hear.

Please join the Bemis Free Lecture Series to experience a most enchanting evening.

The authors are Bemis Trustees.


“My Turn” is a forum for readers to offer their letters to the editor or views on any subject of interest to other Lincolnites. Submissions must be signed with the writer’s name and street address and sent via email to lincolnsquirrelnews@gmail.com. Items will be edited for punctuation, spelling, style, etc., and will be published at the discretion of the editor. Submissions containing personal attacks, errors of fact, or other inappropriate material will not be published.

Category: arts, My Turn

News acorns

June 25, 2024

Cello concert on Friday

Helen Gillet

See Helen Gillet, a “whirling dervish of the cello,” in concert on Friday, June 28 at 8 p.m. in Bemis Hall. Gillet is a cellist, singer, composer, and master improviser who grew up in Belgium, Singapore, Illinois and Wisconsin. Calling New Orleans home since 2002, she is a jazz festival favorite who regularly performs on stages all over the world. Her solo shows are an eclectic mix of styles including French chansons, Belgian folk sung in Walloon, contemporary jazz, North Indian blues and classical. She combines acoustic cello with voice, percussion and live looping and layering technology to explore and push the boundaries of sound and rhythm. See videos of her performing here. Free; sponsored by the Bemis Free Lecture Series.

Coming up at the library

Kids’ Comic Workshop with LJ Baptiste
Monday, July 8 from 7–8 p.m., Tarbell Room
ids ages 7+ are invited to join Boston cartoonist and comic artist LJ-Baptiste for a three-week workshop on Monday nights in July to learn how comics are made. You will also create your own comics and original characters using techniques from pros in comics and manga as well. All supplies will be provided by the library. Registration required; participants are encouraged to register for all three workshop sessions. Register here.

Ricardo Frota

Ecology of Sound: Ricardo Frota
Wednesday, July 10 from 11 a.m.–noon, Tarbell Room
Join us for a performance by Ricardo Frota that inspires children and parents to absorb the rhythms, sound and music from different global cultures and the natural world that surrounds them. Ricardo entertains and educates while playing multicultural songs and improvising with Earth elements. His interactive performances use traditional rhythm instruments, and instruments made of recycled materials and also objects found in nature. All ages welcome; no registration required.

Dungeons and Dragons: A Library Campaign
Thursday, July 11 from 4–5 p.m., Tarbell Room
Come play Dungeons and Dragons in the library with DM Nikolas Metcalf. Registration required; for ages 11+. Register here.

Donate art supplies to Lincoln hospice house

Lincoln resident Stacey Sawyer-Mackie, who volunteers with the Care Dimensions hospice house in Lincoln, is collecting adult coloring books, colored pencils, thin-tipped markers and similar items to have available for family members and visitors at the hospice house. If you can donate such items or easy word search, simple crossword puzzle books or other similar items, email her at slsweet830@aol.com.

Category: acorns, arts

Art sales pull in funds for Boston Bridges Initiative

May 30, 2024

The Schrader-Johnson family of Lincoln with their new painting. 

The Schrader-Johnson family of Lincoln are the proud new owners of an original painting titled “Changes” by James Leonard. They purchased the painting at a recent event hosted by Boston Bridges Initiative (BBI), a nonprofit that facilitates cultural exchange and meaningful social interaction between city and suburban families in the greater Boston area.

The art sale was a fundraiser through BBI’s Downsize for Diversity program, which accepts donations of artwork and sells it at greatly reduced prices — and whose earlier iteration resulted in this 2022 book. The sale focused on art donated by the global consulting firm McKinsey & Co.

Framed paintings and photographs from this collection are still available along with hundreds of additional pieces of art at a home gallery in Lincoln. If you’re interested in purchasing art at discount prices for a good cause, contact Joanna Schmergel at owenjoanna@yahoo.com or 617-645-9059.

Category: arts, charity/volunteer, news

Exhibit celebrating the life of Gerald Foster starting June 4

May 29, 2024

Gerry Foster

An exhibit celebrating the life and work the late Lincoln artist, architect, and author Gerald Lee Foster will be on displayed from June 4 through July 13, 2024 at The Gallery at Villageworks (525 Massachusetts Ave., West Acton).

Foster passed quietly in his sleep on June 25, 2023 in Lincoln at the age of 86. Contributions in his memory may be made to Mass Audubon, 208 South Great Road, Lincoln, MA 01773. Burial arrangements were handled by the Dee Funeral Home. See his full obituary and online guestbook. 
 
