This will be one of my columns in which a few of the players will be unnamed – or assigned aliases.  Not sure if this is necessary, in as much as the theft and subsequent shenanigans took place almost 30 years ago.   But, no matter, I will be respectful, as I always am, for requests of anonymity.  So, it is an early Friday night in May 1983, and four Oliver Ames High School seniors, all guys, are driving around Brockton.  They are in a 1977 Pontiac Firebird Esprit.  Sweet ride. Driving the car is its owner, who we will call Jim – but his name isn’t Jim. “We were over in Brockton on Pearl …

  My column today is inspired by a column which ran in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal.  Jason Gay is the author of the column, which is titled, “The 27 Rules of Conquering the Gym.” The piece provides, while mixing in smart humor, helpful and pragmatic advice on how to stick to, and reap the benefits from, many people’s New Year's resolution: exercise and get to the gym more.    Among the advice and reflection that Mr. Gay offers:    A gym is not designed to make you feel instantly better about yourself. If a gym wanted to make you feel instantly better about yourself, it would be a bar. No …

  I’m a big cat fan. I love cats. Small cats, big cats, domestic cats, wild cats – domestic-wild hybrids.  I’m an Oliver Ames High School graduate, and I competed in athletics for OA. That means I competed as a Tiger.  Many people don’t know that prior to the 1960s, the OA mascot was not a Tiger. OA teams were, variously, referred to as the Shoveltowners and the Amesmen. Fitting. Appropriate. But I like that OA took on the Tiger as a mascot. The tiger is agile, fierce, fast – and perhaps nature’s most efficient and successful hunter.  I was thinking about episodes from OA’s past in which the …

  As I wrote recently in this space, Oliver Ames High School has a fervent fan following across its sports teams – whether they are at home or on the road  In terms of the strong fan backing that OA enjoys on the road, to invoke sports lexicon – which I have done in this matter before – the school’s fans “travel well.”  You can analyze and break down the elements of why OA has such solid school and community support.  And you will no doubt discover a variety of elements and circumstances that contribute to it.   I do know that the Orange and Black has benefited from this support for just …

  And here I join the untold millions around the world who are posting online their wishes and hopes and thoughts for 2012.   This is what you do on the cusp of the new year.  Of course, since this is posting on Easton Patch, I will make my post fairly Easton centric and Easton relative.  I would like to say, first, that 2011 was a wonderful year for me.  Life is good.   For this I am thankful, and I feel fortunate – and, yes, this lapsed Catholic will still allow himself to feel blessed.  Okay, what I hope for in 2012.  This is a very small list of that for which I hope.   In the broad …

Shut in from all the world without,We sat the clean-winged hearth about, Content to let the north-wind roarIn baffled rage at pane and door,While the red logs before us beatThe frost-line back with tropic heat;  -From the poem, Snowbound, (1866), by John Greenleaf Whittier  Oh, how I enjoy a fire and a fireplace.  In the late 1980s, I had a friend, who lived in Boston, down to visit at my family’s home on Summer Street in North Easton. She walked into our home, and one of the first things she commented on was that we had a fireplace.  Fireplaces are not unusual in Easton, of course.   But, …

  I sometimes have difficulty – yet it doesn’t take me long to figure it out – trying to get a hold of why some people lack even a small quotient of graciousness and niceness and courteousness.  Really.   Okay, I can understand it if life has hit you particularly hard and visited on you bad breaks which are not your fault. Yet, so many people beset and afflicted with these circumstances remain upbeat and positive. But, there are also a good many people out there who have a lot going on and yet they are constantly tossing out bad attitude and cynicism and smarminess. I’ve sounded and hit this …

  The essence of feel good and soul enrichment during Christmastime and on Christmas Day is often rooted in childhood and a nostalgia for times past.  It never leaves us.    In one of the episodes of the hit TV series, Mad Men, broadcast on the AMC network, advertising executive, Don Draper, is making his pitch to Kodak executives for what he thinks should be the name of a new machine Kodak has created that spins and projects, one after another, the images from a cartridge of photo slides on to a screen. Don Draper talks about nostalgia; here is an excerpt from his presentation: Nostalgia - …

  Understandably, when Easton resident, Linda (Bosse) Charron, was diagnosed with invasive breast cancer in May 2007, she was in deep emotional distress.   Linda and her husband, Joe Charron, had just had their second child, a daughter, Jillian, a few months before, in January.  They also had a son, Jared, who was two months shy of his fifth birthday.   Linda needed a boost of remarkable comfort and warmth, and it showed up at her door in the person of Roberta Hobaica, who had recently finished up a successful round of treatment for her own breast cancer.  Roberta Hobaica had with her a …

  Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote with so much insight and so artfully and so accurately about so many things.   In his essay, Gifts, published in 1844, he advised and reflected thus: Rings and jewels are not gifts, but apologies for gifts.  The only gift is a portion of thyself.  Thou must bleed for me.  Therefore the poet brings his poem; the shepherd, his lamb; the farmer, corn; the miner, a gem; the sailor, coral and shells; the painter, his picture; the girl, a handkerchief of her own sewing.  This is right and pleasing, for it restores society in so far to its primary basis, when a man’s …

