Reminder: St. Mary's Women's Faith Formation Group - May 1

St Mary's Women's Faith Formation is pleased to announce that Fr. Flavio from La Salette Shrine will be speaking at our May meeting about "Making Mary Part of Our Lives". 

Our meeting will  be held Saturday morning, May 1, starting at 9:30 AM on Zoom. There will be time for discussion.  This meeting is open to all women. 

If interested in attending this 45 minute meeting, please email Deacon Guy (deaconguy@stmarysfranklin.org) for Zoom link contact information.  

This will be our last session until we restart again in the fall.  

 

Reminder: St. Mary's Women's Faith Formation Group - May 1

Franklin Girls T&F take 2nd at Hockomock Championships

"Congratulations to our amazing team of girls for finishing 2nd overall at the Winter Track Hockomock Championship!! 

Results from the meet are posted on the Franklin Track and Field Website

https://drive.google.com/file/d/14ykcN-RrpCnWmNTUTg5AoGjit8khuWt_/view?usp=sharing 

An amazing way to finish off the season!! 🥈🏆"

Shared from Twitter: https://twitter.com/FHS_girlsXC/status/1386367534270763010

Note the FHS boys results are not yet posted.  https://www.franklintrack.org/

https://www.franklintrack.org/

"You distinguish between science that’s objectively established as true and science on the frontier"

"Neil deGrasse Tyson is perhaps the country’s best-known popularizer of science. The astrophysicist, who is 62, has achieved that status through his ever-expanding body of work in television, podcasting, journalism, social media and books (his latest is the new “Cosmic Queries”) and as director of the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. 

He has done so at a time when, distressingly, skepticism toward established science has become increasingly widespread. Tyson himself received some scrutiny in 2019 after he was subject to two claims of sexual misconduct, which he subsequently described as misunderstandings. Those claims were investigated by his employers at the museum as well as Fox Broadcasting and National Geographic, which respectively air his series “Cosmos” and “StarTalk”; all three of them decided to continue employing Tyson. 

“We’ve lost confidence in our civic entities,” Tyson says about declining public trust in science. “That’s a strong destabilizing force, and some of that spilled over into the scientific community.”

Continue reading the article online (subscription may be required)

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/04/19/magazine/neil-degrasse-tyson-interview.html

Neil deGrasse Tyson at the Rose Center at the American Museum of Natural History in New York in 2006. He has been the director of the Hayden Planetarium since 1996. Suzanne DeChillo/The New York Times

"at some point, surplus became more important than feeding people"

"The global, industrialized food system faces increasing scrutiny for its environmental impact, given its voracious appetite for land is linked to mass deforestation, water pollution and a sizable chunk of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions.

The implied trade-off has been that advances in agriculture have greatly reduced hunger and driven societies out of poverty due to improved productivity and efficiencies. But Mark Bittman, the American food author and journalist, argues in his new book Animal, Vegetable, Junk that these supposed benefits are largely illusionary.

In a sweeping deconstruction of the history of food, spanning the past 10,000 years of organized agriculture, Bittman takes in everything from Mesopotamian irrigation to the Irish famine to the growth of McDonald’s to posit the rise of uniformity and convenience in food has mostly benefited large companies, fueled societal inequities and ravaged human health and the environment. Al Gore, the former US vice president, has called the book a “must-read for policymakers, activists and concerned citizens looking to better understand our food system and how to fix it”.

Continue reading the article online (subscription may be required)

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/apr/25/our-unequal-earth-mark-bittman-cheap-food-american-diet

For more about Mark visit his web page  https://www.markbittman.com/

Mark Bittman, the American food author and journalist - "Animal, Vegetable, Junk"

Finance Committee - Budget Hearings - Apr 27, 28, 29 and May 4

Finance Committee Meetings

Please find the agendas and links for the upcoming Finance Committee Meetings Posted below: 

•  April 27 Agenda = Central government, Human Services, Culture and Recreation, Debt and Interest, Benefits

https://www.franklinma.gov/sites/g/files/vyhlif6896/f/agendas/4.27.21_fin_com_agenda.pdf

• April 28 Agenda = Public Safety (Police, Fire, Regional Dispatch)

 https://www.franklinma.gov/sites/g/files/vyhlif6896/f/agendas/_2021-04-28_finance_committee_agenda_.pdf

