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

letters to the editor

Letter to the editor: support hurricane victims at student-run blood drive

To the editor:

Did you know that January is National Blood Donors Month? On Wednesday, Jan. 24, the Lincoln School Student Council will be hosting their first-ever blood drive in Lincoln in the Reed Field House (Brooks gym).

Soon after hurricane Irma hit Puerto Rico, the Student Council decided they wanted to do something to help all the people whose lives were affected by that tragic event. One student came up with the idea of hosting a blood drive. The other students liked the idea and contacted the Red Cross for more information. Sadly, it turned out that they could not actually send donated blood to Irma victims themselves, as blood had already been sent there immediately after the disaster.

However, the Student Council still liked the idea of hosting a blood drive. They learned that every two seconds, someone in the U.S. is in need of blood, and donors are always essential to restock the supply. They also learned that each blood donation can help three at least people in need. Currently, the blood supply is running low, due to many blood drives being canceled due to weather and donors are even more needed.

On the day of the blood drive, students will also be hosting a used book sale and bake sale. They still liked their idea of helping Puerto Rico in its recovery efforts, so all proceeds from the two sales will aid victims of the Puerto Rico hurricane. If you have any gently used books you don’t need any more, you can drop them off at the Lincoln School office anytime before the blood drive, or you can bring them in during the event.

To donate blood, we encourage you to sign up for a time slot, but walk-ins are also welcome. All donors will be rewarded with a $5 Dunkin Donuts Gift Card. To register online, go to www.redcrossblood.org and go to the “Find a blood drive” box. Type in “01773”, then select the “By distance” tab and click on “Brooks Middle School.”

The blood drive is a student-initiated and student-run activity. The whole Student Council is very passionate about this and are hoping for this to be a success. Please spread the word to all your family and friends—we would like to see as many people as possible at the blood drive. We hope to see you there!

Sincerely,

Prerna Karmacharya and Quinn Harnden (Lincoln School eighth-graders)

Letters to the editor must be signed with the writer’s name and street address and sent via email to lincolnsquirrelnews@gmail.com. Letters will be edited for punctuation, spelling, style, etc., and will be published at the discretion of the editor. Letters containing personal attacks, errors of fact or other inappropriate material will not be published.

L-S parents protest proposed cuts to music program

letterTo the editor:

The Lincoln-Sudbury Friends of Music (LSFOM), a committed group of parent volunteers, would like to express our strong objection to proposed cuts to the L-S music program and our unwavering support for Michael Bunting, the L-S choral director.

The L-S administration is proposing a cut to the L-S music program that is far more than a reduction in the availability of choral blocks. These short-sighted changes would devastate the music program and make it difficult to rebuild. We respectfully ask you to take a minute to familiarize yourself with the far-reaching impacts of what the L-S administration is positioning as a mere “scheduling” issue.

The proposed cuts are as follows:

  • Elimination of an entire block of choral instruction. As a practical matter, this cut would make it impossible for many students to fit Chorus or Chamber Singers into their schedules.
  • Elimination of two music electives (Guitar and Songwriting).
  • Reduction of Mr. Bunting’s position to a part-time position, which is untenable for him financially, and may cause LS to lose this treasured and irreplaceable faculty member.
  • In the bigger picture, this cut threatens to destroy L-S’s well-nurtured arts program.

On our website, www.lsfom.org, we have summarized some of the contributions that Mr. Bunting offers to our school and community, from directing the vocals for the L-S musicals, to running the L-S Chamber Singers, to supporting L-S’s five a cappella groups, to organizing school and community concerts, to supporting students in elite singing competitions. Please see our website for a more detailed list.

Mr. Bunting also contributes to our community in many intangible ways through his joyful pursuit of music. Many students have found a home at L-S in the music program through his and Mr. Tom Grandprey’s infectious love for music.

Ten years ago, the music program suffered cuts similar to those now proposed, and it took almost five years under Mr. Bunting’s leadership to bring the program back to life. In fact, one could argue that even today, our music offerings pale in comparison to what is available in other comparably excellent MetroWest public high schools. On our website, we offer a chart that shows the contrast.

