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Allyn signs with UNE
Lakeville Journal
Mar 11, 2026
Photo by Riley Klein
On Monday, March 9, HVRHS senior Wes Allyn committed to play NCAA football at the University of New England. Allyn played tight end and linebacker in his varsity years.
White Hart hosts student concert
Patrick L. Sullivan
Mar 11, 2026
From left, Evelyn Adkins, Madeleine Carr and Brooke Kain sang “You’re Never Fully Dressed Without a Smile” at the White Hart Feb. 26.
Patrick L. Sullivan
SALISBURY — The middle school chorus from Salisbury Central School held a coffeehouse concert at the White Hart Inn Thursday evening, Feb. 26.
Under the direction of teacher Jen Moros, who accompanied the singers on the piano, the show kicked off with Evelyn Adkins, Madeleine Carr and Brooke Kain singing “You’re Never Fully Dressed Without a Smile” from the musical “Annie.”
Next up was Zeira Collins with John Lennon’s “Imagine.”
Then Noah Tencer, Lucas Wang and Miguel Santiago Leyva took on “Fuge for Tinhorns” from “Guys and Dolls.”
This was the second year for the middle school coffeehouse event. Last year it was held in the school cafeteria but students Jackson Magyar and Maddie Carr had bigger ideas. They reached out to White Hart manager Dan Winkley and arranged for the use of the large event room on the hotel’s ground floor.
The SCS cafeteria manager Millen Murray supplied the cookies, and the White Hart donated the space and the coffee or tea.
The event was well-attended, with most of the 115 chairs filled and a number of people standing.
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Taft knocks Kent girls basketball out of NEPSAC tournament
Lans Christensen
Mar 11, 2026
Taft’s Sara Santimaw takes a jump shot.
Lans Christensen
KENT — Kent School’s girls varsity basketball team lost 42-39 to Taft School in the first round of the New England Prep School Athletic Conference playoffs Wednesday March 4.
These two Founders League teams had already played twice in the regular season, with Kent winning both games.
Kent was ranked in 3rd in the playoff tournament and Taft was ranked 6th.
This match was a defensive clinic. Kent’s Kaya Nuthall scored three seconds into the game, and the score remained 2-0 until Taft’s Sara Santimaw hit a 3 pointer with 3:39 left in the 1st period.
The low scoring period ended with Taft leading 11-8. Lock-down defense from both sides persisted in the second quarter, ending in a 16-12 Taft lead.
Kent’s Kaya Nuthall drives the lane. Lans Christensen
Taft gradually took charge in the third quarter with good control and great shots by Santimaw, Jalisa Matthews and Emma Strub, ending the period with a 32-21 Taft lead.
The lead grew to a maximum 38-24 for Taft with five minutes left in the game.
Fans of both teams were ready to call it a day, some thrilled and others disappointed.
Then, Kent changed the tone. The game became a true nail-biter.
Taft and Kent players battle under the basket.Lans Christensen
The 14-point lead was eaten away by Kent, virtually single-handedly by Caoimhe Brophy. Her shots from outside the paint and under the basket were all perfect swishes.
With two minutes left, the margin was cut to 3 points. Kent family and friends were cheering and encouraging Kent to close the gap.
Taft’s defense was able to contain Brophy shotless and the game ended 42-39 for a close, tough Taft victory.
Taft then lost to Sacred Heart Greenwich 58-35 in the semifinals, who went on to win the title over Loomis.
Taft’s Maddy Little on defense.Lans Christensen
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Science and Blind Conviction
Richard Kessin
Mar 11, 2026
One of the virtues of Science is to keep people from accepting a first thought that makes no sense. It says, “Let’s just think about that. Does it make sense? Are you sure?“ It says “No, Mr. Aristotle, eels do not form from the mud at the bottom ofrivers.”Authoritarianstend to hear what they want and decide that it is true. “Surely vaccines are dangerous.” is one such thought. The voice that proposes the first thought can be seductive; it is confident and speaks in a tone that says how can you not know this? People hearing the supposedly authoritative voice of RFK Jr., skipped their children’s measles vaccinations on the pretext that vaccines cause autism.