• April 29 Agenda  = Dept of Public Works 

 https://www.franklinma.gov/sites/g/files/vyhlif6896/f/agendas/_2021-04-29_finance_committee_agenda_.pdf

• May 4 Agenda = Schools

 https://www.franklinma.gov/sites/g/files/vyhlif6896/f/agendas/_2021-05-04_finance_committee_agenda_.pdf

Additional details on the FY 2022 budget can be found
https://www.franklinma.gov/town-budget/pages/fy-22-budget-materials

Finance Committee - Budget Hearings - Apr 27, 28, 29 and May 4

Franklin TV: "Owl-cam Sees All! Necessity is the mother of invention."

by Pete Fasciano, Executive Director 04/25/2021

We have all been reprogrammed by ‘Le Virus’. What was is no more, and we are headed toward our new normal, whatever that might be. The term ‘new normal’ has become part of our viral lexicon. We say it, but what is it? No one can fully know. That said, we are already living some part of it in our day-to-day. Specifically, we have changed the way we connect and communicate, and IMHO, some of that change is here to stay. I’ve opined in past scribblings on this page that Zoom is here to stay. I still believe that.

Before: Me? On a video? OMG! No way! My hair! My house! I’m a mess.
After: Zoom?  Yeh, fine.  Let’s hang out. Casual athleisure attire is de rigueur.

While laptop cams are pretty good for one-on-ones, they fall short for whole family shots and groups. Enter Owl-cam. It’s a smart camera. It’s wikkid soopa-smaht!

Owl-cam Sees All!

The Meeting Owl is a webcam. Like a webcam, it sees you; it also hears your voice. It has a built-in speaker system. Camera-microphone-speaker, all-in-one, and all connect to your computer with one standard USB cable. No fuss. No muss.

Owl-cam knows who is speaking in a group and shows only that person or persons to the other participants at the far end of the Zoom meeting. What is Owl-cam, and how does it work this magic? It has not 1, but 8 built-in directional microphones arranged in a circle inside its vaguely owl-like casing. Hence, its round shape.

The dome camera is actually at the top, but looks sideways for a 360-degree panorama view. The microphones inform the camera where the person speaking is seated. The camera pulls that person from the panorama image.  When two people speak, it does a side-by-side split-screen image of both.

You’ll see Owl-cams in action in the days ahead. We’re installing some in Town Hall, the Senior Center, our own community room, and wherever future groups gather to conduct hybrid Zoom meets in our new normal.

And – as always –
Thank you for listening to wfpr●fm. 
And, thank you for watching.

 

Get this week's program guide for Franklin TV and Franklin Public Radio (wfpr.fm) online

http://franklin.tv/programguide.pdf  or for archive purposes

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1EDxLKpRhX5qRnUkh_l2g5gEkUXyfKICF/view?usp=sharing

Recap: "King Philip Stuns Franklin With Late Touchdown"

Ryan Lanigan, founder and Editor-in-Chief of HockomockSports.com, provides the recap for Friday's FHS vs KP football game:

"For three quarters, Franklin and King Philip were locked in a rock fight on Mactaz Field. 

Then came the fourth quarter fireworks. 

After neither team found the end zone in any of the first three quarters, there were three touchdowns in the final period including two in the final five minutes. Franklin took the lead with just over three minutes to go but King Philip answered with a game-winning drive, scoring with just over a minute to go to secure a 14-10 win. 

“I don’t know [how we won it], there were so many ups and downs in that one,” said King Philip head coach Brian Lee. “It was the type of game that we’ve had success in the past, the type of game we’ve competed in but this group, we’re very young and we don’t have many seniors out there, and throughout this year we were having trouble in the close games. But they kept coming back, it was just awesome to see."

Continue reading the article

https://hockomocksports.com/king-philip-football-stuns-franklin-with-late-touchdown/

For a photo gallery from this game

https://hockomocksports.smugmug.com/2020-2021/Fall-II-2021/King-Philip-Franklin-Football-04-23-21/

King Philip junior Danny Clancy comes down with the game-winning touchdown catch with just over a minute left in the game. (Ryan Lanigan/HockomockSports.com)