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

My Turn: Urge Gov. Baker to sign climate bill

By Paul Shorb

If you are concerned about climate change, please call, email, and/or tweet at Gov. Baker ASAP, urging him to sign S.2995 into law. Click here to read a summary of the bill issued by State Sen. Mike Barrett, co-chair of the conference committee.

You can phrase your message any way you want; it’s enough to say that you care a lot about climate change and want him to sign this bill ASAP. Here are the key touchpoints:

Email Gov. Baker using this portal or call his office (617-725-4005) during business hours to leave a voicemail. If you use Twitter, tag him using his Twitter handle, @MassGovernor. Consider using some of these hashtags: #ClimateRoadMap #ClimateBillWithTeeth #NextGenerationRoadmap bill #ActOnClimate #MApoli. You could aim a similar message at his Energy and Environmental Affairs Secretary, Kathleeen Theoharides, using @ClimateKatie and @EEASecretary.

Why do this:

  • This is a good climate bill! It was reported out January 3 by the conference committee, and includes most of the best parts of the House and Senate bills. It’s not perfect, but it’s a great step forward for now. By enacting and implementing this bill, Massachusetts can help lead the nation where we need to go to avoid the worst effects of climate change.

  • Sen. Barrett and others are warning that there is substantial uncertainty about whether Gov. Baker will sign the climate bill. If Baker doesn’t sign it by Jan. 14, it dies. The most likely sticking point is the bill’s emissions reduction target for 2030, which is a bit more aggressive than the target chosen by the Baker administration in the plan it recently released (i.e., a 50% reduction from 1990 emission levels, rather than the 45% in the Baker plan). The administration has expressed concern that the 50% goal may adversely affect the state’s economy. However, Massachusetts’ biggest industry group (AIM) has come out in support of the bill, and climate advocates believe that moving away from fossil fuels will actually help the state’s economy.

  • There’s good reason to think that enough calls and emails to Baker will have an impact. As the happy results from the Georgia Senate races remind us, it’s all about turnout! Democracy is not a spectator sport — please do what you can today! Thank you.

”My Turn” is a forum for readers to offer their 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.

My Turn: The saga of the lost Dallin sculpture

By Don Hafner

Did you know that one of sculptor Cyrus Dallin’s most famous statues has been lost?

Cyrus Dallin, the sculptor of “The Boy and His Dog” in Lincoln’s cemetery, is best known for a set of four statues of Native Americans called “The Epic of the Indian.” The fourth and most famous in the series, “Appeal to the Great Spirit,” stands at the entrance of Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts.

Lost forever is Dallin’s “Protest of the Sioux,” which was created for the St. Louis World’s Fair in 1904. Dallin’s Native American statues have been criticized recently as “stereotypical imagery” of Native Americans by white artists. Dallin was a vigorous advocate of Native American rights, and when his series of four statues were displayed, they would have been controversial for a very different reason. When Dallin’s “Protest of the Sioux” was displayed in 1904, the U.S. Army was still waging war against Native American tribes in the Southwest. Dallin’s statue of a Sioux warrior on horseback, with fist raised in defiance against the loss of Sioux lands and way of life, must have seemed to some visitors at the World’s Fair as siding with the enemy. As one newspaper correspondent put it, “The North American Indian will make his last stand at the World’s Fair.”

Dallin’s “Protest of the Sioux” was monumental. On its pedestal, it stood forty feet high. But it was made of a perishable artificial stone, not cast in bronze like all of Dallin’s other work. After the World’s Fair, it was moved to a park in St. Louis, and reportedly one night the statue “crumbled into a heap of dust.” A cast bronze replica, only 21 inches tall, survives in a museum in Utah.

Fortunately, Dallin’s sculpture of “The Boy and His Dog” in Lincoln’s cemetery is made of durable cast bronze. To hear more about Cyrus Dallin and “The Boy and His Dog,” join the Zoom webinar with Nancy Blanton of the Cyrus Dallin Art Museum on Monday, Jan. 11 at noon. The presentation is cosponsored by the Lincoln Council on Aging’s Lincoln Academy, the Lincoln Historical Society, the Lincoln Cemetery Commission, and the Lincoln Town Archives.

Zoom link: https://zoom.us/j/97474874876

Don Hafner is a member of the Lincoln Historical Society.

”My Turn” is a forum for readers to offer their 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.

School mulls going temporarily all remote for some grades

At a special meeting on January 5 attended online by more than 250 residents, administrators, and teachers, the School Committee discussed the idea of having part of the Lincoln School go fully remote for two weeks but decided to stay the course. However, the panel will update and expand the criteria for determining if or when schools should switch to remote learning, and they’ll also look into the possibility of testing for faculty and students.

