I knew him for probably five minutes. I chatted mainly with his wife, in the course of snapping pictures at the Senior Center’s Halloween party. They were both wearing crowns and seemed like a lovely couple.
They were featured on the front page of GraftonTimes.com on Saturday as a Halloween Local Yocal. He didn’t talk much, as I said, but he shot his wife a look of utter adoration just before sitting down next to her so I could take their picture.
Joseph J. Baskowski Sr. was 95. He and his wife, Mary, were married for 63 years. He died on Thursday after taking ill that weekend. Possibly, this is the last picture taken of them together, which is just an odd thought. I just added his obituary to GraftonTimes.com.
I didn’t know at the time I shot this photo that he was Craig Dauphinais’ father-in-law, or anything, really, about him at all. But I do like that this is how his family summarized his life:
Through the example of his life we have been blessed by the values of industriousness, persistence, spunk, humility and generosity. All who knew Joe will miss his ever present smile, his twinkling blue eyes and his good humored nature. He loved people and being in his presence always made one feel as if you were home. His greatest love was his family and most especially his grandchildren. He leaves them and all of us a legacy of love.
“Part of the way I got through my H1N1 flu visit to our doctor, during which we, my family and I, had to all wear masks, was by telling myself I would write a vignette about it later. So, I have written a vignette about it and I have attached it to this email. It is meant to be helpful to other families who might go through this as well as be entertaining.”
Truth be told, I was a bit apprehensive myself about wearing the Mask. I mean I’d seen them sitting there before in the doctor’s office, for other people, the people we tried to stay far away from when we were there for some non-contagious thing, but now we were those people.
We arrived at the doctors’ office, the six-year old who suffered longer and harder with the flu because she was recovering from tonsillectomy, the pregnant mother, who managed to get the flu eight days after being vaccinated for H1N1 and the husband, who sustained a nice complete version of healthy-adult flu, all at different stages of flu-recovery. My daughter and I waited dutifully outside the waiting room, while my husband checked us in and brought us three blue Masks, one child-sized.
We stared at the Masks. They defied any sort of common sense approach to putting them on. Each had two rubber bands to go around the head and a metal bar at the top. My attempts to pull, push or force it on had no affect. My daughter stared at me and then tried hers, getting it into some position where she said, “It is choking me.”
“Ok, let’s just hold them in front our faces,” my husband came up with pragmatically. He and my daughter went in holding the masks in front of their faces, while I tried one more time, managing to get it into the same sort of unsustainable choking position my daughter had. I adjusted it slightly to a bearable discomfort and went in. Mercifully, probably because of our flu-flag, they called us in right away. I tried not to meet peoples’ eyes as I walked past a baby and several families. I felt people looking at us and our blue Masks. I was one of those non-contagious people once. Now I know any of us could be wearing these things.
When we got into the office, the medical assistant, showed us how to put on the masks properly. The two rubber bands are crisscrossed—the bottom one goes up and the top one goes down. Then you pinch the strip of metal across the nose to get a molded fit. Clearly some written directions somewhere would have been very helpful.
My daughter got to take hers off and my husband continued to hold his up. I was determined to get the thing on right, so I worked it. We took turns doing Darth Vader imitations, “Luke, I am you father” and “Come over to the dark side, Luke.” Then the doctor came in and she said we could take the Masks off since her daughter had just had H1N1 and she had herself been vaccinated and had not gotten it.
Well, luckily my daughter’s chest was clear. I still have a few days of inflammation in my chest and wheezing to deal with, probably because I’m pregnant, but thankfully my husband is recovered enough now to entertain my daughter and take care of me. It has been a crazy week. I know a lot of other people out there are having similar weeks. We are all going through this, and at one time or another any one of us can be the one in the corner in the Mask.
So what could be even more exotic a patient than Molly, the days old giraffe who stole our hearts (OK, mine) earlier this year? A Bengal tiger, of course!