The exhibit is organized by Foster’s children Mark Foster, Ryan Foster, and Shelby O’Neill. Contact Shelby (shelbymfoster@gmail.com) for further information.
 

Category: arts, news, obits

TEDx Walden Pond is the talk of the town

November 6, 2023

TEDx WaldenPond speakers were (back row, left to right) Trish Kendall, Wendy Murphy, Rick Chavez, Rebecca Heiss, Eric McNulty, Jared Cox, Graham Lutz, Corinne Hancock Scott. Front row: Charley Blandy, Lauren Chaby, Seth Ettenberg, Tim Washer. Nick Morgan is lying on the rug. (Missing: Raj Sharma, Martin Moore, Gerami Groover-Flores)

A Lincoln couple recently hosted the town’s first TedX event, TedX Walden Pond, which showcased 15 speakers as well as two artistic performances.

Co-organizer Nick Morgan said he’s been a longtime fan of TED Talks, where “ideas are front and center, new voices can be heard, and the opportunity to debate interesting topics was there.” TEDx (the “x” indicates independently organized) is an offshoot program that enables local communities to host TED-like events. They’re usually named after the host town, but “TEDx Lincoln” was already taken by Lincoln, Neb.

Anyone can host a TEDx event in their hometown as long as they get approved and licensed by TedX, so Morgan and his wife Jessica Cooper started the application process a year ago and got the green light in August for the November 1 event held at the First Parish stone church. Morgan is a public speaking coach with Public Words Inc. and Cooper is a voice teacher. 

He and Cooper put out the word to their networks for potential speakers. Since the TedX brand is quite prestigious, “you immediately get overwhelmed with people who want to give talks — selecting the most promising is tough,” Morgan said. His theme was “Ripples of Thought,” which was “deliberately ambiguous,” he said. 

“The audience particularly liked Gerami Groover-Flores’ talk about the origins of the Hamilton-Garrett Center for Music & Arts in the music of the Black church in America, Trish Kendall‘s deeply moving talk on success, and SNL veteran Tim Washer‘s funny closing talk, ‘Follow the Fear,’ on self-acceptance,” Morgan said. The other speakers were:

  • Charley Blandy, expert on negotiation and corporate social responsibility and a professional singer, on our response to climate change
  • Dr. Jared Cox on shame
  • Dr. Lauren Chaby, director of scientific strategies at ALZpath, on new developments in Alzheimer’s research
  • Rick Chavez, partner at Oliver Wyman, on lessons he learned from 25 years in the technology business
  • Dr. Seth Ettenberg, chief scientific officer at BlueRock Therapeutics, on regenerative medicine
  • Dr. Rebecca Heiss on how men struggle to find their roles in modern society
  • Graham Lutz on the importance of allowing ourselves to embrace mistakes
  • Eric McNulty on the importance of working together as a community on difficult issues such as climate change
  • Martin G. Moore, producer of the “No Bullsh!t Leadership” podcast, on handling conflict
  • Wendy Murphy, adjunct professor of sexual violence law at the New England School of Law, on how women are denied equal protection under the law
  • Storyteller and educator Graham Lutz on the importance of allowing ourselves to embrace mistakes
  • “Chaos coach” Corinne Hancock Scott
  • Raj Sharma, head of The Sharma Group and a director of the Boston Foundation, on choosing wealth management as a career

Urbanity Dance performers Zoe Carey, Clare Naughton, and Josephine Schneider. Photo by Deborah J. Karson (@DeborahJKarsonPhotography on Instagram)

A highlight of the evening was “Ripples: gathered,” a performance choreographed specially for “Ripples of Thought” by Urbanity Dance, whose mission it is to bring contemporary dance to the Boston landscape. Classical guitarist Aaron Larget-Caplan also performed “moving still,” an original composition, resulting in “a potpourri of people and topics, which is what TEDx wants,” Cooper said.

TED Talks are limited to 18 minutes and TEDx to just 10 minutes — a departure from when Morgan started coaching public speakers when “a 90-minute lecture was not unusual,” he said. TED Talks were “a bellwether of the times” to encourage a variety of shorter speeches in one session. 

TedX Walden Pond should be available for viewing on YouTube by the end of the year once the event company has finished editing, Morgan said.

Category: arts, educational

Read the latest issue of the Lincoln Chipmunk!

