Larry the K's Lineup

  My wife Lynne and I are celebrating our 33 rd wedding anniversary today --- not a milestone number such as the 25 th or 40 th or 50 th , but a number worth marking nonetheless --- especially in this day and age. To mark the occasion, I’m posting this column, which I wrote for the January 2018 edition of Jewish Rhode Island of Providence, R.I., in which I shared some of what I learned from being married, at that time, for almost 30 years. The advice remains sound. This column was originally published in the January 2018 edition of Jewish Rhode Island of Providence, R.I. Thirty years ago this Valentine’s Day, I proposed to my wife Lynne in my column in the newspaper where I was working. We were married later that year, and in October we will celebrate our 30 th anniversary. Thirty years certainly pales in comparison to being married 50, 60 or 75 years, but all of those milestones have one thing in common: Staying married for the long haul requires much more than the roma...

The Boston Red Sox won six games in the playoffs, exactly halfway to the 12 they would have needed to go all the way to win the World Series, and two fewer than they would have needed to win the American League Championship Series after qualifying for the playoffs as a Wild Card team. In the wake of their loss in Game 6 to the Houston Astros in the ALCS, which ended their season, here are 12 thoughts: 1. The Sox playoff run was indeed an unexpected gift to Red Sox fans, but that doesn't stop us from being disappointed in the outcome after they took a 2-1 lead in the ALCS against the Astros after blowing them out in Games 2 and 3. 2. What caused the Red Sox power outage from the fourth inning of Game 4 through Game 6? A combination of factors. Part of it was how baseball works; you're never as hot as you seem and you're never as cold as you seem, either. But if your bats go cold for a few days during the regular season, there's plenty of time to recover from that slump...

TUESDAY, OCT. 19 UPDATE: Memo to Sox fans: As crazy as the last two wins have been, do not get cocky. The Astros lineup is still fearsome and the final two games of a seven-game series are the toughest to win. So don't get ahead of yourselves; just root, root for the Red Sox. Boston Red Sox fans can't lose this postseason, which after the way the Red Sox blew a big lead in the American League Eastern Division race in August, was totally unexpected. Be honest, Sox fans: In late August or on Labor Day, you hoped for a wild card berth, but even that end to the 2021 regular season seemed unlikely, between the injuries and COVID-19 outbreak that decimated the team. But then the Sox started to amaze their fans. Needing to win the last three games of the regular season against the Washington Nationals just to qualify for a wild card berth, they did so, and got the No. 1 wild card slot when they ended the season tied at 92-70 apiece with the New York Yankees. (Fans of a certain age wi...

With the 125 th Boston Marathon being run today (Oct. 11, 2021) --- the first marathon since the 2019 race due to multiple postponements and last year’s cancellation and decision to hold it virtually --- I thought I’d share this column that was published April 19, 2006, two days after the 110 th marathon was held two days earlier. The runners who flock to Boston annually from across the globe and country to run this historic race are a special breed, and no more so than this year. They had to maintain their training for two years despite all of the uncertainty surrounding the coronavirus pandemic, and couldn’t be certain that the 2021 race would actually go off on time. But thanks to the perseverance of the Boston Athletic Association (BAA) and the cooperation of thousands of government, health and public safety officials, today’s race became a reality. Enjoy this look-back on the 100 th race, viewed 10 yeas later. *** This column was published April 19, 2006, in The Sun Chroni...

  Photo courtesy of the Wampanoag Road Runners A group of runners from the Wampanoag Road Runners line up to run their virtual Boston Marathon in September 2020 after the Boston Marathon was canceled. Twenty-three Wampanoag Road Runners participated in Monday's 125th Boston Marathon. With the 125 th Boston Marathon returning to an actual road race on Monday for 20,000 runners --- another nearly 30,000 will be doing the marathon virtually as everyone was forced to do in 2020 due to the pandemic --- I’d like to share this story focusing on how many Attleboro area runners are feeling about doing the race. At the end is also a story featuring an interview with a BAA spokesman about all of the COVID-19 protocols that will be in effect during Monday’s race. Check out the story, as it appeared online at The Sun Chronicle website: Link to Oct. 9th Boston Marathon preview story in The Sun Chronicle: https://www.thesunchronicle. com/news/local_news/an- october-marathon-monday-local-...

