Local voices chime in on a variety of topics.
Like many of my fellow Gen X’ers, I once watched the 1996 film “Swingers,” starring Vince Vaughn and Jon Favreau, with religious fervor.
About a month ago, my son officially moved to Rhode Island to attend the Providence Fire Academy, making it the first time in the 24 years that my wife and I have been together that we don’t have a child living in the house with us.
After 16 seasons of working Holiday retail hell, six of which I was forced to listen to a looping disco Christmas tape, I run with all possible haste away from Black Sabbath Friday and Soul Sacrifice Cyber Monday.
Instead, I offer a more substantial but totally unattainable Holiday and New Year’s wish list:
Bull riding is not rooted in ranch work. Real cowboys have far more important tasks, and no one on a working ranch would waste time forcing an animal into a frantic display that would make life harder for them both. Bull riding is nothing more than a contrived and inhumane spectacle.
Plastic pollution begins with production. Our Manchester Coca-Cola Company is fueled by good intentions, its corporate purpose ‘to refresh the world’. It helps mitigate the impacts of climate change by ‘using 35% to 40% recycled material in our primary packaging, including increasing recycled plastic use to 30% or 35% globally, as well as collecting 70% to 75% of the number of bottles and cans introduced into the market annually’. Yet, harnessing 100,000 to 150,000 gallons of water daily from the industry’s primary source, the Merrimack River, for the purpose of beverage production, would seemingly put the river at risk.
Instead of Howdy Doody we had Scooby Do. We heard all about Woodstock and the Summer of Love but watched the Watergate hearings on TV with our Mom and raced home every day after school to watch Dark Shadows. My older siblings loved Bandstand and the Jerry Blavet show on our local Philly TV stations. My little sister and I watched Soul Train. One of my older siblings and I compared our childhood experiences once and realized they were nothing alike. It was like we were raised in two different families. And by two different sets of parents.
For the uninitiated, the premise of this dazzling 2019 short film is deceptively simple: a bunch of kittens dressed in Christmas sweaters and scintillating cocktail outfits are making quite merry at a gathering in an affluent, modernly-decorated loft.
Supporters claim consolidating SAUs will “return control to local school boards.” But how can local boards exercise meaningful control when a countywide administrator — elected by people who may live 50 miles away — controls all major operational decisions?
While something should be done to help support the families and taxpayers of Claremont to ensure adequate education and oversight, the payday loan with 4% interest and strings attached is not the answer. There is a better solution to the immediate problem in Claremont.
When a person applies for Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI), it is because they have suffered a disability so great that they no longer have the ability to work to support themselves financially. Though there are many requirements to qualify for disability, the applicant’s medical condition is the key part of the SSDI application process.