features 

By Nate Kim and Eric Zhao

(23-JUL-26) The sounds of kids arriving by foot, by bike, and by car signaled a new week at Flerra Summer Playground, a half-day summer program held outdoors at Flerra Meadows in Boxborough during the month of July. 

In week three of four, with arguably the best weather yet, campers started their days with favorites like German Dodgeball, and then cooled off with arts and crafts under the tent or enjoyed a wide variety of board games. “Tie-Dye Tuesday” brought excitement as campers transformed their blank white shirts into colorful creations, while “Water Wednesday” helped campers beat the heat with the water slide on a sunny, picture-perfect summer day.

Behind the scenes, however, the program’s smooth, clockwork-like operation has come with new challenges this year. Flerra Summer Playground has faced budget constraints and changing enrollment numbers, which have impacted staffing.

Flerra Summer Playground director Brian Picca explained, “Two years ago, we had record-breaking numbers of registrants. We anticipated our number last year to reflect that same number, but [last year] we were down about 150 campers.” Due to the enrollment changes, the program had to reduce the number of paid staffers as well. 

“Overall, registration-wise we still aren’t at the number we’d like to be,” continued Picca, “so we may have to reduce staff again next year. But we’d prefer to increase the costs a little bit more just to help cover the costs of paying counselors, vendors and craft supplies.” 

In advance of this summer’s season, the town increased the cost of the Flerra program “to help offset increasing vendor and supplies costs.” 

Picca emphasized, “We don’t want to have to reduce the number of counselors[;] we value having the high schoolers working for us and giving back to them since they were campers themselves.” 

The increased scarcity of jobs has also led to a more selective evaluation of current counselors. Picca said, “We’re really looking at who’s doing a total job of keeping the kids safe, watching campers interact with other campers, performance overall to determine if we can hire back those same counselors and which 8th-graders get paying jobs next year.” 

Even with one of the tightest budgets in recent memory, Flerra Summer Playground remains a hit with Acton and Boxborough residents. 

“I think it’s going really great,” said Laura Spurling, another one of Flerra Summer Playground’s directors. “Kids seem really happy and parents have been giving lots of positive feedback about the program. Our last week is our big fun week with the water balloon fight and talent show. We still have openings, so if people still [want to] sign up, we’d definitely take more campers.” 

Flerra’s fourth and final week will run from July 27 to July 31. Registration is still open online at https://boxboroughma.myrec.com.

(23-JUL-26) For residents with a little extra free time this summer and an interest in learning about town history, there are two books that detail the history of Boxborough – one written back in 1891 and the second written in the 1980s. 

Late in the nineteenth century, a comprehensive history of Middlesex County was published by Samual Adams Drake, titled “History of Middlesex County, Massachusetts containing carefully prepared histories of every city and town in the county.” Encouraged by this work and by her friends, Lucie Caroline Hager felt “that a history of Boxborough printed in a small volume separately…would be favorably received” and set to work to write one. 

Lucie was born in Littleton and moved to Boxborough when she married in 1882. She was a school teacher, bookkeeper, and a writer of prose and poetry. “Boxborough: A New England Town and its People,” the product of her efforts, was published in 1891. 

As indicated by its title, the book is divided into two sections. The first half tells the history of the town for its roughly first 100 years. The second half presents biographical sketches of the prominent families who lived in town during that period. A biography of Lucie and a selection of her poems are included in the section on the Hager family.

Boxborough celebrated its bicentennial in 1983. As part of that commemoration, four residents, Janet Calhoun, Susan DeStefano, Katherine Talmadge, and Elizabeth West, spent 18 months working with others to create “Boxborough: A Portrait of a Town: 1783-1983”.  

As its introduction states, “Portrait” is a combination of thousands of pages of written records with hundreds of hours of oral interviews documenting the memories of people living in town.  This sprightly written, copiously illustrated volume is organized by topic rather than chronology, e.g., “Government,” “Schools,” “Library.”  

It brings to life Boxborough’s history as a small farming town up until the 1960’s, and documents the changes in Boxborough as it grew rapidly through the 1970s and early 1980s. There are multiple copies of each book at Boxborough’s Sargent Memorial Library. Copies can also be purchased at the Boxborough Museum or by emailing the Boxborough Historical Society at BoxboroughHistoricalSociety@gmail.com. 

