Father-Husband-Marketer-Geek

Olin administrator builds Lego Needham Town Hall It turns out that two Town Halls were built in Needham this year. One was the brick-and-mortar building sitting in Needham Center, which underwent renovations and additions and will be officially unveiled at a Needham300 event on Nov. 5.  The other Town Hall is made of Legos.  Nick Tatar, Assistant Dean of Student Life at Olin College, built this second Town Hall at Olin over the course of three months, starting in January. Working with Olin professor Brad Minch and seven children and Olin students, Tatar built the Town Hall out of fifteen thousand Lego pieces, sometimes working 10 to 15 hours a week on the project. On Nov. 5, Tatar will break the Town Hall into chunks and transport it to the other Town Hall. At noon, he will reassemble it, then step back and let people admire his handiwork. Tatar said that he decided to build this Lego Town Hall for kids to enjoy during the Nov. 5 Needham 300 gala. “I wanted to see if we could do someth

An excerpt from a newspaper story explains frustrations from the family of the author of the "Thomas the Tank Engine" books over recent decisions to replace "Christmas" with "Holidays" in some of the popular steam engine's forthcoming content: "A move by television producers to scrap any reference to Christmas in the latest episodes of Thomas the Tank Engine has upset relatives of the man who created the hugely popular children's character.   The TV studio has rebranded "Christmas" as "holidays" for "politically correct" reasons, British newspaper The Daily Telegraph reported.   Reverend W Awdry, author of the original tales about the little blue engine, would be distressed about the omission of the significant religious event, said his daughter Hilary Fortnam.  "He would feel very strongly about this politically correct age and that those who now write his stories should not have taken the Christ of the Chri

It was early October this year and we were starting to unpack our halloween village pieces. Our favorite pieces have always been the animated amusement park pieces from the Original Snow Village halloween series. One by one, we looked at each piece and realized why we didn't use them last year. All of the animated functions had stopped working. The Scaredy Cat Ferris Wheel had stopped spinning. The swinging ghoulies were pretty, well, dead. The pumpkin teacups were not revolving. The witch's turntable did not turn. Must be a common cause for similar malfunction, correct? We're very dissapointed. We spent about $80 each, and if we brought these pieces to an electric utility repair shop, we'd most likely be paying for them all over again. Does anyone else have any suggestions on these? Related articles Halloween Decorations: Make Ghouly Hands! (education.com) Halloween Theme Is Up! (cpcheatshq.com) Giveaway: Wonka Candy for Halloween (frugalupstate.com)