The historic, 180-ton, 110-foot Dutch cargo-class square-rigger that carried 135 passengers some grueling 10 weeks at sea across more than 3,000 miles of the world’s deepest and stormiest ocean was not commissioned to carry people at all. However, in 1620 it was contracted from co-owner Christopher Jones by pilgrims tired of religious persecution and willing […] Read more »

            What do you get when your stage play has to move to the great-out-of-doors, it rains, a cement mixer accents pre-performance run-throughs and you have to replace two actors with very short notice?! Oh, and let’s not forget the Zoom auditions.             You get the Marion Art Center’s production of “Good People,” the Tony Award-winning dark […] Read more »

            For many, the idea of living with sharks is a fairly new phenomenon. After all, sharks like warm water – right? Sharks are not that common around the northeast – right? Most sharks stay in tropical locations – right? Wrong! Spend a little time with well-known and highly-respected shark expert Dr. Greg Skomal, and you’ll […] Read more »

            I was having lunch a couple of summers ago with noted double threat Helen Wan, novelist/lawyer, and as I complained about writer’s block and misrepresented my world-class procrastination, she recommended a book called Daily Rituals. I picked up a copy soon after and promptly put off reading it in keeping with my usual, shiftless style.             This […] Read more »

            Young athletes consistently face jumps in the level of competition throughout their careers. Whether it’s a jump in divisions in town league or making the transition to a travel team, be it club or AAU, they’re constantly forced to adjust on the fly.             But there may not be a bigger jump in competition than the […] Read more »

            Looking out along the shoreline of Little Bay in Fairhaven, at least several miles in both directions, my wife Jan and I spend late afternoons bird-watching a number of Ospreys’ air acrobatics, plunging down from nearly a hundred feet with a splash below the surface of the water, and then come up clutching a flopping […] Read more »

            The idea is barely beyond infancy, but by Monday morning, the baby weighed over 400 pounds.             A group called Tri-Town Learning Community (TLC) has formed to estimate and potentially try to address the dilemma that working parents will face when the academic year starts and their children are at school only some of the time. […] Read more »

After the loss of her three young children and her husband, feeling lonely, rich and restless, Elizabeth Taber returned to Marion for her final years to enrich the community and “put some snap into her village.” In 1891, under architect Williams Gibbons Preston, Elizabeth’s dream was realized in the Marion Music Hall. A historic and […] Read more »

            One of the many grooming skills I learned from my Mother was how to keep my hair neat and tidy. She valued all things clean. Clean floors, polished furniture, crisp freshly laundered sheets, but more than these, clean bodies including fingernails – and hair topped her list.             Growing up at a time when showering daily […] Read more »

            Old Rochester Regional High School Principal Mike Devoll had so much to manage on Saturday that he forgot to give his opening remarks, but even after Valedictorian Rachel Perry spoke, he realized he had to take his turn at the podium because of what he needed to share.             Devoll recalled telling faculty and staff at […] Read more »