My Turn

By Elizabeth Wilson

The majority of The Commons residents are NOT for the expansion. It’s very interesting that only committee members who work directly with the administrators, and who do not accurately represent the residents, are posting propaganda about the proposed expansion to The Commons.

The Commons is not going bankrupt. The money they take in from the expensive buy-ins and monthly assessments for each apartment and free-standing home can sustain the operations of The Commons. However, the new owners need to make money for themselves and to cover the debt they have incurred when buying the property and ultimately the debt they will take on in order to build the overly huge and expensive expansion proposal.

Why do people want to live at The Commons? Because Lincoln is a town that loves the principals of quiet open space. The people living at The Commons chose not to live in the Brookhaven “city” in Lexington/Waltham or the older, larger Bedford Carelton-Willard, or the large apartment-like Newbury Court in Concord or the ultra-modern new Waterstone in Lexington. People choose to live at The Commons because it is like their own home and neighborhood used to be. It feels like home. As it is.

I am a family member of a resident at The Commons. I am trying to give voice to the actual feelings of the body of residents at The Commons who are afraid, who feel helpless and are not heard, and who do not want the proposed expansion. The small group of committee members should not control the information given to the public and Lincoln residents. The committees do not represent the actual feelings of The Commons resident majority.

“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 Submissions containing personal attacks, errors of fact, or other inappropriate material will not be published.

By David Levington

I’m 94 years old, and I’ve lived at The Commons for eight years. I certainly don’t look forward to two or three years of noise and disruption of life here, but I am voting in favor of the proposed expansion, and so are all eighteen residents on the two committees that have been most involved in developing the plan. Why? It’s the finances. We have one asset (The Commons) worth maybe $100 million, and liabilities of $180 million (see this financial statement). We owe $90 million in municipal bonds that pay 6-7% and another $90 million to our residents in refundable deposits.

We’re in this position because, when the prior owners decided to sell, as part of the change of ownership all the cash available was withdrawn and, using The Commons as collateral, $100 million in municipal bonds were sold (as an aside, municipal bonds that pay 6-7% are commonly referred to as “junk bonds.”

Those of us with long memories remember that we’ve been through bankruptcy; we don’t want to go through that again. The projections prepared for us show that if financial conditions continue as they are, the Commons can get through the next few years, but only on a level basis. No major improvements. But we have no financial cushion to get us through a disruption, like a pandemic. The Commons survived the pandemic, when we could admit no new residents, because we were financially healthy. That hadn’t been the case in 2013, when The Groves couldn’t survive a dip in the housing market. And that wouldn’t be the case here if we experienced a recession, a drop in the housing market, another pandemic, or any event which stopped us from admitting new residents. Not only does income go down, but we are obligated to refund the deposits of residents who die or leave for any reason.

The expansion plan will affect us all, some much more than others. There will be noise, construction traffic, heavy equipment. We will lose attractive green spaces. Despite all this, the members of the Resident Council, who are our liaison to management, all vote in favor of the proposed plan. They have been involved in every step of the plan’s development and have kept the residents aware of each step taken. A Steering Committee was formed, with six residents and staff to advise and consider each iteration. (I am a member of the Steering Committee.) We are also unanimous in support. We urge you to vote in favor of the expansion plan; I believe it is in the best interests of the residents of The Commons and the town of Lincoln.

“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.

By Joanne and George Carlisle

At the recent meeting of Lincoln’s Planning Board, we thought the presentations by The Commons, where we’ve lived for five years, were excellent. But we were surprised and horrified by the negativity, even mean-spiritedness, of many residents’ comments. We are great supporters of the emerging proposal for expansion, and we want to be sure that readers of the Lincoln Squirrel know that a recent survey showed that a significant majority of our residents understand and support the current proposal.

After the January 2023 initial proposal by our new nonprofit ownership, we have been given continuing surveys and individual, small, and large group meetings to learn of the need, advantages, and many considerations discussed by our Resident Council and Steering Committee and ownership/management. And we have given many of our own suggestions.

