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Sam Hudzik

Wood Stove Blamed For Fire In Warwick That Killed 5

by: Sam Hudzik

The Massachusetts fire marshal has confirmed the cause of a fire that killed five people last weekend in the Franklin County town of Warwick.

RELATED: Small Town Comes Together After House Fire Kills Mother And Four Children

Fire Marshal Peter Ostroskey said he’s not sure exactly how, but fire escaped from a wood stove in the kitchen and spread to what he calls “nearby combustibles.”

“I believe it was wood and some of the finishes around the wood stove,” Ostroksey said in a phone interview.

In addition to Warwick’s volunteer fire department, 16 others helped fight the fire early Saturday.

With no hydrants, trucks had to fill up at a pond 1/3 mile away and drive the water back. And because this was a narrow dirt road, the trucks then had to drive into New Hampshire to loop back to the pond. It took 45 minutes.

Still, this was a hard one from the start, according to Ostroskey.

“It’s fair to say that the house was heavily involved in fire at the time of arrival of the fire department,” he said.

Five people died: Lucinda Seago and four of her children. The father — Scott Seago — and one child escaped.

2017 Fire Deaths

The fire marshal earlier this week announced the cause of a fire early Monday in Milton that killed two elderly men, including Kenneth Guscott, the former head of the Boston NAACP. That blaze was caused by a space heater that overloaded an extension cord.

Combined, the Warwick and Milton fires left seven people dead. That puts fire deaths in 2017 well ahead of the average from recent years.

Since 2012, the state has averaged about 16 fire deaths during the first three months of the year. So far in 2017 — there have been 20 confirmed deaths, with three weeks of March still to go.

Jewish Family Service Responds To Mayor’s Refugee Complaints

by: Sam Hudzik

Jewish Family Service is defending itself from Mayor Domenic Sarno’s accusation that his office was kept in the dark about the expected arrival of refugees in Springfield or nearby communities.

In a statement this week, Sarno accused the resettlement agency of failing to coordinate with City Hall.

JFS President and CEO Maxine Stein said there must be a misunderstanding. She said her agency has been trying to get the mayor’s office more involved with its work — and met with his staff last summer.

“And we did ask them at the same time that if they had ever received information or had any concerns, to please contact us,” Stein said. “And we have not heard about any concerns.”

Until this week, that is, when Sarno issued his press release.

The mayor’s office declined to make him available for an interview.

In 2013, Sarno called for a moratorium on new refugees in Springfield.

Worcester’s Mayor Apologizes After Calling Protesters ‘Morons’ In ‘Moment Of Frustration’

by: Sam Hudzik

The mayor of Worcester is apologizing after he criticized protesters at the start of a City Council meeting.

T&G: Mayor Petty apologizes for calling protesters ‘morons’ on open mic

Mayor Joseph Petty actually supported the protesters’ message, during a gathering outside City Hall before Tuesday’s meeting. They opposed loosening Worcester’s standing as a so-called “sanctuary city” on immigration enforcement — and so does he.

(There’s actually a good deal of debate about whether Worcester is a “sanctuary city” — it’s a label with varying definitions.)

But when the protest and chants carried indoors and delayed the start of the council meeting, Petty can be heard, clearly annoyed, in a video posted to Worcester’s website:

Freakin’ morons,” Petty said. “Morons, morons, morons.”

Petty’s chief of staff confirms those were the mayor’s words, and Petty is apologizing for them.

He said he was “caught in a moment of frustration” and was worried the voices from the earlier rally would be overshadowed by the disruption in the council chambers.

A Super Bowl Wager, With A Trump Nomination On The Table

by: Sam Hudzik

Thee was a short break in the tension on Capitol Hill on Tuesday as senators considering a cabinet nomination from President Donald Trump chatted about the Super Bowl.

The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee took a break as it tried to sort out a standoff over its procedures for voting on Betsy DeVos as education secretary.

Senator Al Franken, a Democrat from Minnestota, suggested a way to fill the time.

“I guess we should talk about the Super Bowl,” he said, to laughs.

Senator Johnny Isakson, Republican of Georgia, said he and Massachusetts Democrat Elizabeth Warren should place a bet on Sunday’s game between the Atlanta Falcons and the New England Patriots.

“How about we put a vote for Betsy DeVos on the line,” Warren said, with Franken laughing loudly.

“That’s more than a gamble,” Isakson replied.

“How confident are you?” Warren teased.

“Like I said, that’s more than a gamble.”

The laughs soon ended, and Devos was approved on a party-line vote of 12 to 11.

As Obama Exits, New England Supporters Remember Election And Legacy

by: Sam Hudzik

President Barack Obama leaves office Friday around noon. It was a presidency many Americans — and many New Englanders — thought impossible just a few years earlier. Even some of his early supporters from the area had their doubts.

