This summer, it seems to me that the roadside lemonade stand phenomenon has really caught on. The booths and card tables are everywhere, staffed by sweat-sheened elementary school shopkeepers waving signs and jumping up and down, in the often-futile attempt to lure motorists to the shoulder.    We can only guess the reason for the proliferation – a lack of amusement in the never-ending heat? Allowances have dried up? Camp is over? Parents are desperate? Surely these young residents would much rather be inside with their video games, right? It’s a real puzzle, but a pleasant one.   My dog and …

It looks like Mansfield residents have been sold a bill of goods. Or sold down the river. Or maybe sold a bridge they have never laid eyes on.  Whatever they were sold, they bought the farm for sure, voting in a town budget last week that every member of the board of selectmen said they did not want. With 14 more people in the hall at Town Meeting, the whole thing could have gone down in flames. Passing by only 13 votes, it was the closest vote for a town budget any of us has ever seen. At Wednesday’s selectmen’s meeting, board members were visibly rattled by the aftershocks of last week’s …

Like most people, I love bar charts, particularly those that illustrate something I am interested in. A fascinating example of the chart phenomenon is the “Snapshot” statistical feature that appears regularly in the South section of the Boston Globe – it compares characteristics of more than two dozen nearby towns, looking at a wide range of community trivia – real estate values, educational levels of residents, average number of cars per family, the length of the daily commute, crime rates, you name it. Mansfield usually tends toward the middle of the pack, except when it comes to one thing…

  Saturday’s public input session, one of the last segments of the “strategic planning” study conducted under the supervision of John Mullin from University of Mass Amherst, was, to everyone’s surprise, well attended, even on a spring Saturday in the rain. Once more time, Mansfield is trying to get some kind of control over spiraling costs, cramming an unruly budget into the strict rubric of Proposition 2 ½, in a community where fully a quarter of the residents are school children. Efforts to confine the discussion to the future needs of the whole town were overshadowed by the threat of …

My husband and I are what I guess today's media would call "foodies." We look up recipes on line, and are avid fans of the goofy bow-tied master of America's Test Kitchen, Chris Kimball, who lives a stone's throw (as the crow flies that is) from my sister and brother-in-law in Vermont.We are faithful customers of organic produce at Whole Foods in Providence, and also at the wonderful winter farmer's market in Pawtucket, located in an old rope factory. We buy crispy tiny white turnips, little shiny winter carrots, soap made of honey, and fragrant pea shoots that are not deterred by the ravages…

Of all the senses, smell must be the most evocative. A whiff of something as fleeting as a puff of air can transport you right back to preschool, even before you understand what it is. The mind makes an instant leap, disregarding the normal boundaries of age or standing. I'm sure you all have a particular memory that is forever represented by a scent in the air, for good or ill. As children, we who were raised in Mansfield grew to recognize the fragrances of chocolate as a normal part of our lives, of our school mornings and afternoons. It wafted on the breezes from the imposing brick …

You'd be surprised at how many of this community's local children, once graduated from our suburban high school and then college, have moved to New York City. I guess this is some kind of a compliment to a public education giving them the freedom to make choices that eventually take them away from their old home-town, and even their region. Certainly it is our fondest wish as parents, that our kids envision a horizon beyond what we could have realized, even in our wildest dreams. I do acknowledge that, albeit begrudgingly.Nonetheless, here I am on another visit to the only grandchild, with a …

So I have a dog. A very big dog, in fact. She kind of rules my life, because she is HUGE and she loves her rituals. I am apparently a critical part of them.You might have seen me around in West Mansfield, at the Little League field, at the Plymouth Street soccer fields, the conservation property off Oak Street, the Old Colony bike trail, the town forest off Plain Street, beside Fulton's Pond, at the light department field across from the Gilbert Street substation, or just on the street somewhere, a tall frazzled woman in the trail of a red dog the size of a small horse.I can't complain. It …