WESTFORD, Mass. - A 44-year-old Groton man was listed in fair condition today at Massachusetts General Hospital after surviving a snowmobile crash on Forge Pond Saturday afternoon.
Brian J. Brule, 45, was traveling on the snow-covered ice in the mid-afternoon when his yellow and black snowmobile became airborne.
Police speculate that Brule hit ice ridges while traveling at a high rate of speed.
“It looks like he went airborne at one point and came off the snowmobile,” said Captain Victor Neal of the Westford Police Department.
Neal said Brule’s helmet flew off his head in the accident.
Brule was transported off the ice and taken to the Stony Brook School where he was air lifted to Boston.
State Environmental police who had been on the pond earlier that day to monitor an ice fishing tournament were on the scene investigating the accident, and determined the vehicle was not registered, said Neal.
An investigation is ongoing, he said.
Category Archives: Wandering Reporter
SNOWMOBILE ACCIDENT ON FORGE POND
LOCAL IBM WORKERS TOLD TO LOOK FOR NEW JOBS
By Joyce Pellino Crane
WESTFORD, Mass. – An undisclosed number of IBM employees were told on January 21 and 27 to begin looking for new jobs, according to a company spokesperson, who declined to call the action a layoff.
In a phone interview Tuesday, Doug Shelton said some North American employees were informed “about the need to remix our resources and skills to better match our client requirements.”
He denied the action was related to a plummeting global economy that has caused companies across the nation to lay-off hundreds of thousands of employees over the past two quarters. IBM operates in 170 countries with 69 percent of its workforce outside the US, and employs 121,000 domestically, according to its 2007 annual report.
IBM did not publicly announce the workforce reduction. Shelton responded to phone calls seeking comment after rumors of a local layoff surfaced.
“All I can confirm is that we talked to employees in North America,” he said.
The action did not trigger the Worker Adjustment and Notification Act passed in 1988 to prevent large plants from closing up shop with no warning. To help workers prepare for a layoff, the federal law requires companies employing at least 100 people to notify state officials 60 days in advance if more than 500 workers are being let go.
Shelton declined to specify how many jobs or which IBM locations were impacted.
In October IBM spokeswoman Beth Friday told the Boston Globe that the company expected to employ about 3,400 in this region by 2010. She said the company was in the process of upgrading two former Hewlett Packard buildings on Route 110 in Littleton, which neighbors Westford, and would be relocating software professionals there beginning in January. Other employees would be relocated to IBM’s existing Westford campus on Technology Park Drive, just off Route 110.
According to published news reports, IBM laid off unspecified numbers of workers in Vermont and New York last month without reporting the event.
Shelton said all the workers have the option of searching for new jobs within the company. In some states workers will get fulltime salaries for 30 days, and in other states, for as long as 90 days, he added.
The company “reassesses” the skills of its employees on a quarterly basis, Shelton said, and the number employed by the company balances out by each year-end.
In December the company employed about 400,000, globally, as compared to about 386,000 at the end of 2007, he said. But worker reassessments are taken on a quarterly basis, he added, suggesting that further shifts in employee numbers will take place.
“We have a process that is ongoing throughout the year,” he said. “We don’t do one-time events like other companies where they announce thousands and thousands of employees.”
Shelton said that employees leave the company with a severance package of one week’s pay for each fully completed six months of service, up to a maximum of 26 weeks. IBM subsidizes medical and life insurance premiums for up to a year, he said. It provides financial planning services by an outside consultant for up to four months and outplacement services for up to a year. Reimbursement for re-training is provided for one year after departure, he said.
Joyce Pellino Crane can be reached at joycepellinocrane@gmail.com.
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Sphere: Related ContentPOLYNESIAN POP CULTURE TAKES ANOTHER BLOW
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Matt Hull loads the tiki mask he purchased at a memorabilia sale at the defunct New Tiki restaurant in Westford, Mass.
- Karl Baldrate’s dashboard pays homage to his Hawaiian upbringing.
Beth Gerrig displays a treasured tiki mug.
Jon Powers salvages kitchen equipment at the New Tiki.
By Joyce Pellino Crane
WESTFORD, MASS. – Polynesian pop culture weathered another blow this week as the New Tiki sold off artifacts and equipment inside the once popular restaurant.
So much for Chinese food in the kitschy and raffish style of the 1960`s.
Think chop suey, “Hawaii Five-O,” and Don Ho.
For all but a select group of fanatics, the bygone era was the death knell for the dowdy eatery, which permanently closed its doors in late September, a victim of Americans’ fickle preferences.
“People don’t eat that kind of Chinese food anymore…” said Brian Lafferty, a management consultant for the property. “The overhead was too high to sustain it.”
Inside the restaurant’s defunct kitchen, Saturday (oct. 18), artist Jon Powers, who grew up in Amesbury, was grabbing stainless steel teapots, ceramic teacups, and tiki-style sterno holders, in a last-ditch effort to salvage the memories.
