Let’s put what happened on Tuesday in Wisconsin in perspective.   Sure, it was big – it was the first time in U.S. history that a governor that faced a recall election survived.  Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) came into office in January of 2011 – inheriting a $3.6 billion state budget deficit.   In the quest to put Wisconsin back on healthy economic footing, Gov. Walker took on public sector unions and their compensation packages.  With the help of a Republican controlled state legislature, he trimmed the power of public sector unions – with one example being that unions lost their power …

  I guess it is not a surprise to anyone that America is getting fatter.  It is all over the news – we have an obesity epidemic in this country. Diabetes is on the rise as well.   Being fat and obesity go hand in hand. Then again, just spend some time in public and you will avail yourself to all sorts of evidence that we are getting heavier.  Of course, what is particularly sad in the U.S. is that there is readily available high-calorie and tasty cheap food that is just all and out bad for you.   Yet it is far more difficult to find healthy and nutritious food that is as cheap to purchase as…

  Yes, here we are in the midst of graduation season.   Members of the Oliver Ames High School Class of 2012 receive their diplomas on Sunday at Frothingham Park.    Frothingham Park is one of the nicest settings for commencement ceremonies anywhere.   OA grads are fortunate.  As I have done in the past, here I submit a column of recommendations and reflections for the grads.   What I emphasize, and the tack I take here, is different from that I have emphasized and taken in the past.   (Yet anything I have recommended in the past, I am still good with and supporting today.) And, please, I’m …

  I read that Kate Middleton, who most likely will one day become the queen of England, followed a solemn and most noble royal custom and tribute and placed her wedding bouquet at the Tomb of the Unknown Warrior inside Westminster Abbey.  Interred in the tomb are the remains of a British soldier killed in World War I.  In his story last spring in the Daily Telegraph, Sean Rayment, a correspondent for the newspaper, provided this background on the royal legacy: The tradition began in 1923 following the wedding of Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon - the future Queen Elizabeth - to the Duke of York, who…

  I’m about to get back on the road, and the paths, and the fields, and all other surfaces.  Yep, get back to running.    For about two years now, I have been restricting my aerobic activity to hard indoor biking – sort of like spinning.  I like it a lot, and go full bore on the bike.  But I am getting back to running – today.   I hope my left knee can hold out.  I wonder though if I have finally done it in.   There is only so much pounding and ligament damage a joint can take. Anyway... I started to get serious about running when I was a sophomore in high school.  When I was a freshman, I …

  There has been a lot of discussion in the news recently about Native American ancestry. I’m not going to go much into the politics of the matter now.   Sen. Scott Brown and Elizabeth Warren – and their camps – can hash that out.  It all gets me thinking, though, that we should on the whole in society pay a lot more attention to the First People of this land, and learn about them and their history, laud their culture and accomplishments, and recognize the extraordinary and unfathomable hurt and persecution and injustice visited on them. Back on May 10, a “Muscato’s Musings” column ran which …

  Here we have part III of my “It Figures: Easton By The Numbers” series.   The first of the series It Figures: I ran on March 23, 2011.   The second  It Figures: II ran last summer, on July 15.   The style and formatting of this "It Figures" column is different than that of the first two.  For this installment, I go back to 1952 – yep, 60 years ago.   Back then Easton’s population was in the 6000-plus range. Town records show that the percentage breakdown for town spending in 1952 went like this: Schools 47.3 percent; Old Age Assistance 15.8 percent; Protection of Persons and Property 9.4 …

  One of my Facebook buddies is Erik Anderson, a fellow child of Easton and Oliver Ames High School grad. Erik, a few years younger than me, grew up on Seaver Street and now lives in North Carolina with his wife and children. Erik played hoops at OA, and also did some high school basketball coaching.  He loves his roundball.  Erik was what you call a basketball gym and playground rat, frequently looking and scouting for a game, a chance to play, for that opportunity to get in a "run" on the court. Actually, he is now into his mid 40s, and he still plays spirited and aggressive pickup …

  "Everything I am, or hope to be, I owe to my angel mother." ABRAHAM LINCOLN  My mother played sort of the backup and supportive role in our family, across many different areas of our lives.  My dad was a public figure, and he was distinguished in his field, and he was a character, and commanded a good deal of attention. Many people don’t know that my mother was highly influential in our family; she was a strong influence on my father, and on her children. My mom is 83 years old, and lives in a nice retirement community, about a mile and half from my sister and her husband and three kids, in…

  It was nice and heartening that the column I wrote – the one titled, Remembering The "Family" Markets In Easton that was published on Easton Patch last Thursday – stirred a happy foment of nostalgia and commentary about those days gone by.  And, here, let me explain a bit.   When one of my “Muscato’s Musings” columns posts on Patch, usually within 24 hours of the column being published, I post a link to the column on my Facebook page. Now, you know, among my Facebook friends there is a coterie of hard core Eastonians.   Some of the Tribe of Easton still live here in town, others live …