During our professional years before retirement, we learned the benefits of communal living in the many boarding schools we served. Kindness and trust and truth-telling — exactly the things we value most here at The Commons. We are especially pleased that The Commons offers such a rich mix of residents and staff — professionally, geographically, spiritually and in personal gifts and experiences.

Going forward, we are confident the expansion proposal which emerges will of course meet all of Lincoln’s town requirements while continuing, through the PILOT [payment in lieu of taxes] program, our significant contribution to the tax base and providing some additional affordable living apartments. It will also benefit considerably our financial strength, and our ability to stay competitive in the world of growing demand for continuing care retirement communities.

Thank you for this chance to share our support and enthusiasm for plans for expansion at The Commons!

“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.

By Marion Meenan

As a seven-year resident of The Commons in Lincoln who has been most fortunate to live in Lincoln for almost 50 years prior to making that move, I am writing to express my support of the recently proposed revised expansion plan for The Commons.

I believe that this proposal addresses the need to strengthen our financial stability and reduce our exposure to risk while also preserving to the maximum extent our open campus. The proposal also aligns perfectly with the town’s similar objective of strengthening its infrastructure — particularly that at the mall — by proposing additional units, both residential and commercial, while also maintaining and optimizing the town’s maximum open space.

With the PILOT (payments in lieu of taxes) agreements in place as part of the change of the ownership to nonprofit status, The Commons remains by far the largest taxpayer in town. Yes, we do utilize our fair share of resources — and we greatly appreciate the unfailingly prompt and proficient responses of our most dedicated fire and police — but we do in fact make substantial contributions to help support these critical resources town-wide.

The town of Lincoln also advocates strongly for a diverse community. The Commons has always met and will continue to meet the town goals for moderate income housing units. We are also proud at The Commons — and benefit greatly from — our astonishingly diverse and vibrant community. Among our 215 residents, we are fortunate to enjoy seniors from England, Wales, Ireland, South Korea, Germany, the Netherlands, India, China, and more — even Lexington and Bedford and Acton, and California and Texas! And we also encompasses a rich tapestry of active religious affiliates — with adherents of Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism coming together and frequently sharing in one another’s sacred celebrations.

I would like to conclude by pointing out that in the recent telephone survey, a 69% majority of respondents agreed that they do understand and support the need for the expansion.

Under the capable leadership of Executive Director Reynaldo LeBlanc, significant time and effort have gone toward helping us to more fully understand the financial risks of our current position and the benefits that will accrue to all from a carefully thought out expansion.

I feel that implementation of the current proposal will enable our community to continue to thrive, both for ourselves and for forthcoming generations of Lincolnites.

“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.

By Caroline Jacobs

I was horrified and saddened by the negative tone of the questions and comments at the Planning/Select Board meeting on Tuesday, starting with the lengthy letter which was read by a family member of one or more residents.

I have lived at The Commons since 2010 and have been on the Resident Council for a total of ten years since then. During that time I have experienced firsthand the cooperative relationship between residents and management, and never more so than during the last nine months. Our Executive Director has held countless meetings with groups and individuals to explain the rationale behind the expansion proposal and all the financial implications. The Resident Council and Steering Committee have been very involved giving input, and various interest groups have also been consulted. The suggestion that “many others (residents) against the proposal were afraid to speak up due to fear of retribution from staff” is completely alien to the way The Commons functions.

I understand the need for the expansion, particularly as I have already lived through one bankruptcy and have no desire to face the risk of another.

“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.

By Barbara Slayter

As a Lincoln resident, I am deeply appreciative of this community’s responses to the brutal murder of George Floyd in May 2020. Lincolnites both unofficially and officially sprang into action to help the town create and sustain a welcoming, inclusive, and diverse culture.

The First Parish in Lincoln, where I am a member, launched its Racial Justice Advocates program, a vigorous program of book discussions, videos, documentaries, and lectures on topics such as James Baldwin’s works, housing inequities in the suburbs along the Route 128 corridor, and New England’s role in the slave trade. Its Racial Justice Newsletter has become a regular and widely available source of information about activities pertaining to social justice, both within the First Parish community and beyond.

