High Hopes for Tabor Drama ‘In the Heights’

They make it look so easy, those Tabor Academy drama students. Every year, the young actors pull off another musical production as if they were born to play the part. On second thought, they don’t merely pull it – they smash it. That’s why this year’s selection of In the Heights, created by famed Hamilton […] Read more »

Love Your Library

Before smartphones, before computers, before iPads, the Internet and Google, there was the library. There was the card catalog and the Dewey Decimal System. There were encyclopedias, dictionaries, and thesauruses that had mass and density, and you had to use your fingers to flip through actual paper pages, not pages that are swiped aside and […] Read more »

National Expert Teaches Kids Online Safety

When 99 percent of a group of sixth graders under age 13 admits to having either a Snapchat or Instagram social media account, which by law requires an app user to be at least 13 years of age, you quickly understand why Katie Greer does what she does. Greer, a nationally recognized digital safety expert […] Read more »

Tri-Town Profile: Pete Smith

Name: Pete Smith Age: 82 (But he made us guess) Lives in: Marion How he got here: Born and raised… Favorite Tri-Town place: “I kinda like this place,” he says gesturing with his hands inside the Sippican Historical Society Museum office at 139 Front Street. “I must. I’ve volunteered here for over twenty years.” What […] Read more »

The Autistic Bard’s Quest and Fight Against Executive Dysfunction

This is the epic tale of how I fight a continuous battle against executive dysfunction. Executive function (self-regulating skills) affects three key areas of a person’s ability to carry out a task: planning, organizing, and completing. With executive dysfunction, one’s ability to understand how to do a task, get started, organize thoughts, focus, follow through, […] Read more »

Friendly Competition between Students and Staff

The annual sixth graders versus staff basketball game at Rochester Memorial School on Friday night was a close one, but the teachers remain undefeated. The night’s referees were Butch Lepage and retired sixth-grade teacher Danni Kleiman. Everyone rose when the RMS band, led by Chris Williamson, played the “Star-Spangled Banner.” At the end of the […] Read more »

Process This!

We walked into the enormous health care collective, you know, those medical campuses where patients are herded through a maze of reception desks before landing in an exam room to wait. We had arrived to begin the “process.” Now just for the record, my husband and I have become accustomed, as I’m sure you have, […] Read more »

Groundhog Day Ritual Revisited

The annual reenactment of the groundhog’s mystical weather prediction during mid-winter February 2nd is an ancient symbolic ritual dating back to the religious observance of Candlemas, particularly in Germany. In Germany, a badger might have been the prognosticator of good news for a short winter, but only if he didn’t see his shadow. If he […] Read more »

Hey Groundhog…

…We are watching you. We usually make a pretty big deal out of Groundhog Day every year. As of February 2, we are officially halfway through the winter. That is always something to celebrate, and I imagine even more so if you’re a groundhog wintering beneath the ground in a dark and dank hole. And […] Read more »

Local Mission Group Heads to Puerto Rico

Some members of St. Rose of Lima Church in Rochester are heading on a mission trip to Puerto Rico, joining two other parishes as part of the Cranberry Catholic Collaborative’s Mission Team. The group of predominantly older children and young adults, along with supervising adults, got a taste of what it is like to grow […] Read more »