  I need to give a call out here to my journalist compadre, Johnny “Q” Quattrucci, for suggesting this topic for a column.   Q is sports editor for Gatehouse Media; his responsibilities include editing and writing stories for the sports section of the Easton Journal. Q recently sent me an email he wrote in which he said that he thought an interesting column would be one that focused on the family owned grocery markets in Easton that operated when we were kids in the late 1960s, and into the 1970s – this before the major chains bought up the stores, and the names changed from Harvey’s, …

  Gotta love it.   In this past weekend’s Wall Street Journal there was a column by Robert Wheelan; it was titled, “10 Things Your Commencement Speaker Won’t Tell You.”  No better time for this column – for the avalanche of graduation speeches is upon us.  I know commencement speeches. I have delivered one, and I have advised on others.     Mr. Wheelan's column contains wonderful and helpful wisdom. Then again that is a lot of what makes wisdom wisdom – it is wonderful and it is helpful. And here I share with you Number 5 on Mr. Wheelan’s list: 5. Help stop the Little League arms race. Kids' …

  Find your passion – preferably one that doesn’t drain you financially, but enriches you spiritually.  Admire and congratulate those with wholesome passions.  It was back around 1994 or 1995, a winter night after a local high school basketball game, and a group of us, including the coaches of one of the teams in the game – the team that won that night – went back to a home for a post-game party.  Well, the coaches were gathered around a TV set at the house watching that night’s game on tape.   The coaches were thoroughly in to it, talking about each play and going over strategy, and the …

  Ah, being a high school kid nowadays – it seems to be very expensive, here in Easton, and just about everywhere else in the Good Old U.S. of A.   User fees for sports and other extracurricular activities, the pressure to wear the most fashionable shoes and clothes, driving the fancy ride – and then this spring, I mean, we've got ourselves Spring Break and the prom.  Yikes.  Oliver Ames High School has done something smart for its prom; it has moved the event out of a fancy hotel in Boston, and to the South Shore, to Lake Pearl Luciano’s, a nice and classy function facility in Wrentham.  …

  My childhood friend was in Boston over the past few days.  Many years ago, during summers of the 1970s, when we were kids, we spent many weeks together at Stonehill College at boys’ and girls’ basketball camps. My friend’s name is Wally Ray; he is a distant cousin of NBA Hall of Famer and Boston Celtics great, Sam Jones, who was the co-director of some of those hoops camps at Stonehill all those years ago.  My dad was another co-director of those camps. Many Easton kids, Baby Boomers, have fond recollections of Sam Jones and the camps at Stonehill College. I was fortunate to be able to see …

So I’m at the convenience store, and I have to wait and wait in line because some guy is buying his lottery tickets.  And, you know, now, that there are about as many types of the scratch form of lottery tickets as there are choices of cheese in the supermarket.   I have someplace to be, buddy.   Well I really don’t – but I’m being irked. Another thing – when I am in traffic and I stop to let a car into the flow, I want the wave from the driver I have just accommodated and given some love and help.   How many people don’t give me the wave is beyond me.  Really, it boggles the mind.  Now I’m …

  Below continues the story that started on Monday, April 2, the day after April Fools' Day, in this space.  This is a fiction story rooted in fact, considerable fact.  If you haven't read the first part of the story, I recommend you do before reading part 2 which follows.  Things will make more sense that way. I was compelled and inspired to write a part 2 after the kind responses, the number of responses, I received on the first installment. Again, what is truth and what is fiction in this story will be surprising even to those who thought they knew my dad well (for example, not only did my…

  As I do now and then, I called an audible on this column. I was thinking for today to post the second of two parts of the tiny fiction short story that ran here last Monday. I was pleasantly surprised and appreciated very much that the story got so much attention – and I enjoyed and am thankful for the comments and reaction.   I think we are looking at Thursday for part two of two. But as for today I am on the subject of trees and bushes and flowering.   Last fall I did a story on foliage – and some of the best places in Easton to see the autumn foliage.  Well now the buds are on the trees …

  Chris England walked out from the storage closet that was in front of our classroom and behind a teaching station – the biology teaching station, which was a bank of dark stone with some sort of protective veneer that had a deep basin of a sink over which suspended was a gooseneck of metal faucet.  Chris “Crispy” England was our biology teacher – one of those “cool” teachers who “got it” – who understood kids, and who had the ability to actually engage his students in learning.   Now this was 1979 or 1980, for that was my sophomore year in high school – yes, I was Oliver Ames High School …

  It was back in the spring of 1999, maybe a week or so after the shooting massacre at Columbine High School in Colorado.  I was with a friend at the restaurant Pier 4 in Boston, to attend an event at which former Secretary of the Navy, Jim Webb, was speaking, and which he would also sign copies of his new novel, The Emperor’s General.  Jim Webb is what you call as standup as standup can be:  accomplished, honorable, courageous, and very smart.   I admire him tremendously.  At the time of the event at Pier 4, his career was that of a successful filmmaker and author.  He was a graduate of the …