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

Hearing set for replacement cell tower

Existing (top) and projected coverage for Verizon Wireless customers if the tower behind Tracey’s is replaced. The blue marker shows the location of the existing tower; the red one just east of I-95 is another tower in Lexington that would be decommissioned. (Click to enlarge)

(Editor’s note: This article was updated on March 22 to incorporate a correction in the description of the cell tower’s location.)

A plan to replace the 55-foot cell tower adjacent to Route 2 between Page and Old County Roads with a new 75-foot monopole will be the subject of a Planning Board hearing on Tuesday, March 28 at 7 p.m.

Crown Castle wants to build a replacement tower at 295 Cambridge Turnpike and decommission another tower to the southeast in Lexington. The change will not affect coverage for customers of Sprint, the current tower’s tenant, but will improve service for new tenant Verizon Wireless. The structure will also have room for a third wireless tenant, said Michael Giaimo, an attorney representing Crown Castle.

The proposed tower height “was determined by what is allowed under the Lincoln Bylaw and the coverage needs of the carriers locating on the tower,” Giaimo said. The Planning Board oversaw a visibility test on March 11 when a tethered red balloon at the proposed height of the new tower was flown from the current structure.

Last year, the MBTA proposed three new monopoles along the railroad tracks in Lincoln with the potential accommodate cell phone service providers, though their primary purpose was to comply with a federal mandate for emergency train stop controls. A public hearing scheduled in April was postponed until the MBTA completes the permitting process with the Federal Communications Commission.

LLCT hosts conservation events

The Lincoln Land Conservation Trust will host a talk on March 23 as well as  movie on climate change, a vernal pool walk, and birding expeditions in April.

Early 20th-century “Tree Huggers”: Mabel Loomis Todd, Millicent Todd Bingham and the Development of their Conservation Impulses

Thursday, March 23 at 7:30 p.m.
LLCT/RLF office, 145 Lincoln Rd., Suite 102A, Lincoln (second floor). Free.

To the extent that she is remembered today, Mabel Loomis Todd is known either as Emily Dickinson’s first editor or as Austin (Emily’s brother) Dickinson’s lover. Her daughter, Millicent Todd Bingham, is mostly relegated to footnotes for her work on Dickinson’s poetry. But both women have another important legacy as conservationists.

This talk by Lincoln resident Julie Dobrow will explore the untold stories of the influences that led Mabel and Millicent to make major land purchases in both Massachusetts and Maine, and their efforts to have the land preserved in perpetuity. There are many Lincoln connections, including early contact with Henry David Thoreau, Louise Ayer Gordon’s gift of her home and 215 acres to the Mass Audubon Society, and even Paul Brooks’s work to publish Rachel Carson’s seminal work, Silent Spring. These and other influences give insight into these two trail-blazing women, and also into the way that the nascent environmental movement in this country developed.

Dobrow teaches in the Eliot-Pearson Department of Child Study and Human Development, and in the Environmental Studies and Film and Media Studies Programs at Tufts University.

Sun Come Up

Thursday, April 20 at 7:30 p.m.
LLCT/RLF office, 145 Lincoln Rd., Suite 102A Lincoln (second floor). Free; movie refreshments provided.

The Oscar-nominated film Sun Come Up shows the human face of climate change and the story of some of the world’s first environmental refugees. The 38-minute film follows the relocation of the Carteret Islanders from their ancestral land, located on a chain of tranquil islands in the South Pacific, to a new place to call home. A group of young islanders are followed to war-torn Bougainville, 50 miles across the open ocean, and the film documents their journey as they search for land and build relationships.

Lincoln resident Jennifer Haugh, a member of Lincoln’s Green Energy Committee, will provide commentary and answer questions about the impacts of climate change. Haugh founded Iconic Energy Consulting in 2014 to help institutions find ways to motivate sustainable behavior through public art and design. In 2015, she launched the Harvard Energy Feedback Sculpture project, which features a winning design by Cambridge firm INVIVIA to provide a visual representation of freshmen conservation efforts.

Vernal Pool Exploration with Matt Burne

Saturday, April 1 at 1 p.m.
Meet and park at the far end of the parking lot beyond Donelan’s. Free and family-friendly.

Dress for weather conditions. Participants should wear footwear for a one-mile walk and wet ground conditions.