September 25, 2023

The latest issue of the Lincoln Chipmunk, the quarterly arts companion to the Lincoln Squirrel, has just been published. See what your friends and neighbors have created, and start working on your own submissions — the next deadline is December 11. Questions? Call editor Alice Waugh at 617-710-5542 or email lincolnsquirelnews@gmail.com. 

chipmunk.lincolnsquirrel.com

Category: arts

A Q&A with Lincoln’s Elizabeth Graver on her new novel, “Kantika”

May 2, 2023

Elizabeth Graver

Lincoln author Elizabeth Graver and Judy Bolton-Fasman (author of Asylum: A Memoir of Family Secrets) will discuss Graver’s latest novel, Kantika, on Wednesday, May 17 from 7–8:30 p.m. in the Lincoln Public Library’s Tarbell Room. Kantika is a Sephardic multigenerational saga that moves from Istanbul to Barcelona, Havana, and New York, exploring displacement, endurance, and family as home, inspired by the story of Graver’s grandmother, Rebecca née Cohen Baruch Levy. Copies of the book will be sold at the event by the Concord Bookshop.

Graver’s fourth novel, The End of the Point, was long-listed for the 2013 National Book Award in Fiction and selected as a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. Her other novels are Awake, The Honey Thief, and Unravelling. Following is a Lincoln Squirrel Q&A with Graver.

Let me start by asking about your previous historical novels, The End of the Point and Unravelling. They have very different settings and time periods. What inspired them?

With Unravelling, I was in graduate school studying American studies and cultural history and read a book that made a big impression on me about the Lowell textile mills and ended up actually having a dream in which I, or some version of myself, was a mill worker. And woke up and had this voice in my head. The End of the Point was loosely inspired by a spit of land into Buzzards Bay where my husband’s family had, across some generations, a summer house. That one took me into the kind of things that Kantika is also interested in, which have to do with the 20th century and the intersections of big history with individual lives.

The End of the Point had a very tight lens. It covered a lot of time, but the place was really small. I was interested in what happens when a family owns property and can come back over and over and again across generations to the same small place. The place is almost like a crucible where a lot happens and it’s very distilled. I think I needed to write The End of the Point to have the confidence to write Kantika, which involved even more research — this time about lives, languages, and countries that are farther away from me, even though it’s my family’s story. I grew up in New England, but my mother was a first-generation American who grew up in Queens and my dad was second-generation American who grew up in the Bronx. This was an odd book in that I use real photos from my family and real names, and there’s a little girl towards the end called Suzanne, and that’s my mother.

What percentage of Kantika is factual versus fiction?

The central characters in the family are all inspired by real people with the proper birth orders, the main geographical events all happened, you know, the moves from Turkey to Spain to Cuba to New York. But all the interiority I had to make up — it’s fiction, right? There are the stories my grandmother narrated blow by blow on tapes that I have, and there are some things she told me that didn’t make it in, but it’s an incredible melange. There were so many different ways I was grabbing material. I interviewed people at the Sephardic Home for the Aged in Istanbul, and I read articles and I corresponded with scholars and I wandered the streets.

One of the characters I loved writing about, but who really surprised me in terms of my urge to take on his point of view, is Alberto, which was the real name of my great-grandfather, but I never met him, my mother never met him. He died a terrible death in Spain during the Spanish Civil War. I knew about four facts about him: I knew that he was a terrible businessman and loved to garden and was an intellectual and was much older than his wife. That’s about it. But that was kind of enough. In some ways, it’s almost easier to imagine a character when you don’t have too much because people are incredibly complicated. I initially thought of writing this book as nonfiction, but I didn’t have enough material. And I love writing fiction — I love emotion and psychology and inner life.

Writing can be so solitary, but the research for this book connected me to my own past and my own family. I did a lot of interviewing of not just my grandmother decades ago, and my uncles and my mother, but also lots of people who were preserving and making art out of this world, which has been really fun.

Did you learn any Ladino growing up?

Teeny little things at the beginning of a meal, but no, not really. My grandparents would speak it over my head. They were of that immigrant generation when assimilation was very much what needed to happen, maybe even especially for Sephardic Jews who were so different from the majority of other Jews in this country. My mother actually has memories of her father saying to her at one point, “You can’t call me Papa any more. You have to call me Dad.” And they wouldn’t let her pierce her ears because that seemed too foreign. My grandmother just didn’t care. She was so singular — she just was never trying to blend in exactly. But they were working very hard as first-generation immigrants to help their kids make it in American society.