Meet Kya, a 2-year-old Bengal tiger from Southwick’s Zoo who apparently doesn’t want to have children. Let’s just hope she isn’t a drama queen who, crushed when people say “cool, but not as cute as the baby giraffe,” decides to have Molly for lunch.
The rest of the story, as they say, is now posted at GraftonTimes.com.
I’ve never been what you would call graceful. My daughter, however, was practically born dancing. We tried a year of traditional dance class shortly after we moved to Grafton, but it just wasn’t for us — she wasn’t crazy about ballet, found tap annoying.
A few years ago, the afterschool program at South Grafton Elementary School had a month-long hip-hop class and she’s been begging for hip-hop lessons ever since. That’s why I was psyched to find — through a GraftonTimes.com email burst, conveniently enough — that there’s a cute little studio in South Grafton, the Patricia Brosnian Dance Studio on Ferry Street. I’m watching my daughter’s class now via TV monitor (I’m testing the new Word Press app on my iPhone and, so far, it’s not as prone to crashes and erasures as the last one) and she has a big grin on her face, as she does every week.
There are only three girls in the class now, so if you’re in the market, you should check it out. Miss Pat is also offering a new Irish step dancing class, which will have trial classes on Nov. 16 and 18, with regular classes starting on Nov. 30.
The studio feels like one of Grafton’s best kept secrets but I’d love to see her get more business! I also like that she seems so low-key about recitals, which I remember as nightmarish the last time around (multiple costumes, a Worcester venue, expensive tickets and you were going to order flowers, weren’t you?).
I just filed a story at GraftonTimes.com — Romey’s Gourmet, which opened in early summer 2008, is now closed.
I talked at length with Chef Charlie this morning and it’s pretty sad — basically, you can write the “I had a dream to open my own restaurant/but everyone is cutting back on going out” story just about every day. But he’s still Charlie — even when he’s talking about closing his restaurant, he’s still the nicest and most cheerful guy around.
Anyone want to buy a restaurant?
So how did GateHouse Media celebrate the one year anniversary of my layoff? Apparently, they deleted my old “Working… With Kids” blog.
Luckily, I backed the entire thing up a year ago out of fear of just that happening. I only looked just now because a friend mentioned she’d tried to find my reaction to Megan getting a credit card invite online and couldn’t find it.
Printed, apparently, without fear of copyright violation, because you can’t violate something that doesn’t exist anymore!
This is Megan. She’s 7 years old, sleeps with a stuffed dog named Kate in a big-girl bed that received a Christmas makeover from fairy princess bedding to a comforter bedecked with Crayola purses. She’s in the second grade, loves collecting shells at the beach and, if she had a “Total Merrill” Visa card from Merrill Lynch, with unlimited Merrill points, no annual fee and an annual 1.9 percent Introductory Annual Percentage Rate for cash advance checks until December 2008, she says she’d buy our family a mansion, a limo, and, for all her friends, every Webkinz in the world.
You would think that she wouldn’t have access to the “unique card experience beyond the expected — Beyond Rewards.” You would be wrong. Apparently, my daughter — did I mention she’s only 7? We’re very proud — has a fantastic credit history. In just the last year, she’s received credit card offers from American Express (she qualifies for gold!), Capital One and a stunning number of financial institutions who are all eager to sign up my budding consumer.
Maybe their spy satellites have picked up the bank on her desk, the re-purposed Planters Peanuts jar with the slot cut in top filled with dollars from the tooth fairy and whatever spare change she manages to tickle out of her grandfather. Maybe they got wind that she recently opened an account at the credit union in her school, and she received five whole dollars for that purpose. Maybe they’ve heard her insightful commentary while watching “Project Runway” and figure, with a taste level that rivals Michael Kors, they should get in on the ground floor and offer funding before her American Girl Doll clothing line really takes off.