Matt Burne, a herpetologist and conservation director for the Walden Woods Project, will lead a walk to explore a vernal pool in Lincoln. Participants will look for signs of spotted salamanders, wood frogs, and fairy shrimp, and will hopefully see some creatures up close as well. Listen for the wood frogs’ duck-like calls and the high-pitched chorus of tiny spring peepers, a species of tree frog. Learn about the importance of vernal pools and how to protect them.

Co-sponsored by Lincoln Land Conservation Trust, the Walden Woods Project, and the Lincoln Conservation Commission.

Spring birding in Lincoln

All outings are from 7:30-9:30 a.m. Bring binoculars and dress for the weather conditions (walks will not take place if it is raining).

Find out why birders love early mornings in spring as you learn to identify birds by sight and song, and explore some birding “hot spots” in Lincoln. At least two of the following local birding experts will lead each walk: Vinny Durso, Nancy Hammond, Norman Levey, Gwyn Loud, and Nancy Soulette.

  • Sunday, April 23—Lindentree Farm and fields behind St. Anne’s Church. Park on Old Concord Road near the junction with Rt. 126.
  • Sunday, April 30—Browning Fields and Pigeon Hill. Park by the riding ring in Browning Field on Weston Road.
  • Sunday, May 7—Ricci Fields. Park by the trailhead on the east side of Bedford Road, just before the junction with Rt. 2A.
  • Sunday, May 14—Baker Bridge Fields. Park at the Food Project on Rte. 126.

Letter to the editor: vote yes on community center feasibility study

letter

To the editor:

The warrant for the  Annual Town Meeting on March 25 includes an article to approve $150,000 to fund “a feasibility study and preliminary design development plans for a community center to be located within the Hartwell Complex of the Ballfield Road school campus.” If funding for a school project feasibility study is approved, the board of the Lincoln Council on Aging and the Parks and Recreation Committee recommend approval of the community center article at both Annual Town Meeting and the town election to be held on Monday, March 27. The benefits to all residents of Lincoln in funding feasibility studies for both the school and community center projects are many, and include:

  • Funding feasibility studies for both projects assures that planning will be done jointly, and therefore will take into account the needs of both projects most efficiently.
  • Beginning the process for a community center project now will save the town money in the long run. Multiple committees have determined that both the Council on Aging and Parks and Recreation need significantly improved facilities and construction costs will only increase over time.
  • The community center will provide all residents with attractive space for programs and activities they already enjoy as well as new ones, with enough parking that is a reasonable distance, and that is fully accessible. This includes:
    • Adults and children who participate in Parks and Recreation programs
    • Seniors who attend COA programs and use COA social services
    • Members of community organizations who will hold meetings and programs in the community center
    • Residents of all ages who need confidential health and social services
    • All members of the community who would like to participate in fun and community-building activities like community suppers and townwide fairs, and
    • Anyone who would like a place to gather to socialize with others in a relaxed, welcoming place.
  • A community center in the Ballfield Road area, along with the schools and athletic fields, would enhance Lincoln’s sense of community by providing one place for formal and informal opportunities for residents from many generations and a diversity of interests to come together to get to know one another and feel a part of a vibrant and welcoming town.

The reasons for supporting a community center are as many and as individual as each town resident. What would you like a community center to do for you?

Sincerely,

Lincoln Council on Aging Board
Lincoln Parks and Recreation Committee

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.

Obituaries

Yvonne Fenijn

Yvonne Fenijn, 94 — Dutch-American whose family survived World War II Japanese internment in Indonesia prison camps.

Richard Ponn (March 14) — husband of Nancy (Long) Ponn. Services at the Beth El Temple Center, 2 Concord Ave., Belmont on Wednesday, March 22 at 10 a.m.

Charles Hersch

Charles Hersch, 89 (February 26) — clinical psychologist, former director of the Concord Area Comprehensive Mental Health Center, president of the American Association of Psychiatric Services for Children.

Letter to the editor: Soccer players urge ‘yes’ vote on Wang land

letter

To the editor:

There’s good news and bad news about Lincoln’s athletic fields. The good news: youth recreation is at an all-time high and our kids are using our fields more than ever. The bad news: the few fields we have in Lincoln are vastly overused. This, combined with a lack of irrigation, has created terrible playing conditions for the more than 327 families who participate in Lincoln Youth Soccer (LYS). If you’ve had the opportunity to walk our fields, you know this. If you haven’t, this may come as a surprise. A third-party report, commissioned by Parks & Rec and LYS this fall, confirmed that:

  • our fields are in terrible shape
  • despite investments in maintenance, the fields are deteriorating
  • improving the quality of our fields will require irrigation and rest.

