Rotary Club of Franklin - Interact Club to meet with Rep. Jeff Roy

Representative Jeffrey Roy has graciously accepted an invitation to meet with the Rotary Club of Franklin Interact Club on April 2, 2021, at 3 PM on the Franklin Town Common. 

Rotary Interact Club is for teens 12-18 years of age and come together to complete service projects locally and surrounding towns. A few of our club members are seniors in High School and leaders amongst their peers.  They are civic minded and are grateful for the chance to speak to, and ask questions of, one of our own hometown heroes.

"Rotary Club of Franklin MA hopes that our Interact Club teens will be inspired when they hear about the kinds of things expected of a State Representative and what Rep. Roy is doing for the Towns of Franklin and Medway, and also Massachusetts and how they can be involved." said President Judy Alfred.

From the archives:

Franklin Interact Club - project delivers masks to hospital - August 2020

https://www.franklinmatters.org/2020/08/franklin-interact-delivers-100-masks-to.html

Rotary Club interview - Nov 2020
https://www.franklinmatters.org/2020/11/fm-400-franklin-ma-rotary-club-111720.html

Interact Club to meet with Rep. Jeff Roy (Interact Club twitter image)

Franklin Public Schools, MA: District News Letter - March 2021

Franklin Public Schools, MA (@FranklinPSNews) tweeted on Tue, Mar 23, 2021:

"Hello FPS!  Please find the March edition of the District Newsletter posted here: https://t.co/rTxzTzqeXA "  or here

https://myemail.constantcontact.com/District-Newsletter---March-2021.html?soid=1134219428814&aid=nEzlZRXRB6w

Franklin Public Schools, MA: District News Letter - March 2021

Shared from Twitter: https://t.co/BxuL8s1V2f

 

One interesting piece is the budget video https://youtu.be/IXI95zuFbnw

Hockomock League: Hockomock League Fall II Update on Away Spectators

"Effective immediately, the Hockomock League will allow 2 AWAY family members of SENIOR student-athletes to attend all varsity games. This policy will include all league sports offered during the Fall II season: Cheerleading, Football, Volleyball, Track and Field, and Unified Basketball. 

Going forward, the Athletic Directors will continue to monitor information as it is made available from the EEA, DESE, and our local Boards of Health. Each district has the ability to make this policy more restrictive based on its own facility limitations and/or local Board of Health restrictions. It is our goal to focus on the health and safety of our communities while safely permitting family members the opportunity to watch high school sports in person. "

Shared from the Hockomock League page:

https://hockomockleague.blogspot.com/2021/03/hockomock-league-fall-ii-update-on-away.html

Hockomock League Fall II Update on Away Spectators

MA State News: "Should we still call it ‘commuter’ rail?"; uncertainty in the vaccine numbers

"Should we still call it ‘commuter’ rail?" 

"The MBTA is launching a fairly radical change to its commuter rail operations on April 5, running fewer trains at the traditional morning and evening peaks and spreading service out at regular intervals over the course of the day – what some call regional rail.

On the Framingham-Worcester line, trains currently depart from Worcester for Boston at 5:30 a.m., 7 a.m., and 8:50 a.m. and then run at roughly two-hour intervals the rest of the day. Under the new approach starting April 5, the first train from Worcester will depart  at 4:15 a.m., the next train at 5 a.m., and then trains will depart every hour on the hour for the rest of the day until 7 p.m. The three late-night trains will depart at 8:20, 9:20, and 10:20.

 The idea behind the scheduling experiment is that COVID has disrupted ridership patterns. No one is quite sure what riders will want in the future, but the feeling is that they will no longer rigidly commute into work in the morning and return in the evening. They want more flexibility and greater frequency. And they want schedules that are easy to remember."

Continue reading the article online

https://commonwealthmagazine.org/the-download/should-we-still-call-it-commuter-rail-2/

"Uncertainty abounds in vaccine eligibility numbers"

"WHEN THE MASSACHUSETTS COVID-19 Command Center calculates how many people are eligible for vaccinations in each of the state’s three phases, there’s a problem: The total number is 1 million more adults than actually live in the state.

The main reason is that the state is double counting many individuals in these estimates.

As a result, while the Command Center has said an estimated 2.55 million people could become eligible for vaccinations in the final group – generally healthy people between ages 16 and 55 who are not essential workers – the uncertainty in the numbers raises the possibility that the final group may be smaller than expected."

