From way back in 1960, Joan Baez
    sings Mary Hamilton.

    Last night there were four Marys
    Tonight there'll be but three
    It was Mary Beaton and Mary Seton
    And Mary Carmichael and me.

    Continuing with words that first appeared in the
    Merriam-Webster dictionary fifty years ago.

    Here it is already; another back-to-school season. This is one of
    my back-to-school pictures. I'm the skinny guy on the right. This
    was taken in 1959 at the VanMeter dorm at UMass Amherst. (The
    only UMass there was back then.) Here's a tune from that  time
    and place.

    But there's no smoke at all coming out of the stack
    For the mill has shut down and it's not coming back

    Click here to hear Aragon Mill - or here if you'd prefer it
    with a Hazel Dickens bluegrass sound.

Freedom Street, Seven Sisters

Hopedale in September 2019


  Hopedale history ezine for September - Griffin Apartments Dedication   

Hopedale in August 2019

Hopedale in September 2018

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    Thanks to Miriam Greta for this photo of the swim
    team at Hopedale Pond in 1977 or 1978.

    Swan takes shower - Charles River,
    South Natick, September 1.

    Click here to go to the Natick Historical Society site where you
    can read the story of the statue by the Charles River that can
    be seen from Route 16, and also of the nearby red bridge.

    According to a reverse image search, it appears that this bird, which we
    saw along the Charles, is a double breasted cormorant. It wasn't a bit shy.
    We passed it twice, fairly close, and it stayed right there on its perch.

    Here are a couple of monarchs given to me by my friend Pat in
    Connecticut. The one above has stopped eating and I presume is
    moving on to the next stage - making a chrysalis. The one on the
    right is a few days ahead.

    Around 11 p.m.on the day I took the pictures, I looked at the one
    shown above. It had finished creating its chrysalis. Wish I had paid
    more attention during the day and watched the process.

    Laboratory testing has “confirmed two new cases of Eastern Equine Encephalitis (EEE) virus infection, a
    woman in her 60s from eastern Worcester County and a female under the age of 18 from southwestern
    Middlesex County,” health department officials said in a press release. “This brings the total number of
    human cases of EEE to seven this year in Massachusetts. As a result, the risk level in Framingham,
    Marlborough, Northborough, and Sudbury has been raised to critical and the risk level in Berlin, Boylston,
    Hudson, Maynard, Stow, and Wayland has been raised to high.”

    On Thursday, officials announced that the state’s fifth human case of EEE this year had been confirmed in
    a man in his 70s from southwestern Middlesex County.

    The case prompted officials to raise the risk level for EEE in Ashland, Hopedale, and Milford to critical
    and the risk level in Bellingham, Blackstone, and Millville to high. Boston Globe, Sept. 6, 2019

    September, the month of the poor, misunderstood goldenrod that
    never did anyone any harm. Wldflowers don't care where they grow.
    That's what you can hear from Linda, Emmylou and Dolly.

Here's another photo from 1959.

    Above - hungry goats by the Hopedale Street side of
    Hopedale Pond - August 30.

    Right - photo shows the same area on September 9.
    According to a Milford News article, a brush cutter
    was used to finish the work started by the goats.

    Once or twice I month I go to the Milford History Museum at  Memorial Hall
    looking for an answer to a Hopedale history question. Today I was there in
    search of information on a person involved in the IWW/Draper strike of 1913.
    While i was there I noticed a recently donated set of four glasses, each with
    a different Milford scene, on their large work table, including this one of the
    Gen. Draper statue.

From the 1904 Milford-Hopedale directory.

    Day in the Park - September 14. Click here
    to see more photos of it.

Click here for article.

    The photo to the left shows an American chestnut tree on the
    Upton side of North Pond. (There are five little groups of them
    near the shore.) The picture below was taken at Prospect
    Heights, Milford. Both trees are in much better shape than any
    chestnuts that I've seen elsewhere. Usually when they get to be
    about 15 feet high, they are hit by the chestnut blight and die.
    They seldom survive long enough to bear nuts.. I'm not sure if
    the one in the Heights is an American chestnut. See below, left
    for the answer.

    It must have been at least ten years
    ago when Rick Buroni sent me a CD
    with pictures of various Hopedale
    scenes in the 1940s, '50s and '60s. I
    put some of them on this site,but
    didn't get around to doing all of them. I
    just ran across them again, and
    added more than a dozen of the
    building of Draper Field and early
    games to the Now and Then - Draper
    Field  page. Here it is.

    Here are a  few newspaper clippings from September
    1920, showing preparations in Hopedale for the first
    election after the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment.

    On September 22, the monarchs came out of the chrysalises
    that you saw further ups this page. Click here if you'd like to
    see more pictures of them.

    The mystery of the chestnut tree in the Heights led me to going
    back there to see if I could find out more about it. A guy working
    on his car just a few feet from it told me who owned it. I knocked
    on the door of the owner and asked. Portuguese chestnut, he told
    me. When I got home, I  took a look online. Here's a bit about its
    several names according to Wikipedia.

    The tree is commonly called the "chestnut", or "sweet chestnut" to
    distinguish it from the horse chestnut Aesculus hippocastanum,
    to which it is only distantly related. Other common names include
    "Spanish chestnut", "Portuguese chestnut" and "marron" (French
    for "chestnut"). The Latin sativa means "cultivated by humans."
    Some selected varieties are smaller and more compact in growth
    yielding earlier in life with different ripening time: the Marigoule,
    the Marisol and the Maraval.

    Lena (Nargi) Spencer, born and raised in Milford, established in Saratoga Springs what became
    the oldest continuously operating coffee house in the country. Recently WMHT, the PBS station in
    Albany produced and aired a documentary about Lena and Caffe Lena. Here it is.

    Here's Chronicle reporter Ted Reinstein giving a talk at the Bancroft Library. The program
    was sponsored by the Friends of the Hopedale Library. Reinstein told several fascinating
    tales from around New England. The photo on the screen behind him was showing
    when he was talking about Norman Rockwell and the Rockwell Museum.

    Next program at the library - Wednesday, October 16, 2019: Sarah Hodge Wetherbe
    will present “Paranormal and Weird instances in the History of Massachusetts”.

    Sixty years??? Yes, it was 60 years ago that we graduated
    from Hopedale High, or as it was called then, General
    Draper High School. We've been having annual reunions
    since the 40th. Here we are at Willow Brook for the 60th.

Click here for the Hurricane of '38 in Hopedale.

    Coincidentally, about two weeks after I put this
    Where's Waldo cartoon here, I ran across an
    article about Statue of Hope sculptor Waldo Story
    with the title you see above. There will be more on
    Waldo's work and a photo of it sent by Kathleen
    Lawrence on Hopedale in October.