Frank Komola retired in 2012 following a 23 year career at UPS. He belongs to the retirees chapter of Local 25, International Brotherhood of Teamsters in Boston. He and his wife, Lisa, live in Haverhill.
Our recent first time flying internationally has taught my wife and I a valuable lesson. Either book a non-stop flight to your destination, or make sure that, if you do have a connecting flight, you allow at least three hours between the two flights. While it won’t take you all of that time to get through customs, customs combined with a flight delay and the distance between the gates of your connecting flights could consume almost all of those three hours.
No one in Boston sports media has brought it up to my knowledge, but the absence of David Ortiz’s bat and presence in the dugout has, in my opinion, definitely impacted the Red Sox run production this season. The loss of his bat in the lineup and the high ERAs of the pitching staff have combined to send the Bosox to the middle of the pack in the eastern division. And I’m not sure that David Price will ever live up to the team’s expectation. Hopefully, they’ll prove me wrong.
Wouldn’t mind being a fly on the wall in the Brady house after the recent comments by Giselle regarding Tom’s apparent concussions while playing for our hometown team. The team does a great job of keeping everyone on the same page when it comes to communicating with the public, but this was a rare case of an outside the box comment. The paparazzi will all have the telephoto lenses watching every bit of body language between this celebrity couple in the coming months for sure.
I think health insurance rates for individuals should be established in much the same way as car insurance rates. If you smoke, don’t control your weight or salt intake, don’t control your intake carbs if you’re a diabetic, drink too much or eat too many foods containing saturated fats, you should pay a higher premium than individuals who watch what they eat and exercise regularly. Health care providers should be asking more questions than just, “Do you smoke?”
When you live in a city like Haverhill, you have to expect they’ll be a certain amount of congestion on the city’s main roads, particularly when an accident during rush hour on 495 forces frustrated commuters on to city streets. For many of us who live on side streets off of 97, 110 and 125, these congestion events entice frustrated commuters to cut through neighborhoods at highway rates of speed. In order to save even more time, stop signs turn into yields, posing a danger to our residential neighborhoods. A group of concerned citizens in the Bradford section of the city have begun to make their case for a more aggressive approach to enforcing the 20-mph limit on neighborhood streets. Hopefully greater enforcement of this limit will prevent a serious accident or personal injury. Perhaps just this once a city like ours can be proactive in preventing a tragedy.
Now, all I have to do is find the lawnmower. Didn’t I just do the lawn three days ago?
I have a lot of random thoughts too….
With the cost to educate “just one” student in the Havehill School System being reportedly $12,000+ per year, I wonder how many students there are who are the children of parents in the United States illegally? Dozens? Hundreds? Thousands?
Why was there no outrage by people who recycled electronics recently to the mayor charging citizens to drop items off and then his selling the material collected to a recycling company for a profit?
I wonder why city councilor Melinda Barrett tells people privately that her downtown business has been “devastated” by the meals and parking taxes the mayor instituted, but says nothing publicly?
With The City of Boston just announcing that 65% of the crimes committed in that city are done by criminal trespassers, most from the Dominican Republic, I wonder what the percentage is in Haverhill?
I wonder when even one city councilor is going to demand the mayor provide accurate feedback on the energy savings programs he’s instituted over the past couple of years? I further wonder what they’re going to do when they find out the savings is nowhere near what the mayor promised, and that his proposals were all outright lies?
I wonder how many gang shootings and drug busts there will be this summer by criminal trespassers in the country illegally who call Haverhill home since the mayor has made it a sanctuary city?
Why do Haverhill youth sports leagues put up with parents paying taxes that fund the DPW and Recreation Department and then the mayor turning around and charging them all a second time via a user fee to use city fields?