Larry the K's Lineup

The good thing about making predictions for this year's Red Sox season, which will start tomorrow (Thursday, March 30) with the home opener against the Baltimore Orioles, is that the Sox's expectations are so low that if they're a .500 or better team, they will have improved over their 78-84 last-place finish in the American League East in 2022. Or, to put it in a way that fans of the iconic 1967 "Impossible Dream" team would understand, if they simply meet the spring-training prediction by that team's manager, Dick Williams, that "we'll win more than we'll lose," the season will be a success. That's because realistically, with all of the question marks surrounding both the lineup and pitching, especially among the starters, there's no way you can pick them to finish any higher in the AL East than fourth, behind the Yankees, Blue Jays and Rays --- and even that assumes that this year's Sox will be better than the once-lowly Oriole...

  CUTLINES: Left:   Sylvia and Ike Kessler, 1945 while Ike was in the Navy during World War II. Below: Sylvia and Ike Kessler in the 1990s. Today (March 13, 2023) is the 20 th anniversary of the death of my father, Isaac “Ike” Kessler at the age of 84. His yahrzeit or remembrance in Hebrew, was marked on the ninth of Adar, the day on the Hebrew calendar that corresponded to March 13, 2003. Officially, he died on the ninth day of Adar II --- the leap month that is added periodically to the Hebrew calendar to compensate for it being a lunar-based calendar. But on non-leap years, his passing is remembered on the ninth of Adar. (It’s kind of like being born or dying on Feb. 29.) At any rate, in honor of the milestone of losing my Dad, I wrote this column, which appears in the March 2023 edition of Jewish Rhode Island of Providence, R.I. The link to the article, on that paper’s website is: https://www.jewishrhody.com/stories/my-dad-long-gone-but-never-forgotten,29722 ? ******...

Photo by Mark Stockwell / The Sun Chronicle Rick Thurmond, center, is flanked by then-Sun Chronicle Editor Mike Kirby, left, and Larry Kessler on March 17, 2017, when all three retired from the newspaper. Growing up, and later as an adult, I was always told by my parents and older friends that one of the toughest things about growing old is seeing friends and relatives predecease you. I always knew that to be true, as I saw my Dad Ike lose a lot of friends and relatives before he died 20 years ago this month. But I recently received yet another sad reminder about that truism when a longtime colleague and friend died way too soon. Yes, it’s true that my good friend had been battling COPD for several years, but even though his condition had worsened, I still had hoped that he’d be around for years to come. Sadly, that was not to be. Rick’s passing at the age of 68 was made worse because nearly a year ago, he had moved out of the Attleboro area to another Massachusetts city that was ...

It may just be an unfortunate byproduct of the nasty and hateful cesspool that social media has all too often become these days, but a report that Boston Red Sox Chief Baseball Officer Chaim Bloom has been subjected to antisemitism and death threats has to be addressed. In an informative, and entertaining, feature on Bloom in The Boston Globe recently, photo journalist and reporter Stan Grossfeld of the Globe included this alarming paragraph in the story: "Bloom is reluctant to comment on the rare death threats and an antisemitic slur he has received. He doesn’t want to talk about having trouble sleeping when the team plays poorly or about the migraine headaches he occasionally gets. “I’ve had them my whole life,” he says. I've been critical of Bloom's roster construction and his botching of the Xander Bogaerts negotiations. I've also suggested that Bloom and principal owner John Henry were never serious about giving Bogey a long-term contract or else the ex-Sox shorts...

  Photos by Barbara Benoit / The Relay For Life of Greater Attleboro Photo 1 (above):  Artist   Mary Wojciechowski designed these luminaries during the "Creating Awareness" exhibit at the Attleboro Arts Museum held during the Winter Night Festival. Photos 2 and 3: (left and below left):  Artist   Greg Anderson used calligraphy to create these luminaries.    The Relay For Life of Greater Attleboro, which will be celebrating its 25 th anniversary at this June’s fundraising event for the American Cancer Society, received a tremendous boost during the recent Winter Night Festival in Attleboro, thanks to an art exhibit held at that time. The “Creating Awareness” live art-making event featured about a dozen artists decorating luminary bags in various art forms, and it attracted hundreds of spectators throughout the four-hour exhibit. With the relay on June 16-17 at Norton High School still months away, this was a positive start to what’s always an ...

