The Suffield Observer (https://thesuffieldobserver.com/category/opinion/editorial/page/10/)
One of the interesting tools I use when writing or evaluating other people’s writing is software that measures readability. If writing is too complex, say college level, it may be too difficult for middle or high school students to read.
Having grown up in Hungary Hill in Springfield, I developed great pride in my Irish heritage. Hungary Hill was named because of the immigrants who came from the west coast of Ireland during the great potato famine.
Most of us are traveling on a highway once in a while, especially on a holiday, and stopping at a rest stop. Have you ever really looked at someone pushing a mop around on the floor or cleaning a restroom?
It is easy to think that there is not much kindness in our very divided world. I looked up a simple definition of “kind” in Merriam Webster’s Learner’s Dictionary, which is meant for use by new English language learners.
It’s sometimes hard to hear the good things happening around us, what with all the stories about continued gun violence, invasions of immigrants, hacking of voting places, media disparagement, name calling, and worries about health care, to name a few. It’s good, then, to reflect on some of the good that regular citizens do that make this country great.
Recently I attended a performance of Shakespeare’s Henry V at the Hartford Stage Company; I found it satisfactory though not exemplary. Because I had not read the play since college, I watched the rendition on DVD by Kenneth Branagh.
The staff of the Observer was generally happy with the October issue. We thought it had a variety of interesting articles and some beautiful pictures.
If we were to list the many values of our beautiful town of Suffield, we could probably fill the pages of this newspaper. Our wonderful citizens, great schools, lovely buildings and churches, parks, local businesses and emergency services are all special.
When the French Jesuit priests first saw the native people (in the area now Canada and upstate New York) playing a game using a stick with netting, they called it Lacrosse because it looked like the staff a Bishop carries in religious ceremonies.
It’s more than a little frustrating for supporters of a community center to see both the Town’s proposal for a new Town Hall, whose cost will most likely be well over the approved bond amount from the 2015 bonding vote, as well as a seemingly fast-track proposal to move the highway garage to a location on East Street where we would be leasing, not owning, the property, ignoring, again, the vote in 2015 approving the bonding for the renovation of Bridge Street School (BSS) as a community center.