John Woodsmall

Preliminary results, Annual Town Election.

@ClevelandFire fireboat getting ready to escort into Cleveland harbor the USS Cleveland for the start of its visit to the City for its commissioning.

DCAMM will be presenting an updated plan reflecting changes being made to the concept plan of the Industrial School for Girls redevelopment. These changes are being made to accommodate a Town drinking water well as well as refinements to accommodate existing conditions.

💉 Stay protected this season at the Walgreens Vaccination Clinc! 📍 Lancaster Community Center, 701 Main Street 📅 Wednesday, May 20, 2026 ⏰ 12:00 PM – 3:00 PM Scan the QR code to register today!

PJ Keating will be blasting Friday 8th May 2026 in the Lunenburg quarry between 11am and 2pm. The quarry will remain closed fifteen minutes pre and post blast until the all clear is given.

📍 Annual Town Meeting – Lancaster, MA Mary Rowlandson Elementary School Date: Monday, May 4, 2026 Meeting Starts: 7:00 PM Please download ahead of time if you want to follow along or speak on an article! Handbook: ci.lancaster.ma.us/DocumentCenter… Budget: ci.lancaster.ma.us/DocumentCenter…

Our DPW just placed an order for a new type of plow vehicle for this winter. Its supposed to be quicker & more efficient. The only downfall is the open air cab, which require a new uniform. Keep an eye out this winter! 😉#MayThe4thBeWithYou #PublicWorksMakesItHappenInAllGalaxies

Heavy Equipment Operator/ Laborer Water Department ci.lancaster.ma.us/602/Employment…

Search is full of ads and wrong answers. Every other email is an ad. Prime Video charges you and shows ads. Paramount? Ads. Peacock? YouTube? Hulu? Ads followed by more ads. Netflix full of ads. Meta and X, every other thing is an ad. Pinterest is nothing but ads. AI is in everything. AI finishes sentences incorrectly and won’t stop. AI reads your email and search history to target you with more ads. Every time you open an app or visit a site there’s an update making it worse. In a hurry? First, click here to agree to terms you don’t have time to read and must accept. You need an account to do that. Change your temporary password. Enter your 2FA code. Check your email and enter that code. Now use a passkey. Your password is too simple to remember. Change it. No, not like that. Now log on. Enter your 2FA code. Check your email for a code… Welcome back! We’ve updated our terms of service and privacy policy (you have none). Subscribe to the site. Subscribe to Netflix. Subscribe to toilet paper. Subscribe to these groceries. Pay a membership fee for the right to subscribe then tip your driver who delivers the subscriptions your membership lets you subscribe to. Time to work? We’ve got to update your laptop and will slow down everything you do until you agree to update. But first, click here to agree. Update installed — your laptop’s broken now. It doesn’t matter, since your boss just replaced you with AI. Go to your phone to complain on social media. Wait, your phone needs an update so we can add more AI. Click here. Oh sorry, your phone can’t handle this update. Now it’s useless. Go get the newest phone. Here’s a text from a friend, an email, a voice mail they left three days ago but you didn’t see until now because of sync problems with the cloud. It’s their GoFundMe. Their MLM. Their Patreon. Never mind, you didn’t respond to their text within 9 minutes and now you’re no longer friends. They blocked you. Make new friends. Download this app to find people in your area. In your neighborhood. On your street. Two doors down from you. Do you know this person yet, we think you’d get along. You need an account to use this app. That username is taken. Enter a password. Not that one, you used it on another site. You need to be connected to WiFi to download the app. Allow the app to connect to other devices on your network. Allow the app to access your contacts, know your precise location, store your credit card details. Oops, sorry, we got hacked now all that info is available on the web. There’s a class action suit. You can join. It’ll take a decade to get your $3.73 share of the ten billion settlement. We’ll send it via PayPal or deposit it to your bank, just tell us those details. Oh no, another hack. That info is circulating now, too. Here’s a spam call, a spam email, a spam text. Why are you angry? Why are you talking about getting rid of your phone? Why don’t you like AI, it lets us make all of this easier? Do you know how ridiculous that sounds? This is progress. You’ll be left behind. Do you want to be left behind? Do you???

The May 4, 2026 ATM Handbook can be found here: ci.lancaster.ma.us/DocumentCenter… For additional Town Meeting information please click here: ci.lancaster.ma.us/240/Elections-…

PJ Keating Lunenburg Quarry Notice: We will be blasting Friday 1st May 2026 in the Lunenburg quarry between 11am and 2pm. The quarry will remain closed fifteen minutes pre and post blast until the all clear is given.

