18. March 2012 by pat desmond.

Sen. Scott Brown and Pat Desmond talk about Milton.

Earlier this month I spent a few days in Washington, DC, with the leadership of the National Newspaper Association.

I planned to write about the trip right away - but I came back to Milton to find I needed to step up and handle the day-to-day editing of the paper.

The man who handled that work for the past three years, Mike Whalen, is no longer at the Milton Times. He will be missed. So it has taken a week before I can tell the world how interesting the political scene in DC happens to be.

First all politics is local. I had a chance to meet with Congressmen Stephen Lynch and Michael Capuano as well as Sen. Scott Brown.

It was wonderful and amazing to see that they all care about Milton and its 350th anniversary celebration.

There is much more to say but today is the day the MHS hockey team meets Burlington at the Boston Garden in the state finals.

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28. February 2012 by pat desmond.

Tonight I learned the mayoral field has been winnowed.

The latest list of candidates for Mayor of Milton includes: Jayne Goode, Philip Driscoll, and Mike Lynch.

The 350th Committee met at town hall tonight. We did quite a bit of chatting but most of us hadn’t realized we needed to be sworn into office once again. So we put off voting.

The race for the mayor is heating up.

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27. February 2012 by pat desmond.

I try not to work weekends but Sunday evening I spent some time at the first meeting of the candidates in the Mayor of Milton contest.

They are an interesting group.

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18. February 2012 by pat desmond.

A little more than a month ago, the Milton Times established a paywall to protect the content on our web site.

Next week we plan to open a small hole in the pay wall to allow readers to view special pages on our annual reader’s choice contest. We call it “The Best in Milton.”

It will mean the 40,000 plus unique visitors that stop by our web site each month will have a chance to go through the Special Pages we are creating to explain the story of the contest winners.

Let me be clear. There are many winners. I can’t reveal who they are before we go to press next week - but I can say the story and the new special section on our web site will be fun.

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7. January 2012 by pat desmond.

My daughter, June, will marry next summer.

I like the man she’s marrying. Her two children like him too.

So all the world is right.

This week we shopped for her wedding gown. She will make a beautiful bride - and the wedding will be designed to fit her hopes and dreams.

I married once myself - but I didn’t have the chance to design my dream wedding. It was fun anyway. But it was really my mother’s design. She didn’t have a big wedding herself since she and my father decided to marry right after he was drafted during World War II.

My daughter has been planning this wedding for more than a year now. It will be lovely. I wish I could post a photo of June trying on The Dress - but the future groom as internet access and we don’t want him glimpsing the dress before the big day.

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11. December 2011 by pat desmond.

This weekend I saw “Tower Heist” with my son.

It surprised me that Hollywood was months ahead of the Occupy Movement in calling out Wall Street.

It defined a class war worth the battle.

Hard to believe this film actually was conceived in 2005 and shot a year ago. Who knew how popular it would be to trash stockbrokers in 2005?

I enjoyed the political humor.

Loved the initiative on the part of the service workers .

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1. October 2011 by pat desmond.

It’s nearly time for Celebrate Milton!

The event began 18 years ago as a celebration of the community - its spirit - its diversity.

George Welles, former pastor of the Church of Our Saviour, and I will both receive Lifetime Achievement Awards from the organization.

It humbles me to prepare for this honor.

In 1997 I won a community builder award which proudly hangs on my office wall at the Milton Times.

The paper was young back then and I was much younger than I am today.

My daughter, June, had nominated me and I was thrilled to know she wasn’t upset about the long hours she was working to help the paper grow. 1997 was a good year for my whole family. My son graduated from Milton High. My daughter had her first child, Hayley Bradford. And I joined a small group of Milton people called community builders.

I was living on Willoughby Road that year and I spent most of my days and nights connecting with people in the community.

Building a weekly newspaper is all about helping the community find its voice.

The town of Milton has a strong and vibrant voice.

I continue to enjoy being part of the community. And I am grateful for all the community provides.

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29. July 2011 by pat desmond.

If you have the Milton Times home delivered in Milton, you already know it arrived Friday, July 29, instead of Thursday.

We began getting calls from subscribers early in the afternoon of the 28th. One after another asked whether there was a problem with his or her subscription. After a number of these calls, I phoned across the street  to the post office, asking for Amy Carter, manager of the Milton office.