At virtual meetings on January 2 and 4 with school administrators (one of which also included Public Health Nurse Tricia McGean), teachers expressed concern about the rising number of Covid-19 cases in Lincoln seen after the Thanksgiving break.

The Lincoln School’s Smith building (grades K-4) had eight students and five staff members test positive in December, compared to just one each in the preschool, Brooks (grades 5-8), and the two Hanscom schools. Half of the 14 cases were reported after the winter recess began just before Christmas, according to Superintendent of Schools Becky McFall. Follow-up found that most of the positive cases were contracted at home, but a few infection sources are unknown.

“What we are really seeing is household spread. Once it gets into a household, [the virus] is pretty rampant and goes right through a family,” said McGean, adding that over 50% of Lincoln’s cases have been asymptomatic.

Given the numbers, Smith teachers asked for their grades go fully remote for two weeks to try to control the rate of increase. Several other Massachusetts school districts reverted to remote-only learning this week after seeing cases go up in their towns and statewide. Cambridge and Lexington have moved from a hybrid model to remote until January 11 and January 19, respectively, and Weston High School has gone to fully remote for an unspecified period, according to Superintendent of Schools Becky McFall.

Kim Mack, the METCO representative to the School Committee, said the school (or at least the Smith portion) should have begun January remotely. “Are we going to wait until, God forbid, someone dies of Covid in the [school] community? When are we going to be more proactive about how we approach these decisions?” she said.

Teacher Colleen Pearce said that while school’s safety measures and isolation protocols for symptomatic students have worked thus far, “it’s now a different environment than it was in September.” More people are testing positive with no symptoms, and if the December cases had all occurred when school was in session, there would have been substantially more spread, she added.

“The stress of what you continue to ask even as circumstances change needs to be considered,” Pearce said, adding that 92% of Smith said they wanted to go remote for two weeks at the start of this term.

“I’ve been struggling with this as well. I see the headlines on contagion and the new [virus] variant, and just speaking for myself, they’re scary,” said committee member Peter Borden. “How do you balance fear with a rational point of view and the evidence we have in front of us?”

“For me the data, still support” continuing to offer full-time in-school instruction, said committee member Trintje Gnazzo. “What causes me to pause more is grappling with the cost of putting faculty into the building day after day.” Teachers were exhausted heading into the winter break, “and I really worry about the toll this is taking on our faculty. These guys are on the front lines.”

“It’s in the best interests of the kids to keep the schools open,” committee member Adam Hogue said. “We’re looking at the data every single day, and we can pull the trigger pretty quickly” if certain criteria are met and the schools need to close.

“I trust [McFall and McGean] and the numbers still seem OK to me, but I certainly think it’s a good idea to have a meeting like his and review the protocol and the factors that would cause us to change course. It’s really benefiting the kids to be in school.

“I grapple with the same things everyone is grappling with,” committee chair Tara Mitchell said while noting that having the school open is very important to parents and children. “Going remote brings tears to people’s eyes — they just feel they would crumble.”

The infection rate may rise at the same rate even if the school were to go fully remote because many students would likely wind up in child care and playdate situations that are less safe than those a school, some noted. Once the doors close, “I fear that we won’t come back,” McFall said.

Regular Covid-19 testing of the school population would be quite expensive and would also involve town procurement laws requiring bids. “I don’t want people to get the expectation this is something we could put in place next week,”Administrator for Business and Finance Buck Creel said.

Mitchell asked McGean if she would recommend a period of remote learning, given the expected post-holiday winter spike in positive Covid-19 tests.

“Is it enough to close the school? I don’t have that Magic 8-ball,” McGean replied.

“None of us wants to be the one that makes a decision that brings harm to anyone,” said an emotional McFall.

Kathleen Lane, founder of Lincoln’s SVdP chapter, dies at 95

Kathleen Lane

Kathleen F. (Young) Lane, of Lincoln, a woman devoted to family and faith, died peacefully at Emerson Hospital in Concord on January 2, 2021. She was 95.

Kathy was born and raised in Somerville, the daughter of the late George and Ella (Trefran) Young. She married Frank Lane of Belmont, and they lived in Lexington and Lincoln, building a successful real estate investment and management business. They hosted many family and social gatherings in their home, traveled extensively throughout the world, and enjoyed a beautiful bounty of friends throughout their lives. Frank predeceased her in 2002.

Kathy founded the Society of St. Vincent de Paul chapter at St. Joseph Church in Lincoln. She organized and delivered meals for the Bristol Lodge Men’s Shelter in Waltham, holiday gifts for families of St. Patrick’s Church in Lowell, and Thanksgiving turkeys and food donations for Catholic charities. She also helped initiate the St. Joseph’s Guild, running many social and fundraising events for the church for many years.

