The Archives

Finally, today is the last day for both the Patriots Poll and the "Make the President of Saugus.net Submit a Halloween Story Campaign", so be sure to both vote and send your feedback letters. Currently the former is still too close to call and the latter is only just a few feedback letters short of achieving its goal.

Also, we have further good news to report concerning Ken Shaw's liver transplant; it was completed successfully and so far Ken is doing well. He will remain in Florida for awhile, but we'll let you know when he returns to Saugus.

We've posted some information on the Saugus Hammersmith Stroll.

We've added in some highlights of the Saugus vs. Peabody Thanksgiving Day Game. Don't forget to take our Patriots Poll, too.

We have some good news to report. Saugonian Ken Shaw received a liver transplant last night. Within hours of the liver becoming available he was being prepared for surgery, and the surgery itself is a fourteen hour procedure scheduled to begin at 9:00 AM today. We haven't heard anything else yet, but we'll keep you updated as we hear more.

We received an interesting e-mail message the other day asking us to remove the link to the New England Patriots' web site from the Entertainment, Recreation, & Sports page on the grounds that the Patriots are no longer local. The ex-Patriots fan who wrote the letter argued that even though the Patriots will be in Foxboro for a season or two longer, they're only adding insult to injury in doing so by expecting "carryover support" to keep the money coming in until they're ready to permanently abandon their traditional fans. We're left in a bit of a dilemma; should we remove the link or not? We decided to let you, our readers, decide. We're running a Patriots Poll up through the end of the month. Come the first of December, if a simple majority want the Patriots' link removed, we'll remove it.

On a different note, the Saugus.net office will be closed for the Thanksgiving holiday tomorrow and Friday. E-mail sent to webmaster@saugus.net will still get through on Friday, though, if you need to contact us for any reason. We hope you have a good holiday.

The Saugus Town Meeting actually met twice last night with the second meeting being held right after the first. Only two items were discussed on the first, and both were decided unanimously in the affirmative. The first was whether or not to continue funding the Walnut Street Reconstruction Project and the second was whether or not to reimburse the reserve fund for money borrowed earlier in the year to repair water damage done to Town Hall records and voting machines. The following meeting was a continuation of the Special Town Meeting that had started weeks prior, and it concerned only three zoning articles. The first sought to slightly expand the powers of the Planning Board's Associate Member to provide coverage for the relatively newly passed Hillside Protection Act. This first article was passed unanimously. The second was to rezone the property from 204 - 206 on Central Street from Industrial to Residential. Some concerns were expressed regarding this change, and in the end the vote was made to indefinitely postpone it, with just six in opposition. The final article concerned a handful of detailed changes to the zoning by-laws including changes to the definitions, table of use regulations, and adding a new type of Special Permit to be granted by the Board of Selectmen. There were several amendments, and in the end it was referred ahead to the next Special Town Meeting.

There have also been some updates to the Computer Terms and Computer Extensions reference pages, and of course the Search Interface that goes along with them.

There have been some new pictures added to Jim Harrington's Saugus Photos Online site, including more from the recent Saugus Town Hall Reopening Ceremony and some of Breakheart Reservation.

Our client Earthways has a new URL; you can reach them directly at http://www.earthwaysltd.com (in addition to going through our Miscellaneous page).

Pictures for most of the Halloween Ghost Story Contest authors have now been added. Any remaining authors who don't yet have their pictures online are still welcome to contact us and send in a picture. As mentioned back at the beginning of the month, if there's enough interest, Saugus.net president Eric Brown will write a story, too; we just need to get enough feedback letters before the end of the month. If we don't get enough letters, he'll get away scott free.

A couple more Halloween Ghost Story Contest authors have submitted photographs; by end-of-day today only two will be left without pictures.

We've updated our Sherlock plug-in to fully comply with the set auto-updating standards; from here on in it ought to take care of itself for you.

The Saugus Town Hall Reopening Ceremony was last night; we of course attended.

