Larry the K's Lineup

The Blizzard of 2022, as I write this in the late afternoon of the first day of the storm (Saturday, Jan. 29), has lived up to its hype, dropping upwards of nearly 2 feet so far on many parts of the Attleboro area, according to various reports, including from The Sun Chronicle of Attleboro, MA. Here's one person's Blizzard Journal, from Jan. 29 and Jan. 30, followed by an aftermath: ********* DAY 1: AN EXERCISE IN FUTILITY Early-morning hours to about 10:30 a.m. --- I look outside several times and by 10:30, with the storm really ramping up, I decide to start this snow day in earnest and venture outside. 10:30 to 11:30 a.m. ---  I find about 6 inches of snow on my walkway, and I shovel it as the winds intensify and whiteout conditions are starting to take hold. Despite not seeing a plow since about 2:30 a.m., when they did a sweep of my cul-de-sac, I try to walk-jog on the cul-de-sac. Big mistake! It was slow going doing the quarter-mile heading out, but conditions turned impos...

As the nation approaches the beginning of its third year of the coronavirus pandemic, and with nearly 870,000 Americans having died from COVID-19 since the pandemic’s start, we’re increasingly looking for some good news --- and the return of the Attleboro Arts Museum’s Flower Show for the first time since 2019 certainly qualifies as that. The show had to be canceled the last two years, and the cancellation was especially bitter in 2020, as it happened just a few days before the show was set to open and right after Massachusetts went into lockdown. The museum was shut down for three months after that cancellation, but has been able to stay open ever since with a combination of virtual and in-person exhibits that operated according to COVID-19 protocols. The flower show was canceled last year as well, although an art exhibit was held. Museum officials began planning for the show’s return in 2022 last summer, and to their credit, they were able to announce last week that the show, with so...

My friend and colleague at The Sun Chronicle, Staff Writer George Rhodes, has a knack for telling the most inspiring, comprehensive and amazing stories about World War II veterans. All of the veterans profiled by Rhodes have had incredible stories to share about that time in world history when the entire world was involved in a struggle to defend freedom, but Rhodes has outdone himself with his latest story. His story on a Foxboro man, Franciszek "Frank" Zaleski, may be the most compelling story he's written yet on World War II. Not only was Rhodes able to get a three-hour interview with this Polish resistance fighter on Jan. 17 --- his 100th birthday--- but this courageous man passed away just two days after the interview, in which he told his harrowing story of leading Polish resistance fighters against Nazis during the most terrifying days of the Nazis' reign of terror across Europe. This editor's note sets the scene for Rhodes' story. After that, click on ...

Memo to the 60-plus million unvaccinated Americans who are so fond of saying they're making a "personal choice." Your "personal choice" is not only selfish and misguided --- unless you have a legitimate medical exemption --- but it's endangering millions of lives, and not just from COVID-19. And that's not only because your choice is helping to spread the coronavirus, nor is it because by not getting vaccinated, you're very likely going to come down with far more serious bouts of COVID-19 than those who are vaccinated and boosted. No, with the vast majority of people who are hospitalized with COVID remaining unvaccinated, that "personal choice" is not only playing a major role in pushing hospitals to the brink, but it's also endangering the lives of thousands of patients who need serious, but not necessarily life-threatening, surgeries. As the Boston Globe reported last week, many hospitals, in the midst of this COVID surge, are making ...

During the just-concluded holiday season, I was "regifted" with a "present" that could be traced back 61 years. What I received was in no way a conventional “gift” that people normally get in December, but its timing made it a “gift” nonetheless, albeit one that I didn’t remotely desire.   This column was published in the January edition of the Jewish Rhode Island of Providence: The link to the column on the Jewish Rhode Island web site: https://www.jewishrhody.com/stories/gifts-come-in-all-shapes-and-sizes,14014? Many gifts were exchanged last month during Hanukkah and the holiday season, but not all gifts are created equally. For instance, gifts of food, such as chocolate gelt and baked goods, don’t usually last longer than a few days. Toys are often broken or left unused after the initial fascination with them fades. Clothes and shoes will either wear out or the recipient will outgrow or get tired of them. (The exception is older men like myself, who tend to le...

  Friday’s snowstorm (Jan. 7), which dumped up to a foot on parts of Massachusetts and about 8 inches in North Attleboro, offered a rare pause from the non-stop pandemic news, which has gotten to be too much for even those of us who have been fully vaccinated and boostered against the coronavirus. The brief return to the “old normal” began the night before. That’s when the season’s first legitimate snowstorm prompted the local nightly news to talk about something other than the pandemic right off the top. The snowy forecast instead led the TV stations to rev up their storm-watching machines to tell us over and over that --- mirabile dictu --- it was going to snow in January, and you had better be prepared. And prepare the viewers did, going to the store to stock up on bread, milk, peanut butter and other staples, and going to hardware stores to scoop up shovels.  (The latter has always amused me, because given that it’s winter in Massachusetts, it’s a safe bet that it will e...

Call it the great conundrum of this New Year: How to greet 2022? With hope? With optimism? With more gloom and doom? With pessimism? With fear? With dread? With depression? With a new load of worries? With an attack of nerves? With uncertainty? With skepticism? With concern for our survival as a nation and world? Try all of the above --- and a lot more! There are plenty of reasons that justify each of the above feelings. As the ball dropped past midnight on the East Coast last night/early this morning, I felt all of the above emotions, although caution and dread led them all. After being fooled into thinking that 2021 would be better and mean the end of this never-ending coronavirus pandemic, I've learned to be skeptical about feeling too hopeful. Instead, I entered the year with a simple, but utterly pragmatic, wish: "I hope that things won't get even worse in 2022 than they were the last two years," I told my wife moments after watching the ball drop on TV while sip...