She was a kind and generous woman who loved celebrating holidays and birthdays, always making them festive and fun. Her unique and beautiful homemade birthday cakes were a reflection of each recipient’s special interests, and were very fun to receive. She was an accomplished cook and entertainer who loved being with and helping people.

As a devoted mother, grandmother and great-grandmother, Kathy will be forever missed by her daughter Patti Walch and her husband Steve of Sudbury; three grandchildren, Kimberly Walch of Marlborough, Jessica Timmermans and her husband Michael and children Mackenzie and Ryan of Sudbury, and Jeffrey Walch of Denver, Colo.

Due to Covid-19 restrictions, Kathy’s long life will be celebrated during a private funeral Mass on Wednesday, Jan. 6 at St. Julia Parish in Weston. Burial will follow at Lincoln Cemetery. In lieu of flowers, contributions in her memory may be made to Society of St. Vincent de Paul, P.O. Box 324, Lincoln, MA 01773.

Obituary courtesy of Dee Funeral Home & Cremation Service of Concord. To share a remembrance or to offer a condolence in Kathy’s online guestbook, please click here.

Just two days left in the Lincoln Chipmunk fundraising drive

Last month we asked supporters of the Lincoln Chipmunk (Lincoln Squirrel’s sister publication for the arts) for help in defraying some of the $8,000 cost of creating the Chipmunk’s website. The Indiegogo fundraising drive ends on Wednesday, Jan. 6, so please consider making a contribution to a vital platform for Lincoln’s artists, writers, and photographers. As an incentive, you can get some Lincoln Squirrel or Lincoln Chipmunk merchandise as a thank-you for donating at various levels. Click on the image below for details:

Lincoln Squirrel subscribers have free access to the Lincoln Chipmunk, so please see what your artistic neighbors have been doing, and learn about how to contribute some work of your own.

Even if you don’t donate, have a look at our new store for all your Squirrel/Chipmunk merchandise needs, including clothing, drinkware, stickers, coasters, and of course face masks.

A huge thank-you to everyone who’s supported the Squirrel in various ways over the last eight years, and to those who waited patiently for the successor to the Lincoln Review to finally make its debut. And thanks in advance to anyone who’s able to donate to the Lincoln Chipmunk!

My Turn: Water Dept. always available in emergencies

By Ruth Ann Hendrickson

The Water Department has a system in place to serve you if you have need for immediate help. We do not have enough staff to personally answer the phone 24 hours a day, but we do have personnel who are assigned to be “on call.” If you have a leaking water meter or some other water leak that needs immediate attention, do not hesitate to call the Water Department at 781-259-2669 and select option #1 – “Emergency.” This will allow you to contact the on-call person who can arrange for quick resolution of your problem.

Ruth Ann Hendrickson is a member of the Lincoln Water Commission.

”My Turn” is a forum for readers to offer their 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.

My Turn: Lincoln Garden Club honors front-line workers

By Jane Herlacher

The Lincoln Garden Club recently honored the town’s front-line essential workers with holiday flowers. For the club’s December Zoom program a floral designer created arrangements which were later picked up at her Chelmsford home and delivered to four town departments and the post office. All the staff members have been on duty on site full time since the beginning of the pandemic. We are grateful for their continued service during unknown and changing times since last winter. Many, many thanks to every one of them.

Jane Herlacher is a member of the Lincoln Garden Club.

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”My Turn” is a forum for readers to offer their 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.

Town sees 27 cases of Covid-19 in last half of December

Lincoln’s Covid-19 caseload continues to climb, with a total of 27 cases during the last two weeks in December — the same number as recorded over the preceding four months.

Forty-four Lincoln residents tested positive for Covid-during the four-week period starting the week of December 10. The largest two-week total before this was nine cases for the fortnight ending on April 25. As of December 31, Lincoln had 19 active cases — fewer than Carlisle but more than Concord, where fully 40% of the cases were in residents age 20 and younger.

Earlier in the pandemic, many Lincoln cases cropped up among elderly residents at The Commons and elsewhere in town. More recently, as in the rest of the country, the virus has affected a greater age range of Lincolnites and the method of spread has more often been within households.

“In the last few months, we have definitely seen an increase in the number of cases in the one-to-25-year-old age groups,” Public Health Nurse Tricia McGean said in an email to the Lincoln Squirrel. “College students socialize in groups and live in congregate group settings like dorms, and the virus is very happy to spread in these types of settings. We did not have the college-aged cases back in March and April, as most of them were sent home to learn remotely. The younger cases we’ve seen recently in the local elementary and middle schools are usually related to household spread. If there is a family of four or six, we can usually watch it spread to each person.

