The Marion Social Club located at 44 Pumping Station Road, will be having a Chicken Dinner on Sunday March 24 at 1 pm. Doors will open at 12:00 pm for socializing, and we would love to have you attend. We will be serving barbequed chicken, baked potato, vegetable & dessert for $15.00 each. For ticket info, please call Betsy Youngson at 508-295-8253.
Instructor Lisa Elliott returns to the Marion Art Center to teach the next 5-week session of Weaving on a Rigid Heddle Loom. The class runs April 25 – through May 23 and meets Thursday evenings from 6:00-8:30 pm in the MAC Studio. The cost is $150 for MAC members and $160 for nonmembers, plus a $10 loom/equipment fee payable to the instructor. Register online at marionartcenter.org/adult-classes.
Class description: Learn a new fiber skill on a rigid heddle loom. Have you ever wanted to try weaving but not sure where to begin? In this course over five weeks, you can create and take home your very first woven project. Students will weave one of the following: a scarf, table runner, set of placemats, or set of tea towels. Looms and weaving equipment are provided for a $10 fee, but let us know if you have your own rigid heddle loom that you would like to bring to class. Students will provide their own yarns. After registering, students will contact the instructor before the first class to discuss your project and calculate the amount of appropriate yarn needed for your project.
Adelaide S. “Ada” (Silva) Alves, 94, of New Bedford, formerly of Mattapoisett died March 14, 2024 at Sippican Health Care Center surrounded by her family.
She was the wife of the late John D. Alves.
Born in Worcester, the daughter of the late John A. and Hortense F. (Lima) Silva, she was raised in New York City and lived in Mattapoisett and New Bedford most of her life.
Ada was formerly employed as a jewelry maker while living in New York. She later worked at Dartmouth Carpet Factory until her retirement.
She enjoyed knitting, crocheting, crafts and needle point.
Survivors include her 2 daughters, Victoria Duarte of New Bedford and Maria Alves of Mattapoisett; 5 grandchildren; 15 great-grandchildren; and many nieces and nephews.
She was the sister of the late Kenneth Silva, Frances Torres and Rose Davey.
Her Funeral will be held on Thursday, March 21st at 9 am from the Saunders-Dwyer Mattapoisett Home For Funerals, 50 County Rd. (Rt. 6), Mattapoisett, followed by her Funeral Mass at St. Anthony’s Church at 10 am. Burial will follow in St. Anthony’s Cemetery. Visiting hours will be on Wednesday, March 20th from 4-7 pm. For directions and guestbook, please visit www.saundersdwyer.com.
Rochester’s Planning Board Tuesday delayed signing the draft decision to allow Blue Wave Solar and BWC Snows Pond LLC to build a solar-energy array at 0 Cushman Road after the applicant’s representatives raised concerns about one of the decision’s conditions.
BWC Snows Pond LLC Managing Director of Solar Operations Aaron Simms, appearing on Zoom, asked for an alternative to complying with the condition that contractors on site use equipment only with bio-hydraulic fluids.
Simms said vendors have all told the company the same thing, that meeting this requirement is hard to do. The contractor hired for such a relatively small operation would have to drain all their hydraulic equipment, he said, a burdensome, expensive process that lead vendors to not even bid for the job. The size of the operation would not make it worth the effort.
“A larger firm could handle it,” Simms said. “I am not confident they would be interested in a project of this size.”
Simms asked if instead the company could fund a bond to front the risk of a fluid spill into the groundwater “for any issue that might come up,” he said.
Planning Board members were firmly against any compromise.
“You being in a groundwater protection district requires this condition,” Planning Board Chairman Arnold Johnson said. “No one has been given a pass on this before. Ninety-eight percent of our homes are on wells. Our job is to protect the townspeople’s wells.”
Johnson noted, however, language could be added to make an exception for smaller equipment, specifically skid-steel loaders and pile drivers. “Nothing bigger than that,” he said.
Simms asked if a designated equipment size could be the exception. Johnson said no. “We haven’t made any exceptions with solar projects before,” he said.
Simms and the project’s engineering consultant Andrew Hamel, who was attending in person, then quietly agreed to have this lone exception added to the draft decision. “So now we will wait to see the revised language,” Hamel said.