While choral enrollment numbers may dip occasionally, it would be a mistake for L-S to overreact to any short-term dip in enrollment with devastating cuts in offerings. Only a robust choral program can continue to attract and retain students and deliver excellence, and cutting core courses and electives will only depress enrollment in this essential element of arts education.

LS should be looking at how to enhance its current music offerings — commensurate with those other excellent local high schools — under Mr. Bunting’s leadership, rather than cutting its program and risking losing this exceptional educator. Even the best part-time Choral Director would not have the time or capacity to provide anywhere near the offerings and support — not to mention dedication and vision — that Mr. Bunting now provides our students in his full-time position.

Our community has successfully fought against such cuts before. Just last year, the Sudbury community protested cuts to the Curtis Middle School music program, and was able to save that program. We know that protecting the arts is a treasured value for our students, parents and the community.

It is gratifying that over 1,200 people have signed a student petition against the cuts. This is more people than voted in the last town election concerning the proposed new fire station. We encourage you to sign and share the petition. Mr. Bunting’s current and former students, on their own initiative, also organized a student concert to celebrate his contributions on January 10.

We encourage anyone concerned about these cuts to take further action. It is urgent that you please take the time to express your support for the preservation of our L-S music and arts program, and for Mr. Bunting retaining his full-time choral director position, directly to L-S Superintendent and Principal Bella Wong at bella_wong@lsrhs.net and to the L-S School Committee at lsschoolcomm@town.sudbury.ma.us.

Sincerely,

The L-S Friends of Music
lsfriendsofmusic@gmail.com

Letters to the editor must be signed with the writer’s name and street address and sent via email to lincolnsquirrelnews@gmail.com. Letters will be edited for punctuation, spelling, style, etc., and will be published at the discretion of the editor. Letters containing personal attacks, errors of fact or other inappropriate material will not be published.

Letter to the editor: Pierce House gala needs your help

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Dear Lincolnites,

We heard you—and we want to thank you for all your offers of help. The Lincoln New Year’s Day Open House at Pierce House is back on! With the generous support from the Celebrations Committee, the Rural Land Foundation, the Police & Fire Association, the Lincoln Family Association, private residents and town officials, we are able to support a scaled-back version of the event on January 1, 2018 from 1–5 p.m.

But we do need your help! In order to make this a wonderful event for all, volunteer staffing is needed for setup, serving, and cleanup. We can’t do it without you! If you could donate an hour or two of your time, we would greatly appreciate it. While food will be covered, we need volunteers:

  • 10 a.m.–1 p.m.:  Set up tables, chairs, tablecloths, food, etc.
  • 1–5 p.m.:  Prep food to go out from the kitchen, refill trays, empty trash, watch over children’s area
  • 5–6 p.m.:  Clean up after the event.

If you’re willing to volunteer an hour or two of your time, please fill out this short online form by Friday, Dec. 23. We will reach out individually to those who have volunteered by December 27 to confirm volunteers.

Thank you again for such a strong show of community support—this could not happen without all of you!

Sincerely,

The Pierce House Committee (Terry Green, chair)

Letters to the editor must be signed with the writer’s name and street address and sent via email to lincolnsquirrelnews@gmail.com. Letters will be edited for punctuation, spelling, style, etc., and will be published at the discretion of the editor. Letters containing personal attacks, errors of fact or other inappropriate material will not be published.

Letter to the editor: Lincoln Dems sponsor 2018 kickoff rally

To the editor:

The Lincoln Democratic Town Committee is sponsoring a Campaign 2018 Red-to-Blue Kick Off Rally on Sunday, Jan. 14. A reception will be held from 12:30–1 p.m. and the program will follow from 1–3 p.m. in Bemis Hall. Massachusetts Reps. Katherine Clark and Seth Moulton have been invited to review new congressional candidate endorsements for contested and open seats across the nation, and to illustrate how attendees can learn how to support them.

