Larry the K's Lineup

  The coronavirus pandemic has made the need for Holocaust education more vital than ever as a growing number of anti-vaxxers show their complete ignorance about the horrors of the Holocaust and the 6 million Jews and 11 million people in total slaughtered by the Nazis before and during World War II by comparing vaccine passports and mandatory vaccines to the treatment of Jews during the Holocaust, including having death camp numbers burned on to their arms. That is a completely horrifying development! Those comparisons aren’t only reprehensible in every sense of the word, but they show a thundering lack of historical awareness on the part of those white supremacists and other ignorant people who insist on making such sickening comparisons. For one thing, the two aren’t even remotely comparable; for another, vaccines have been mandated for decades for students in schools ….. the MMR, chicken pox and other vaccines, including against hepatitis, are all required, with exceptions ...

  Related story This story was written for the August 2021 edition of Jewish Rhode Island of Providence: Holocaust education can play a major role in making both students and adults more aware of the Holocaust, say two educators with experience in the field. Paula Olivieri, the education coordinator of the Sandra Bornstein Holocaust Education Center at the Jewish Community Center in Providence, said the legislation passed recently by the Rhode Island General Assembly to create a permanent commission to promote and continually improve genocide and Holocaust education will go a long way toward making more people aware of the Holocaust. In an interview, she explained that “since 2016, a consortium formed of interested parties representing the Holocaust, Armenian, African nations and Southeast Asian genocides developed curriculum,” in conjunction with the Department of Education, for teachers in grades 6-12 and put it on the department’s website. The problem with that approach, ...

  Related column This column was written for the August 2021 edition of Jewish Rhode Island of Providence: Those who may doubt how much Holocaust awareness will be raised with the mandating of Holocaust and genocide education in Rhode Island’s middle and secondary schools should familiarize themselves with the Holocaust Stamps Project. Massachusetts had no such mandate in the 2008-09 school year when the seed was germinated in then-fifth-grade teacher Charlotte Sheer’s class at the Foxboro Regional Charter School to start what became the Holocaust Stamps Project, and still lacks such a mandate. Two bills are awaiting action to move them toward a vote in the Legislature after hearings in May. But the absence of a law requiring Holocaust education didn’t deter Sheer’s determination to enlighten her young students. After they read Lois Lowry’s “Number the Stars,” an historical fiction novel set in Nazi-occupied Denmark in 1942, the students asked some probing questions surroundi...

If like me, you’re exasperated, frustrated and just plain sick and tired of the ignorant excuses by people who stubbornly refuse to get vaccinated, here are two stories from people whose passionate pleas for people to get vaccinated are must reading. The first article is from the widow of a Norton police officer, Det. Sgt. Stephen Desfosses, who posted the final texts she got from her husband when he was in the hospital dying from COVID-19 in January. The comments of Jessica Vogan Desfosses, which include her pleas to the unvaccinated to get vaccinated, are compelling arguments. The link: The story, written by Sun Chronicle Staff Writer George Rhodes, appeared in the Aug. 19, 2021, edition of The Sun Chronicle of Attleboro, MA. https://www.thesunchronicle.com/news/coronavirus/widow-of-norton-cop-who-died-of-covid-shares-his-final-texts-in-plea-for/article_1bde7b77-7a14-59c0-9213-cba02fca7d48.html The second article is a column from a doctor who, like many of us, is very close to l...

With many United States health leaders calling the evolving coronavirus resurgence of the last few weeks “a pandemic of the unvaccinated,” it’s imperative that people just get vaccinated already --- especially with how vast the delta variant is spreading among the unvaccinated and in some cases, even the vaccinated. So-called vax lotteries haven’t worked, and the NFL’s edict that unvaccinated players that cause teams to miss games will forfeit games due to a COVID-19 outbreak may not work, either. Even Republican Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey, to her credit put the blame for the resurgence of the pandemic clearly where it belongs: squarely on the millions of stubborn --- and in incredibly foolish, selfish and clueless ---Americans who are using their political beliefs as an excuse not to get vaccinated despite the fact that getting vaccinated is clearly NOT a political issue. “I want folks to get vaccinated. That’s the cure. That prevents everything,” Ivey said. “Why would we want to mess ...

There’s probably no better way to salute Ike on what would have been his 103 rd birthday today (Aug. 11, 2021) than to feature this column that was published on Oct. 31, 2004, after the Boston Red Sox won their first World Series title in 86 years. As I’ve written many times, Ike was the consummate Red Sox fan even though he grew up in Philadelphia. But he bled Red Sox from the time he moved to Boston with his family and wife Sylvia in October of 1953 until his death on March 13, 2003. Sadly, Ike, like many diehard Red Sox fans of a certain age and era, never got the chance to see the Red Sox win the World Series. That’s why, after the Sox won the championship in 2004, so many sons and daughters of these fans planted Red Sox pennants at graves all over New England. Thanks for the memories, Ike, and thanks for being a great father to myself and my older sister Sharlene, and a great husband to our Mom, Sylvia. This column, headlined, “Tears flow for Ike and Bob,” was published i...

The Boston Red Sox are returning to Fenway Park for a three-game series against the Tampa Bay Rays, starting Tuesday, after an abysmal --- and thoroughly embarrassing --- 2-8 road trip. Only a comeback, extra-inning win in the second game of a doubleheader Saturday against the Toronto Blue Jays and a 4-1 win against Detroit, thanks to a nice outing from Eduardo Rodriguez, kept the Sox from an 0-10 road trip. Here are 10 thoughts about the Sox collapse: 1. Chris Sale will be finally returning from his Tommy John surgery on Saturday, Aug. 14 --- two years and one day after last pitching. Sale has looked solid in his rehab assignments, but it says here that his return will be far too little, far too late to salvage this season, which is fast slipping away and resembles the 1978 and 2011 collapses. 2. Red Sox baseball boss Chaim Bloom did a good job in assembling the team in the off season, but his lack of effective moves at the July 30 trade deadline leaves him the No. 1 guy to bla...

Sunday’s 19 th annual 5K Run/Walk to Remember in downtown North Attleboro --- the Attleboro area’s first in-person race to be held since March 2020 when the coronavirus pandemic shut down the country ---was the road-running equivalent of “Cheers.” That’s because this race, a 3.1-miler organized by the Community VNA to raise money for its hospice care program, had the added benefit of turning into a reunion for runners, who last year were forced to do the race virtually. And what a reunion it was! People were so glad to be mixing with their friends at North Attleboro’s Veterans Park near town hall that the race itself was almost anti-climactic. And who could blame them, because on Sunday, Veterans Park was transformed into a place where, like the Bull & Finch Pub (the real name of Cheers made famous by the long-running NBC-TV sitcom), everyone knew their name. You couldn’t take a few steps in the park without someone greeting you by your first name, and it was an experience to...