TodayzHistory

       February 5, 2023 marks the 45th anniversary of the Blizzard of ‘78, a catastrophic nor'easter that caught New England by surprise, dropping 27 inches onto the 21 inches that previously fell two weeks before, killing nearly 100 people, injuring 4,500, and causing more than $500 billion in damage (Patriot Ledger, February 5, 2022).  The suddenness of the storm, despite the best efforts of meteorologist Harvey Leonard in his first year, stranded many on the Mass Pike and shut things down for three days.  There have most definitely been worse storms since, but this one will always stand out for me, and will forever remind me of three people in my life;  Peter Gosselin, Leo Lussier, and Mark Tebo.      I was a hyperactive fourth grader at Taft Elementary School in the winter of ‘77-’78, but before that attended the North Uxbridge School (later named Victoria Blanchard school after the respected principal in charge w...

                 One thing I think we all have in common is that the last few years have robbed us of things we would have traditionally expected.  Birthdays, graduations, funerals, classes, ball games, and many other social interactions that we took as standards, unceremoniously disappeared from our lives.  People, events, and memories were lost to a virus that didn’t care.  Yet, periods of time such as this can also force you to reflect on all the things in your life that you did and do have, and often, wrongfully, also took for granted.  Cogs large and small that keep the machine that is your life chugging faithfully along, regardless of what may get in the way.        I have really made an effort to be grateful for what I have, but I know there are many things in my life that are long overdue for the attention they deserve.  So, here is my modest attempt to remedy any slights. I ...

        I live in a log cabin surrounded by three acres of woods, a place that has a different kind of magic with each season.  I’ve lived here for nearly 30 years, and have enjoyed the combination of solitude and close proximity to Route 146 and downtown Uxbridge.  It has been a great place to raise a family. If you weren’t looking for my house, and hopefully you’re not, you would probably miss it.  And I dig that.  But, in the last couple of years I have became more aware of the plant life that was obscuring my view of anything past the edge of our (now drought riddled) lawn, and it began to make me feel more claustrophobic.  The natural wall that I had always seen as a protection from the intrusions of the world was now slowly making me feel more and more like a prisoner in my own home.  It was time to tackle the immense task of clearing it away.      I have no idea what the scientific names for any of these p...

       Yesterday I closed the book on my thirtieth year of teaching, and, like every other year,  it is forcing me to reflect on what the previous ten months have meant and the effects they have had.  Most years, I fall into a melancholy, mostly thinking of the seniors that have graduated and I may very well never see again, and how I will miss the daily interactions with my students that simultaneously energize and exhaust me.  After the hybrid hot mess of 2020-2021 that we somehow duct taped into a leaky raft that barely got us to shore, we all had higher hopes for 2021-2022.  It turns out, despite a relative return to normal, this year brought its own challenges that may have been worse.     Don’t get me wrong.  Back in person was a breath of air (I can’t say fresh air because we were still in masks), and having everyone’s partial faces all in the same room was wonderful.  And as the year went on, we seemed to get ...

     Choosing to take a path in life can bring a varying mix of fear and exhilaration.  It can also be one of the few things that causes authentic surprise, because you never really know what opportunities await as you take this new avenue.  Whether it's a new job, a new relationship, or having a child, each brings an endless amount of unforeseen scenarios, both pleasant and painful.  When I chose to teach, I never could have expected that it would allow me to travel to the likes of D.C., England, Scotland, and Italy, or experience winning a high school super bowl as an assistant coach.  But, the most unexpected and vivid memory that I’ve been able to experience because of my time at Uxbridge High School was a three minute brush with the Boss himself.      This all begins with the Big Dig, a huge public undertaking to beautify Boston and simplify travel through it.  One part of this project was the replacing of t...

             I am old enough to understand what the Cold War felt like.  The constant buzz of nuclear holocaust and being tormented by images of the same in the movie “The Day After”.  It seemed like every bad guy in every movie (Stripes, Spies Like Us, Rocky IV, every James Bond movie, etc.), drama or comedy, was a Soviet soldier, KGB agent, or East German spy. They could be formidable enemies or clownish imbeciles, but they always lost to the American good guy.  I was graduating from Westfield State (back then) College when Communist Russia fell. The Berlin Wall was torn down, and Roger Waters celebrated with a star-studded concert in Berlin of Pink Floyd’s, aptly named, “The Wall”.  By my first year of teaching in 1991,  Soviet satellite nations started to break away from Russia.  Ukraine was one of them.  Who knew it would lead to the events of 2022?       There’s quite a bit to unpac...