He won the Civil War, broke the Klan, went bankrupt at 62, got terminal throat cancer, and wrote one of the greatest books in American literature in the final year of his life. He finished it 5 days before he died. Ulysses S. Grant was born 204 years ago today. His name wasn't even Ulysses S. Grant. He was born Hiram Ulysses Grant in Point Pleasant, Ohio on April 27, 1822. The congressman who nominated him to West Point wrote down the wrong name. Grant kept it. The "S." stands for nothing. He hated his father's tannery and loved horses. Graduated 21st of 39 at West Point. Fought in the Mexican-American War, then came home convinced it was an unjust war designed to expand slavery. He later said he believed the Civil War was divine punishment for it. He married Julia Dent in 1848, into a slave-owning Missouri family. His abolitionist father refused to attend the wedding. In 1859, broke and desperate, Grant freed the one enslaved man he'd briefly owned instead of selling him. He could have gotten a year's wages. In the Civil War he became what no other Union general was: relentless. Vicksburg (July 4, 1863) split the Confederacy in half. Lincoln then gave him every Union army. His Appomattox surrender terms: officers kept sidearms, men kept horses for spring planting, no one prosecuted. As president (1869 to 1877) he did something no president would do again until LBJ: used federal troops to crush the Ku Klux Klan. He suspended habeas corpus in 9 South Carolina counties, prosecuted Klansmen before predominantly Black juries, and broke the first Klan. His presidency was also rocked by scandal: Black Friday 1869. Crédit Mobilier. The Whiskey Ring. Belknap. Grant himself never took a dime. He was just disastrously loyal to corrupt friends. The pattern damaged his reputation for a century. After the White House, he toured the world for 2 years. Dined with Queen Victoria. Met the emperor of Japan. Then in 1884, a Wall Street partner named Ferdinand Ward ran what we'd now call a Ponzi scheme. Grant was wiped out. 62 years old. Penniless. Weeks later he was diagnosed with terminal throat cancer. Mark Twain offered to publish his memoirs. Grant wrote in agony, sometimes 50 pages a day, racing the disease to leave Julia an inheritance. He finished the manuscript July 18, 1885. He died July 23. The book made Julia $450,000, about $14M today. It's now considered one of the finest memoirs in the English language. For decades historians ranked Grant a failure. Since 2000 he's jumped 13 spots in the C-SPAN survey, the biggest rise of any president. Happy birthday, General 🇺🇸

Today marks the 46th Anniversary of our attempts to rescue 53 American hostages from the Embassy in Tehran. We tried, but the odds were stacked against us. The details are in my book, but today, I ask you to remember the fallen, the eight brave men we lost during that mission. Recently, Mike Ritland @MRitland asked me if there’s a quote that has significance for me. I paraphrased one from Ernest Hemingway: “It’s said that a warrior dies two deaths, the first on the battlefield, the second the last time their name is spoken.” I’m honored to say their names. 1st SOW Air Force personnel that was killed:  MAJ Richard L. Bakke, age 34, Long Beach, CA, MAJ Harold L. “Hal” Lewis, Jr., age 35, Mansfield, CT, MAJ Lyn D. McIntosh, age 33, Valdosta, GA, CAPT Charles T. McMillan II, age 28, Corrytown, TN, and Tech. Sgt. Joel C. Mayo, age 34, Bonifay, FL.  Marine Air Group 26, Marine personnel that were killed:  SSgt Dewey L. Johnson, age 31, Jacksonville, NC, SGT John D. Harvey, age 21, Roanoke, VA, and CPL George N. Holmes, Jr., age 22, Pine Bluff, AR.

On this day, 26 years ago, we all got a little more cowbell.

Getting some light amount of sleet currently in Clinton, MA @WX1BOX @DHTheWeatherNut @ShiriSpear

March 29 is Vietnam War Veterans Day, recognizing all who served and honoring the ultimate sacrifice made by more than 58,000 soldiers, marines, sailors, and airmen. Here at home, we also remember the 1,331 Massachusetts residents who gave the last full measure of devotion.

I'm awed by the courage of the Iran protesters, and horrified by the death sentences being handed down.

Military experts later confirmed that Chuck Norris and Walter Payton together on the same boat was temporarily the world’s fourth-strongest navy.

Please click here for Special Town Meeting Article Information: ci.lancaster.ma.us/DocumentCenter…

This meme is funny, but it's also got some truth behind it. You can't be a good "neighbor" when you don't follow a few basic rules of behavior that will help you avoid a type of moral injury. Check out this week's blurb for more info.