“The holidays have also been a factor in increased case numbers. Despite warnings from public health officials, many people chose to be with friends and family members outside of their households. I have seen a few Thanksgiving and Christmas gatherings result in a full family sweep of new Covid-positive cases,” McGean said.

There have been a few hospitalizations among the recent Lincoln cases, though these have been older adults and usually due to a comorbidity like a chronic respiratory disease.

On the bright side, “we have not seen any confirmed spread within the school community, so that’s fantastic news. Everyone is doing their job by keeping masked, maintaining social distance, and performing good hand hygiene, and we hope to get everyone back to school [this] week as planned,” McGean said. There have been no deaths or new cases at The Commons since December 23, and the facility expects to start its Covid-19 vaccine clinic for its residents as soon as this week.

Statewide, Lincoln is now in the moderate risk category, where it moved from low risk during the period from November 22 to December 5 (click here to see how the state’s risk map has evolved for towns since October 18).

Although vaccines are on the way for everyone, the immediate threat is very real, especially since Covid-19 is sneakily contagious. “The most infectious period of the virus is 48 hours prior to symptom onset, so by the time you get the headache, cough, and achy feeling, you have already unknowingly spread the virus,” McGean said.

New skating rink to offer another winter diversion

This winter will be more isolated than most because of Covid-19, but there’ll be one new bright spot: a town skating rink.

The Parks and Recreation Department is using $3,500 from its celebrations fund to purchase a 30-by-60-foot skating rink and expects it to be delivered in January. Staff will set it up behind Town Hall adjacent to the soccer field and, weather permitting, they’ll fill it with water to make it available for skating as soon as possible.

Details are still being worked out, but there was discussion of requiring visits to be reserved online to limit capacity as demanded by the pandemic. The rink will be used for both hockey and figure skating, though players will have to bring their own nets.

As far as maintenance goes, “it will be very similar to how backyard rinks are maintained — a labor of love by a group of volunteers,” said Parks and Recreation Commission member Rob Stringer. “When it snows, we’ll shovel it off; when the ice gets uneven we will spray it with additional water to freeze in a smooth surface.

The rink will have its permanent home once the sport court and parking lot next to the Brooks gym are not in use by the school construction project. The sport court has lights so residents can use it after dark.

“We’re excited to use the ice rink for this winter and many years to come,” said David Sequeira, acting director of Parks and Rec.

“We’re looking forward to having a rink now that the weather is cold enough, and I hope the community enjoys it enough to make it an annual facility,” Stringer said.

News acorns

Christmas tree pickup benefits Fire Dept.

The Lincoln Fire department will pick up Christmas trees on Saturday, Jan. 9 from residents who’ve made a $20 donation toward their fundraiser. For details, contact Caleb Hagerty at hagartyc@lincolntown.org.

Send in suggestions for next talent show beneficiary

The deadline is Thursday, Jan. 7 for submitting nominations for a charitable cause that will benefit from the next Lincoln youth talent show. Organizers will keep all suggestions anonymous. Two options have already been presented:

  • Marc Day, a 2018 L-S graduate who is battling Stage 4 cancer
  • The Lincoln chapter of St. Vincent de Paul Society, which runs a food pantry and emergency fund to help people in the community who are having trouble financially

Please email achlagandhi24@gmail.com or kids4covid.19@gmail.com with ideas. Organizers will send out a survey on LincolnTalk next week to let the community can vote. Here are links to videos of the first talent show on December 23: Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.

Event looks at domestic abuse survivors from South Asia

On Tuesday, Jan. 12 at 3 p.m., the Sudbury-Wayland-Lincoln Domestic Violence Roundtable will host a talk by Divya Chaturvedi and Rita Shah, co-executive directors of Saheli, about the organization’s work supporting domestic abuse survivors from South Asia. They’ll highlight how Saheli focuses on people’s unique cultural beliefs and backgrounds when offering programs and services. The presentation will include:

  • A closer look at some of the specific cultural factors — such as acculturation stress, limited support structure in the U.S., and limited English proficiency — that make it more difficult for people who have immigrated from South Asia to access support
  • The hows and whys of Saheli’s focus on economic empowerment, awareness of legal rights, reducing isolation, and fostering healthy relationships.
  • Suggestions on how friends, neighbors, and family members can best support people from South Asia who may be living with abuse.

To get the Zoom link to the program, please register here or through the Roundtable’s website. Over the course of the year, the Roundtable will be presenting several programs in its Spotlight Series focusing on segments of our communities that face additional barriers when considering if and how to seek help or support. For questions, please email infodvrt@gmail.com