From your standpoint, how did the Sephardic experience differ from the Ashkenazi experience in America?

My father’s family actually didn’t know what to make of my mother at first. They ended up adoring her, but she didn’t eat the same food as they did. She didn’t know Yiddish. Growing up, I was very struck by the differences. My father had a harder childhood as an only child whose father died when he was very young. My mother’s family didn’t have a lot of money [in America]; they had plenty of struggles, but it was a very, abundant family, filled with food and music and joy and very Mediterranean. The Sephardic culture has a lot more flow, from what I’ve seen. There weren’t the same sorts of ghettos. It’s not that it was easy — the Sephardim were welcomed into the Ottoman Empire after the Spanish Inquisition but they didn’t have full rights. So none of it is a totally rosy picture, but they also traveled a huge amount, which led to a quite expansive culture. Some of this was forced crossings around diasporic expulsion, but some of it wasn’t. Some of it was trade.

My Ashkenazi and Sephardic grandparents would spend some time together, and they became friends. And my grandmother, Rebecca, in my novel and in real life, was part of a Jewish community in Queens that was mostly comprised of Ashkenazi Jews. She became good friends with people at her temple, but I think she always felt a bit foreign. I have a scene in my book right at the end, where she’s doing a concert at her little synagogue, and one of the people who’s organizing it asks her to sing a song in Ladino because she thinks it’ll be exotic. In real life, my grandmother was kind of happy to take on that role —she was colorful, she liked attention, but at the same time I think there was a real sorrow and sense of not fully belonging.

It was complicated because there were significant Ottoman Sephardic communities in New York, but they were not of her social class. She started out rich and my grandfather, who was her second marriage, grew up very poor. He had quite a bit of family in the United States, but they didn’t much like her, and she didn’t much like them. I started to tease some of this out and turn it into fiction about the different ways in which people were connected or divided. And social class was one of them, which also really interested me in The End of the Point.

Rebecca wanted to own a house, she wanted to have a garden. They didn’t have a lot of money, so they ended up in the far reaches of Queens because that’s where they could do that. And she had a good friend across the street who was Cuban and Catholic, because she could speak Spanish with him. My grandmother in her old age in Florida became friends with a reverend. In Istanbul, she went to Catholic school. It’s funny because I teach at a Jesuit university. So she was really pluralistic in all these ways. And at the same time, she was deeply Jewish. She had her Star of David earrings and she always went to synagogue. And I was raised culturally very Jewish but totally secular.

How does Kantika track with your work as a professor of creative writing and literature at Boston College?

I’ve been teaching a paired course with a colleague and close friend of mine called “Roots and Routes: Reading Identity Migration and Culture.” That course is intended for advanced English language learners, so many of the students have their own really interesting migration stories. I’ve had them do things like interview an immigrant and often it’s a parent or a grandparent. I feel like everybody has a story and so I encourage my students to gather them, too.

I think I wrote Kantika partly in response to the worldwide refugee crisis and the fact that I was reading so much incredibly powerful literature and teaching by immigrants, so having this story intertwine or sit alongside some of those other stories feels important to me. I had a feeling that this is a story that’s rich and beautiful and painful and has many different pieces and has not been told as much as it might.

Category: arts

  • Page 1
  • Page 2
  • Page 3
  • Interim pages omitted …
  • Page 47
  • Go to Next Page »

Primary Sidebar

Upcoming Events

May 9
12:30 pm - 1:30 pm

Jessa Piaia as Isabella Stewart Gardner

May 9
1:00 pm - 3:00 pm

Volunteer work day at Twin Pond

May 10
10:00 am - 12:00 pm

Lincoln Democrats caucus

May 10
11:00 am - 2:00 pm

Garden Cub plant sale

May 12
6:00 pm - 8:00 pm

“Fort-Night”

View Calendar

Recent Posts

  • My Turn: Planning for climate-friendly aviation May 8, 2025
  • News acorns May 7, 2025
  • Legal notice: Select Board public hearing May 7, 2025
  • Property sales in March and April 2025 May 6, 2025
  • Public forums, walks scheduled around Panetta/Farrington proposal May 5, 2025

Squirrel Archives

Categories

Secondary Sidebar

Search the Squirrel:

Privacy policy

© Copyright 2025 The Lincoln Squirrel · All Rights Reserved.