News, features and photos from Lincoln, Mass.
By Alice Waugh
Faced with the possibility that the Lincoln Extended-day After-school Program (LEAP) might be replaced, parents and others turned out in force to protest at last week’s meeting of the School Committee, which voted to delay the decision until the fall.
[Read more…] about Emotions run high at meeting on after-school program
The Lincoln Junior Hikers. (Photo courtesy Jason Felsch)
By Alice C. Waugh
A new chapter in the story of Lincoln’s conservation trails begins on Sunday afternoon when a group of kids will set off down a path and enter the country (or countryside, anyway) bearing brand-new passports.
[Read more…] about Young walkers get passports to fun on Lincoln’s trails
Here’s a selection of interesting events coming up in town. Mark your calendars!
Saturday, April 20
1-3 p.m., Codman Community Farms
Kids of all ages will make a fairy gardens to take home. If you have a dinner-plate-size basket or bowl you’d like to use, please bring it with you. We’ll have some on hand if you don’t. Led by Susan Cummings.
Please RSVP to sustev@comcast.net. The cost is $5.
Dr. Michael Rich
Thursday, April 25
7-8:30 p.m., Brooks Auditorium
Ask the “media-trician” about kids and media! Lincoln PTO Parent Education presents Dr. Michael Rich, MD, MPH, of Children’s Hospital Boston (CHB), who will talk about the positive and negative effects of media exposure on our children. Hear the latest research about children’s use of media and implications for their health from Dr. Rich, director of the Center on Media and Child Health at CHB. This program is supported in part by a grant from the Lincoln Cultural Council, a local agency that is supported by the Massachusetts Cultural Council, a state agency. The Lincoln School PTO also provided funding.
Sunday, May 5
5 p.m., 53 South Great Rd., Lincoln
Enjoy a chamber concert at the home of Laura Bossert and Terry King (53 South Great Road) on Sunday, May 5 at 5 p.m. overlooking Farrar Pond and Pincushion Island to benefit Farrar Pond. Wine and hors d’oeuvres followed by a chamber music concert featuring Arensky’s Two Cello Quartet and Dvořák’s Piano Quintet in A Major. See the Lincoln Squirrel calendar listing for details on the musicians.
Seating is limited and tickets are $75. To purchase, send a check payable to “Massachusetts Audubon Society” (the fiscal agent for the pond) with “Farrar Pond Music Benefit” in the memo line. Mail to Ron McAdow, 59 South Great Road, Lincoln MA 01773. We will hold your tickets at the door. Please include an e-mail address for ticket confirmation. The full amount of your tickets/donation is tax deductible. The money held by Mass Audubon is used to fight invasive vegetation and to maintain the dam and the beaver deceivers.
“Farrar Pond is a unique place in Lincoln where creative zoning has resulted in conservation land and trails around a beautiful pond,” said Farrar Pond Associates president Will Winchell. “The Farrar Pond Associates, associated trusts and the Lincoln Land Conservation Trust work to maintain it in its natural state. There are a number of invasive plant species that need to be controlled to preserve the pond and we are dependent on donations to accomplish this often costly process. What better way to support Farrar Pond than a glorious evening of music, refreshments, and getting to know each other?”
Two exhibits at the Lincoln Public Library this month show how children’s portrait-drawing abilities evolve over time and depict Lincoln’s natural history. [Read more…] about Nature and portraits on exhibit at library in April
Mark your calendars for a variety of historical observances with the Lincoln Minute Men.
Paul Revere’s Capture Ceremony
Saturday, April 6 at 3 p.m.
Minute Man National Historical Park
The Lincoln Minute Men march down Battle Road and narrate the story of Paul Revere’s capture at the actual site. Hear Revere, Samuel Prescott, William Dawes, Mary Hartwell, even Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Music, dramatic reading and musket fire in the Park. For all ages. [Read more…] about Lincoln Minute Men events to observe Patriot’s Day
The Lincoln Public Library will host two weekly librarian-led story times for children this spring:
Preregistration is required. Please email children’s library Jane Flanders at jflanders@minlib.net or call the library at 781-259-8465. See the library website for details on these and other children’s programs.
The next outing for the Lincoln Junior Hikers is Sunday, March 17 at 2 p.m. We’ll meet at Lincoln Cemetery and explore the trails near the Wheeler and Flint farms.
Be aware that there are three cemeteries in town. The Old Burial Ground is behind Bemis Hall. The Arbor Vitae Cemetery is the small one on Trapelo Road about a quarter mile east of the library. We will meet at the third and largest, Lincoln Cemetery, which is located on Lexington Road half a mile north of Trapelo Road.
The hike will be about 1.5 miles round trip around some hilly terrain. Parents, as always, will be responsible for the supervision of their children.
Editor’s note: This is one of several Lincoln Squirrel articles about an agenda item (a “warrant piece,” with apologies to Leo Tolstoy) to be considered at the March 23 Town Meeting.