That we find ourselves in this situation in Lincoln—a town known for its love of open spaces—is surprising. As president of LYS, the largest youth athletic association in town, I hear this frequently from our families and the many who travel to Lincoln to compete against our teams.

At the upcoming Town Meeting on March 25, we have a unique opportunity to turn this situation around. Up for consideration is a warrant article to purchase 12 acres of land—three of which would be developed as an athletic field and nine to be conserved. We will be asked to approve $1.8 million in Community Preservation Act funds to underwrite this endeavor with no negative impact to taxes or ability to bond future projects. To show our support, LYS has led a fund-raising effort to contribute $200,000 of private donations to the project.

On behalf of LYS and the hundreds of children running around our fields, I strongly encourage you to attend Town Meeting on March 25 and to vote YES. This investment allows us to increase our field inventory and ensure our recreational fields are treated with the same care as our many wonderful open spaces.

Sincerely,

Eric Harnden
20 Todd Pond 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: Vote yes on solar array at landfill

letterTo the editor:

Without question, we Lincolnites are dedicated conservationists. Almost 35 percent of the town’s land is protected, giving us five square miles of undeveloped natural habitats for wildlife and plant life, fresh air, clean streams, and long stretches of space to walk and reflect.

It’s perhaps not surprising, then, that we also care about sustainability and the environment. In a recent Green Energy Committee survey, 90 percent of respondents indicated an interest in rooftop solar out of concern for climate change; 65 percent were concerned about the global politics of fossil fuels.

There is a direct connection between climate change and energy consumption. In Massachusetts, state law requires a minimum of 12 percent of its electricity be supplied from renewable sources in 2017, with those minimums increasing at just 1 percent each year. This means that the remainder—up to 88 percent—comes from dirtier or more dangerous sources. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, more than 63 percent of Massachusetts electricity came from burning natural gas, petroleum, and coal in 2016.

Fortunately, Lincoln has alternatives. Many volunteers have worked tirelessly over the past several years to explore supplying a portion of the municipal electricity with locally sourced clean energy. A Selectman-appointed Solar PV Working Group developed a Solar Blueprint, a detailed analysis of 25 municipally owned sites for potential solar arrays. These sites included school buildings and parking lots, public buildings, Codman Farm, and the capped landfill at the transfer station, automatically eliminating options that were located on environmentally sensitive lands, in historic districts, or with too much shade.

Two sites were ultimately selected for near-term solar installations that have the potential to generate up to 50 percent of the municipal electricity supply: a 45kW array on the Public Safety Building along Lincoln Road, and a 600-1,000kW array on the landfill at the transfer station.

Landfills have been natural first choices to host solar arrays in communities throughout the United States. Capping a landfill involves layering over a contaminated trash heap with a plastic-like drainage material, then clay and gravel, topped off with a vegetative layer to prevent soil erosion. In June 2016, Lincoln published a study on the environmental impact of using Lincoln’s capped landfill for a solar array. The study determined that the site provides low-quality habitat for wildlife and native plants.

To install solar PV at the landfill, Lincoln must identify and designate an equivalent amount of non-conservation protected land into conservation protection. The town’s proposed acquisition of An and Lorraine Wang’s property on Bedford Road provides an excellent opportunity for a win-win: using poor-quality land from a capped landfill to host solar electricity generation, and acquiring equivalent or better-quality land to contribute to Lincoln’s current Article 97-protected stock of conservation land. After a thorough review, the Conservation Commission unanimously voted in December to support the project and the removal of the capped landfill property from Article 97.

The proposed landfill solar PV generation system exemplifies Lincoln’s active engagement in and support for environmental conservation and stewardship projects. The landfill solar PV project has benefited from well-developed research, thoughtful consideration, and community engagement process. By continuing to move in the direction of clean, local, and renewable energy supplies, we will leave a more sustainable environment in Lincoln for future generations to come.

We encourage you to vote “yes” on Article 36 at Town Meeting on March 25.

