Rochester Historical Society

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The October 18 meeting of the Rochester Historical Society will feature a program by Sharon and Woody Hartley about their cranberry business in Rochester. The meeting is at 7:00 pm at the East Rochester Church Museum, 355 County Road. All are welcome. Refreshments will follow the program.

Come early and visit our “Farming in Rochester: Past and Present” display, the history of farming told in stories and pictures.

The Museum will also be open each Sunday in October from 1:00 pm to 3:00 pm. Visit our gift shop for all things Rochester from T-shirts and sweatshirts to Rochester books and cards.

More Pleas to Stop Menthol Cigarette Ban

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Last time it was the Coalition for Responsible Retailing (CRR) and a Marion liquor store owner asking the Marion Board of Health to reconsider a pending bylaw to ban flavored tobacco and nicotine products, including menthol cigarettes; on October 10 it was the non-profit Massachusetts Association of Minority Law Enforcement Officers (MAMLEO), and the Washington D.C. based think tank R Street Institute.

In a letter dated September 27 from MAMLEO President Larry Ellison, Ellison says his association stands with the Board of Health in its initiative to discourage minors and adults from using tobacco products, but warned the board that a ban on menthol cigarettes would have unintended consequences – something introduced to the BOH last meeting by Dennis Lane of the CRR.

It’s no secret, writes Ellison, that members of the minority communities comprise the majority of menthol cigarette smokers, and a ban on menthol would have a disproportionate impact on them.

“Understanding that Marion has a very small community of color, the Board of Health may not be fully aware of these consequences,” wrote Ellison, “and I therefore feel obligated to respectfully bring them to your attention. This is particularly important if your intent in banning menthol comes with the hope that other communities will follow your actions.”

According to Ellison, 30 percent of cigarettes in the state arrive from outside Massachusetts and are sold on the black market. Banning menthol cigarettes or limiting access to them would cause the criminal market to expand, place an additional “unfunded burden on law enforcement,” and lead to “a disproportionate impact [that] this illicit trade will have on communities of color.”

Banning menthol cigarettes, asserts Ellison, would create “yet another opportunity to criminalize the Black community by enabling the excuse for biased law enforcement.”

“Finding a menthol cigarette in the wrong car, at the wrong time could be justified by some as cause for further investigation, and a deeper violation of civil rights merely because the individual is a smoker,” says Ellison. “It may sound like a dramatization to suggest such a scenario, but one need only look at the national news to see it is a reality in our nation, and it causes great harm to many people while it puts the law enforcement officers at great risk.”

It seems senseless to make matters worse for the Black community, wrote Ellison, by making a product illegal instead of furthering anti-tobacco education and stricter enforcement of sales “that protect all citizens, including minors equally.”

After the meeting last month, BOH member Betsy Dunn commented that the intent of the menthol ban was never related to race, asking, “Why do they always have to make something racial? I find that unconscionable.”

Nicolas John, Northeast regional manager of the R Street Institute, asked the board to reconsider banning flavored electronic nicotine products and cautioned against banning mint, menthol, peppermint, and wintergreen flavors, particularly because they are popular with adults, especially those who have switched from traditional combustible cigarettes to the seemingly safer e-cigarette.

John advocated for tobacco harm reduction, emphasizing the role that e-cigs and ‘vaping’ have in reducing cigarette-related diseases.

Banning flavored electronic nicotine discourages smokers from seeking the safer alternative, said John.

“While well-intentioned, this legislation will adversely affect public health by limiting access to safer alternatives to combustible cigarettes to the very people that this bill aims to protect,” said John.

John urged the board to consider Public Health New England’s conclusion that e-cigs are “no less than 95 percent safer than combustible cigarettes.”

“I applaud the efforts of the Marion Board of Health to reduce prevalence of smoking and associated diseased,” said John. “However, it is important that the potential of e-cigarettes to mitigate risks associated with combustible cigarettes be recognized if we wish to encourage a healthful populace.”

The board was satisfied and asked no further questions, nor did members make comments on the content of the discussion.

The next meeting of the Marion Board of health is scheduled for October 24 at 4:30 pm at the Marion Town House.