Concerned abutters of the 31-acre parcel where the 12.55-acre solar array will be built in a Residential/Agricultural District and a Mattapoisett River Valley Watershed and Groundwater Protection District were again in attendance, but Johnson said he could not let them speak because the public hearing had closed.
Johnson noted that once a decision has been filed, complainants or the applicant will have 20 days to appeal that decision. The Rochester Zoning Board of Appeals will then judge whether it was an appropriate determination but would be unable to change the decision language.
In other action, the Planning Board endorsed an Approval Not Required application for a plan to sell off land at 52 Wolf Island Road. From the house lot there, 2.5 acres are being sold off, and a 6-acre bog is being sold to the Buzzards Bay Coalition.
The board also endorsed an ANR application to modify an internal lot of around 40,000 square feet at County Road and Cranberry Highway for a proposed self-storage building project there.
Upon the applicant’s request, the board continued its hearing into the Site Plan Review application for JPF Development’s plan to construct a 15-acre self-storage facility at Kings Highway and Route 28 until March 26.
The board agreed to contract Ken Motta of Field Engineering to review the Planning Board’s rules and regulations at a cost of “up to $3,500.”
The board discussed one of the Zoning Bylaw articles it will submit for the May 13 Annual Town Meeting warrant, a bylaw change to regulate the battery systems installed at solar-array projects. Johnson said specific language for this article is not necessary before the warrant deadline of March 22, only “place-holder” language. The board intends to have the specific article ready for its next meeting.
The Rochester Planning Board will meet next on Tuesday, March 26, at 7:00 pm at Town Hall, 1 Constitution Way.
Rochester Planning Board
By Michael J. DeCicco
A woman stopped me in the post office the other day to tell me how much she liked my last column. I politely said thank you, though I had no idea what she was talking about. I could not for the life of me remember what I had written only a few days before.
Truth be told, the minute I press the send button on my computer, the essay I had just written is gone out of my mind. There is only so much room in my memory bank to retain all the trivial nonsense I foist upon you every week.
I have always thought I have a pretty good memory, particularly with faces; I never forget one. Unlike one friend of mine who can recall the name of every person he ever met, names for me disappear as quickly as my weekly musings. I still remember my children’s names and their birthdays, but for the life of me I cannot tell you what years they were born without doing the math (another skill that is rapidly vanishing from my talent pool).
I remember our anniversary and my wife’s birthday, including the year she was born, which she rarely admits to. I seem to remember things that happened years ago better than what occurred recently. Is that a sign of diminished cognitive ability?
There has been a lot of talk about memory loss and cognitive ability in the news these days, especially in the political arena. So, I decided to check out one of these tests that have showed up online lately.
I chose the MoCA (Montreal Cognitive Assessment). Appropriately enough, the first part was about memory. The first question asked me to read five names, then repeat them. They were face, velvet, church, daisy and red. Well, I figured that would be easy since I still remember how to read. I aced it. Then I had to wait until the end of the test and say them again, in order, from memory.
The second part, the “Alternating Trail Making,” was all about drawing. Now this is my thing, I shouldn’t have a problem here. The test showed letters and numbers and asked me to draw a line “going from a number to a letter in ascending order.” One to A and 2 to B and so on. Easy, peezy! Things are looking up.
Next, I had to draw a clock (digital clocks don’t count) with the numbers set to 10 minutes past 11. No problem. On to the “Abstraction Thinking” section, it asked, “How are an orange and a banana alike?” clarifying that there are “…no second guesses allowed.” Then the test asked how a ruler and a watch are alike (remember digital doesn’t count). If you said they both had numbers, you’d be wrong. Join the club for the cognitive impaired. The correct answer is they are both measuring instruments.
Next up, it asked me to say as many words as possible in one minute that begin with the letter F except proper names, numbers, words that sound alike, dirty words, foreign words … whoa, wait, now this was getting complicated. I am a dedicated user of a thesaurus. (Do you think I know all the big words I use in these columns?) This spontaneous stuff is asking too much.
Thankfully the test was coming to an end. One more thing. It was time to repeat those five words from the first section. Boy am I in trouble. I could only recall “daisy,” which was the name of our dear, departed dog. I know I said I remember any face. I didn’t say I could remember the word.
So, there you go. I was too chicken to count up my score. After all, I have no intention of running for president or any public office. If someone stops me to say how much they like this column, I’ll just say, “thank you” and be on my way.