Sincerely,
The Lincoln Solar PV Working Group

(Renel Fredriksen, Board of Selectmen; Tom Gumbart, Jim Henderson, and Peter von Mertens, Conservation Commission; Tim Higgins, Town Administrator; John Snell, Green Energy Committee; and Gary Taylor, Planning Board)

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: New Hanscom School is a great model

letter

To the editor:

Back in December, I responded to a request to explain why a number of residents opposed and ultimately helped to defeat the 2012 school building project. Although many were alarmed by the proposal to cut the trees and sacrifice the central playing fields, in essence “paving paradise to put up a parking lot,” I was particularly concerned with the interior environment and the plan for an outdated, dehumanizing cell-block layout of classrooms and corridors. The ill-fated plan offered an uninspired, mediocre environment in which to develop, learn and teach.

Then on Monday, I had the good fortune of touring the newly opened Hanscom Middle School with a small group of parents and residents led by Superintendent of Schools Becky McFall and School Committee chair Jennifer Glass. This new school incorporates much of what our superintendent has been describing in her vision for the Lincoln schools for several years. Even though architecture and particularly interiors are best experienced to be truly understood and appreciated, I will highlight a few exciting features that I gleaned from the tour.

Upon entering the Hanscom facility, one feels immediately welcomed. Just past the security entrance, a long, light-colored wooden bench leads one to the two-story common area with an open stage and grand stair to the second level. Rather than traditional indestructible concrete block, the walls are painted drywall in warm color tones that mitigate the austere white of LED and occasional fluorescent lighting. The customary cool grays, blues and greens found in many institutional buildings are minimal, and used merely as accents in flooring patterns, door frames and some furniture, albeit in warmer tones. Not only do people look healthier, they generally feel better about themselves in such spaces, and the entire experience is one that evokes an implied trust that students are mature enough to appreciate and take pride in this environment.

Secondly, there is an abundance of diffused natural light from a variety of sources, including windows and skylights, some of which are visible through interior glass partitions. As a result, one is aware of the natural rhythm of the day whether it is sunny or cloudy outside, morning or afternoon.

Thirdly, there are a variety of flexible room types, sizes and shapes, all organized around age-appropriate “neighborhoods” based on the various grades. Rooms and spaces have a variety of ceiling heights and are not all rectilinear, creating interesting juxtapositions and adjacencies that do not feel institutional. Also, their adjacencies lend themselves to multiple uses ranging from larger classrooms to smaller spaces appropriate for coaching students who may need individual help. In each of the various neighborhoods, there are rooms set up to accommodate a range of instruction, from a group of students focusing on a single subject or project, to individual quiet reading areas full of comfortable cushions and benches and a teacher circulating to help students as needed.

Rather than being long and bleak, corridors are short and come in a variety of shapes as they connect various classrooms and neighborhoods. Transitions between classes are orderly, and Becky reported that students need little, if any, supervision for disruptive behavior that often accompany the cellblock model.

There is really so much more to tell, but in summary, the highly organized but relaxed layout, the variety of interior spaces and the use of color and natural light is masterful in how children and teachers are treated with dignity, visibly inspiring a passion for learning and teaching. This is the model that should guide the planning of the Lincoln School in the next year if we are to offer a viable 21st-century learning community. And I believe this should be our highest priority as we gather for Town Meeting in less than two weeks.

Thanks again to Becky and Jennifer for making the tour available. If the opportunity arises again, I urge others to visit as well.

Sincerely,

Ken Hurd
21 Lexington 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: ConComm supports Wang project

letter

To the editor:

Over the past several weeks, the Conservation Commission has received several questions about the 100 Bedford Road project (also referred to as the Wang project), which will be going before Town Meeting on March 25. The Parks and Recreation commission has put together an excellent video describing the proposal, which has two major components:

  1. The creation of an athletic field
  2. Placing 7.1 acres of land into conservation protection

There is a third aspect of the proposal related to a solar power installation that will also be presented at Town Meeting. The purpose of this letter is to explain the decisions made by the Conservation Commission regarding the proposed solar project and the processes taken that informed those decisions. The Conservation Commission strongly supports the 100 Bedford Road project and believes it represents a major benefit to conservation efforts in the Town and to the Town as a whole.

The Conservation Commission strongly supports solar energy, and the state is a proponent of using town landfills to provide solar energy. The Green Energy Committee has done extensive work in identifying potential solar sites in town and concluded that the landfill is the optimal site for a significant photovoltaic installation. At the 1995 Town Meeting, the Town voted to “permanently dedicate and restrict exclusively for active and passive recreation and open space uses, consistent with and subject to the mandate and protections of Article 97 of the Amendments to the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts… the “Landfill Parcel.”

