Well, another year has whizzed by. It seems as though we were just anticipating Memorial Day, the official start of summer soon to be followed by the Fourth of July, fireworks, the road race, ice cream at the “Slip” (new owners next year), and a long hot summer. It all goes by so fast.
This year I resolve to write only good news. No Town Hall controversies. No local politics. Definitely nothing about those folks down in Washington pretending to govern. Especially nothing about the current tenant in the Peoples’ House and his grand ballroom, triumphal arch or gold décor that he says we don’t have to pay for. Nope, none of that. Only good news. Yup, just good news.
So, have you looked at your property tax bill yet? Wow! Oops, that resolution didn’t last long.
I long for the days when our little village was just a rest stop on the way to the Cape. A simpler time when us “Townies” could take advantage of small-town corruption and rely on bribery to lesson our tax burden. You could “pay off” an Assessor, who was likely your neighbor, to make a slight adjustment to your tax bill, with a basket of tomatoes from your garden.
A friend of mine is an Assessor. His garden is a lot bigger than mine. Last year he gave me a nice bunch of kale. It was delicious. He can keep his kale next year!
Okay, enough of this kvetching. I am sure dear readers that you are tired from the holidays. All that shopping, wrapping, travel and visiting relatives must be stressful. Therefore, I feel obliged to update you on important information you may have missed during all of the end-of-year festivities.
Down in Florida where it is warm, a woman homeowner is facing over $165,000 in fines for parking her car on her own lawn. Apparently, the city of Lantana does not allow on-street parking, so since there are four family members living at her address, each with a car, she has been parking her car with two tires on her grass. She has been committing this dastardly deed of parking on an “unapproved surface/grass/walkway” since 2019.
The city also assessed her additional fines totaling $16,125 for “cracks in the sidewalk” and another $47,375 for failure to fix her fence in a timely fashion while she was waiting for an insurance claim. The fence was blown down in a “major storm”. To add insult to injury, after numerous appeals, the Florida Supreme Court declined to hear her case.
Closer to home, USA Today notes that a sleep scientist (who will remain nameless) at a hospital in Boston has suggested that sleeping in the nude can “reduce distractions from twisting or shifting fabrics” but can be “uncomfortable for some people.” Ya think!
Moving on… A Swedish musician has trained an octopus to play piano. Mattias Krantz searched high and low for an animal to teach to play the piano. Krantz found one while browsing a seafood market. He named the mollusk Takoyaki, or Tako for short.
He built an underwater keyboard and began to place bits of crab on the appropriate keys. Before long Tako realized if he snapped up a bit of crab with one of his eight legs…well you get it. Sure enough, eventually, along with Krantz accompanying him on Guitar, he was able to play the tune “Baby Shark.” You can’t make this stuff up.
Speaking of intelligence, NBC reports that there is wide concern that spending too much time on X (formerly known as Twitter) and watching TikTok videos and Instagram Reels may be reshaping the brain. The condition is known as “brain rot.” Research has suggested that these activities may cause “attention problems, memory disruption, and cognitive decline.” Well, that may explain a lot of what is happening in Washington.
And finally, out in San Francisco a woman gave birth in the back seat of a self-driving “Waymo” taxi. The taxi company’s computers, detecting “unusual activity” in the back seat, called to check on her and directed the cab to the nearest hospital. Mother and child arrived safely at the hospital. According to Waymo’s spokesperson, the vehicle “has been removed from service for cleaning.”
Now that’s good news.
Mattapoisett resident Dick Morgado is an artist and happily retired writer. His newspaper columns appeared for many years in daily newspapers around Boston.
By Dick Morgado
Have a safe and Healthy Happy New Year in 2026.