RFK Jr had been in American Samoa in June 2019 and spread the idea that measles vaccine begets autism. Low rates of vaccination declined further. A tourist with measles introduced the infection to the under-protected Samoan population and an epidemic ensued, introduced by a tourist, peaking in the Fall of 2019. Measles virus is exceptionally infectious. Thousands of people were infected, and the island closed down--schools, factories, markets, and tourism. Vaccinators from CDC and several countries, arrived went house to house, vaccinating the residents. The population was about 195,000, and 13,666 vaccinations were given to previously unvaccinated adults and 1,113 children. By Mid-December there were no new cases.
There were, nonetheless, 800 cases of measles in total and 83 deaths, most in children under 5. Eighty-three deaths is a horrendous number, when the vaccine could have prevented them.There is more to learn from these numbers. Of the vaccinated children who did not get measles, some, according to Mr. Kennedy’s theory, should have developed autism.I called the Samoan Health Authorities and asked if they were seeing more autism than usual. They were fighting filariasis, but not autism. Measles vaccination does not cause autism to increase, but something does, and Mr. Kennedy has no idea how to find out what that is.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr confessed to licking cocaine off toilet seats and then explained that’s why he doesn’t fear bacteria. That is hard to top, but perhaps God looks after fools and drunks, or perhaps someone had just swabbed the toilets with Clorox.Then he told us that mRNA vaccines are dangerous and should not even be considered by the FDA. He said they don’t work in the upper respiratory tract, but they do. That rookie error has been retracted. RFK Jr. should think first but does not.mRNA vaccines are part of the future, which does not guarantee that Moderna’s new influenza vaccine will be given a fair hearing at the next FDA meeting which has been seeded with vaccine skeptics.
The United States has withdrawn from the World Health Organization.After the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, more than a decade ago, an organization called CEPI (the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations) formed. Their goal was to make vaccines for new pandemics and have them in the field in 100 days. That takes mRNA vaccines.Vaccines derived directly from the virus genome 9 which is usually made of mRNA, not DNA, can be made quickly. Later, chemists can make drugs as they did with Covid 19. CEPI is funded by the Norwegian Sovereign Welfare Fund, The Gates Foundation, and many others. But not the United States. They do not need our money but someday we may need their mRNA vaccines.
That we are set to discourage vaccines and better ways to make them means that we are ceding leadership in science and medicine that has been American for decades. European countries, Japan, China, Australia, Israel, India and others are now industrial powers, as good at advanced molecular genetics and vaccines as we are. We risk that they will collectively surpass us, a competitive deficit that we do not need.
The NIH and other research institutions work through study sections, which meet three times a year and go through about 100 grant applications, submitted by scientists in colleges and universities around the country. About 20 % are funded. The other 80 scientists can make changes and reapply. The judgmentdetermines the future of the applicant’s lab, including support for PhD students, so a lot is at stake.This process also faces disruption. I served on a study section forfour years and submitted applications to fund my own lab for nearly 30.The process was honest and apolitical. Now the Trump administration has decreed that applicants can have their grants moved up in rank if administrators think one meets the President’s priorities better than others. The system is now more open to political corruption. Is there to be a political officer at each study section?
There is good news. Congress has not cut the NIH budget by 40% as the Trump administration wanted.Let’s see if Universities and other research organizations can keep their Ph.D and MD fellowship programs going. That the number of students in them will be reduced, is a given.
Richard Kessin is Emeritus Professor of Pathology and Cell Biology at the Columbia University Irving Medical Center.
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Great Again?
Kathy Herald-Marlowe
Mar 11, 2026
Six American soldiers this Saturday were transported to Dover from Kuwait where they perished in drone strikes in their makeshift tent/trailer center. 40,000 to 50,000 US soldiers are based across the Middle East – 11 of 18 of their bases are air unprotected, makeshift facilities.“Great Again”? Loss of life in the Middle East commenced last Friday, February 27, in a war without Congressional approval or any prior communication with the people of this nation. Is this “Great Again”?