Article 97 of the Massachusetts Constitution grants “people the right to a clean environment and authoriz[ed] the Commonwealth to acquire conservation easements. Article 97 was intended to be a legislative ‘check’ to ensure that lands acquired for conservation purposes were not converted to other inconsistent uses.”

It is extraordinarily difficult to remove land from Article 97 protection, and to ensure that such removal is rare and to good purpose, the state has defined a rigorous series of steps that must be taken to effect removal. The Massachusetts Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs (EOEEA) Article 97 Land Disposition Policy, commonly referred to as the “No Net Loss of Conservation Land Policy,” requires that the several steps be taken to effect removal of a parcel from Article 97 protection, including:

  • The Conservation Commission must vote unanimously that the parcel is surplus to municipal, conservation, and open space needs.
  • Town Meeting must support the disposition with a two-thirds vote
  • The state legislature must support the disposition with a two-thirds vote

Not surprisingly, the process that the Conservation Commission followed is also quite rigorous. I’ll go through each issue that was considered:

  1. Have all alternative sites in Lincoln not covered by Article 97 been considered and rejected as “not feasible and substantially equivalent”? The Green Energy Committee and Solar Design Associates identified approximately 25 potential sites for solar photovoltaic (PV) arrays, with a ranking system for suitability. The work showed that the landfill is the most suitable and the consensus of the Commissioners was that there are not alternative sites that are “substantially equivalent.”
  1. Does the disposition and proposed use destroy or threaten a unique or sensitive resource? Rimmer Environmental Consulting was hired to prepare a Solar Site Assessment and Habitat Evaluation of the landfill site and that report was completed in June 2016. The evaluation found that the proposed use will not destroy or threaten a unique or sensitive resource, and the commissioners supported this finding.
  1. Is real estate of equal or greater fair market value, or value in use of proposed use, whichever is greater, and significantly greater resource value provided to the municipality? The Conservation Commission then considered the 7.1 acres of the 100 Bedford Road property as the property to be provided to the town in exchange for the removal of the landfill from Article 97 protection. The potential acquisition parcels have perimeter habitat, which the commission determined are of substantially greater value (with respect to both fair market value and proposed use) than the landfill. The 100 Bedford Road property offers valuable habitat, trail connections, and vegetated buffer to other uses. The commission contacted the EOEEA and town counsel about the swap, and both parties agreed that the proposed swap is appropriate.
  1. Is the conversion of the minimum acreage necessary for the proposed use and, to the maximum extent possible, does it continue to protect the resources of the parcel proposed for disposition? The commission has not been presented with a final construction plan for the installation of solar panels on the landfill site. Accordingly, the commission determined that it would condition its approval (if all the other above conditions are met) on conducting a review of the construction documents in order to ensure that the resources continue to be protected to the maximum extent possible. Items the commission will examine include staging and work sequencing, fence detailing for wildlife passage, and restoration plant specifications.
  1. Does the disposition serve an Article 97 or another public purpose? The commission concluded that the disposition does serve an important public purpose, namely the first major source of solar PV energy for the Town. The commissioners expressed their strong support for this public purpose.

This evaluations described above were conducted over approximately one year and involved the Conservation Commission, conservation director, conservation planner, Green Energy Committee, and several consultants. On December 14, 2016, the Conservation Commission voted unanimously to remove the landfill parcel from Article 97 protection for conversion to a site for solar energy. The removal was conditioned on (1) that the 100 Bedford Road land swap, and (2) Conservation Commission approval of the solar construction plans.

In my personal opinion, the town made an intelligent decision in 1995. By putting the landfill under Article 97 protection, our citizens made it difficult for later generations to remove the land from protection without having exceptionally strong reasons. As a direct result, the outcome of this lengthy exercise will provide major victories for the town: more valuable conservation land and a large solar power installation. And we should not lose sight of the fact that the driving force behind the 100 Bedford Road acquisition is a new playing field, filling a long-felt need for the town. The solar benefit is real and the processes to enable it are complex, but to be clear, the solar benefit was a positive side effect of the playing field acquisition, not the driver of the 100 Bedford Road project. All of these positives would be gained with no additional tax burden, a serendipitous sequence of events and outcomes for the town!

Sincerely,

Richard Selden, MD, PhD
Member, Conservation Commission and Community Preservation Committee

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.