For those who were fearful and critical of the election of Donald Trump as president, have your fears and criticisms been confirmed?  For those who voted for Donald Trump, do you feel betrayed and embarrassed? Red to Blue Democratic Campaign 2018 brings a rising wave in record numbers of fresh young and intelligent talent—but electing them will only happen with serious grassroots support.

Our own Rep. Clark is now vice chair in charge of recruiting for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) to identify, train, and encourage Democratic candidates in Congressional races from Maine to California. Rep. Moulton is endorsing several highly qualified candidates with military experience across the nation as well. Emily’s List is endorsing women for a full range of electoral seats for state and local offices, as well as for Congress, the Senate and state Governors.

The DCCC is encouraged by the elections in Virginia and New Jersey. They believe we can flip the House and turn red states blue. As of September 30, 391 Democratic challengers have filed with the Federal Election Commission—up from 209 in June. These new candidates are known and respected in their home districts for their devotion to their community values, honest dedicated government, and truthful democracy. They come from every walk of life to seek positive change and make a constructive contribution.

Gary Davis and Barbara Slayter
Co-Chairs, Lincoln Democratic Town Committee

Letter to the editor: shop local for the holidays

Dear fellow Lincolnites,

Yesterday I needed two small gifts to take to a holiday lunch with friends. I headed for the Old Town Hall Exchange to see what they might have. In five minutes I discovered some high-quality soap made in Afghanistan to benefit a good cause. Perfect! I came away pleased with my purchase and stress free. (Or at least for the moment, in these hectic days.)
Don’t forget our local Lincoln shops where a familiar face will greet you and you will walk away on a holiday cloud (or at least for the moment).
Sincerely,
Mary Ann Hales
32 Huckleberry Hill Rd

Letter to the editor: thank you from the Lincoln Food Pantry

To the editor:

The Society of St. Vincent de Paul would like to thank all those who helped make this Thanksgiving special for our pantry clients. We helped 29 households, a total of 65 clients most of whom live or work in Lincoln and Weston. We are grateful to:

  • the 17 volunteers
  • St. Julia parishioners for making monetary or food donations
  • the Religious Education students and their parents for helping fill the bags
  • Joanne Dolan of Gold Bell for a huge amount of vegetables
  • the Boyce family for donating apple cider for all of our clients
  • Donelan’s Supermarket in Lincoln and their customers for donating over 1,000 items of food
  • students from the First Parish in Lincoln and their teachers for collecting a large amount of food in front of Donelan’s, and the customers for contributing
  • FELS (the Foundation for Educators at Lincoln-Sudbury) for organizing a pie sale, and the families who donated their pies to our pantry clients

It takes a village to ensure that all pantry clients can celebrate Thanksgiving. Many thanks to all of you!

Sincerely,

Ursula Nowak (Society of St. Vincent de Paul, St. Joseph Conference)
33 Conant Rd.

Letter to the editor: sign Lincoln petition to overturn Citizens United

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To the editor:

Citizens in Lincoln and throughout the nation are working to restore regulation of campaign financing. The petitions seek to overturn the Supreme Court’s 5-4 decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission 588 U.S. (2010) that invalidated bi-partisan rules on political advertising, based on the Court’s holding that corporations have a constitutional right to freedom of speech.

In 2012 Lincoln voted to support a bill filed by Mass. Rep. Jim McGovern proposing that the U.S. Constitution be amended to provide that corporations are not “people.” It stated that Constitutional rights are the rights of human beings only, and campaign contributions and expenditures may be regulated. In 2015 Lincoln again voted on this issue, calling for a Constitutional Convention and directing Congress and the states to place limits on political contributions and expenditures. These resolutions were approved in cities and towns throughout the Commonwealth and in many other states.

Citizens across Massachusetts and the nation are now trying to move forward with a 2018 ballot measure. This initiative petition would create citizens’ commissions in Massachusetts and other states to consider and recommend potential amendments to the U.S. Constitution to establish that corporations do not have the same Constitutional rights as human beings and that contributions and expenditures may be regulated.