Marion Board of Health

By Jean Perry

 

Tabor Academy Hosts Open House

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On Sunday, October 15, Tabor will host their annual Fall Open House from 12:30 pm to 3:30 pm. Designed to provide a comprehensive look at the school’s programs and facilities, the day includes presentations by faculty leaders about the academic program and the unique Marine Science offerings at the School by the Sea. Programs in athletics, arts, and student life will also be presented in detail. The Open House begins in the Fireman Center for Performing Arts in Hoyt Hall at 235 Front Street in Marion. The day will end at 3:30 pm after a free flowing Curricular and Co-curricular Fair allowing prospective students and families the opportunity to meet informally with Tabor students, teachers and coaches, college counselors, and members of the Parents Association based on their areas of interest. Please pre-register for Tabor Academy’s Fall Open House program at www.taboracademy.org/openhouse.

“We are eager to meet area families interested in Tabor Academy and hope our expanded programming will give families the best look at the many incredible opportunities our community provides,” shared Bobbi Krein, Director of Admissions.

Rochester Artists Host an Art Show and Sale

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“The Monday Morning Painters” of the Rochester COA will hold an art show and sale on Saturday, October 14 at the Rochester Senior Center, 67 Dexter Lane, from 10:00 am to 3:00 pm. A portion of the sales will go to the Friends of the COA. Lunch will be available courtesy of the Friends. The following artists will be participating:

Terry Laspesa is a new artist in Rochester . She has taken classes in Harwich, MA and in Meriden, CT. Terry was very fortunate to have lived on Wychmere Harbor in Harwichport, which provided her with a view of the ever-changing water and the environment that it supports. When the spirit moves, that is when she creates. Terry is a free spirit who incorporates that freedom into her artwork. Terry was part of the Guild of Harwich artists and participated in Marion’s Arts in the Park. Some of her earlier works have been made into prints.

Helen Johnson is primarily a self-taught watercolorist. She has no formal art training, but has taken advantages of workshops, demonstrations, and classes led by local artists, as well as learning by working with fellow artists. She is a member of the Canalside Artists, Marion Art Center, and the Taunton Art Association.

Exploring art in many areas since high school, Betty Beaulieu has studied with various local artists. The Rochester artist has focused her interest in local history on preserving past and present local scenes in watercolor and oil paintings. Her paintings have won awards in many local art shows. Betty is a member of the Marion Art Center, Taunton Art Assoc., and Bourne Wareham Art Assoc.

A graduate of MassArt, Jane Egan is a multifaceted artist who works with a variety of mediums, including oil paint, watercolor, and pastel. Among Jane’s most recent accolades, she was awarded “Best of Show” for pastel works in both the Bourne Wareham Art Association and Taunton Art Association member shows. Her pastel works have been juried into surrounding gallery exhibitions and national shows. Jane’s works have also been on exhibit at the Marion Art Center. Jane is an active member of the Bourne Wareham Art Assoc., Pastel Painters Society of Cape Cod, Taunton Art Assoc., Cape Cod Art Assoc., and Marion Art Center.

Jennifer Cipriano’s artistic experience includes a preference for oil painting, but also other mediums such as watercolor. She creates landscapes, botanical paintings, and animal renderings. She is a graduate of the UMass Dartmouth College of Visual and Performing Arts. Before retiring from a corporate position, she previously worked in the textile industry, retail advertising, and was a freelance scrimshander for nine years with her works being sold nationwide. Jennifer is a member of the Bourne Wareham Art Association and the Marion Art Center.

After retiring from a career in nursing, Janet McDonald became a volunteer at the Plymouth Center for the Arts in her hometown of Plymouth, where she was introduced to a lively art world. Since her first beginners watercolor class seven years ago, she has fallen in love with this magical medium. She is also a member of the Taunton Art Association and the Marion Art Association. She currently paints four times a week with the Rochester COA painters, the Bourne Canal Side Artists, the Duxbury Tarkiln Painters, and the Marion Art Center. She enjoys attending watercolor workshops to broaden her knowledge and style. She has won numerous ribbons and awards. She is so glad she took that first watercolor class.

Lynnette F. Torres graduated from Vesper George School of Art in Boston. She has worked in the commercial art world for over 30 years having spent the past 28 years working as the design/art director/production planner for a local screen print company. The mediums she enjoys are pen and ink, pastel, and watercolor. Lynnette is a member of the Rhode Island Watercolor Society and the Plymouth Center for the Arts. She is currently pursuing watercolor.

Over the past few years, Marion artist Elizabeth Kirke has enjoyed a myriad of subjects, employing pastels, acrylics, and more recently watercolors. She holds a BA in Art History with a minor in Art Education from University of Massachusetts Amherst.