“There’s something about being fed up with the destruction of vintage America,…with the plastic urban renewal…,” he said as he bypassed greasy woks to grab shiny serving platters. “Where’s the charm? Some of us try to recreate it and share it with friends and family.”
“I have this real affection for Polynesian,” he said.
He’s not alone. About 50 Polynesian cocktail aficionados from as far away as Pennsylvania meet monthly in the Boston-area to dance the hula and down mai tais.
Matt Hull, 46, drove up from Allentown, Penn., stopping, on Friday, for a concert by the Ventures in New York City. The 1960`s instrumental band recorded the theme song to Hawaii-Five-O, a hit television series filmed on the island of Oahu that aired from 1968 to 1980. Don Ho was a 1960`s Hawaiian singer and entertainer.
Tikiphiles connect through Northeast Tiki Tours, the brainchild of Mike Sullivan, a Tolland, Conn., resident, who started the company in August 2007 with a whirlwind trip to several surviving Polynesian restaurants. In addition to the New Tiki, the group visited South Pacific in Newton, Bali Hai in Lynnfield, Mon Kou in Attleboro, and Kowloon in Saugus. They were accompanied by the Boston-based Waitiki band.
Polynesian cuisine gave way to Japanese fare some 20 years ago, and more recently, to Japanese-Chinese fusion cuisine. Even the typical Chinese restaurant of the 90`s is losing favor of late, according to the National Restaurant Association, which publishes an annual “What’s Hot and What’s Not” chef survey.
But New England has an unusually large number of Polynesian restaurants still in operation, according to Sullivan.
Among them, Ho Kong in Woonsocket, RI, Mon Kou in Attleboro, Chuck’s China Inn in New Bedford, Tiki Hawaii in Sandwich, and Tiki Port in Hyannis.
Phil and Cheryl Dinsmore of Littleton, who stopped in at the New Tiki on Saturday, said they spent many weekend nights dancing and drinking there with friends during the 1970`s.
“Memories” and “curiosity” drew them in when they spotted the memorabilia for-sale sign on Route 110.
Members of Sullivan’s tiki followers call themselves the Queequeg Chapter of the Fraternal Order of the Moai, a reference to Moby Dick.
Tiki means the first man or creator of the first man, according to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary. Polynesia encompasses the islands of central and South Pacific, including New Zealand and Hawaii.
Beth Gerrig’s car was already brimming Saturday with cartons of tiki mugs from the Salvation Army in Salem, NH, and boxes of other Polynesian treasures while she searched for more goodies inside the restaurant.
“These came from the Mai-Kai (Restaurant and Lounge) in Fort Lauderdale,” said the 44-year-old Lowell resident, as she held up a chocolate-colored mug with the sculpted mask of a tiki god.
Karl Baldrate of Shirley, 53, said since finding Sullivan’s group, his love for tiki has resurfaced.
“When I was young,” he said, “ I lived in Hawaii. That was when the Poly pop was still big.”
Baldrate pointed to the success of Trader Vic’s, a global chain of restaurants with a Polynesian theme, founded in the 1930`s in Oakland, Calif., and now a $70 million empire.
Baldrate said he loves the camaraderie of the tiki crowd and the lighthearted fun they share when they gather–particularly because New Englanders tend to suppress such ebullient cultures.
“Living in New England, these things get pushed down,” he said.
Sullivan, in a phone interview last year, said socializing with the tiki crowd keeps him sane.
“It’s therapy,” said the fortyish print shop operator, otherwise known by the nickname that says it all—“Bargoyle.”
Joyce Pellino Crane can be reached at joycepellinocrane@gmail.com.
TRANSIT POLICE DENY STAFFING SHIFT
by Joyce Pellino Crane
(Here’s some information I picked up while riding Boston’s subway this week)
Transit police are preparing to beef up subway coverage in September when school starts, said a transportation official, contradicting speculation among patrolling officers that they will soon be reassigned to above-ground areas.
Joseph O’Connor, deputy chief of patrol operations for the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority, said there is no truth to rumors that the core subway system will no longer be patrolled.
“The speculation that we’re going to reduce officers from the subway is not accurate,” he said. “We know that people feel safe when they see an officer in the transit system…”
Terrorist attacks inside London’s subway in 2005 and Tokyo’s in 1995, and bombings at three of Madrid’s commuter train stations in 2004, have heightened awareness of the vulnerability of public transportation systems. Boston’s transit police are trained to watch for threatening situations and explosives, said O’Connor.
The staffing rumors were conveyed by patrolling officers aboard the Green Line this week, who said the MBTA needed to fill coverage gaps in other areas due to retirements and vacations. But O’Connor said the number of retirements this year were negligible, and by August the system will add 17 graduating officers to its current staff of 256.
Transit Police cover public buses equipped with video cameras for real-time monitoring, commuter rails, and ferries, as well as Boston’s subway system. The fiscal 2009 budget for its operations, which began July 1, is $20 million.
As the price of gas hovers around $4, transportation officials are anticipating increased ridership, he added.
“It’s our goal to keep the system safe especially where we have increased ridership with the price of fuel going up,” O’Connor said.
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