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From Wellesley Police:
Wellesley Police and Wellesley Fire are investigating a chemical/acid spill inside the Science Center at Wellesley College. A regional hazardous material team has been called to the scene to assist. The spill is confined and limited to one building at the college.
A Wellesley mom writes to ask if any readers might know of a good half or full day summer camp in the area that is focused on photography. Her 12-year-old daughter is interested in attending (she’s attended one at Framingham’s Danforth in the past).
It’s a bit of a stretch, but the U.S.-and Wellesley-based arm of Canada’s Sun Life Financial, recently agreed to pay $4 million a year for naming rights to the Miami stadium at which Sunday’s Super Bowl will be played. Unfortunately, they didn’t get rights for our home team to play there on Super Sunday. The stadium previous was called Dolphin Stadium and Land Shark Stadium.
The liquidation sale for the Wellesley-based Ski Market chain, which recently filed for bankruptcy protection, started today at 7 locations.
The company’s sudden downfall has angered shoppers, in particular those who were given gift certificates shortly before the company declared bankruptcy and then told they couldn’t use them or that the cards would only be worth half their original value.
Meanwhile, I was talking to a friend who had rented snowboards for her 3 kids over the winter from Ski Market, only to be told once the bankruptcy filing took place that she wouldn’t get her hefty deposit back…but that she could keep the rental gear. Smartly, she went to VISA and explained the situation to them, and they covered the deposit.
From the Wellesley Free Library Centennial Fund:
Are you a Wellesley author? The Wellesley Free Library Centennial Fund wants to celebrate you.
To commemorate its Silver Anniversary, on April 15th the Centennial Fund will host a Wellesley Authors’ Reception, to pay tribute to the exciting diversity of talent found right here in our hometown. So we want to identify Wellesley’s authors, poets, illustrators, playwrights — everyone who creates books and scripts and all kinds of publications. Please let us know about you and your works so that we can create a comprehensive list (a valuable resource which will eventually be housed at the library), and so that we can invite you to this gala evening.
This event will have special meaning because the Centennial Fund was born at a Wellesley Authors’ Reception 25 years ago, when a local author discovered that the library couldn’t afford to buy a copy of his book. He created the Fund to “enrich and enhance” the library’s collection, and since then the generous contributions of townspeople have enabled the Fund to donate $866,000 to the library (most recently this totaled 24% of its annual materials budget), ensuring the depth and richness of the collection. Authors — please share with the Centennial Fund your name, address, e-mail address, and names of publications.
You may e-mail this information to EMacLennan@minlib.net, or send it to: Centennial Fund Authors Reception, c/o Wellesley Free Library, 530 Washington Street, Wellesley 02482. And everyone in town — mark your calendars for April 15th, 7 p.m. at the library.
You’re all invited to meet and celebrate the gifted and intriguing authors who share our town. See you there!
Thanks to reader LR for pointing out that Wellesley’s Hal Mason is the big winner of the latest (Feb. 
caption contest for The New Yorker magazine. The cartoon (click here to see it on New Yorker site) features a laundromat where the washers are filled with people. Mason’s caption: “I liked my old spin class better.”
The grand prize?
“The Qualified Winner of each Cartoon Caption Contest will receive a print of the cartoon, with the caption, signed by the artist who drew the cartoon (the “Prize”)… The approximate retail value of the Prize is $250.
The Globe reports that the new Wellesley Senior Center project is dragging, as Selectmen instead of presenting plans at the March Town Meeting expect to do so in the fall instead. The proposed Tolles-Parsons Senior Center project could cost around $6 million and would go where the American Legion building was torn down on Washington St. last year. Here’s a link to a presentation (may be slow to download) on the parking and traffic analysis.
The Boston Globe features an obituary on Francis O. Hunnewell, a member of the family whose name gave Wellesley its name, who has died at the age of 71 while visiting the country of Georgia. Hunnewell, a military veteran, was said to have been quite an entrepreneur and adventurer, having collected items during his life such as an Indian elephant saddle and Chinese opium bed. Among other things, Hunnewell played an important role in encouraging young musicians, and given this tribute by NPR’s From the Top program.
Babson College’s school colors are green and white, and 2010 grads will emphasize the green when they wear caps and gowns made from recycled bottles. Babson says the fabric is spun from molten plastic pellets and that each gown is made from about 23 bottles. Biodegradable dishes and cups, as well as recycled paper for diplomas and programs will add to the school’s environmental sustainability efforts.
Wellesley High’s Bradford reports that there was a skunk living in the school’s boiler room for the past year (and some babies joined the party at some point along the way), adding an unwelcome aroma to the first-floor area near the library. Teamwork between a school maintenance man, an animal control expert and a mason has rid the school of its guests.
You might recall the case from about 2 years ago when a Wellesley couple faced criminal charges after a Department of Health investigation raised questions about whether the Ellis family had neglected to address alleged lead paint violations in their home (more reports on the initial case here and here). The investigation started after one of the Ellis children was found to have a high blood lead level, a result the state suspected came from lead paint in the Wellesley home but that the couple insisted more likely came from a toy necklace that the child owned before even moving into the house, which cost tens of thousands of dollars to de-lead. The couple eventually got the criminal charges dropped.