It is not easy to amend the Constitution, and it can take many years of determined work. Massive and unregulated spending by our wealthiest citizens and corporations, including foreign corporations, threatens the integrity of our democracy. It is not a partisan issue. This amendment is supported by overwhelming majorities of Republican, Democrat and independent voters all across the nation.

Volunteers will be seeking Lincoln voter signatures in Lincoln Station on October 30 and November 7, and at the State of the Town Meeting on November 4.

Sincerely,

Peter Pease
40 Huckleberry Hill

Gary Davis
20R Indian Camp Lane

Letters to the editor must be signed with the writer’s name and street address and sent via email to lincolnsquirrelnews@gmail.com. Letters will be edited for punctuation, spelling, style, etc., and will be published at the discretion of the editor. Letters containing personal attacks, errors of fact or other inappropriate material will not be published.

Letter to the editor: help Scout preserve bats

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To the editor:

On behalf of the Lincoln Boy Scouts, I am writing to update the community about our declining bat population and how Troop 127 is trying to help.

In Massachusetts, there are nine different species of bats, the most common ones being the little brown bat (Myotis lucifugus) and the big brown bat (Eptesicus fuscus). As we know, these bats are extremely efficient in controlling mosquitoes, up to 600 insects per hour. A main challenge our bats are facing is white-nose syndrome, a disease originating in their wintering caves and leading to the death of a significant portion of the bat population — more than a million in the Northeast and Canada alone. Bats that are host to this disease have a white fungus (Geomyces destructans) growing on their nose or other body parts. The moisture in the caves allow this fungus to spread uncontrollably. Until scientists find a way to eradicate this illness, our troop aims to provide new, dry places for bats to live.

For my Eagle Scout project last spring, the Lincoln Boy Scout Troop and I built seven bat houses designed to house 50–60 little brown bats. The houses were hung high on trees throughout the conservation land in our town. Not only was this project ecologically beneficial — it was a satisfying task for the Scouts to participate in.

The troop would like to continue creating bat houses in the hopes of helping the struggling bat population. If you would like to contribute to this ongoing project, please donate to “Lincoln Boy Scout Troop 127″ and mail contributions to Troop Leader Christopher Bursaw Sr. at 136 Tower Rd, Lincoln, MA. Thank you for your interest.

Sincerely,

Nicholas Soukup, 2017 Eagle Scout
6 Woodcock Lane

Letters to the editor must be signed with the writer’s name and street address and sent via email to lincolnsquirrelnews@gmail.com. Letters will be edited for punctuation, spelling, style, etc., and will be published at the discretion of the editor. Letters containing personal attacks, errors of fact or other inappropriate material will not be published.

Letter to the editor: kudos to Scarecrow 5K for reusable water bottles

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To the editor:

As a participant in Sunday’s Scarecrow 5K run and walk, I want to commend all involved in setting up, supporting, and implementing a wonderful morning of fun. I particularly want to thank the Lincoln Land Conservation Trust, Klean Kanteen, and the Rural Land Foundation for providing reusable water bottles to every participant in the race. This was a welcome change from plastic water bottles that are generally used in road races around the country.

Americans use 50 billion single-serve plastic water bottles a year. Only 29 percent get recycled, so most end up littering our land and our waterways, and pose a risk to our wildlife and marine life. Plastic does not biodegrade and remains in our environment for 1,000 years. Plastics leave behind and leach chemicals that are known to cause cancer and threaten our health — and the health of our ecosystems.

The long-term impacts on the planet and our health are not worth the price and convenience of cheap, convenient, single-use plastic water bottles. Thank you again to the sponsors of this race for your vision and commitment to a clean, green, sustainable Lincoln.

Sincerely,

Sheila Dennis
28 Weston Rd.

Letters to the editor must be signed with the writer’s name and street address and sent via email to lincolnsquirrelnews@gmail.com. Letters will be edited for punctuation, spelling, style, etc., and will be published at the discretion of the editor. Letters containing personal attacks, errors of fact or other inappropriate material will not be published.

Letter to the editor: driver and families are also victims in bike accidents

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(Editor’s note: this letter was submitted to the Squirrel on September 23, two days before the writer spoke about the issue at a Board of Selectmen meeting.)

