CRAFTY DUO 6-year-old twin brothers, Nathan and Ryan Mendes, try their hand at creating Chinese laterns during crafts time at the Windham Public Library recently.
By Dawn De Busk
According to Windham Public Library librarian Ines Gruber, they saw it coming on the horizon. Between the summer months and the rain, the book-lending business had never been brisker.
On Monday, June 22, the Windham library experienced a flurry of activity with a record-breaking circulation number for the day: Slightly more than 1,000 items were checked out from both the adult and children sections. That Monday fell on the first full week that children were out of school for the summer.
Nearby residents sign letters of complaint over loud music at night
By Dawn De Busk
About two months after Club 302 officially opened its doors, two letters – complaining about noise levels emitting from the establishment when live bands are playing, and written or signed by residents on nearby Oak Lane – have circulated through the town offices and ended up being read at a recent Windham Town Council meeting.
Club 302, which opened in late April after the State Liquor Board reversed its denial of the sports bar’s alcohol license – following the council voting down the license by 3-2, is located in the same strip mall as the post office and Goodwill store. Oak Lane is a dead-end street located immediately behind Club 302. Oak Lane is also near New Marblehead Manor, the senior housing complex off Sandbar Road.
Town officials are already attempting to find a solution to mitigate the noise levels that Oak Lane residents have complained compete with their TVs and rob them of sleep on the
weekends, according to Code Enforcement Officer Roger Timmons.
The town has hired self-employed noise level expert Steve Ambrose to do sound tests outside the walls of the establishment, Timmons said.
“We try to work out things with people. The court doesn’t want to see us. So, we always try to work something out,” Timmons said. “We won’t know until we do the tests” if Club 302 was exceeding the noise level limit of 60 decibels, which was set by the Board of Appeals.
According to testimony by Ambrose during the 2008 quarry application hearings, 60 decibels is equivalent to a normal conversation.
Life-long Windham resident Steven Stubbs, 23, has officially hit the streets as Windham Police Department’s newest patrol officer. Stubbs, a 2004 graduate of Windham High School, said he has always wanted to be a police officer and he could think of nowhere better to work.
“Windham was my number one choice,” he said. “I’m gung-ho about getting into police work. It’s the direction I was headed and where I wanted to go.”
ON THE BEAT Steven Stubbs, a 2004 WHS graduate, is now a member of the Windham Police Department.
Michael Jackson is still dead, it's
still raining and "O" is still a vowel
By Joshua Shea
If you ever want to feel disconnected from the world, take a vacation just hours after one of the world’s most famous people dies.
I’ve been back from a long weekend to Virginia for my brother’s wedding for a few days now and with the exception of about 10 minutes of television time in the hotel room, I didn’t watch a bit of the Michael Jackson coverage, so now, a week after his death, I don’t have the overloaded media blitz feeling that so many are openly sharing, although looking back to both Princess Diana and JFK, Jr., I do know how you feel.
The key to having it go away is to stop caring about it, negatively or positively. Paying attention to things is what keep the media going. The media works the same way that any supply-and-demand product or service in our capitalist world does. Bad movies that are poorly attended leave the theaters fast because they are taking up space that more popular and profitable movies can occupy. Television shows without viewers –
be it a sitcom or news program – don’t last.
Over the last decade, celebrity news has blown up. There was a day when Entertainment Tonight was the only celebrity news show, and it was far less about personal lives 20 years ago. Now, you’ve got show after show of Inside Entertainment Access Showbiz Hollywood Tonight blending together. Why so many shows?