SHS Classic Film Series

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The October Classic Film for the Sippican Historical Society and the Marion Council on Aging is Psycho, which will be shown on Friday, October 13 at 7:00 pm at the Music Hall. This movie directed by Alfred Hitchcock remains one of the best films ever made. It is a movie that will stay with you for a lifetime and scare you practically to death. It is not for the weak at heart. A secretary working in a real estate office in Phoenix steals $40,000 and decides to run off to California to meet her boyfriend. Along the way she stays overnight in a sleazy motel during a thunderstorm and she never leaves. If you can stand it, find out why.

Come early to hear music provided by Truman Terrell on the piano and Bob Sanderson on the clarinet before the movie begins. David Pierce will share some observations at the movie’s conclusion.

Marion’s New Master Plan

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To the Editor;

The next public outreach forum on Marion’s new Master Plan will be held on Saturday, October 14, at 9:00 am in the Sippican School multi-purpose room. Marionites will have an opportunity to learn and ask questions about this vision for our town.

Three years in the making, the Master Plan is the product of five public workshops, hundreds of comments by advisory groups and residents, prior years’ Master Plans, as well as the expertise of our consultants at SRPEDD (Southeastern Regional Planning & Economic Development District).

The final-draft version of the Master Plan can be viewed and downloaded from www.srpedd.org/marion-master-plan, and from the Marion Town website homepage www.marionma.gov. Printed copies are available at the Town Clerk’s office, the Police Station, and the Elizabeth Taber Library. Townspeople will see that this document’s colorful, concise, easy-to-read format presents our community’s vision of our town for the next decade and beyond.

Our next step as a town is to approve the Master Plan, then begin implementing the most urgent and feasible ideas with further community input, analysis, and creativity. The Planning Board asks that you familiarize yourself with your new Master Plan before coming to Town Meeting on October 23rd so you can cast an informed vote.

Taxpayer dollars and much hard work by a great number of your fellow citizens have gone into producing this important state-mandated document. Our Master Plan is a key tool to guide Marion into the future — a future that affects and depends on us all.

Questions? Contact Marion’s new Town Planner Gil Hilario at ghilario@marionma.gov.

Sincerely,

Jennifer Francis, Marion Planning Board

Wendy Cullum, Master Plan Advisor

 

The views expressed in the “Letters to the Editor” column are not necessarily those of The Wanderer, its staff or advertisers. The Wanderer will gladly accept any and all correspondence relating to timely and pertinent issues in the greater Marion, Mattapoisett and Rochester area, provided they include the author’s name, address and phone number for verification. We cannot publish anonymous, unsigned or unconfirmed submissions. The Wanderer reserves the right to edit, condense and otherwise alter submissions for purposes of clarity and/or spacing considerations. The Wanderer may choose to not run letters that thank businesses, and The Wanderer has the right to edit letters to omit business names. The Wanderer also reserves the right to deny publication of any submitted correspondence.

ORR on Track for Fall Playoff Sweep

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With Old Rochester coming off an extremely successful season that saw their overall athletics win-loss record place in the top 10 in all of Eastern Massachusetts, it’d be easy to expect a bit of a slide back to the norm.

Nope.

With the fall sports year just past the halfway point, the Bulldogs are on pace to qualify for the postseason with every single one of its nine teams — golf, boys’ and girls’ soccer, football, field hockey, volleyball, and boys’ and girls’ cross country.

“I think we’re off to an even better start than last year,” Old Rochester Athletic Director Bill Tilden said. “I don’t track it specifically, but you usually have a feel that all of your programs are in the mix, and I think all of our teams are looking for the postseason.”

ORR had the best aggregate record of the 37 schools in The Boston Globe’s Ames Division 4 last year, and is ahead of last year’s fall pace of 55-44-11.

The girls’ volleyball and girls’ soccer teams have already qualified for the postseason, volleyball getting in on the strength of a 3-2 win over Apponequet. The 10-2-1 squad is led by Libby Mitchell, one of the best setters in the conference, along with outside hitters Natalia Wierzeicki and Ella Vercellone.

As for the soccer team, they won their last three games in dominant fashion, outscoring Diman, Seekonk, and Wareham by a combined score of 22-1.

A look at what’s happening at Old Rochester, Old Colony and Tabor:

Old Colony

Lights! Camera! Homecoming!

It’s Homecoming Week for Old Colony, and thanks to a donation of lights from a local company, there will be a rare sight — night games on campus. The girls’ soccer team played Tuesday night, the boys’ soccer team followed on Wednesday, and the football team plays Upper Cape Friday night at 7:00 pm under the portable lights in Rochester.

