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Vol. 2, No. 16
Wednesday, August 18, 2000
[Home]
In less than a month we may have a new play structure at Wellington Park! After many meetings and discussions, the play structure was finally ordered on July 27. Now we need volunteers to help on our build day, Saturday, September 16. No experience is necessary, so all are welcome to help with the build day. However, if any of you or your friends are contractors or have some experience at such endeavors, please sign up and let us know. If you are available to help on the build day, we ask that you sign up so that we can be assured of having a sufficient number of people. Many hands make light work. We will have lots of different jobs to do, including digging holes, assembling the pieces, pouring concrete, carpentry on our border timbers, providing snacks and drinks to the crew, etc.
The easiest way to sign up may be to send email to build@wellingtonpark.org. Alternatively, please call 969-6222 and leave a message on the machine (it answers as Recognitive Sciences, Inc.). Please leave your name, address, phone, and email if we do not have it. We will be working all day or until completion starting around 8 AM. Please also let us know which portion of the day you may be available for. The rain date will be Sunday, September 17. If it rains the whole weekend, we will try again on the following weekend, September 23-24.
We have ordered both a play structure and a new swingset (4 swings). The play structure will be located close to the Kilburn Road fence roughly between the existing gate and the current swingset. The new swingset will be in roughly the same location as the existing swingset. The play structure will be in a raised area (1 foot) surrounded by timbers and filled with Fibar wood chips. The swingset will be surfaced with sand as it is currently.
It would be helpful if someone has a bobcat or loader or perhaps a power auger for digging holes. As we get closer to the date, we will provide more detailed instructions to those who are signed up in terms of desired tools and implements to bring. We will have an on-site supervisor from GameTime who will help coordinate the construction activities. We still need to order 6 x 6 timbers for the edging, rebar to hold them down, gravel for drainage, and many bags of concrete to pour in the structure holes. If anyone has connections and can get a good deal on such items, please let us know.
The structure is due to arrive in the week before the build day, hopefully as close to Saturday, September 16, as possible. There is a good chance we may need some help during the day to help unload the play equipment pieces from the truck. In addition we will be receiving a load of Fibar wood chips. These will be delivered in a large tractor trailer truck and unloaded onto the basketball court. This should make it easy to load into wheelbarrows for later placement under the structure. It will also save the grass. In fact, we have already taken delivery of some rolls of padding that separates the Fibar from the material underneath. Early in the week prior to the build, the city will be removing the existing swingset and benches and possibly smoothing out the structure area a little.
There will be a planning meeting for the build on Tuesday, August 29, 7 PM at the Kuklinski's, 24 Henshaw Terrace (white house - red roof, not to be confused with 24 Lindbergh which is next door). There are lots of things to be done prior to the build in preparation. The meeting is open to all. Any volunteers to make phone calls to our non-email membership or to put up posters around the neighborhood concerning the build?
Just yesterday, our new web address became active. Our web home can now be found at www.wellingtonpark.org. The "org" properly reflects our status as an organization and hopefully will be easier to remember than our previous address of wellingtonpark.8m.com. This was a free address but people always wondered what the "8m" stood for. If you go to the old address, wellingtonpark.8m.com, you will be directed to the new address (in the very near future). In addition, it will take awhile for the search engines to catch up to our new address.
You can still send email to us at wellingtonpark@aol.com or use our new domain by sending mail to info@wellingtonpark.org. Any mail sent to anything@wellingtonpark.org gets forwarded to wellingtonpark@aol.com anyway.
Some of you may have wondered about the banner ad at the top of our web pages. Our web hosting is done by a company called Freeservers at www.freeservers.com. In order to cover the cost of free hosting, they place the banner ad on their free-hosted pages. . In addition, there may be another pop up ad window that may appear from time to time when you visit our website. Feel free to just close it. It should pop up no more than once a month. We could eliminate the banner ads by paying an additional fee ($6.95/month) but since we are considered a LBO (low budget operation), we won't. Freeservers seems to be a reasonable company and even this additional fee may be among the least expensive web hosting services for domain names you will find.
The new address also may help to prevent people from mistakenly going to www.wellingtonpark.com. Yes, this web address does exist and perhaps some of you have visited there by mistake - a very fine reception hall that you can rent in jolly old Lancashire, England! From the other WellingtonPark website: "Wellington Park is the perfect choice whether for a company seminar, dinner dance or conference. Whatever the occasion, Wellington Park is the ideal venue. Situated off Church Road and surrounded by a mature coppice of trees and rhododendron bushes, Wellington Park is a new purpose built building for that special occasion. The building is surrounded by a private car park for approximately 150 cars. The interior offers a choice of five well furnished and tastefully decorated rooms." Maybe we could rent that Wellington Park for our upcoming Wellington Park Ball (just kidding).
