Recently I was reminded that I live in a small town, and that reminder had overtones of an earlier time.  You know, before the Pony Express, back when you handed your letter to the stagecoach driver and told him to leave it with somebody in some distant town like Laramie, Wyo. or Scottsbluff, Neb. When one of my constituents wanted to send me a note, he apparently dropped it in the farebox of a Lexpress bus. When the money was taken out of the farebox to be counted, the note came out, too. The Transportation Coordinator took the note to the Selectmen’s Office, where the Clerk called me to …

Just after Thanksgiving I wrote that it had become a sort of universal holiday with huge ties to local things like the four big F’s—football, food, friends and family. Even the football is local, because many who do not watch the game on a regular basis find themselves sitting on cold bleacher seats watching two local high schools play while arguing about who beat whom 40 years ago. The food is always good, but an important part is family, with just about everything else revolving around that important element of our lives. But now, just a very short month later, we are all enveloped in what …

It’s been an interesting week. One of those early-senders-of-holiday-cards I wrote about a couple of weeks ago turned out to be the Obama family. Even their dog, Bo, signed the card. I know—at least 4 million other people got the same card, but I like it just the same. Newt Gingrich has never sent me a card nor has Mitt Romney, even though I mentioned him once in a Patch column. And a Patch reader with connections to MASS MoCA called me a jerk when it comes to art. Well, she was kinder than that, but she made her point and the way it all played out is the point of this column. A while back I …

Even before I graduated from high school, I had started working for an electrical company as an apprentice electrician. Ability to use physical tools like saws, drills, screwdrivers, pliers and the like was a must, and it was not acceptable to just do enough to get the job done. For instance, when you cut a piece of steel conduit with a hacksaw, a burr will be left on the inside and outside of the cut end. There are tools to remove those burrs because the inside burr may cut wires later pulled into that conduit and the outside burr may make threading difficult or may keep the conduit from …

As I was relaxing at my brother-in-law’s home in Amherst this past Thursday, I realized that Thanksgiving may well be the perfect holiday. I don’t mean because I get a really wonderful supper with almost none of the work associated with such events when they are at my house. My brother-in-law is a very good cook, but there is so much more than that to this holiday. It comes at a great time of year. For students, the end of the semester is still far enough away that real worry has not set in. The fall is almost never completely over and winter has usually not fully arrived.  There is still …

I have written about my preference for buying locally before.There are many reasons. One of them is Manz’s Law #268 which states, simply, if you can’t find it at one store, you are probably not going to easily find it elsewhere. There is a corollary, which is if you pass it up at one store because you think you can find it cheaper elsewhere, either you won’t or you will spend so much time and gas going to that greener pasture to get the desired item that you will wish you had bought it at the first place. Sometimes, you do buy something and then find it astoundingly cheaper elsewhere, but …

This past Friday was Veterans Day and, as I do every year, I was wearing three hats—as a member of the Board of Selectmen, as a veteran and as the Scoutmaster of a Lexington Boy Scout troop. After the ceremonies, there was the inevitable question from a reporter which sought to tie all of that together, especially the Boy Scouts and military parts. It was a good question, because it gave me a chance to talk about Robert Baden-Powell, who founded World Scouting more than one hundred years ago. He was a former British Army general who had seen his war and apparently did not like it -- even …

When the recent storm surprised us with not much snow, but a lot of damage, there were some obvious first steps. With six out of nine schools either completely dark or on emergency power and with access to several schools seriously impaired, closure was obvious. The need to delay trick-or-treating was another obvious measure given the number of homes without power, street lights dark, trees blocking the roads and sidewalks, and the very real possibility that there might be live wires buried in the debris.  A shelter was opened at the high school, where people without power could get something…

When I got up Sunday morning I was feeling pretty good. OK—maybe just a bit smug. My weekly column for Patch, since scrapped, was pretty much finished. The leaves in the front yard were raked and the grass cut for the last time until spring. Hockey wouldn’t start until the next weekend. And the rumors of Kim Kardashian’s divorce after just 72 days made my own marriage of 40 years look downright astounding. An early morning walk around the neighborhood revealed that this was going to be another one of those weeks. Almost nobody had power. We did, but would lose it later in the day. Cable went …

The recent cold mornings have reminded us all that fall really is upon us and, with snow possible by the end of the week, I have started to get serious about doing some of those things that I have been putting off. Like cleaning out the shed, something I started last summer ... or maybe the summer before that. Good grief—where did all this stuff come from? Most of what was in the shed was on the short list for one of three piles—junk, Freecycle, yard sale table. That is, until I came across my unicycle hanging in a corner. It should be noted at the outset that it took me two years to learn to…