The child does not receive any magazines in her name. Even the American Girl catalog comes in my name. Her donations to charity have been limited to the Salvation Army bell ringer and the shamrocks Stop & Shop sells in March to raise money for the Jimmy Fund. Maybe the school’s Parent-Teacher Group has been selling off the names from the Octoberfest basket raffle — I thought that playground went up too quickly for mere Boxtops for Education funding.
Merrill Lynch was no help in resolving the mystery. I called them, as I’ve called every other credit card vendor who has wanted to pimp out my daughter, shortly after opening the offer. Did I mention that she can use the Merrill Points to apply towards a 529 College Savings Plan?
“Hi, my daughter received a credit card application in the mail today…”
“And we can get that out to her immediately, could you read the number as it appears above her name?”
“No. You don’t understand. She’s 7.” (”And three-quarters!” Megan pipes up.)
“Ohhh. We’re so sorry about that.”
The initial woman had no idea how Megan ended up on their list, and how I could track down the initial entry point, so I asked to speak to her supervisor. He had little to offer as well, although he assured me that a financial institution such as Merrill Lynch would never, NEVER solicit the child again.
Would you believe he then had the gall to pitch me the same exact offer?
I was sick this weekend and figured blog traffic would be down, because why would anyone be reading my blog if there was no new stuff?
Imagine my surprise when I discovered blog traffic was up. Why? This post.
Is there something controversial about the GEA’s Spelling Bee? Not at all. The number one search term hitting on my blog right now is… Snap Crackle and Pop costumes.
Seriously. Apparently there’s going to be a slew of cereal killers out this Halloween. And they couldn’t just look at the Rice Krispies Box for inspiration — nope, they needed photographic proof that, once upon a time, a spelling bee team actually carried this off. Weird!
Just when I think I’m immune to Grafton Common, it goes all fall on me.
Sigh. I know, you thought it would be another bandstand picture. But I absolutely love how the trees line up in this stretch toward South Street. It appeals to the dryad in me.
So! Speaking of Grafton Common, it’s going to be looking mighty lonely come Thursday, which will be the first time since July that we have not had a Grafton Farmers Market on the site.
Yes, the season is over. No more ears of corn, no more apples and squashes and event tents dotting the Common as local farmers sell their wares. And, totally selfishly for me, no more one-stop shopping for local color and gossip!
Lest you wander the Common aimlessly talking to good ol’ SpongeBob ScarecrowPants here, I have a little something to tide you over — call it a bit of farmers market methadone.
The Grafton Farmers Market Committee has put up a survey, which they’re asking you to kindly fill out to give feedback on this, the very first season for the market. How do you feel about the hours? The offerings? The place to tell them exactly what you think is here.
All right, all right, we’re getting to the end of the post and I can already hear the complaints.
“The bandstand! The bandstand! It’s absolute sacrilege to post photos of Grafton Common in the fall without a least one photo of the bandstand!”
Fine. May the Force be with you!
Full story is up on GraftonTimes.com but I’m just going to note here that I’m feeling crappy today and I’m hoping that all the running in and out of Grafton High School I’ve been doing over the last two weeks doesn’t mean I’m coming down with swine flu!
Martha the ghost now has company.
It’s funny, the way people react when they see something that’s just a bit off kilter (and this, if it wasn’t a mannequin, could have been a LOT off kilter). I grabbed my camera and shot a picture. A woman who saw this going into the Grafton Inn scolded John Pardee for giving her a scare.
In any case, I was at the Grafton Inn today for a story that’s running on GraftonTimes.com probably Thursday (barring any breaking news, which is my eternal caveat). We talked about what’s been going on there since he took over the business and — yes — I now have a first-person account from someone who has actually seen Martha in that — well, I guess you can’t say flesh with ghosts, can you? I’m going to have to save that story for the audience over at the other site, of course…
Anyone want to look for orbs?
Also, we had lunch there today and my cheeseburger was AWESOME. Not quite as good as a Five Guys burger (seriously, if you’re in Marlborough, you have to try them), but probably the best one I’ve had in town.