Again we make a plea to all to help keep the dog supply bags at the entrances filled with your old plastic bags. Even if they have some in them, stuff some more in. You have loads around if you save the ones from the newspaper, your grocery shopping, or trips to the convenience store. The more these bags are filled, the less poops found in the park. Still, there is no excuse for leaving dog poop on the ground at the park. The "Dog Days" doggie festival sponsored by the city was held last Sunday at Cold Spring Park. It was well attended and it showed that we have a lot of dog owners in Newton (including Mayor Cohen). Alderperson Christine Samuelson was discussing the possibility of a Newton dog park. There was a company there that sold poop bags (about $20 for 100) - sounds a bit expensive to me. So keep those supply bags filled!
The city had been very good about mowing the park on a regular basis this year. In addition, they empty the trash barrels on a weekly basis. Usually the grass under the barrels will die off leaving a barren circle. Please feel free to shift the barrels back onto the existing circle so we don't end up with a collection of new dead grass circles.
Thanks to Bill Cheney and Jana Tolisano who spent some time weeding the bush area along the Kilburn Road fence recently. They concluded that perhaps we need a bit deeper mulch level. We will try to arrange for more mulch to be delivered to the park at a future date.
Mr. McCarthy on Henshaw Place was recounting when the present area of Wellington Park used to be a peat bog, while Mr. Gene Cronin (local historian) recalls a small pond being present near the current Princess Road entrance. If there is anyone out there who would like to research the neighborhood a little more at the Jackson Homestead, please let us know. It would be nice to put some of the old maps on our website. We would be happy to print your childhood memories of the neighborhood or Wellington Park. By the way, does anyone know where the name "Wellington" came from?
Bruce Nelson recently spotted an American Kestrel (a type of hawk) flying over the park. There have been a few more instances of bird feathers around lately. Coincidence?
Anyone who went over to NCSC to see the skate park opening, with X and Gravity Games gold medalist Andy Macdonald, was treated to a display of amazing skills. The NCSC skate ramp is free and open to those inline skaters and skateboarders who have a waiver signed by their parents. Rules and forms can be found on the NCSC website at www.ncscinc.com/skate.htm. Skaters should also be aware of the new Waltham skate park which is next to the Burger King on Moody Street and which will be open later this summer or in early fall.
Thanks to Annie Myers who has been leading the pickup basketball effort on Wednesday evenings at 7 PM. If you are interested just show up. Attendance has been off a little recently due to rain and other factors but there are plenty of nice evenings left before the park frosts over. I am told there may be some interest in pickup volleyball. We have a net that can be set up on grass. Let us know if you are interested and possible best evenings (volleyball@wellingtonpark.org).
If you haven't sent in a contribution yet, it's not too late. The Wellington Park Fund is currently at $3,660. The city is currently making the arrangements to transfer their original allocation of $12,500 to our fund account at our non profit sponsor, NCSC. This would give us a grand total of $16,160. The play structure and swings that we have ordered came to a total of $14,452, which will leave us with a balance of $1708. We will be using this to cover additional expenses such as concrete, gravel, timbers, rebar, equipment rental, etc. for the build.
In addition, we would like to replace the current benches with newer ones using recycled lumber ((roughly $600 apiece). Your contributions are tax deductible thanks to our sponsorship by the Newton Community Service Center (www.ncscinc.com). If you wish to make a donation to the Wellington Park Fund, please make out your check to NCSC, Inc. and write "Wellington Park Fund" on the check and send it to:
Newton Community Service Centers, Inc.
Wellington Park Fund
492 Waltham Street
West Newton, MA 02465
Thanks to new donors, Max Brauninger (Lindbergh Ave.) and Beth and Karl Mitchell (Byrd Ave.) for their recent contributions! Remember, there is still time for you to make a difference.
Please get on our email list. You will receive the Wellington News directly by email. It is the fastest and easiest way for our organization to keep in touch. Just send an email to WellingtonPark@aol.com or call (617) 969-6222 and leave a message. Or if you wish to be removed from the list let us know the same way. And of course, check out our web site http://www.wellingtonpark.org. All back issues of Wellington News are available online.
If you are not wired, just read our high tech cork bulletin board at the park. You are most welcome to submit items for publication here (childhood remembrances about the park, opinions, yard sale notices, etc.) by email or regular mail (Wellington Park News, c/o Ted Kuklinski, 24 Henshaw Terrace, West Newton, MA 02465-1632).
Please make sure the Velcro tape is sealed along the side of the plastic cover so that rain doesn't get into the board. Lately, we have had a lot of information on the bulletin board related to the play structure not leaving too much room. If you have other notices, please try to keep them small enough to fit in the currently available space and keep them under the plastic cover. Please report any vandalism at the park to the police and to us at vandalism@wellingtonpark.org or (617) 969-6222.
We have also started using clipboards at each entrance for meeting notices in order to not have the need to trek over to the bulletin board. This system makes it easy to change notices easily.