Continue reading the article online

https://commonwealthmagazine.org/health/uncertainty-abounds-in-vaccine-eligibility-numbers/

Note: This another symptom of the lack of a fully integrated and functioning public health infrastructure. The Commonwealth has various sources of data about the population (voter records, driver licenses, tax records, etc.) yet they lack the cohesiveness of a central repository of our population so we could know our count and categorizations without double counting. The repository would drive the planning already done by the local departments of health to enable the timely and accurate delivery of a vaccine or anything health related to all.

Cultural District planning session for ArtWALK - Mar 25, 7:00 PM

The Franklin Cultural District Committee has begun planning for the upcoming ArtWALK Celebration which will be held on the weekend of June 11th - 13th. This Thursday, March 25th at 7:00 p.m. the committee is inviting all of our Cultural District Partners to join us in our first collaborative planning meeting. The meeting will be held via the zoom platform. Below you will find the  zoom link for this meeting.

The Cultural District Committee is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.
Cultural District Committee, Cultural District Partners Event Planning Meeting
March 25, 2021 7:00 PM 

Join Zoom Meeting
    https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83387368806
Meeting ID: 833 8736 8806

One tap mobile
    +13017158592,,83387368806# US (Washington DC)
Dial by your location
        +1 929 205 6099 US (New York)
Meeting ID: 833 8736 8806
Find your local number: https://us02web.zoom.us/u/kdVvZiUkbc

Attached you will find the agenda for the meeting. 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/12uoFiSrhvvguLpRRCMDf_RcSPpFJQWWa/view?usp=sharing

As we look forward to this event,  we hope that all of our partners will take part in the planning
by joining one of the working groups. We will discuss these groups at our meeting on Thursday.

We hope to see you all there.

Regards,
Nancy Schoen

Chair, Franklin Cultural District Committee
nschoenfranklinculture@gmail.com 

Cultural District planning session for ArtWALK - Mar 25, 7:00 PM

National news: Post Office performance to slow mail; Some news orgs following Russian model

"Slower mail, fewer office hours part of Postal Service plans"

"Postmaster General Louis DeJoy on Tuesday announced plans to slow mail delivery standards and cut hours at some post offices as part of a 10-year strategy to stabilize the struggling agency.

Details of the long-awaited plan come at a time of intense scrutiny on the US Postal Service over persistent delivery delays under DeJoy, a major GOP donor who took over the agency last summer. The plan also includes a proposal to consolidate underused post offices, hinted at a potential postage rate increase and detailed investments in new delivery vehicles, among other things.

Facing an expected $160 billion in losses over the next decade, DeJoy and postal executives stressed the need to cut costs and modernize the agency's operations as its workload increasingly shifts from handling letters to hauling more and more packages."

Continue reading the article online (subscription may be required)

https://www.bostonglobe.com/2021/03/24/business/slower-mail-fewer-office-hours-part-postal-service-plans/

 

"Specifically, Pomerantsev points to two major areas of strategic overlap. First, there’s a shared war on facts that tries to convince the viewer that accountability is a fool’s errand because true objectivity does not exist.

“There’s this kind of pop-postmodernism, where Sean Hannity will say things like objectivity doesn’t exist, everybody’s biased,” Pomerantsev says. He points to Hannity’s infamous interview with Ted Koppel, in which he contrasted his own style with what he sees as the charade of “objective” facts in other areas of the press. “I don’t pretend that I’m fair and balanced and objective,” Hannity bizarrely boasted.

“That’s exactly the same argument the Russians make,” Pomerantsev says. He recalls a famous phrase uttered by Dmitry Kiselev, a prime-time TV host who was also appointed by Vladimir Putin to run Kremlin’s international propaganda network, Rossiya Segodnya. “Objectivity is a myth that is proposed and imposed on us.”

Continue reading the article online (subscription may be required)

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/03/23/he-worked-russian-media-he-recognizes-same-tactics-fox-news/

Town of Franklin, MA: A resource of available trails and paths for our community

Town of Franklin, MA (@TOFranklinMA) tweeted on Mon, Mar 22, 2021:

"Hello Franklin! It's gorgeous out there today!  Perhaps you can find a bit of time to go for a walk!  Our Trails & Walking Paths Storymap is a great resource to find places to go in Town.

Enjoy the day!" https://t.co/vofhNYMjEO

Shared from Twitter: https://twitter.com/TOFranklinMA/status/1374019648707002369

A resource of available trails and paths for our community