Are you more knowledgeable than the average citizen? The average score for all 2,508 Americans taking the following test was 49%; college educators scored 55%. Can you do better? Questions were drawn from past ISI surveys, as well as other nationally recognized exams.
Town officials are forging ahead with plans to renovate Franklin's aging high school building, while realizing that the economy's downturn could affect their ability to pay for the project.
The town submitted a refreshed proposal to the Massachusetts School Building Authority this month, specifying problems with the 37-year-old building and providing additional details on enrollment projections, the educational goals of a potential renovation, and past examples of the town's commitment to building maintenance.
In addition, several Franklin officials, including Town Administrator Jeffrey Nutting and Town Council chairman Chris Feeley, met with the building authority's executive director, Katherine Craven, to identify Franklin's most pressing needs. Craven called the encounter "very positive."
Read the full article in the Boston Sunday Globe West section here
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_vYrDu2Y2DV5o96UUvdMttFBWhXl9RgaD7p5__cT9SReJ4dF9NcrSZRv1oRy1S-kN1USbLife6Pev6QXO78QAfbCkQBM-KjbzlpGGa545Cxmn8bdkjz1PccyyXrC9E4ilnqENq_pkAEDbzq5_Y6qD8=s0-d)
An earsplitting clanging echoed from the stone bell tower of Mount St. Mary's Abbey in Wrentham, calling to prayer about a dozen nuns ending their morning shift in the convent's Candy House.
The sisters, wrapped in work clothes and aprons, walked down a wooded path and through a clearing as they made their silent way home. By noon, they were wearing the crisp, white robes of their contemplative Cistercian order, and had joined 40 others to chant and pray inside the abbey's airy church.
Up at 3, pray and work all day, retire at 8.
So it goes for these nuns and others in the order that for 900 years has emulated St. Benedict in relying on one's hands for daily sustenance.
Here in Wrentham, off a country lane not far from Interstate 495, that means tending a flock of sheep for wool to make blankets and growing a bounty of fresh vegetables in the summer, and, for these sisters who are rarely seen in public, making Trappistine Quality Candy - and lots of it.
Read the full article in the Boston Sunday Globe West section here
The Abbey web site can be found here
You can order candy via their online web store or make a donation via PayPal.
Postings about the Abbey's wind turbine can be found here
Image via WikipediaWhat if some nuns in Wrentham decided to put up a wind turbine? And then high school officials in Worcester? And a Canton bank chairman? And pretty soon, the question wasn't where do wind farms belong, but how many windmills can we squeeze in to every last available space? That day is coming......
"Wind power is part of that," Schulte says. "It seems to be peppered all over society right now: green, green, green. Well, this is green. This is clean energy. This is 20 years of energy with no emissions. Twenty years of energy with no pollution you have to bury in the ground. I think that's all right."
Remember the nuns? Their turbine -- another SED project -- is scheduled to be built this winter. And Sister Mariann Garrity, for one, can't wait for the moment she sees those pearly white blades spinning. "The wind is just something that we've let caress our faces," she says. "It was not something, up until now, that we had learned how to harness. And when we see that turbine go up, we'll know that we are using a gift of creation in a much more effective way."
It's just like the nuns pray on Sundays. Gathered together, all 50 of them, they thank the Lord for the rain and the dew, for the heat of summer and the cold of winter. They give thanks for the seas and the rivers and the beasts, wild and tame. And they give thanks, of course, for the wind blowing outside the abbey, just waiting for a turbine to spin. "All you winds," they say together, quoting from the book of Daniel, "bless the Lord."
Read the full article in the Boston Globe Magazine here
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_vRSftjC8EAZyJ-8MMWL4Y-wlvhjELLiANZGtp01B8-fYR8w3s0QAEStgJWKadpxHE1dSP8XCmGEiGR7NubNwOA1cNwymbmbkmlyEvznK2IgQutK4lHtKXkaoJKRjzYHKe1h89zbJdEE_BfwLFV3sW_=s0-d)
Outraged that some parents think it's OK for their children and friends to drink alcohol at home, a coalition of concerned residents is shedding light on the problem of underage drinking.
Franklin High School Principal Pamela Gould has helped form a group called WASTED, or When Alcohol Starts To Effect Decisions. The group will host a meeting for parents on Tuesday, Dec. 2, at 7 p.m. at the high school, to share ideas to keep kids from drinking.
Read the full article in the Milford Daily News here.Many parents don't believe their children drink, but the problem is pervasive, Gould said.
Yes, Dolores and I found a sticker placed on the base of the "Hat's Off to Franklin" sculpture on our walk this morning.
It didn't take long for some inconsiderate soul to deface this brand new Franklin gem.
Fortunately, it removed fairly easily.
FRANKLIN - When Gabriel Dut Bethou fled his remote village in southern Sudan 14 years ago, after a raid by soldiers of the faction that controlled the country at the time, it was with fear for his own life and grief for a family he thought had been killed.
Fourteen years later, the 24-year-old is preparing to return to his homeland — this time, with unimaginable joy.
Bethou, a student and employee at Dean College in Franklin, will be reunited with his mother, Ayen Aleer, and 20-year-old sister Akuot Bethou, both of whom he spent more than a decade believing to have been killed in the attack.
He will also meet for the first time two younger sisters born after Akuot and his parents — his father was later killed in other strife — relocated to the Sudanese city of Juba: Aluong, 10, and Nyakong, 14.
Read the full article in the Gazette here
Earlier this year, Franklin Matters had posted on the story as reported in the Boston Globe
How cold was it this morning?
Cold enough that the frost
protected by the shade
sugar coated the green grass