To the editor:

Last week as I was returning from driving my child to soccer, two middle-aged men drove their bicycles through the stop sign on Sandy Pond road into the five-way intersection. Before these bicyclists arrived at the intersection, I had stopped at the sign and began to proceed straight on Lincoln Road. Fortunately, I had been driving quite slowly and was able to stop again quickly so there was no collision. My child, who was in the car with me, yelled out the window, “There was a stop sign there.” Our family is intimately and painfully aware of the chaos, loss, and trauma bicycle collisions cause.

Last year, a bicyclist drove through a stop sign at a 90-degree intersection. He veered into the opposite side of the road, crossed the yellow line, lost control of his bicycle, and collided with the side of the car. Despite efforts to save him, he died immediately.

There were two families who were victims of this tragic accident: the bicyclist’s wife and children, and my family. I did not know this bicyclist, but over the past year, I have had many conversations with him in my mind. I wanted to be angry at him and tell him that what he did was unfair and irresponsible. I wanted to tell him that whatever joy he obtained from bicycling was not worth the enormous pain and loss he caused our families. When I have these thoughts, sadness and grief quickly overcome anger. From what I have read about the bicyclist, he was a very good human being, a responsible, loving, supportive father and husband. He simply made a mistake.

For several weeks after the accident, I walked to that turn and videotaped numerous bicyclists per hour drive through that stop sign, taking a wide turn and crossing the yellow line in the same manner that the bicyclist who died did.

I commend the Thornberg family for creating the ghost bicycle memorial. However, these memorials never recognize the pain and trauma that car drivers experience with such collisions.

Involvement in a fatal accident is traumatizing. Performing chest compressions on a person who has experienced blunt force trauma to his head is terrifying. You want so much for the person to live. When he doesn’t and when you learn that he left behind children who were the exact same ages as children in your family, it is extremely painful. These images are repeated in your head. You wake up in the middle of the night crying and screaming. You repeatedly ask yourself whether there was anything you could have done to save him.

The psychological trauma is made worse by the evening news, which had a headline, “Bicyclist Struck, Killed by SUV in Massachusetts.” Initial statements from the media and district attorney’s office lacked any knowledge of the facts and immediately sought to assign blame to the driver of the car.

In addition to the psychological trauma, there is the chaos that such accidents impose on the driver’s life and her family members. In accidents that involve a fatality, the driver’s car is automatically impounded and the driver’s license is suspended until the state police can complete the accident reconstruction report, which usually takes at least 10 months. In our family’s case, it took 13 months for the district attorney’s office to notify us that the state police accident reconstruction report clearly found that the car driver was not at fault and no charges would be pursued.

I have spoken to bicyclists about this tragedy and our family’s trauma. They have explained that quite often, the state of mind of the cyclist is to minimize events that cause them to lose speed or momentum—which clearly, obeying stop signs does. Evidence from the speedometer that the bicyclist was wearing indicated that his average speed was 14 miles per hour and maximum speed was 31 miles per hour, which was the same approximate speed that cars drive on the road where the accident occurred. Yet bicycle drivers are not required to be licensed or insured.

If bicyclists who died were here today, I wonder what they would say or do to change the number of families who are traumatized by fatal bicycle collisions. The eyes of the bicyclist who died last year will forever be in the mind of the person who tried to save his life.

I ask the families of deceased bicyclists, the Lincoln community, and current bicyclists to expand their concept of ghost bicycle memorials to include two children, to represent the family who lose their parent to fatal bicycle collisions, and another figure to represent the person who tries to save the bicyclist’s life. Often, this will be the driver of the car. Such recognition may make the ghost bicycle memorial less traumatizing for the driver of the car.

Sincerely,

Julie Lynch
5B South Commons

Letters to the editor must be signed with the writer’s name and street address and sent via email to lincolnsquirrelnews@gmail.com. Letters will be edited for punctuation, spelling, style, etc., and will be published at the discretion of the editor. Letters containing personal attacks, errors of fact or other inappropriate material will not be published.