WBZ has the latest on the black bear that has been ambling around Concord of late - and includes this advice should you find yourself mano-a-paw with the bear:
They are advised to talk to it calmly while backing away.
Talk to it calmly? Unfortunately, WBZ fails us and doesn't specify just what we're supposed to say as we calmly talk to the bear. Whisper sweet nothings? "Hey, how 'bout that Gronk!" What?
A Massachusetts man who says his Florida partner walked away from the idea of selling mugs carved out of the hollowed out barrels of baseball bats is now suing him because the guy got back into the baseball-bat-mug business. Read more.
Prevailing sentiment in progressive haunts is “2016, don’t let the door hit you on the way out.” Between a stressful election season, acts of terror, and the crisis in Syria, many of us will be glad to see the calendar page turn on Sunday night. Still, to every cloud there is a silver lining, and at least when it comes to tackling climate change in the US, Massachusetts was a bright spot amidst the clouds of 2016.
J.L. Bell brings us an account of the fighting at the Old North Bridge by Amos Baker of Lincoln:
There were two British soldiers killed at the bridge. I saw them when I went over the bridge, lying close together, side by side, dead.
Joshua Brooks, of Lincoln, was at the bridge and was struck with a ball that cut through his hat, and drew blood on his forehead, and it looked as if it was cut with a knife; and we concluded they were firing jackknives.
A man wanted across eastern Massachusetts for a variety of crimes - including attacking a Boston cop - was arrested in Concord last week for allegedly stealing expensive eyeglass frames from a health center.
Steven Stanley, 44, of Weymouth, faces charges of larceny over $250 in Concord, Burlington, Braintree, Natick, Randolph and Wrentham. He faces three warrants in Boston for larceny over $250, in addition to a charge of assault and battery on a police officer. Natick also wants him for assault and battery. Read more.
The T has posted a video of a weekend replacement of a Fitchburg Line bridge over Rte. 62 in Concord - compressed to just four minutes.
The Library of the Royal Irish Academy wants to identify the people in the photograph below. Please contact the Library if you recognize any of the subjects. The Library can be reached via Twitter @Library_RIA, or by email at www.ria.ie/library/contact, citing "8 May Photo Query Tweet."
If more information regarding the location, subjects, time, et cetera, of the photograph become available, I will update this post.
LensProToGo, which rents high-end camera gear, reports somebody spent some serious time smashing a large hole in a wall to rob its Baker Avenue Extension warehouse over the weekend. They've posted a list of the stolen lenses and their serial numbers. Read more.
Police in Concord, Bedford and Billerica say stay-at-home residents are being targeted by scammer toughs in trucks with Maine license plates who are going around offering to remove snow, then forcing their elderly and disabled marks to hand over money before they're done. In a statement, the three departments report:
The men offer to remove snow or remove fallen or unwanted trees from the resident's yard. Once the men do a minimal amount of work, they get aggressive and try to get the resident to pay them thousands of dollars before they get suspicious or think better of it.
We need to stop litter and keep Massachusetts clean by spreading the word about the Yes on Question 2 campaign.
The Bottle Bill is the most effective recycling tool we have. Eighty percent of bottles covered by the Bottle Bill’s 5-cent deposit are recycled. Yes on Question 2 would add a bottle deposit to water, sports drinks, tea, juices, and other drinks that were not included in the original bill because they were not popular when the law was passed in 1982.
We need your vote on November 4 to update the Bottle Bill.
The state Department of Conservation and Recreation said today "open-water swimming" will continue to be allowed at the historic Concord pond, but that people really shouldn't try it until they know what they're doing:
UPDATE: Never mind, DCR says.
Paul Levy considers a DCR proposal to try to stop people from swimming across the historic kettle hole:
Calendar of Patriots Day events - some this weekend. The list is, however, missing the annual re-enactment of the rides of Paul Revere and William Dawes.
End of the line in Bedford. Photo by Billerica PD.
Brian D'Amico reports state and local police doggedly pursued a man who carjacked a woman in Newton, rammed into three cars in West Newton, got shot at by police, carjacked another person in Billerica, carjacked yet another person in Concord, then kept on going until he crashed into a pole and a tree on Springs Road in Bedford. He may have also found time to shoot somebody in Carlisle.
Steve listened to the Christmas-eve caroling in Concord.
Copyright Steve. Posted in the Universal Hub pool on Flickr.
A woman who graduated Concord-Carlisle High School this year says the school did nothing about a two-year bullying campaign against her that included repeated death threats carved into school walls, smearing feces inside her car and repeatedly keying vulgarities into her car's exterior - once at the local ice-cream stand where she worked.
An MBTA spokesman said police are still investigating how the person came to be on the tracks before being hit by an inbound train shortly before 4 p.m..
Shortly after 4 p.m., a rider on one train e-mailed UHub:
Train stopped due to what the conductor said is an apparent suicide between the two stops. He said the police are going to be on the scene for a few hours, so now we're waiting for the train to turn back to West Concord to disembark the train.
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