Among the most inspiring undertakings was Lincoln Public Schools’ 21-day AIDE (Antiracism, Inclusion, Diversity, Equity) Challenge, which offered an amazing compilation of penetrating questions about biases and stereotypes, colonialism, systemic racism, white privilege, and all forms of social injustice. These were accompanied by an extraordinary range of resources — all available with the click of the mouse — from lengthy documents such as Brown University’s report on its various entanglements with slavery, to brief video clips on any topic at hand. The town was invited to join in, and indeed we did, with lively discussions of the questions posed and materials offered. Lincoln teachers and administrators put incredible effort into this 21-day challenge and into making it accessible not only to the schools but also to the entire community.

Now, as the culture wars deepen, I am ever more appreciative of Lincoln’s schools and apprehensive about our nation’s trajectory. According to recent data, 18 states across the country restrict education on race, banning books from the library and discussions in the classroom. I winced as I read just recently that a teacher in an AP English class in South Carolina has been forbidden by the local school board to have her students read Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Between the World and Me, a compelling letter from a Black father to his son about the risks he faces being a Black youth in America. This work, read by a group at the First Parish, was a vital resource in sharpening our understanding of racial dynamics in this country.

It is with this thought in mind that I recognize how fortunate we are to have Lincoln educator and author Ray Anthony Shepard in our midst. Ray has devoted his professional life to educating America’s young adults and also children about the struggles for racial justice. In his most recent book, A Long Time Coming, just published this August, he does so through story and free verse, written in snappy short poems with sharp imagery that pulls the reader into the thoughts, emotions, hopes, predicaments, setbacks, and dangers faced by the protagonist. He offers biographies of six individuals from 18th-century Ona Judge to 21st-century Barak Obama, revealing the arc of reform as a torch that lights the way to Black liberty as it is metaphorically passed from generation to generation (see my review of the book in the latest issue of the Lincoln Chipmunk).

In addition to the deep respect for these six resilient figures elicited by his poetry, and the new perspectives offered on their lives, Shepard provides insights based on his own experiences having been brought up in Missouri where his maternal grandfather was enslaved. He is very much aware that this book may soon be on a “banned book” list of those that make white students “feel discomfort, guilt, or anguish.”

In my view, it is the persistence and dedication of authors and educators who, like Ray with his long-term vision and his hopes for the future, provide all of us with the best opportunity to bring to fruition a less divided, more inclusive, and fairer America. Make sure that you, your children, and grandchildren get to read it!

“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.

By Sonali Das

In 2014, my grandmother flew halfway around the world to get from her home, a small Assamese silk village in northeast India known as Sualkuchi, to my home in Lincoln, a small town in Massachusetts. It was her first time stepping outside the world of temples and chador mekhelas she had known all her life. Yet, despite never traveling far, she had heard about our town many times over the years.

Lincoln, as most people know, is home to Walden Pond, which homed the renowned transcendentalist philosopher, Henry David Thoreau. Thoreau was inspired by Hinduism in his approach to live simply and with an open and inquiring mind, saying, “Whenever I have read any part of the Vedas, I have felt that some unearthly and unknown light illuminated me.” In turn, many Hindus, including Gandhi, were inspired by his determination to live life simply and with peaceful, strong conviction. My grandfather, Krishna Ram Das, was one of them and had always wanted to visit Thoreau’s sacred pond. He even composed a poem, “I am a Tree,” and recited it in a seminar held on Thoreau in 1965.

My grandfather died of lung cancer in 1994. Twenty years later, in 2014, my grandmother sprinkled pink petals into the waters of Walden Pond (see photo gallery below) to inaugurate the Thoreau Laboratory for Global Health, a research laboratory dedicated to fighting the medical cancer that killed him as well as the impending societal and environmental cancers that threaten us all.

My grandfather planted the initial seedlings of the Thoreau Laboratory for Global Health. A weaver, philosopher, poet, and the father of nine children, he lived in a humble home with earnings even more so. And yet, his dreams filled the walls of his small house, his ideas formed the lines of his complex poetry, and his hands fought to revive an organization called the Krishna Samaj, founded by his grandfather back in 1920 to protect local weavers from Britain’s textile aggression. Krishna Ram Das wanted to transform it into a cooperative movement among the weavers’ community.