  Several years ago, I wrote a story for a local newspaper about kids not making the cut – that is, not making school sports teams.   I am revisiting the issue here. Over the past couple weeks, as the winter sports season commenced, young people here in Easton, and across America, have been cut from teams; they have been told that they are not good enough.  For the young person getting cut, it hurts – it hurts a lot.   We all need to be mindful of this. The first time that I as an athlete was intimately involved with the cut process was in the mid 1970s, when I tried out for the Easton Junior…

  So here we go – this coming Sunday, the New England Patriots visit Sports Authority Field at Mile High and the altar of Tim Tebow.  I’ve been a bit conflicted on the Tim Tebow thing.  You know, the starting quarterback for the Denver Broncos, who is a non-prototype NFL quarterback, and yet is managing to be the signal caller as the Broncos have been on a nice roll of victories.  It you aren’t much of a sports fan, or you have been abroad for a couple months, what is generating considerable interest, indeed very mild hysteria, are a couple primary elements in the saga:  1. That with Tebow, a…

  They are haute … and hot.  I mean, look at the photos. I am talking about the three smart, stylish, design savvy … and did I say hot? ladies,  and friends, who run a website and burgeoning media property called Three Haute Mamas that carries this tagline:  “life is short make it haute!"  Three Haute Mamas (www.threehautemamas.com) – founded and run by three haute and hot mamas – is media rich and is updated several times a week.   It produces commentary and tips on fashion and style; it reports on, and from, the best parties and philanthropic events.    Two of the haute and hot mamas are …

  Starting in 2010, the historic Hockomock League ceased to exist and was replaced with the Hockomock League Kelley-Rex Division for the large schools, and the Hockomock League Davenport Division, for the small schools.  As I wrote in my Monday column, I am not in with this decision.  The teams that make up the Kelley-Rex Division are Attleboro, Franklin, King Philip, Mansfield, and North Attleboro. Oliver Ames, Canton, Foxborough, Sharon, and Stoughton make up the Davenport Division.  On the whole, about the only positive I find about this realignment is that it gives tribute to three long-…

  I’ll come clean here – when the Oliver Ames High School football team clinched the Davenport Division title and a playoff berth over in Sharon on Thanksgiving Day with a win over the Eagles, I did not consider it a big deal.  I said so fairly loudly, in writing and verbally.   I believe strongly there should be still only one Hockomock League – not a Hockomock League Rex-Kelley Division (large schools) and a Davenport Division (small schools) – and the winner of the league should be the sole Hockomock participant in the Eastern Massachusetts playoffs. (People in Easton and in the …

  All sorts of karma and energy, some of it of this world, and maybe some of it beyond – all of it good – is circulating around this high school football game. Oliver Ames High School Athletic Hall of Fame member, Mike Bumpus, is flying in tonight from his home in Illinois to be at Gillette Stadium tomorrow morning to watch the 7-4-0 OA Tigers take on the 12-0-0 Concord-Carlisle Patriots in the Eastern Massachusetts Div. 3 Super Bowl. Kickoff is at 9. Mike (OA ’86), the high school All American lineman at OA and standout at Boston College, has more than just a tie to his alma mater at stake…

  “To advance and to encourage the study of horticulture, floriculture, and landscape architecture; to encourage the education of gardening and the protection and conservation of natural resources, and to promote civic beauty and roadside improvement in the town of Easton.” MISSION STATEMENT OF THE EASTON GARDEN CLUB How much better is life when you have a passion to do something good, to create something beautiful, to bring people together, to make people smile?  This is what the Easton Garden Club (ECG) does throughout the year in town, in place after place, across event after event, and …

  Thanksgiving is behind us – and we are in the last few days of November. Yep, ‘tis the season.  I was down at Queset House yesterday, at the inaugural Festival of Trees that the Easton Garden Club is running.   Let me tell you, with the beautiful trees and the lights and the Christmas music set in an awe-inspiring and historic mansion, and with kids delighting and laughing, and with the swirl of a spicy Yuletide scent in the air, I got me a major dose of Christmas and holiday spirit.  My column that will post on Wednesday will focus on the Festival of Trees, which runs until December 3 – …

  "All good things of this earth flow into the City because of the City's greatness."   PERICLES I had Thanksgiving dinner yesterday in Boston, on Beacon Hill.  I had a nice time.   I like getting into the city.   Even though the streets of Boston were, as a major city goes, vacant on Thanksgiving Day, the metropolis still emits and transmits energy and an enthusiasm. I have lived and worked in Boston, and lived and worked in New York City – two great cities.  As well, for a school year, I lived outside of Washington D.C.  I love all those cities.   We are fortunate in Easton in that we are …

  Kenneth "Ken" Martin lived simply and beautifully.  He had little concern for accumulating wealth, competing in social status, or “keeping up with the Joneses.”  His life was a one of goodness and service and gentleness.    Ken Martin, a lifelong resident of Easton, was an inspiration.  Ken was born with a developmental disability, which included a slight speech defect. How he confronted and handled that lifelong challenge made him and his life so admirable. Ken Martin died November 15 at Boston Medical Center from injuries he sustained in a single-person auto accident on November 3.   He …