The Ken Shaw benefit last night was a big success, with over three-hundred fifty people in attendance. Former Boston Bruin and current WAAF radio celebrity Lyndon Byers attended and autographed pictures and a hockey stick (speaking of which, an autographed picture was found after the benefit; if you've lost one, please contact Cynthia Leonardi and verify the name written on it). His attendance was especially appreciated considering that early this morning (4:30 AM early in fact) he started his week long foot trek from Attleboro to Boston on Route One. He's pushing a wheelbarrow collecting change to help the area food banks feed the less fortunate this Thanksgiving, so if you see him in your travels please try and toss him some change and some words of encouragement.

The real Saugus Town Hall has reopened and people are welcome to come in and take a look around. It has changed a lot since we toured it during its reconstruction back in August. Everyone is still in the process of moving into their new (or actually old depending upon how you look at it) offices and the computer system is not expected to be fully functional until later tonight.

We met with most of the Halloween Ghost Story Contest winners (along with friends and family) this past Saturday. We've added some photos of the authors to their respective stories posted online; if you're an author who could not attend Saturday who'd still like your picture posted, please contact us.

Remember that we maintain an archive of all the events in which we participate, and all three of the above mentioned events are accessible directly through it. If you'd like us to attend a local non-profit event that you're running, please just let us know and schedule etc. permitting we'll be there.

The Ken Shaw benefit is tonight at the Kowloon Restarant. We received a letter from Ken's sister, Linda Skidmore, and with her permission posted an excerpt from it on the Ken Shaw benefit page.

The Temporary Saugus Town Hall will be closed today; however the real Saugus Town Hall will be re-opening Monday at noon. The Ken Shaw benefit will also be this Monday; although we can't confirm it right now, it is rumored that a local sports celebrity & radio personality will be attending. Also, don't forget the gathering of the winners of the Halloween Ghost Story Contest tomorrow.

As mentioned on the Community Event Calendar Page, we'll be giving away T-shirts to all the winners of the Halloween Ghost Story Contest this Saturday at 1:30 PM in the Saugus Public Library. Other interested parties are welcome to attend and meet the authors, grumble about why their stories didn't win, etc. We just ask that you please don't bring any weapons.

The Saugus Veterans' Day Parade was cancelled due to the heavy rains. We don't know yet if it'll be rescheduled or not; if it is, we'll announce it here.

There have been some major additions to the Ken Shaw benefit page, including some stories from his days on the force in both Saugus and Boston.

We'll be shortly closing down the Yard Sale Page for the season; if anyone is planning any last minute yard sales, please let us know ASAP -- in a week or two it'll be closed down until spring. The regular Community Event Calendar Page will of course keep running all winter. In fact, it's had several recent updates, including one today.

Today's update was actually supposed to have been mentioned this past Thursday but was held up for a little additional testing. For all you Sherlock users out there we're now providing a Saugus.net Sherlock Plug-in. With this plug-in enabled, you'll be able to incorporate the Saugus.net search facilities in with the other search engine facilities that Sherlock already provides.

There have been some updates to the Saugus Historical Society's page today.

Election details are in and posted; keep in mind though that it'll still be ten days or so before they become official due to the possibility of federal employees abroad voting and other similar circumstances.

Also, another entry drifted in for the Halloween Ghost Story Contest in the Middle School Category. It was apparently sent on time; we only got the copy today, however. This brings the total number of Middle School entries up to three.

We've gotten word that now Hart's Hardware in Saugus Center is selling tickets to the Ken Shaw benefit in addition to the Saugus Police Station, the Kowloon Restaurant, the Saugus Chamber of Commerce, and of course Saugus.net. Ken himself is now in intensive care in Florida; he had a mass removed that was found not to be cancerous, and he is the next person on the list for a compatible liver -- as soon as one becomes available, he will be operated on. He can still receive mail although it now must be read to him.

Election Day is here; the polls will all be open until 8:00 PM.

All the winners have now been posted for our Halloween Ghost Story Contest. In fact, they were all posted on Halloween night, category by category starting in the early evening. For those who didn't wait up, the final entries were posted prior to the witching hour. We're still trying to contact the winners. There's been some talk of getting the president of Saugus.net to post a story, too; the contest was his idea and some of us feel that he shouldn't be asking others to do what he won't do himself. If you'd like to see him write a ghost story, send us feedback. He's already agreed that if we get enough requests, he'll hunker down and write one.

Also, as usual, our Most Popular Pages for the Month Countdown has updated itself to reflect last month's most popular pages.