By Alice Waugh
The Parks and Recreation Commission is asking for $182,000 to rebuild Codman Community Pool’s tot pool, which is leaking underground and no longer meets handicapped requirements.
If Town Meeting warrant article 15 is approved, the town will appropriate a total of $976,950 for 11 Community Preservation Committee (CPC) requests, including the wading pool project. The CPC is charged with allocating funds that are collected from a 3 percent surcharge on real estate tax bills as mandated by the Community Preservation Act (CPA), which was approved by town residents in 2002. CPA funds can be used for expenditures related to open space, preservation of historic structures, community housing (defined as low to moderate income housing), and recreation.
During the last few summers, pool operators have noticed worsening water loss from the tot pool and have shut off the filters at night to save water, requiring them to chemically rebalance the water each morning, said Dan Pereira, Director of Parks and Recreation.
Last year, the Parks and Recreation Commission got a contractor quote of about $25,000 to repair the pool, but in spring 2012, Americans with Disabilities Act codes changed, so now the town can’t do any work on the tot pool without replacing the entire structure. The pool now has a short step into the 15-inch-deep water, but new codes call for a “zero-entry pool shell, so people can essentially roll right into the pool if they want to,” as they would at a sandy beach, Pereira told the Board of Selectmen in December 2012.
The ADA change “removed out ability to just fix what was broken,” because a new code-compliant tot pool on the same footprint could now have only half the usable area it currently does, Pereira said. The Parks and Recreation Commission subsequently got quotes of $130,000 to replace the wading pool on its current footprint or $145,000 to replace it with one twice as big.
A preliminary design calls for a figure-eight-shaped pool, with half for wading and the other half with sprinklers and other play features commonly seen in public parks. The total price tag including contingency would be about $183,000. The new features would make the wading pool “a little more appealing and up to date,” which might have the added benefit of attracting slightly older children who now crowd into the shallow portion of the main pool, Pereira said.
The price tag is “a larger number than we expected when we started out, but essentially it’s a brand-new pool that’s double the size of what we have now,” Pereira said.
The main Codman Pool opened in 1974. Twelve years ago, the main pool got new decking and filter lines for $250,000, and a Codman Trust grant two years ago funded a $45,000 PVC liner to stop serious leakage, Pereira said. The tot pool was added sometime in the mid-1980s and has never been renovated.
With an expanded array of bingo and raffle prizes, Bingo Night netted about $3,500 for the Lincoln PTO earlier this month.
Hundreds of people packed the Brooks gym on February 1 to compete for a roster of prizes topped by an iPod Touch. The PTO sold 440 bingo cards and more than 1,500 raffle tickets. “After the initial push, two ‘floaters’ walked between tables and sold additional tickets. The crowd also devoured 65 pizzas (though the last few were sold near the end of the evening at a discount).
Looking back from the vantage point of the Blizzard of ’13, it looks Ms. G. was right when she predicted six more weeks of winter.
Ms. G, Drumlin Farm’s resident groundhog, emerged from her carrying crate on February 2 and saw her shadow, a prediction contradiction with her better-know fellow woodchuck, Punxsutawney Phil. But the dozens of observers gathered around her on the bare frozen ground didn’t mind — they showed their appreciation in the usual way, though the applause was considerably muffled by mittens and gloves. Before her pronouncement, some even briefly chanted, “Six more weeks! Six more weeks!”
 Ms. G clambers aboard her stump as she prepares to make her prediction. (Photo: Alice Waugh) |
 The crowd, some with “Ms. G for State Groundhog” signs, wait for her pronouncement. (Photo: Alice Waugh) |
Mish Michaels, Ms G’s campaign manager. (Photo: Alice Waugh)
The morning was also a campaign event for Ms. G., who is running hard for the post of Official State Groundhog with the backing of former local TV meteorologist and environmental reporter Mish Michaels of Wellesley. Michaels is helping children at the Hunnewell School as they try to move a bill through the state legislature that will, if approved, give statewide stature to the Lincoln groundhog.
“I’m her campaign manager at this point,” said Michaels, who sported a groundhog hat and campaign sign.
In addition to her political/rodential work, Michaels is creating on a children’s book with her young daughter called “A Groundhog’s Shadowy Road to Fame” and running an online children’s clothing business called Natural Cloud Cover (“organic clothing for the weather watcher in every kid!”).
After a few minutes of watching Ms. G. clamber over a tree stump in the frigid air, many of the children and their parents trooped inside to get their weather questions answered by a panel of local meteorologists. Inevitably, one of the kids asked whether we would have any more snow this year — a reasonable question during what had been an almost snowless season.
The short answer, said WBZ-TV’s Joe Joyce, was yes, though neither he nor his colleagues could predict when. “We keep getting it inch by inch. It’s been a frustrating season,” he said. Little did he know…