My dad, Bikul Das, one of eight siblings, grew up in the same small village as his father. A budding philosopher, poet, silk businessman, and dreamer, he worked with his dad during his childhood in the family’s Muga silk business. Muga, known for its golden threads and extreme durability, is a culturally significant silk native to the state of Assam. Making grafts for his father and networking with traders in his village, my dad grew up wanting to be a politician. Instead, he went to medical school, became a doctor, traveled to Bhutan, and a couple stories later, wounded up as a stem cell/cancer scientist working with the University of Toronto, Stanford University, and the Harvard-affiliated Forsyth Institute.

Dr. Bikul Das discovered altruism on a microbiological level, and thus became a pioneer in the research field of stem cell altruism. Years later, he studied COVID-19’s relationship to stem cells and dormant TB reactivation. Interestingly, his core scientific findings stemmed from the philosophical ideas discussed in the Krishna Samaj. Thus, in 2010, he officially setup KaviKrishna Laboratory, now located at the Indian Institute of Technology at Guwahati, as a continuation of the Krishna Samaj. The Thoreau Laboratory for Global Health, set up in 2014, is its sister laboratory located at UMass-Lowell. Both the Thoreau Lab for Global Health and KaviKrishna Lab look to engage scientists and graduate students excited about cancer, stem cells altruism, and related research.

As a high school graduate with a gap year ahead, I decided to explore this complex story further. My journey took me on an expedition to Sualkuchi, (Here is a beautiful video two of my Indian cousins made of my experience in Assam), where I spent five months working with graduate students to develop a Medical Humanities program centered around KaviKrishna’s rural medical oncology clinic.

As a high school graduate (Lincoln-Sudbury Class of 2022) with a gap year ahead, I decided to explore this complex story further. My journey took me on an expedition to Sualkuchi, where I spent five months working with graduate students to develop a Medical Humanities program centered around KaviKrishna’s rural medical oncology clinic. Here’s a video that two of my Indian cousins made of my experience in Assam, and another video of a talk I gave about the program itself.

Through the work, I was immersed in a dynamic experience awash with interactions of people from every level of society, festivals rich with song and color, visits to cancer patients, and broken Assamese conversations. I came to understand KaviKrishna’s ultimate purpose: to uplift the culture and society of the weavers and artisans living in Sualkuchi and greater Kamrup (also in northeast India) through grassroots project-based initiatives and hardcore academic research. Through its Medical Humanities program, the Thoreau Laboratory aims to bring these research efforts, inspired by the weaving community, to the globe.

Currently, as an intern at both the Thoreau Lab for Global Health and KaviKrishna Lab, I am editing my dad’s book on “Recovering the Spirit of Jiva Upakara Tantra” that will illuminate the intricacies of this evolving research story. My experience working in these two organizations has given me an incredible window into the power of interdisciplinary research and its relevance in a time riddled with individual, environmental, and societal cancers. I have already introduced two Lincoln residents (Prerna Karmacharya and Alexander Payne) to the organization in their week-long visit to Assam. As I begin my undergraduate journey at Bowdoin College, I hope to continue to help develop the Medical Humanities program and bring its ideas to the liberal arts community.

If you’re inspired by my story, the Thoreau Laboratory is currently looking for high school and college students interested in developing their own projects related to biology, philosophy, sociology, etc. with a focus on stem cell work, altruism, and Hindu philosophy/education as a part of the Medical Humanities program. It is also looking for volunteers interested in developing a digital public relation project for KaviKrishna/Thoreau Lab through its YouTube and social media accounts. All participants will get a certificate from the lab following a successful completion of an agreed-upon project. Interested students can also join our weekly philosophical meetings co-led by Simon Karty to discuss the philosophy of Thoreau, Gandhi, science, and healthcare.

KaviKrishna and Thoreau Lab would love to hear from you! Find us at www.kavikrishnalab.org or www.thoreaulab.org, or email sonalisdas14@gmail.com or bdas@thoreaulab.org.

Lincoln resident Sonali Das will start her studies at Bowdoin College next month.

“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.