  This column on what could be considered an 11 th plague for our times --- the scourge of hackers and scammers preying on people, especially senior citizens --- appeared in the February 2023 edition of Jewish Rhode Island of Providence, R.I. After being hacked three years ago --- and after my wife’s email was recently hacked --- I was motivated to write this column to share our experiences and to offer some advice on how to fend off these truly evil and despicable people, who deserve life imprisonment or the ultimate penalty: being denied access to computers and all forms of electronic media for the rest of their lives. NOTE: The link to the column, as it appears on the newspaper’s website follows: https://www.jewishrhody.com/stories/tips-to-thwart-those-despicable-scammers,27613? ****** Every time someone’s email or phone gets hacked or a senior citizen falls victim to a phishing or another scam, the perpetrators are not only treating their victims with extreme disdain and ...

NOTE: This story appeared in the Feb. 7 edition of The Sun Chronicle of Attleboro, MA. Here’s the link to that article: https://www.thesunchronicle. com/news/local_news/relay-for- life-attleboro-arts-museum- team-up-for-exhibit-during- citys-winter-night-festival/ article_21d24485-93d6-5ab3- 944d-b25bddc52b90.html BY LARRY KESSLER For The Sun Chronicle ATTLEBORO --- The Relay For Life of Greater Attleboro and the Attleboro Arts Museum will continue their ongoing partnership by teaming up on an art exhibition during the city’s 2023 Winter Night Festival from 4 to 8 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 18. The festival will be returning to downtown Attleboro for the first time since 2020, when it was held weeks before the coronavirus pandemic lockdown halted all large gatherings and closed the museum for a while. The art exhibit inside the museum, one of the festival’s organizers, will be one of several events going on that day. Hayrides, a giant bonfire, food trucks, illuminated jugglers and sti...

  Today (Feb. 1, 2023) marks 20 years since the space shuttle Columbia broke up on re-entry after a two-week mission, killing seven more astronauts just 17 years and three days removed from the Jan. 28, 1986, Challenger explosion. The failure of many of its tiles, which protected the shuttle from the fiery re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere, left Columbia without a reliable heat shield and caused America’s first space shuttle to disintegrate upon re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere, sending Columbia’s remnants all across Texas. It was a Saturday morning, and I had just returned from my morning run when a friend and co-worker at The Sun Chronicle called to alert me to the tragedy, which brought back the painful memories of the Challenger disaster. In addition, as one of two news editors then on Saturday duty, I had a paper to get out --- our Sunday edition was at that time still the biggest of the week for The Sun Chronicle. (The edition was phased out and combined with the Sat...

NOTE: To remember the Columbia space shuttle disaster, which occurred 20 years ago today (Feb. 1, 2003), I’m posting two localized stories on the tragedy written by then-Sun Chronicle staff writer John Winters, as well as a column that I wrote about it. Winters’ two stories are posted first, followed by my column. They appeared in The Sun Chronicle of Attleboro, MA. on Sunday, Feb. 2, 2003. This is Winters’ main local story, a reaction to the Columbia disaster two decades ago:   BY JOHN WINTERS SUN CHRONICLE STAFF Patricia Stewart knows what it's like to watch a loved one sail into the skies aboard the space shuttle. Her cousin, Kevin Kregal, has flown four shuttle missions, most recently in July 2001. Stewart, who lives in Plainville, has been there to watch three of those launches. Which is part of the reason that Saturday's explosion of the space shuttle Columbia hit her hard, and why the families of the seven astronauts who were lost in the tragedy were her fir...

  NOTE: To remember the Columbia space shuttle disaster, which occurred 20 years ago today (Feb. 1, 2003), I’m posting two localized stories on the tragedy written by then-Sun Chronicle staff writer John Winters, as well as a column that I wrote about it. Winters’ two stories are posted first, followed by my column. They appeared in The Sun Chronicle on Sunday, Feb. 2, 2003. This is Winters’ sidebar, in which he talked to teachers, asking their reaction to Columbia’s disaster two decades ago: BY JOHN WINTERS SUN CHRONICLE STAFF Plainville school teacher William Fasulo was saddened to watch the space shuttle Columbia break up over Texas Saturday morning. He thought of the families of the astronauts lost in the tragedy, and as someone who is eager to become a part of one of NASA's teacher in space program, the incident was even more troubling. “It brings back a lot of memories of the Challenger,” he said. “It shocks you, and brings back those memories and what the family of C...