“It’s going to be a great week. We’re trying to blow it up a bit, really open the doors and let people see what Old Colony is all about,” Superintendent Aaron Polansky said.

“For us, playing under the lights at home, it doesn’t get much better than that,” said football coach Brandon Mendez.

The football team has been ruining home games for its opponents of late — of the Cougars’ four straight wins, three have come on the road.

The latest win came Friday night at Bristol-Plymouth, a thriller that the Cougars won in overtime, 22-14. The hero was Jarred Gagne, who scored the touchdown in OT to put them ahead then ended B-P’s hopes with an interception to seal the win.

Tabor Academy

It was a great weekend in Marion, as the school inducted a second class into its Athletic Hall of Fame and had the campus buzzing with lots of action.

Honored with induction into the Hall were: Chester Hill (Class of 1937), Edward Kakas II (1960), Conrad Deneault (1964), Jennifer Sherbrooke Palmer, Alison Brewer (1996), James Gowing, the 1971 hockey team and the 2004 girls soccer team.

The biggest highlight might have been from the legs of junior Aly Hussein, one of New England’s best scholastic runners; he broke his own course record with a 16:04 time for Tabor.

            Riley Suh scored the only goal of the game in a girls’ soccer win, while Bill Zhang scored both goals in a boys’ soccer win. Annie Berry scored twice in a 2-1 field hockey win. The volleyball team also took home a nice win in five games over Thayer Academy.

Several Tabor alums are playing at top collegiate programs, but no one is on a better squad than Molly Bent (class of 2016), who is a sophomore playing for the UConn women’s basketball team. The team is already scrimmaging in advance of the November 1 season opener.

ORR

The season is only five games old, but the ORR football team has now been involved in two of the most entertaining games in recent memory.

In front of a full house Friday night, the Bulldogs lost a 36-33 thriller to visiting Somerset-Berkley, their first loss of the season. Combined with their season-opening win over Wareham, it’s added some drama to a year otherwise marked by blowouts.

Despite the loss, ORR will almost certainly be in the playoffs if it can beat Fairhaven this Friday night on the road.

“We shouldn’t have a problem getting in, I think we have a good shot,” Tilden said, noting that the loss to Somerset was a good test of the team’s resolve. “I think we’re a better team for it, gets us ready for competition — that was the first team I think matched up with us well depthwise, and it was very intense. I think both teams were running out of gas in the end.”

Somerset Berkley is in its first year in the South Coast Conference and has some strong programs — none moreso than the field hockey team, which regularly wins games by double digits and has some very strong girls AND boys playing (a quirk of the state’s rules).

In fact, when ORR lost to Somerset-Berkley 3-0, it was quite the moral victory for the 6-2-2 Bulldogs.

“We were the only team that tied them last year (0-0), and 3-0 was a good score for this year,” ORR coach Polly Lawrence said. “I have a very hard-working team, the kids are still sort of trying to get used to each other, they’re doing well.”

Lawrence spotlighted the play of Kaitlyn Kelly, Ali Hulsabosch, and leading scorer Arissa Francis, and was pleased with the efforts of sophomore starters Cece Prefontaine, Kate Marsden, and Lila Gendreau.

Both crosscountry teams were perfect heading into Tuesday’s tri-meet vs. Dighton-Rehoboth and Seekonk, led by Maddie Martin and Sam Ball on the girls’ side, Adam Sylvia and Evan Tilley for the boys’.

By Jonathan Comey

 

Thanksgiving Pie Sale

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The Rochester Women’s Club is again holding their annual Thanksgiving Pie Sale. Members will be making 9-inch homemade apple, pumpkin and squash pies that will be sold for $15. Order ahead by calling Marsha at 508-322-0998 no later than Friday, November 17. Pies must be picked up at the 37 Marion Road Clubhouse on Tuesday, November 21 between 3:00 – 5:00 pm.

Mattapoisett Lions Club Family Fun Festival

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The Mattapoisett Lions Club proudly presents the second annual (Free!) Family Fun Festival on Saturday, October 21 from noon to 4:00 at Shipyard Park (rain date is October 22). Bring the family down for hayrides, pin the nose on the pumpkin, coloring station, corn hole toss, pumpkin patch, goody bags, apple cider, hot chocolate and more. All ages welcome.

Academic Achievements

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The following Tri-Town residents have graduated from Wentworth Institute of Technology in Boston. The university held its summer commencement on August 20, 2017:

– Noah Steven Beaulieu of Marion

– Andrew S. Hughes of Mattapoisett

– Jonathan A. Barroso of Rochester