Larry the K's Lineup

  Larry, Lynne, Arianna in China in 1997. A quarter-century can seem like a long time, but the 25 years that have elapsed since my wife and I adopted our first child, Arianna, from China have gone by in a flash. Today, our daughter is a teacher, having graduated from Bridgewater State University in 2018, but in 1997, she was a toddler waiting for her forever family to take her out of China, which at the time was losing thousands of its daughters yearly due to that government’s one-child policy, which wouldn’t be ended until 2015. In what now seems like an eternity ago, my wife and I traveled to China to adopt Arianna in the fall of 1997. This article --- which appeared in The Sun Chronicle of Attleboro, MA on Tuesday, Oct. 25 --- looks back on that trip of a lifetime. The column follows, and the link to the column on the newspaper’s website is: https://www.thesunchronicle.com/opinion/columns/larry-kessler-the-journey-of-a-lifetime-indeed/article_925e991f-b63a-54cd-8589-8929d9292...

With inflation running higher than it has in four decades --- and with retailers under more pressure than ever with staff shortages due to supply chain and post-pandemic pressures --- I thought I'd share two positive retail experiences that I had today (Friday, Oct. 14). I went to the Emerald Square mall in North Attleboro in search of a specific color shirt (lavender) for an upcoming wedding. I went to JC Penney first because I had a gift card to that store, but after looking for 10 minutes or so, I couldn't locate a shirt of that color. So I asked a clerk in the men's store for help, and he went out of his way to help me, something that's no longer a given these days. This gentleman looked for a shirt from the racks, but didn't find even a color close to lavender, but he didn't stop there. He spent a few minutes searching online for an appropriate dress shirt, but didn't find an exact match. He offered to order the one he found, but he also suggested that ...

Red Sox Chief Baseball Officer Chaim Bloom, in the team’s season-ending press conference on Thursday, Oct. 6, pledged to make signing potential free agent Xander Bogaerts (who could opt out of his contract five days after the World Series) and Rafael Devers (who will be a free agent after the 2023 season) to long-term contracts a top priority this off-season, and he had better follow through or run the risk of getting fired. Bloom needs to do that if he ever wants to dispel the notion that he’s been trying to turn the Sox into Tampa Bay North, a notion that the former Rays executive has, with some justification, been accused of trying to do since he took over in 2019 and promptly dumped Mookie Betts to the Los Angeles Dodgers for three average players. (Sorry, but Alex Verdugo is an average, at best, outfielder and his rightfield defense has been mediocre to awful since he was made a right-fielder after the trade deadline. Connor Wong may one day make a good catcher, but he’s not th...

Max Volterra (Photo courtesy of The Sun Chronicle)       Max Volterra is shown in 2009. (Photo courtesy of The Sun Chronicle) The passing on Monday (Oct. 3) of Attleboro attorney and former state and city official Max Volterra at the age of 86 was a n extremely sad loss for the greater Attleboro community. The man was a mensch, as the story by Staff Writer George Rhodes, on Volterra’s death, published in The Sun Chronicle on Wednesday, Oct. 5, noted. (Read the full story at this link to the newspaper’s website: https://www.thesunchronicle.com/news/local_news/max-volterra-pillar-of-the-attleboro-community-dies-at-86/article_e4293cc9-e636-5cb8-b789-52cc5341b737.html) Volterra, as Rhodes wrote, served the city as a Ward 2 city councilor, city solicitor, state representative, board member for the office of community development, and a member of the Attleboro Redevelopment Authority and the election commission. He also served his synagogue , Congregation Agudas Achim for ...

With the Jewish New Year beginning at sundown today (Sunday, Sept. 25), Jews in the United States and around the world are facing an uncertain future due to the sharp rise in anti-Semitism and the increased boldness and hatred of right-wing hate groups --- both online and in person. Their hateful rhetoric is in danger of making the Jewish people sitting ducks again --- and God forbid --- spawn a new Holocaust! This column, which was published Friday, Sept. 23 in The Sun Chronicle of Attleboro, MA, examines that disturbing trend. The link to the column, as it appears on The Sun Chronicle website, follows: https://www.thesunchronicle.com/opinion/columns/larry-kessler-for-jews-it-hasnt-been-such-a-shana-tova/article_3f28e9be-5028-5112-97a0-182acb7742df.html The Jewish New Year 5783 will start Sunday evening (Sept. 25) with the start of the two-day observance known as Rosh Hashanah and will end 10 days later at sundown on Wednesday, Oct. 5 with the conclusion of the 24-hour solemn fas...

