Larry the K's Lineup

  In the wake of the 10 th anniversary of the Boston Marathon bombings, which was observed during Monday’s (April 17, 2023) 127 th running of the race, I’d like to share this column on a unique art exhibit held to pay tribute to the Boston Marathon five years after the 2013 tragedy. The art exhibit --- which was held during the month of April 2018 at the Attleboro Arts Museum in downtown Attleboro, MA --- offered a unique glimpse into both the bombings and their aftermath and the marathon itself. This column was published in the Wednesday, May 2, 2018, edition of The Sun Chronicle of Attleboro, MA: Link to this column: https://www.thesunchronicle.com/opinion/columns/larry-kessler-museums-marathon-exhibit-is-inspirational/article_0c135f7b-b8b9-537e-88b0-7abf563a33db.html Link to the story I wrote on the opening night of the exhibition on April 10, 2018: https://www.thesunchronicle.com/news/local_news/runners-high-attleboro-arts-museum-features-marathon-themed-art/article_4f7e...

It's not every day that I can play the proud papa role and tout one of my daughter's athletic accomplishments, but yesterday (April 12), on her 22nd birthday, my younger daughter Alana scored the first goal of her college lacrosse career during Johnson and Wales University's 22-5 rout of Albertus Magnus. That goal came about midway through the third quarter and it was the 18th JWU goal of the game. That was quickly followed by her second and third goals of her career, including one on a penalty shot. Getting a hat trick on three consecutive goals was a great way for her to celebrate her birthday. Her accomplishment is a testament to her grit and determination, because the only other competitive lacrosse she had played before this winter-spring season was on a club team during the second semester of her senior year in 2019 at Tri-County Regional Vocational Technical High School in Franklin, MA, where she was a four-year starter on the women's championship soccer team. He...

  Artist Mary Wojciechowski of Attleboro creates luminaries at the Feb. 18 museum art exhibit. The Attleboro Arts Museum, which serves the greater Attleboro, MA, area and beyond, is celebrating its 100 th anniversary this year, and that’s a most notable accomplishment. The Sun Chronicle of Attleboro, MA, saluted that anniversary with stories in the paper on the weekend of April 8-9, and with this column, which was published in the edition of Monday, April 10. At the end of this column, I include the links to the stories and this column in case you’d like to check them out. ******* “Mazel tov” is the traditional Hebrew greeting when you wish someone well as they’re celebrating a “simcha” (a happy occasion). It’s most often uttered when wishing people well at milestone events --- bar or bat mitzvahs, marriages, births, wedding anniversaries, graduations and birthdays. It literally means good luck as “mazel” means fortune or luck and “tov” means good. But however you say it, in...

  The author is 3 (far left) and his sister Sharlene is 7 in this family photo. Passover, the eight-day Jewish Festival of Freedom, will begin with the first of two Seder meals tomorrow evening (April 5), and the holiday --- which commemorates the ancient Hebrews’ flight from slavery in Egypt --- carries an even deeper meaning these days due to what the Anti-Defamation League has called record-high antisemitism in the United States. It's both discouraging and chilling that antisemitism remains a major problem in 2023, but given the hateful nature of American politics these days --- when people (and not just extremists or would-be terrorists) demonize their opponents and openly talk about killing them and inciting riots and inflicting violence on them --- it shouldn’t come as a surprise. That atmosphere makes our memories of the holiday even more precious, and that’s the subject that I delved into with two versions of the same column. This column was published April 1, 2023, in ...

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 ...