Memo to New England Patriots fans who will be jamming Gillette Stadium tonight (Sunday, Oct. 3) and watching on NBC for the Patriots game against the Tampa Bay Bucs for the much-anticipated return to Foxboro of six-time Super Bowl champion Tom Brady: Do not boo TB12, because regardless of his breakup with longtime Patriots coach Bill Belichick, Brady is a local legend and future Hall of Famer, and he’s earned our cheers. By all means, root for the Patriots against the Bucs during the game itself (8:20 p.m. on NBC-TV), but don’t boo Brady; he doesn’t deserve that treatment. Other thoughts about Brady’s return: * His trip back to Foxboro with the Bucs can’t be compared to any other return of a Boston area athlete with his new team. Roger Clemens was already a hated figure among Red Sox fans when he returned with the Yankees. Johnny Damon was booed at Fenway Park, but he’s not close to being on the same level as Brady. The Celtics Ray Allen also wasn’t a superstar when he returned...

UPDATE: After a nine-day bout with my cough, bronchitis, congestion, etc,  I found out that the urgent care near my home didn't require COVID tests to get treated, and was able to get seen by a doctor and was given a lot of meds to help nurse me back to health. Memo to everyone who has been doing everything --- including getting vaccinated and wearing masks at indoor settings, especially stores and avoiding large crowds: Don’t get what used to be a routine cough or cold, because doctors’ offices will not see you until they put you through the ringer, demanding that you get a negative COVID test first, regardless of how severe or persistent your symptoms are. Never mind that the cough and laryngitis that you have could get worse if you can’t get access to inhalers or other antibiotics. The doctors’ offices could care less, which is why they had better stop lamenting that patients won’t show up for routine ailments, because there are no routine ailments any more; all that too many ...

I ran my fourth race and second 5K since races have been allowed again on Saturday, the Franklin Farm 5K in Cumberland, R.I., and it was another welcome breather from all of the nasty COVID-19 chaos swirling around our lives thanks to the 70 million people who prefer to make a non-sensical political statement by not getting vaccinated instead of keeping themselves and others safe by getting vaccinated. (How getting vaccinated became a political issue is beyond me. If Americans acted as foolishly as this during the polio outbreak, that disease would have never been eradicated in the United States. And don't get me started about the 675,000-plus deaths in the United States from COVID-19 having exceeded the death toll from the 1918-20 Spanish flu outbreak; that development is as absurd as it is tragic.) The race was a fun run/walk to raise money for the farmland, which is situated in a rural part of the town that has been preserved, and it was held in conjunction with a festival held ...

 Julian Kadish,  an emergency medicine physician who has served on the Norton Conservation Commission for about 40 years, wrote this guest column for The Sun Chronicle of Attleboro, MA on Thursday, Sept. 23. His column is yet another plea for the millions of unvaccinated Americans to do the right thing and get vaccinated for the sake of everyone else, if not for themselves. He writes: "From my perspective, the decision to not be immunized against COVID-19 is equivalent to driving into the intersection when the light is red. Most of the time you will make it. But the times you don’t make it, it’s bad for you, and worse, it’s bad for other people. "Not getting immunized against COVID-19 is definitely bad for you but it is also bad for the whole community because it stresses our medical community treating all those people who get seriously ill, it prevents people with normal medical problems from getting access to health care because of the overload of hospitals caused by those ...

  This column --- which I wrote on Sept. 11, 2001, and which was published Wednesday, Sept. 12, 2001, in The Sun Chronicle of Attleboro, MA --- was headlined “A taste of what our parents felt with Pearl Harbor.” I’m posting it today on my blog, not only to commemorate the 20 th anniversary of the terror attacks, but also to give people a sense of what people were thinking at the time of the attacks. What we couldn't foresee then was that 20 years later, after trillions of dollars and thousands of lives lost in a war fought by American soldiers who had to in many cases serve several tours of duty in Afghanistan, the war would end with the Taliban --- the same militant-terrorists who had harbored Osama bin Laden for years --- returning to power. Twenty years later, our unity in the days after the attacks proved ephemeral, with the result that now, at the 20 th anniversary of the attacks, the country is more polarized, divided and on the verge of civil war than it’s been since th...