Last week, State Rep. Alice Peisch, who represents Wellesley, filed a bill seeking to eliminate criminal penalties for failure to de-lead owner-occupied dwellings without first showing that lead in the dwelling caused elevated blood lead levels in children living there. The bill also attempts to encourage inspection of all objects likely to cause elevated blood levels in children, such as the toy at the center of the Ellis situation. Jane Ellis, the mom whose daughter was found to have a raised blood lead level, worked with Peisch to create the bill and spoke to the House committee about her experience. She pointed out that her daughter’s blood lead level actually fell after they moved into the Wellesley home and that after remediation the blood levels of all 3 Ellis kids rose.
Students of Wellesley are gearing up for Broadway Bound Dance Center’s performance of Alice in Wonderland. Fifty-six students of six surrounding towns will participate in the production, including Wellesleyites: Lydia Tuffy as Alice, Nicole DuBois as the White Rabbit, Julia Taibl as the Queen of Hearts, as well as Kate Dario, Chloe Diamond, Kate Fletcher, Mia Garvin, Pierce Gillim, Ashley Glorioso, Maggie Hartnett, Lindsey Heffernan, Lauren Kehoe, Gwen Major-Williams, Emma Megan, Caitlin Pfaff, Gabrielle Reed, Julia Reed, Carl Richardson, Nadine Richardson, Carolina Rocha, Madeline Schneider, Sophie Scott, Amy Sterling, Sarah Sterling, Sophia Taibl, Julia Tambone and Anna Tellalian.
Alice in Wonderland is this year’s annual musical put on by Broadway Bound Dance Center.
Tickets are $15 and are available at Broadway Bound Dance Center Monday-Thursday 3-8pm or at the door on the day of the performance. Show runs approximately 1 hour and 30 minutes.
Wellesley College’s Newhouse Center for the Humanities has released its Distinguished Author Series line-up, a series of public readings/discussions to be held over the next few months. All events will be held at 4:30pm at 237 Green Hall.
* Chris Abani and Achy Obejas (Tuesday, February 23) Born in eastern Nigeria and currently a resident of southern California, Abani calls himself an “Ibo citizen of the world.” His ten books of prose and poetry have earned several notable awards, including the PEN Hemingway Book Prize, the Prince Claus Award, and a Lannan Literary Fellowship. Abani’s most recent collection of poems is Santificum (Copper Canyon, 2010), and his latest work of fiction is the novella, Song for Night (Akashic, 2007). He directs the MFA Program in Creative Writing & Writing for the Performing Arts at the University of California, Riverside. Achy Obejas is a novelist, poet, journalist, and translator. Her most recent work of fiction is the novel, Ruins (Akashic, 2009), which is set in Cuba, where she was born. Her work has been translated into Spanish, German, Hungarian, and Farsi, and she has received two Lamda Literary Awards and an NEA Award in Poetry. Obejas is currently the Sor Juana Visiting Writer at DePaul University in Chicago.
* Francine Prose (Tuesday, March 16) Prose’s twelve novels include Blue Angel (Harper Collins, 2000), which was a finalist for the 2000 National Book Award. Her most recent nonfiction book, Anne Frank: The Book, The Life, The Afterlife, was released in 2009 by Harper Collins. A fellow of the New York Institute for the Humanities and a 1999 Director’s Fellow of the New York Public Library’s Center for Scholars and Writers, Prose is a contributing editor of Harper’s Magazine. She resides in New York City.
* Colum McCann (Tuesday, March 30)
Colum McCann was born in Dublin, Ireland, in 1965. He is the author of two story collections and five novels, including This Side of Brightness (Picador, 2003); Dancer (Picador, 2004); Zoli (Random House, 2006); and the 2009 National Book Award-winning novel Let the Great World Spin (Bloomsbury, 2009). His awards include the Rooney Prizeand the Hennessey Award for Irish Literature. McCann lives in New York City, where he teaches in the MFA Program in Creative Writing at Hunter College.
*Carolyn Forché and Valzhyna Mort (Tuesday, April 20)
Carolyn Forché is known as a “poet of witness.” Her four collections include The Country Between Us (Harper and Row, 1982), which received the Poetry Society of America’s Alice Fay di Castagnola Award, and The Angel of History (Harper Collins,1994), which was chosen for The Los Angeles Times Book Award. Her most recent collection is Blue Hour (Harper Collins, 2003). Forché is the Lannan Visiting Professor of Poetry and Professor of English at Georgetown University in Maryland. In the words of the Irish Times, Belarusian poet Valzhyna Mort is a “risen star of the international poetry world.” Born in the city of Minsk in 1981, Mort made her American debut with the collection Factory of Tears (Copper Canyon Press, 2008), co-translated by the husband-and-wife team of Elizabeth Oehlkers Wright and Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Franz Wright. Her honors include the Hubert Burda Award for Eastern European Poetry.
Wellesley taps new Sprague School principal
Wellesley Public School Superintendent Bella Wong has announced that Steve Goodwin has verbally accepted her offer to take over as Sprague Elementary School principal when Donna Dankner departs following this school year. (We believe Lynch comes from Winchester’s Lynch School.)
And as if that isn’t enough excitement for one day at Sprague, the school also was paid a visit by Fox-25 TV weather Kevin Lemanowicz, who is promising video on the 6pm newscast tonight…