More than you really want to know about Natick, Mass.
Tents are popping up like mushrooms across Natick as the schools ready for the return of students and staff. Tents will be used for classes, breaks, lunch, and we’re sure more ideas will arise.
Lilja Elementary School tents
Natick High
Natick High
Memorial Elementary School
The Natick Health Department has announced it will be running a by-appointment-only drive-through flu shot clinic for Natick residents age 6 months and older from 8:00 AM - 4:00 PM on Saturday, Oct. 3.
A maximum of four participants per car. The event will take place at the DPW at 75 West St.
You must fill out a form in advance and bring it with you, along with your insurance card if you have insurance. The shots are free, and vaccines will be available in regular and high dose. Masks required.
The lawn at First Congregational Church in Natick Center will be covered for the next two week with red and purple flags to honor the 2,015 lives lost last year in Massachusetts to opioids.
SOAR Natick has spearheaded the public display, assembled on Aug. 21 by several dozen volunteers, including those who planted red flags in honor of individuals. The flags will stay up until Sept. 4.
Preliminary data from January-March 2020 show there were 467 confirmed and estimated opioid-related overdose deaths in Massachusetts, an estimated 28 fewer deaths, which is a 5.7% decline compared to the first three months of 2019.
Of particular concern now is the impact that the COVID-19 pandemic is having on the opioid situation, both in terms of resources reallocated and vulnerability of those under pandemic-related stress.
Natick residents in 2016 voted in favor of legalizing adult recreational use of marijuana in the state, and now eight businesses are vying to bring cannabis shops to town.
Town Meeting voted in 2018 to approve a handful of zones where such businesses could locate, and in the map below you can see where seven of the eight applicants propose setting up shop. Among the most intriguing: a business that seeks to operate out of the space where Bernie & Phyl’s sells furniture on Rte. 9, right across from the Amazing lingerie store—quite the transition for that section of the road. (We reached out to Bernie & Phyl’s but haven’t heard back.)
A maximum of two applicants will be approved, and based on the town’s review and licensing schedule, it looks like any such business would not open before next spring:
These businesses aren’t waiting until the last minute, though, to get the word out about their intentions. They lay it on thick about the educational and community contributions they will make, though in fairness, the Natick request for information application calls for some of that (“Royalty Group and its Team will be the kind of cannabis organization that is focused on the people who make up the company, especially its employees, and who are a community driven organization that seeks to better the municipalities in which we conduct our businesses in.”).
There are so many references to education on these feel-good outfits’ websites that I almost mistook some of them for schools. Quality, uniqueness, safety, organically, and community, are among their catchwords. Marijuana, pot and weed, not so much. They sometimes spell out, in their menus, the various impacts their products will have on you, from pain relief to relaxation to creativity.
Dale Buckman, a Natick resident who leads the sciency-sounding Phytotherapy Natick, recently reached out to the community online to share information on the outfit’s plans if it gets selected to open in town. Interestingly, the business looks to open at the current Bernie & Phyl’s space on Rte. 9 (combining cannabis and furniture sales might not be the worst idea, but that’s not the plan).
Phytotherapy assures that “We have laid out a vision for success that will benefit the Town, our organization and, most importantly the residents of the Town of Natick.” Its Natick-specific website is focused on its building, traffic and education plans, not its products, which are hinted at on its main website.
The business says it has or will reach out to a number of usual suspects among Natick’s community service organizations, and that it will attempt to give Natick residents preference (to the extent it can under the law) for 30-45 jobs it anticipates filling at its retail shop. It touts plans for educational forums and materials for adults, with some knowledge designed for dispensing to children.
Among the others looking to set up shop in Natick is reLeaf Alternative, which manages to check off a bunch of those aforementioned catchwords in its mission statement: “to provide quality education, experience and service to our communities by delivering organically grown cannabis in a safe environment.”
ReLeaf does educate on its website by laying out different types of cannabis and strains, and also pushes planned community involvement.
C3 Industries, whose name could represent just about any type of company, distinguishes itself by having cultivation, manufacturing and retail operations. The business is based in Ann Arbor, Mich., but has a presence in Portland, Ore., and has designs on expanding its High Profile brand to Massachusetts.
Another candidate, Justice Grown, was launched in 2014 by civil rights attorneys, and it has Middleborough and Gardner as other Massachusetts targets (it has dispensaries already in Pennsylvania). Among its missions: “We work to undo the damage done by cannabis prohibition through action and charitable giving.”
Other applications to Natick were filed by Strain, Cypress Tree, and Revolutionary Clinics.
Under a separate process, medical marijuana dispensary Bountiful Farms (which has a rare “.care” web address) looks to open at 13 Mercer Rd., in Natick behind The Verve hotel.
Reusable bags are back, baby.
The bags situation is a little out of hand at our house, so it’s welcome news that reusable bags are back.We’ve amassed quite a collection of single-use paper and plastic bags in our home since March 25, when the Massachusetts Department of Public Health (MDPH) temporarily suspended the use of reusable bags due to COVID-19 concerns. One day the well-trained shoppers of Natick could be seen with an armload of canvas totes, or well-worn paper bags on perhaps the last Roche Bros. run of their lives before finally falling apart. The next day, those bags were banished to the back of the trunk for the foreseeable future.
Health officials have since determined there is a low risk of contracting COVID-19 from resuable bags, so we can all pull those sacks out of obscurity and once again go about the business of saving the planet.
If a stockpile of bags determines who makes it through zombie apocalypse, we will surely be the survivors. Find me at that time, and I’ll trade you 3 plastic bags for 30 gallons of water.