Although I couldn’t reach her, I discovered that no one would get the paper that day because the entire delivery had been sent to visit Boston.

Personally I think this is part of a scheme to encourage newspapers to find alternate methods of delivery and decrease the mail volume to a greater degree.

In case you haven’t received a piece of mangled mail lately, let me tell you: It’s on the way.

The post office has spent millions (or billions) of dollars on new machines - called FSS machines - that are supposed to sort the mail.

The Milton Times has been delivered on Thursdays to mailboxes in Milton for the past 15 years. When we began 16 years ago, the newspaper was mailed with a bulk imprint.

But within a few months we began the process of qualifying for a periodical permit (it was called second class back in those days.) We kept documentation of every dollar received for a subscription and filed all the forms.

The reason we worked to meet the mailing requirements is that periodicals are supposed to be treated with priority and delivered quickly.Those were the days my friend, I hoped they would never end.Back in the early days of the Times existence, my son (who was in high school) would pick up the copies of the newspaper several hours after we went to press. Then he and I and anyone else I could rope into the work crew would label the mail copies and sort into bags by carrier route.

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9. July 2011 by pat desmond.

Nearly two years ago, the Milton Times began working to produce the first ever Milton Phone Book.Now this is not to say no one else had ever produced a Milton phone book. About 10 years ago there was a very popular book called Manning’s Little Blue Book that concentrated on Milton and was delivered townwide.But then people said smart phones and internet sites were capturing all the young people.Anyway, while you can find front page news from the Milton Times online at www.miltontimes.com, the print paper has much more information. We are in the process of developing our own APP to deliver mobile content for a small subscription price.Most print phone books disappeared, reduced their reach or just targeted upper income neighborhoods.We felt there was a need. What we didn’t realize as we embarked upon the project was the length of time it would take to produce a Milton phone book that succeeded financially. So the book we began marketing for 2010 became the 2011 book by default.Since that book was delivered to the townspeople, we have been working on the 2012 Milton Phone Book.The 2012 book goes to press this fall and we expect it will be delivered just after the beginning of the new year. We are already gathering information for the project. Anyone who wants to change the listing found in the 2011 book should email Nadine Leary, our advertising coordinator, at ads@miltontimes.com.Most of the information found in the 2011 book can be found online at www.miltonphonebook.com.That will all be replaced with the 2012 information sometime in the fall.What I like best about the 2011 book is the cover - the front cover shows Ken Lodge and the Baron Hugo Band performing at the gazebo in front of town hall. It was a photo taken at one of the last concerts Ken performed as part of the summer band concert series.Ken, who graduated from Milton High School in 1937, recently moved to Florida. It’s a loss for the town.This summer we are looking for a photo to exemplify Milton on the 2012 cover. We haven’t found the right picture yet but there is still some time.

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6. June 2011 by pat desmond.

The office did just fine without  my help last week - the paper came out on time and, for the most part, there is not much I would have changed if I’d been in Milton.

I might have given Christina Ferrera a little more credit. She was chosen to deliver an address at Fontbonne’s graduation not just for her academic achievement but for her character, spirituality and contribution to the community.

A community paper needs to explain what is right in the town and we agree with Christina who quoted Mahatma Gandhi in her address: “Be the change you want to see in this world.”

While I was in Newport, RI, with the rest of the National Newspaper Association board of directors, I learned a few good ideas.

One idea is a column written by Mary Fisher in Arkansas - a column on community history that I’m thinking about adding to our regular table of contents.

The time I spend with the NNA board helps me focus on how the newspaper industry is changing across the country.

All of the other directors are coping with the need to deliver the news their communities have come to count on while coping with budgets that reflect a troubled economy.

Because NNA markets to community newspapers, these industry leaders have solutions that work in Milton.

So I came back from Newport, having toured the grass courts of the Tennis Hall of Fame and ridden a small craft into the choppy waves of Newport Harbor and so much more so that I could take photos at the All Night Party for the MHS Class of 2011.

The All Night Party is one of my favorite photo ops of any year.

You can find the photos I captured on the Milton Times web site. There’s a link to photos. I will place the new pictures as our featured gallery as soon as I crop the pictures to eliminate stray party goers who wandered into my frames.

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