Retired UMass Amherst political scientist Jerry Mileur has lived in Western Massachusetts for nearly 50 years. But he is a Southern Illinois boy at heart.

And several years ago, “I was actually driving back to Illinois and I heard a radio broadcast that this fellow named Barack Obama was running [for office], and I remember thinking that, boy, with a name like that, how’s he going to win in lllinois?”

But Mileur asked around about Obama — to his friends and fellow academics, to Democrats and Republicans.

“Because everyone had spoken so favorably about him, I decided that was someone I wanted to support,” he said.

And so in August of 2004, Mileur donated $1,000 to Obama’s U.S. Senate campaign, in a race he easily won. Mileur thought well of Obama, but did not see his next step coming.

“Heavens no,” he said.

Still, Mileur kept writing checks, and Obama kept winning. And now, more than a dozen years after that road trip:

“Well, it’s been a very tough presidency,” he said. “I think the first couple of years, when he had a Democratic Congress, they got a lot of things done: the healthcare, the jobs programs.”

But the achievements slowed under a GOP Congress, and the president has acknowledged he could’ve done a better job at communicating.

“I don’t think he will be in the first rank in presidents,” Mileur said. “But he will certainly be in the second rank.”

And one thing no one can take from him, Mileur said, is Obama’s place in history as the first African American in the White House — something Mileur never thought he’d get to witness.

But Sheree Biggs saw it coming.

“The first time I learned about Barack Obama was actually on Oprah,” Biggs recalled.

Biggs was then a student at Westfield State. She liked what she saw, what she heard and what Obama could represent.

Biggs is an immigrant from Jamaica, she said,”So, it’s not like my first time seeing a black president in office.”

But in the U.S.? Biggs said her mom, for one, was skeptical during that 2008 campaign.

“I think in her mind she was like, ‘Oh, it’s not going to happen because he’s African American,’ and I’m like, ‘Mom — the only way it’s going to happen is if you actually go out there and vote,'” Biggs said.

Biggs did more than vote. While going to school, she volunteered for the Obama campaign, even traveling to New Hampshire.

MASSLIVE ARCHIVE: Western Mass. residents cross state lines for presidential candidates

Biggs is now 32, works at a titanium company in Hartford, and she’s also in the Air Force Reserves — at Westover.

“I serve in the military, so at the end of the day, he is my boss,” she said.

And she’s proud of him. She calls the Affordable Care Act “monumental,” but a key part of Obama’s legacy, she said, is the unity and excitement he inspired in that first presidential campaign..

“And it was not just for the color of his skin,” she said. “Just because we as people wanted a change, and we were motivated and we were passionate because we felt our voices were finally being heard.”

And now that legacy, she said, is part of her own legacy.

“To say to my daughter and my son in the future, ‘I was a part of making that vote happen,'” she said.

It was a vote that — for a while at least — Tatishe Nteta thought unlikely. He’s a political scientist at UMass Amherst and before the 2008 primaries, he examined data that showed a gap between what white voters tell pollsters and how they actually vote when a black candidate is on the ballot.

Back then, he wrote a column in the Daily Hampshire Gazette, doubting that Obama could change that trend.

“I couldn’t have been more wrong in terms of my assessment of Obama’s chances in 2008,” Nteta said this week.

Nteta said he was happy to be wrong.

“My parents came from South Africa. They fled an apartheid government to come to the United States,” he said. “And it was extremely emotional to see the nation’s first African American president, whose parents — or at least one of his parents — was from Africa — get to the pinnacle of the political system.

And that, Nteta said, along with his Supreme Court picks and a host of legislative achievements, will be “the defining aspect” of Obama’s legacy.

Fighting Poets or Hamster? Amherst College Picks 30 Mascot Semifinalists

by: Sam Hudzik

Amherst College has narrowed its list of possible mascots from 588 to 30. The college last year scrapped its longtime unofficial mascot, the Lord Jeffs.

BACKGROUND: Amherst College’s Lord Jeff: An Example Of Tradition, Irony Or Hate?
LAST JANUARY: Amherst College Boots Lord Jeff From Campus

The old mascot was based on Lord Jeffrey Amherst, the namesake of the town who also wrote letters suggesting biological warfare against Native Americans.

Amherst College formed a mascot committee and accepted nominations. Not making the cut: The Biddys (or Biddies), after the college’s president, Biddy Martin; or The Frosts, after Robert Frost — who taught at the school.

But in a town that also claims Emily Dickinson, the Poets — as well as the Fighting Poets — did make the list.

Also advancing: Purple & White, after the school’s colors; Hamster, an anagram of Amherst; and the A’s, because — as one student put it — “It is the letter our school starts with.”

After another round of deliberations, five finalists will emerge. Students, staff and alumni will vote in March.

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