(9-JUL-26) Boxborough's volunteer-powered FreeBee Market returns for its sixth season on Saturday, July 11, 2026, at 10:30 a.m. on the side lawn of UCC Boxborough, 30 Middle Road. What began as an emergency response to the challenges of 2020 and the fire on Swanson Road has grown into a joyful community tradition centered on food rescue, sustainability, and neighborly sharing.

FreeBee was born during the pandemic and in the aftermath of the Swanson Road apartment fire, when Boxborough residents organized to support displaced families. As volunteers worked to meet immediate needs, one group discovered another gap: most food pantries were closed on Saturday and excess food normally given to them (“gleaned”) was going to waste. Volunteers began rescuing surplus produce and meat from local supermarkets and sharing it on the lawn of the UCC Boxborough. By 2021, the effort had become the FreeBee Market, guided by its simple motto: "Give what you can, take what you need."

(9-JUL-26) In the days leading up to the Fourth of July weekend, Boxborough residents reported several black bear sightings on the eastern side of town. 

John Ehrlich of Davidson Road shared that a black bear visited his yard several times between June 30 and July 4. Most sightings were in the evening, roughly 7:30-9 p.m., with one visit around 8 a.m. “Looks youthful,” Ehrlich reported, “perhaps 1-2 years, solitary, no visible tags. Handsome critter.”

On Friday, July 3, Boxborough resident Susan Bak saw a bear cross Mass Ave (Route 111) while she was driving westbound around 4:30 p.m. “It was medium size,” she said. “It was just after Flamingo” [Market & Liquor] and before Sadler Lane. “He was running from my left [south] to right [north].”

“In that black bears have moved east, we must learn to live safely knowing they're around,” commented Boxborough Conservation Trust President Rita Gibes Grossman. “The Massachusetts Division of Fisheries and Wildlife has a good resource on bears and we strongly recommend everyone read it: https://www.mass.gov/black-bears-in-massachusetts.”

The Division of Fisheries and Wildlife reminds all Massachusetts residents to remove bird feeders, secure garbage, protect pets, and use electric fencing for chickens and other livestock. And, if there is a bear in your yard, “wait for the bear to leave, then remove or secure food sources on your property.”

Grossman also suggests that Boxborough residents report any bear sightings to the Boxborough Police Department and to the “MassBears” research project at Amherst College at https://massbears.wordpress.amherst.edu/.

(9-JUL-26) Movement is necessary. Thinking is necessary. Coordinating these two together are essential for our physical and mental health well-being.   

Many of the inventions during my lifetime of working with people's bodies and studying mobility science have unintentional consequences that hurt us over time. Ask any of my students how much I railed against backup cameras in cars. Are they a safety measure, yes. Should we use them at times, yes, but for people who have let their usage become a habit and never turn around anymore to see out the back window of a car? Many have upper back immobility issues. All have lost the thoracic rotational ability.  Most have shoulder and neck pain that follows them daily. 

Another example we have all heard of is “tech neck.” Fifteen years ago it never existed, but now has a medical term associated with it. It is a deformative realignment of the neck vertebrate that resembles whip lash on an x-ray. It is caused from hours of looking down at a computer screen or our phones in our hands. Physical therapy and Yoga can help the associated pain, but if we don’t change the root cause, it continues to reemerge in our lives. 

All of the painful physical manifestations of our habits are reversible with conviction. Most can be prevented with knowledge and understanding. Anything that becomes a habit that we do without thinking is probably a red flag area for your body. Our movements should be mindful and intentional and varied. Look over your shoulder and twist to look for cars, move your computer screen higher and simply put the phone down. Do hand yoga exercises to stretch out overly shortened muscles or add mobility training to your day. 

Or better yet, simply write notes by hand. The brain lights up like a Christmas tree when you hold pen to paper and write, but the brain stays dark with no neurological connection when typing on a keyboard. We know our bodies are designed to move and our brains are designed to think. We have learned that not moving is tantamount to disease and discomfort in our life. Can you imagine how damaging using AI is to our brain? Things that make life “easier” are not designed with our overall health in mind. 

Humans are physical beings whose bodies can do amazing things. We need to use the  muscles and brain to coordinate neuroplasticity for a successful and pain-free aging process. That coordination keeps our brains young and flexible, but many of these inventions that are designed to make our lives easier are slowly taking away our physical and mental abilities as we age. Use of AI will accompany great losses in our brain health overall.