The signs of impending winter are upon us. The leaves haven’t turned much and the weather is still warm it is true, but those are not the harbingers I look for. We picked the last of the apples from our two trees this weekend. It will be the last pie from those trees this year. Meg Muckenhoupt gave me an idea for next year when she said, “Hank, I’ve got two words to say to you.” I was relieved to find out that the words were “cider press.” I immediately checked on that and, while an assembled press is a bit pricey, there are plans for building one which looks like a great winter basement …

Let’s face it. Real life often happens in an eyeblink. One moment nothing can possibly go wrong. The next it is disaster and, sometimes, pure terror. We are taught to find a responsible adult or locate a police officer, or just call 911. They will fix it. I was reminded of all of this as my Boy Scout troop hiked in the White Mountains this past weekend. The temperatures were impossibly high for October. The view from Mount Moosilauke, one of the 4,000-footers, was spectacular. But the 12 miles we hiked in 11 hours were just as arduous as always, with boulders the size of houses. We could have…

It’s been an interesting couple of weeks. First, the Red Sox collapsed and, then three times I was asked a question which boiled down to what best prepared me for town government. I blathered on about desire to help and all of that, but I knew the real answer. It is all about baseball. Well, baseball generally, and Little League specifically. Deep down, there really is no other sport  as far as I am concerned. I play, coach and announce hockey. I watch and announce football. I have even taken to watching soccer on TV late at night. But, given a choice, I will watch and play baseball because …

It should not be a surprise that I go to a lot of meetings. Meetings have their drawbacks, but I live for those times when there is a piece of information so startling that it changes the way I think about things. It happened recently during a meeting of the Estabrook School Access Ad Hoc Task Force. When the idea of a new Estabrook School was broached last year, there was a statement made that a second access to the school grounds was a requirement. The only access that came to mind at the time was Robinson Road. Predictably, Robinson Road residents had something to say about the idea as did…

Last weekend was another one of those weekends. And, as so many of them do, it started with technology. The idea was to upgrade my home broadband router so I could add network attached storage—NAS to the techies—which would give me automated backup with backup for the backup. RAID technology and all of that. But I won’t bore you with the details. It was a 15-minute job that ended up taking two days and two visits to Geek Central, also known as MicroCenter in Cambridge. I was deeply into the complexities of routers and NAS when I awoke Saturday morning to a cold house. Fifty-four degrees …

This past Sunday was the 10th anniversary of 9/11 and as I stood at remembrance ceremonies held at the main firehouse in the morning and on our Battle Green in the early evening, it was time for somber reflection. The events of Sept. 11, 2001 really came home to me during a visit to New York shortly after the attack on the Twin Towers. As I have done many times before, in the early evening I walked across the Brooklyn Bridge to a favorite restaurant. And, as I always do, I paused halfway across to look back at the New York skyline. I have lived in several large cities and there is a magic to …

After two weeks at camp and not much attention since, a glance in the mirror revealed that my hair was looking much like the lawn (term loosely used) in front of the Lexington Post Office. It was time to visit one of the many shops in the area that could help with this problem. Most guys my age do not deal well with the idea of hair salons. I say “guys” because, while some men may visit salons, guys find it hard to do so. Trust me on this one. The owner of the Stephanie Louis Salon once assured me that she could do something with my hair.  I have not had the courage to find out exactly what …

I have some favorite days in every year. Many are connected with the schools, with one of my favorites being the day teachers come back. This past Monday, I got to sit on the stage to help greet the teachers. I did not completely believe they were any more ready than I was to accept that summer vacation was over, but their energy was undeniable.  As I looked out over a packed auditorium, I was a bit worried about what I was going to say. Oh, sure, introduce the Town Manager and my colleagues on the Board of Selectmen, but what then? My own brush with K-12 education was less than rosy. As a …

Out in the middle of the country there is a town of around 9,000 people called Alliance, Neb. And if you have ever lived anywhere around there, you know about Carhenge—a re-creation of Stonehenge using cars. Laugh all you want, but recently I watched a program on PBS called Carhenge—Genius or Junk? I have visited Carhenge because I once lived in Lincoln. Lincoln, Nebraska, that is. And of course I have lived in Lexington. Mass., not Nebraska although there is one there, too. The high school sports teams are called the Minutemen, too, although they use the image of the Concord Minute Man …

The draft of my column for this week was written on the back of a large envelope. “Oh, c’mon” you are probably saying. “That Abraham Lincoln-writing-by-the-light-of-the-fire stuff was old a hundred years ago.” It is true that I did not write by the light of a fire. There was one burning nearby, but I used a Coleman lantern, which my eyes really appreciated. I recently wrote that, when I retired, it would be to a place where you would not be able to reach me by phone or Internet. I was thinking Paris at the time. In fact, for the past week I have been without any reliable links to the outside …