Editor’s note: Mattapoisett resident Dick Morgado is an artist and retired newspaper columnist whose musings are, after some years, back in The Wanderer under the subtitle “Thoughts on ….” Morgado’s opinions have also appeared for many years in daily newspapers around Boston.
Thoughts on…
By Dick Morgado
The Mattapoisett Republican Party welcomes all to join us on Thursday, March 21 from 6 to 8:00 pm for our monthly scheduled meeting. Be a part of the discussion on local initiatives, support of candidates in future elections and share ideas with like-minded neighbors.
This month’s guest speaker is Sheriff Joseph D. McDonald, Jr. He is the 30th High Sheriff of Plymouth County and leader of perhaps the oldest law enforcement agency in America. The Plymouth County Sheriff office strives to be an integral part of public safety systems providing vital communications services to our emergency medical systems, local fire, and police departments. In the name of public safety, please join us to learn about and discuss new ideas to make a difference for all of us. Guest speaker begins at 7:00 pm at the Knights of Columbus, 57 Fairhaven Road, Mattapoisett. There is always good food, good people, and a cash bar.
For additional information contact, Paul Criscuolo, Chairperson, Mattapoisett Republican Town Committee at PCMattyGOP@proton.me
Mattapoisett Recreation is pleased to announce late Spring program sign ups are now open online. We have Youth and Adult pickleball starting in late April along with running club for grades K-6. Summer planning is well underway, and we plan to have online registration open for our Seahorse Explorers program for Mattapoisett Town residents only starting April 1. We will then open to nonresident returning campers on April 4 and to nonresident new campers on April 8.
Visit our website at www.mattrec.net to see all of our program offerings.
On Sunday March 24 from 1:30 to 3:00 pm in the downstairs public meeting room of the Mattapoisett Free Public Library, the Mattapoisett Democratic Town Committee will host its third in a series of speaker’s forums on Affordable Housing, Property Taxes and Ideas for Easing the Tax Burden for Mattapoisett Residents.
Joining the conversation will be Kathleen Costello who retired from the Town in December 2022 after more than a decade as the Administrator of Assessing. Ms. Costello is currently the Executive Director for the Massachusetts Association of Assessing Officers, the governing authority of the Massachusetts Assessors. Ms. Costello brings a wealth of experience to the discussion of affordable housing and what we as a community can do to make it happen for our young and aging residents.
Ms. Costello will be joined by Mattapoisett Town Administrator Mike Lorenco who will share what the Town has done and is doing in an effort to keep our property taxes at a reasonable level while also ensuring our Town’s services are adequately funded.
Bring your family, friends, neighbors and questions and spend an afternoon learning more about how your property taxes are calculated and what we can do to offset them. Light refreshments and snacks will be served.
Upper Cape Tech welcomes area high school students and their parents/guardians to attend the annual UCT College Fair on Thursday, March 14 from 6:00 to 8:00 pm.
Over 60 colleges, technical schools and military representatives will be available to meet with interested students about post-secondary opportunities and admissions requirements. Counselors will be present to assist students with identifying appropriate institutions and navigating the fair. The event is most appropriate for 10th and 11th grade students, as well as 12th grade students who may still be exploring their options for next year.
Detailed information, including a list of participating institutions is available on the Upper Cape Tech website. Please visit www.uppercapetech.com and view under “News and Notices”.
There is no cost to attend the fair. Questions may be directed to the Upper Cape Tech Guidance Office at 508-759-7711 x210.
Marie C. (Walker) Haymaker, 75, of Mattapoisett, passed away peacefully Thursday, March 14, 2024. She was the loving wife of George M. Haymaker.
Born in Brookline, daughter of the late Edgar and Evelyn (Agostini) Walker, she lived in Everett and Mattapoisett most of her life.
Marie enjoyed going to the beach, partying with her friends and family, watching B- grade Sci-Fi movies, and taking care of her grandchildren. She spent many years helping George with the family business, Independent Fasteners.
Marie is survived by her husband, George; her children, William Haymaker of Lakeville, Jeffrey Haymaker of Minnesota, and Kirk Haymaker and his wife Natalie of Mattapoisett; her sister Cheryl Boutin and her husband Joseph of Fairhaven; and her grandchildren, Skyler, Katie, Keith, and Eli Haymaker.
A celebration of life will be scheduled at a later date. For online guestbook, please visit www.saundersdwyer.com
