Schools

Watertown High School Robotics Team Excels at Beantown Blitz Competition

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On Oct. 6, the Watertown High School Robotics Team competed in Beantown Blitz in Revere where after a long day of competition they were able to advance to the final match and achieve a second place alliance finish in a closely contested final! Seventeen teams from around the New England region attended the competition and joined in three team alliances against other alliances to score points with their robots by strategically and efficiently placing game cubes in Exchanges, Switches and Scales. After competing in nine qualifying matches, the team moved on to the elimination matches. In the semi­final match, the WHS Robotics team’s alliance handily won the round 2­0 in a best of three.

Boston Marathon Bombing

Buses to Start Using New Red Lanes on Mt. Auburn Street Soon, Also Impacts Bikes, Cars

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The following information was provided by the MBTA and Town of Watertown:
Beginning the week of Oct. 15, the Town of Watertown, the City of Cambridge, the MBTA, the Mass. Department of Conservation and Recreation (DCR), the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy, and the Barr Foundation will roll out a bus priority pilot funded by a grant from the Barr Foundation to bring elements of Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) to the Mount Auburn Street Corridor, serving MBTA routes 71 and 73, as well as employee shuttles. The project will feature painted bus and bicycle only lanes – primarily on Mount Auburn Street between Cottage Street and Coolidge Avenue in the inbound direction – as well as signage and signal changes to create faster, more reliable service for 12,000+ daily bus riders while improving traffic flow for everyone. The partners will host an official launch event with speaking program on the morning of Oct.

Entertainment

Watertown Commander’s Mansion Hosting ‘Lil Monster Mash

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Children and their families are invited to have some Halloween fun at Watertown’s Commander’s Mansion. The Town of Watertown provided the following information:

Don’t miss the ‘Lil Monster Mash on Saturday, October 27, 2018, 5:30 to 8 p.m.

Free Community Event for Families, Geared towards K-5th Graders. Two scare levels at the Haunted Mansion. Carnival games under the “big top.” Food, beverages and prizes for all.

Around Town

Historical Society of Watertown Hosting Tours of the Edmund Fowle House

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The Historical Society of Watertown announced it will host tours of the historic Edmund Fowle House, which features two exhibits. 

The Historical Society provided the following announcement:

Tours of the 1772 Edmund Fowle House, 1:00 to 4:00 p.m., Sunday, October 21, 2018 at 28 Marshall St., Watertown. Hosted by the Historical Society of Watertown, with the last tour at 3:15 p.m.

Adults: $5; Students/Seniors: $3. Visitors can also view two free exhibits: “Watertown and the Civil War” and “A Mi’Kmaw Woman’s Award Winning Legacy.”

For more information: www.HistoricalSocietyofWatertownMA.org.

Letters

OP-ED: MBTA Making Changes to Avoid “Ghost Buses” on Cellphone App

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State Sen. Will Brownsberger, (D – Belmont) who represents Watertown, provided the following piece:

MBTA bus arrival predictions should get better as of today and further improvements can be expected over the next few months. Representatives Jon Hecht and Dave Rogers and I learned a lot at a recent meeting with MBTA management about bus service complaints that we had received from riders. Most regular bus riders now rely on mobile phone apps to get predictions of when the next bus will arrive. Here is how those predictions are generated and how the technology is changing. Each MBTA bus is equipped with a device that transmits its location back to the MBTA’s control center.

Police/Fire

See How to Watch Ceremony for Fallen Watertown Firefighter at National Memorial

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Fallen Watertown Firefighter Joseph Toscano will be honored at the national memorial for firefighters on Sunday, and you can watch a live feed. The Town of Watertown provided the following information:

This coming Sunday, Firefighter Joseph Toscano, who died in the line of duty on March 17, 2017, is being memorialized by the National Fallen Firefighters Foundation at their memorial in Emmitsburg, Maryland. The following is a link to the live broadcast of the event which starts at 10am. Click Here for Link to Live Feed

Adelaide Sproul

Gifts to Teens for Trees Program Honor Watertown Tree Activist Adelaide Sproul

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The following piece was provided by Trees for Watertown:

TFW Teens for Trees, a six-week summer internship program to teach Watertown teens about the many benefits of maintaining a healthy urban shade tree population, received two generous donations this Fall in honor of former longtime Watertown resident Adelaide Sproul. Adelaide Sproul was a painter, sculptor and writer, and a founder and early president of Trees for Watertown (TFW), a volunteer citizens group founded in 1985 to protect and plant public shade trees and to advocate for a healthy urban forest in Watertown. Ms. Sproul lived and worked on the top floor of a house overlooking Whitney Hill Woods until shortly before her death in 2009 at age 95. “Adelaide was an early proponent of TFW and the prime mover organizing the first Whitney Woods Cleanup Days,” said Paul A, Tamburello Jr., longtime neighbor of Ms. Sproul, who gave a matching-funds gift of $500 in Ms. Sproul’s honor to Trees for Watertown’s fundraising campaign for Teens for Trees. “She would be over the moon about the central project to inventory Watertown’s public shade trees.”

Around Town

Family Mental Health Support Group Meeting at Newton Wellesley Hospital

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The National Alliance for Mental Illness provided the following announcement:
Family Mental Health support group: NAMI Family Mental Health Support Group is a free, structured, confidential peer-led support group for the families of individuals living with mental illness.  
A support group will be held on Tuesday, Oct. 9, 7-9 p.m. at the Newton Wellesley Hospital, at 2014 Washington St. in Newton 02461, on the second floor of the main building in the Bowles Conference Center. This is organized by the National Alliance for Mental Illness (NAMI).