GearTicks apply tech savvy to MMNHP project

Margie Coffin Brown and Roger Fuller of Minute Man National Historic Park with three of the GearTicks (Evan Lee, Dante Muzilz and Catherine Appleby) and the park’s donation lanterns.

The Lincoln GearTicks, known for their high-tech robotic wizardry, applied their talents to a historical enterprise when they recently brought two donation boxes into the 21st century.

At Minute Man National Historical Park (MMNHP), visitors often drop coins and bills into the lantern-shaped donation boxes, which have to be designed in a way that prevents tampering and theft, since the money sometimes isn’t collected for several days. To bring the donation boxes up to current security standards, the park needed to added a security baffle to each box.

Margie Coffin Brown, resource manager at MMNHP, reached out to the GearTicks, the Lincoln-based high school robotics team that qualified for the state championship in the FIRST Tech Challenge tournament held earlier this month. After reading the National Park Service specifications on donation box construction, the students felt they could build the internal components needed to bring the old boxes up to standards.

To make the baffles, the GearTicks used a wire-bending jig to make precise bends in sheets of plastic, a common component used in the construction of small, competitive robots. In previous robot projects, the team used a heat gun, but had recently acquired the new jig to improve the functionality of their robot.

The reconditioned donation boxes (whose design was inspired by the signal lanterns hung in the Old North Church on April 19, 1775) were installed at the park late last month.

News acorns

Lincoln Fire Department receives fire education grants

The Lincoln Fire Department recently received two state grants totaling more than $6,500 for fire education for children and seniors. Lincoln’s was one of 228 Massachusetts fire departments to receive Student Awareness of Fire Education (S.A.F.E.) program grants to work with classroom teachers to deliver fire and life safety lessons. Of those, 212 departments also received a Senior SAFE program grant to work with older adults on fire and life safety. The town’s grant amounts were $3,951 S.A.F.E. and $2,596, respectively.

The S.A.F.E. Program’s allows trained firefighter-educators to work with teachers to deliver age-appropriate fire and life safety lessons that also meet the requirements of the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education’s Health Curriculum Frameworks. In the 21 years of the program’s existence, the average number of children who die in fires each year in Massachusetts has dropped by over 70 percent, according to a release from the office of Gov. Charlies Baker.

Seniors are most at risk of dying in fires in Massachusetts. Using the Senior SAFE program, fire departments partner with local senior service agencies to better educate seniors on fire prevention, general home safety and how to be better prepared to survive a fire.

Middle school stages “The Lion King Jr.”

The Lincoln School production of “The Lion King Jr.” takes place in the school auditorium on March 29, 30 and 31. Seventy student actors and 20 crew members have been rehearsing the show’s drum beats and chant-filled choruses since December. Tickets will be sold at the door ($5 for students and seniors, $10 for adults). Show times are 3:30 p.m. on March 29, and 7 p.m. on March 30 and 31.

Panel looks at journalism and democracy

For a lively conversation on the state of journalism from a local, state, national and international perspective, come to the annual FELS Talk on “Breaking News: Journalism and Democracy in the 21st Century” on Wednesday, April 5 at 7 p.m. at the LSRHS auditorium. Panelists will be:

  • Deborah Becker, senior correspondent and host, WBUR
  • Isaac Feldberg, journalism major and correspondent for The Boston Globe
  • David Grace, L-S history faculty member
  • Anne Mostue, Bloomberg News radio anchor
  • Charles Sennott, founder and executive director of The GroundTruth Project
  • Alice Waugh, founder and editor of The Lincoln Squirrel, an online newspaper

Julie Dobrow, senior fellow, media and civic engagement at the Tisch College of Civic Life at Tufts University, will moderate the evening. Tickets are $10 at the door. All proceeds will benefit the Foundation for Educators at Lincoln-Sudbury.

Passover seder at First Parish

The First Parish in Lincoln will celebrate Passover with a family seder service and meal on Wednesday, April 5 at 6 p.m. in the Parish House (14 Bedford Rd.). The seder will have the elements of a traditional family haggadah and a meal of hummus and tabbouleh. It will be very participatory and feature activities for everyone in the family.

Passover celebrates the foundational story of Judaism—the release of Jews from captivity in Egypt described in Exodus. The spiritual themes of Passover remain central to the spiritual themes of Christianity and Unitarian Universalism, and are very much a part of the spiritual life of the First Parish in Lincoln. RSVPs are required. Please contact Mandy Beal, ministerial intern, at mandy@firstparishinlincoln.org or 857-208-3482.