Regardless of the lightened descriptors of hostilities, conflict, in Iran there rages a war – called such by Trump, by his Secretary of Defense.At least in 1964, Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution authorizing President Johnson to use “all necessary measures” to repel attacks, serving as a functional, though not a formal authorization of war. 58,000 Americans lost their lives in the Vietnam War lasting from 1964 to 1973, through Presidents Johnson and Nixon. Is this – unsanctioned war – 6,000 miles out of range - with an unclear purpose an example of “Great Again”? Making America Great Again?
500,000 to a million Americas live and work in the Middle East as engineers, consultants, technologists in energy, in defense, in business development. 10’s of thousands of Americans are traveling in the Middle East at any given time.These Americans, at risk with the avalanche of missiles and drones, were given no advanced or real-time communications, initially offered no assistance beyond “move out.” Eight of the key embassies in the region are without an ambassador, have stood vacant for years. Is this “Great Again?”
In his brilliant best-selling “1929,” economist Andrew› Sorkin draws parallels of 2025 to the extreme excesses of the 1920’s that led to a stock market crash, a decade of depression. Income inequality in the US is currently the greatest since the Gilded Age.The wealthiest 1% of Americans hold about $55 trillion in assets – roughly equal to the combined wealth held by the bottom 90% of Americans.The “big, beautiful bill,” passing the GOP-dominated Congress in the summer of 2025, gave tax breaks to corporations and billionaires while removing health care for millions.White House doors, White House favors, White House pardons, and access to White House related moneys are wide open to those who give millions to Trump campaigns, to reconstruction of partially demolished sections of the White House, to the naming/renaming of landmarks. “Great Again”- is it the redistribution of wealth back to the levels of the corrupt 1920’s?Is it demolishing sections of the White House.Great Again?
1936 was the last time the US experienced net negative migration – more Americans migrating out of the US to other countries than in. The only other US instance of negative migration was in 1936, with the migration during the depression of Americans to Russia. In 2026, migration of Americans out is to Mexico, Canada and to Europe -a diversity of Americans representing a range of ages, families with and without kids, and the young choosing international colleges and universities over American.American migrants are leaving to counter lessening incomes, to expand social coverage, to access lifestyle advantages, and some to just be away from Trump.According to the Wall Street Journal, 180,000 + Americans left in 2024 – more in 2025 with more expected in 2026. Migration out comes with the increased demand for locating alternative places to live outside the US, international relocation companies burgeon.Americans leaving the US - Great Again? The loss of population, the loss of students. Great Again?
The demographics of the US was enviable just a year ago to Japan, Russia, Greece and numerous others nations whose populations are in decline. The US did not have a declining population when it welcomed immigration – a long-extended welcome.Yet today in the US there is a reframing of immigration to a negative concept.Immigrants legal, illegal, a few criminals are relentlessly pursued by ICE while other immigrants are self-deporting leaving a needy work force depleted in services and agriculture in particular.Great Again?
Additionally, the US birthrate is in decline – the needed 2.1 birth per woman for population replacement is down to 1.6. Birthing in the US has become riskier as women are not protected from pregnancy complications, from life-endangering situations with doctors who are reticent to intercede for the life of the mother, the life of the child. Fear and questionable restrictions came with the repeal of Roe vs Wade.Is this progress, is this Great Again?
1,000 children have been infected, died from long eradicated measles. Vaccines are villainized by a questionable lead as Secretary of Health and Human Services.An unhealthy nation isthat Great Again?
Make America Great Again fits and looks good on a baseball cap.It is worn with intensity this ball cap.But what is its meaning? What is America Great Again?What is the essence of this slogan:a billionaire President unbound for his and his family’s wealth, billionaires tax free, common folk precluded from health care, Americans leaving “the shiny city on the hill”, Americans deployed willy-nilly in Venezuela, Greenland, Iran, or America reneging on its promises of support to Ukraine, its NATO partners?Tell us please what is “Great Again”? How do we know it when we see it? Is it Constitutional?
Kathy Herald-Marlowe lives in Sharon.
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