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

My Turn: Offering avenues for action in the wake of Capitol riot

By Julie Brogan

Like all of us, I was stunned and saddened by the events in Washington, D.C. on Wednesday, January 6. If you’re wondering what an ordinary Americans can do repair and restore our republic, I highly recommend this report from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences’ bipartisan Commission on the Practice of Democratic Citizenship. The report makes specific recommendations for reform and endorses organizations working to make these changes. I don’t agree with all of these ideas, but they are wide-ranging and may appeal to you or your friends looking for way to get involved.

I recently joined the National Finance Council in one of the cross-partisan groups endorsed by the commission, American Promise, based right next door in Concord. We are working to pass a Constitutional amendment to get big money out of our elections. If you would like to learn more about American Promise, feel free to contact me. But no matter what you decide is needed to get this country to a better place, don’t despair — act!

Julie Brogan, an Old Sudbury Road resident, can be reached at juliebrogan@verizon.net.

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 Submissions containing personal attacks, errors of fact, or other inappropriate material will not be published.

Help sought for future Covid vaccination clinic

Town officials are gearing up for a possible Covid-19 vaccination clinic and are seeking volunteers, though much is still unknown.

“We do not even know for sure if Lincoln will get the vaccine from [the state Department of Public Health], so we ask that people seek the vaccine from their primary care providers or when public clinics are advertised,” said Public Health Nurse Tricia McGean. “Large public clinics at Gillette, Topsfield Fairgrounds, the Big E, and UMass-Amherst are supposedly going to open at the end of the month. Do not wait for a town clinic.” In offering vaccinations, the town must adhere to the three-phase approach outlined by DPH, she added.

For the possible vaccination clinic and other functions, the Lincoln Public Health Task Force is seeking volunteers to join the Lincoln Medical Reserve Corps. Volunteers with medical, logistics, communication, and computer skills, but everyone can help in some way. Volunteering with the Medical Reserve Corps is a simple and effective way to support the needs of Lincoln while also helping your family, friends, and neighbors stay safe and healthy, said Fire Chief Brian J. Young

Lincoln Medical Reserve Corps organizers are interested in gathering early information on how many town residents might be interested in volunteering to assist in the vaccination effort. The clinics will occur between March and May and will be held at a location in Lincoln. The roles they need assistance with include the following:

  • Parking lot coordinator (non-clinical) — Mostly outdoors. Confirming appointment times and verbally guiding residents to appropriate locations
  • Vaccine check-in administrator (non-clinical) — Indoor position. Greet people, validate scheduled appointment and participant ID, arrive to appointment and direct to vaccination area.
  • Vaccinators (clinical) — Indoor position. Must be RN, MD or certified to administer vaccinations. Vaccinate personnel and direct to waiting and Check-out area.
  • EMS clinical surveillance (clinical) — Emergency medical staff to be present to provide assistance should an individual have an adverse reaction to the vaccine.
  • Vaccine check-out administrator (non-clinical) — Indoor position. Guide participant to waiting area, validate appointment for second vaccine is scheduled at date confirmed, provide vaccine card and make sure participants wait approximately 15 minutes before departure.

Fire Chief Brian J. Young will be hosting public Zoom meetings on Tuesday, Jan. 12 at 7 p.m. and Tuesday, Jan. 19 at 7 p.m. to discuss the Medical Reserve Corps and to answer questions. Anyone interested may email lincolnMRC@lincolntown.org.

My Turn: Where do the Codman Farm footprints lead?

By Pete Lowy

I captured this image the other day as I was wandering around the laying hen pasture. What do you see? Chicken feet, arrows, maybe something else? Well, we are on a farm, so I guess the most obvious answer is that they are chicken footprints — but in the same instance I noticed the patterns — it also immediately dawned on me that they looked like arrows pointing in different directions. When I showed the photo to Jen, she blurted out “chicken feet.” It’s funny how a shift in perspective can yield a totally different image. And the “chicken arrows” pointing in every different direction made me think of the current state of affairs in our country and also of life on the farm. How different ideologies can alter your perspective and thus perception of events and result in different actions being taken.

As a farmer, the image made me think how each and every day we have an endless amount of things to do, all sometimes pointing in different directions. The daily tasks on a farm are endless and it’s my job to make sense of the chaos and chart a clear path forward. The farms and businesses that find success tend to be the ones that are best able to stay pointed in one direction, stay true to their core principles, and be disciplined to achieve their goals.

At Codman, we are currently on such a path. With the sudden increase in visibility due to the pandemic, Codman Farm has become more of a resource to our community than ever. This has made us take measure of where we are, and consider more carefully where we are headed as a non-profit farm in the community of Lincoln. Why are we here, what is our purpose, how can we best care for our land and for the community in which we live. These are some of the many questions we are asking ourselves both now, and in the weeks to come.

I invite you to share what Codman means to you, how YOU see our role as a nonprofit in the community and HOW we can best carry out our core mission of keeping the lands of Lincoln open, in production agriculture, and educating others about farming and the impact it has in our society in so many different ways. Email me at pete@codmanfarm.org.

Pete Lowy is the farmer at Codman Community Farms. This piece appeared as part of the farm’s monthly blog/e-newsletter to members. Click here to see past issues of the blog.

”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.

Time to submit your creative work to the Lincoln Chipmunk!


The deadline for sending your creative writing, artwork and photos for the next issue of the Lincoln Chipmunk is January 22, 2021. Have a look at previous issues at chipmunk.lincolnsquirrel.com.

The Chipmunk’s Indiegogo fundraising drive to help defray the cost of creating and launching the Chipmunk is over, but you can donate any time by check credit/debit card, or Venmo. Please click here to learn how to donate, and thanks for supporting Lincoln’s news and arts publications!

Town offices and library close again due to pandemic

Due to the recent rise of Covid-19 cases in Lincoln and statewide, town offices and the Lincoln Public Library are closed for in-person visits as of Monday, Jan. 11.

Non-essential departments including land use and permitting, finances, town clerk, town administration, and the Council on Aging will be physically closed, but staff responsible for these services and programs will remain available to support and assist remotely. Zoom conferencing will be made available as needed, and limited in-person support will be made available in extenuating circumstances.

Residents are urged to make full use of on-line support services and to contact town staff via e-mail and phone. Contact information can be found on the town website at www.lincolntown.org.

“We learned through our experience in March that we can depend on the dedication and ingenuity of our staff and volunteers to ensure that the needs of our residents continue to be met, regardless of whether they are responding in-person or remotely,” officials said in a statement. “Our leadership boards have continued to meet uninterrupted throughout the pandemic, making full use of remote meeting technology, and Monday’s restrictions will not impact the remote meeting schedules of our boards.”

Library

Library staff will continue contactless pickup on a reduced schedule:

  • Monday, Wednesday and Thursday from 1–7 p.m.
  • Tuesday from 1–6 p.m.
  • Friday and Saturday 1–5 p.m.

Most libraries that have closed recently have had to stop curbside pickup due to the amount of staff time involved. Right now a card member can place up to 50 titles on hold for delivery, but with only one or two staff members in the building at any one time, the library will not be able to continue with contactless at that level. Therefore, the staffs ask the community to please think twice about requesting materials that you really aren’t sure you need to help to keep the amount of items to a manageable level.

Staff will monitor the library’s voicemail system so patrons can ask questions by calling 781-259-8465 or emailing lincoln@minlib.net.

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.