  Larry with daughters Arianna, left, and Alana on his 70th. CUTLINE: Larry is surrounded by his two daughters, Arianna, left, and Alana, while celebrating his 70 th birthday at an area restaurant. (Photo by Lynne Cains) I recently turned 70, and as the saying goes, reaching that milestone is better than the alternative. But hitting that mark also has also convinced me to try to become less of a worry wart --- something I’ve been for the better part of my life. In this column, which I wrote for the September edition of Jewish Rhode Island of Providence, I share my thoughts on being a worry wart, and also offer a few observations on growing older. Here is the link to the column as it appears on the Jewish Rhode Island website: https://www.jewishrhody.com/stories/a-few-things-ive-learned-in-my-70-years,17213? This column appears in the September edition of Jewish Rhode Island of Providence: One of the advantages of growing older has been learning to live more spontaneou...

In a time of great division and bitterness, it’s important to remember that there are good people out there who still reach out to help others. The residents of the Highland Meadow neighborhood of North Attleboro fit into that category. Simply put, they are, as the wizard in “The Wizard of Oz” described it, “good deed-doers.” For the sixth year --- the race wasn’t held in 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic --- the neighborhood, led by the youngsters and students who live there --- organized a race on Saturday (Sept. 10) to raise money for pediatric cancer research. It’s been held on Labor Day previously, but this year was changed to Saturday, due to Monday’s steady rain. This was the third or fourth time that I've done the race, and it’s an easy decision to participate in it, because I can jog-walk the mile or so from my house to the race site, do the race --- which is three laps around the neighborhood --- and then jog-walk back again. And the proceeds go to a very laudabl...

The death of Queen Elizabeth II on Thursday, Sept. 8 at the age of 96 has been mourned worldwide, and justifiably so. No other nation's leader, royal or otherwise, was treated by people of hundreds of countries as their leader, too. Indeed, no other leader has made millions worldwide feel better by just being herself, and by being there. Elizabeth first became the leader of Great Britain and the Commonwealth on Feb. 6, 1952, at the age of 26, when her father King George VI, died, and it was truly remarkable that she reigned every day until her death --- for more than 70 ½ years. That’s a record for a monarch that's unlikely to be broken --- and it’s worth noting that she was still on the job two days before her death as on Sept. 6, she met with outgoing British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his replacement, Liz Truss, to facilitate the handover of power following Johnson’s recent resignation from the post. But Elizabeth, as has been noted by the many British royal watcher...

  One thing that former President Donald Trump has accomplished is to make Richard Nixon --- who resigned in disgrace over the Watergate scandal on Aug. 9, 1974 --- look like a saint in comparison. Improving Nixon’s legacy is something that the younger me wouldn’t have thought possible. But then Donald Trump changed all that. Between Trump’s role in inciting an attempted coup of the government by marshaling right-wing extremist groups to invade the Capitol on Jan. 6 and to come perilously close to do bodily harm to then-Vice President Mike Pence and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi --- and then his decision to take hundreds of classified documents home with him in a clear violation of United States law, Nixon's place in history has improved considerably. Sure, Nixon orchestrated the cover-up of the Watergate burglary and ensuing scandal, which eventually sent numerous members of the Nixon Administration to jail. But Nixon didn’t attempt to overthrow the government, nor did he mi...

CUTLINE: Tony Conigliaro is shown in his hospital bed the day after the night that he was beaned by Los Angeles Angels pitcher Jack Hamilton on Friday night Aug. 18, 1967. For those like myself who were in attendance at Fenway Park, it's a moment we'll never forget. (Boston Globe file photo on Boston.com)  To commemorate tomorrow’s 55 th anniversary of one of the most iconic moments of the Boston Red Sox’s fabled 1967 Impossible Dream season --- the beaning of Tony Conigliaro on the sultry summer night of Friday, Aug. 18, 1967 --- I thought I’d share this column that I wrote for The Sun Chronicle of Attleboro, MA, as the 50 th anniversary of that moment approached. That column was published on Aug. 16, 2017. At the same time, I’m taking this opportunity to renew my plea for the Boston Red Sox to retire Tony Conigliaro’s No. 25.   Conigliaro, known forever to Red Sox fans of that era as “Tony C,” shares a unique place in the history of the Sox and that magical Impossible ...