The Boston Globe from Boston, Massachusetts • 15

Opinion 2 Political Notebook 3 Around the Towns 6 People Places 14 Sports 17 The Boston Sunday Globe November 12, 2000 'If you sit in a classroom and listen to college freshmen for a few sessions, you may reach the same conclusion I have as a teacher: too many are simply not ready for writes Rea Killeen. Page 2 Mansfield artist Candace Walters won an Artists Grant from the Massachusetts Cultural Council for her works on paper, including (detail) 'Memory of Home from an Page 14 Karen Boen, coach of the women's cross-country team at Stonehill College, has turned the program around in her three years at the helm. Page 17 All lam in mmm if 5 i 1 i 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 4 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 Parking grind Reading groups a popular diversion at rail stations Shortage of spaces, slow state response frustrate commuters Abington wary of housing proposals Developers plan affordable units to avoid sewer limit By Alexander Reid GLOBE STAFF ABINGTON Many towns might rejoice if developers offered to build subsidized housing in today's expensive real estate market Not so in Abington. In the early 1990s, the town's sewer problems prevented much development and growth. Only when Brockton agreed to double the amount of sewage it handles from 500,000 gallons a day to one million gallons in 1998 did the problems disappear.

The town then enacted a sewer policy, giving priority to existing homes and several subdivisions approved between 1998 and February 2000. Now come two development proposals that could doom the policy. The largest is a 320-unit condominium project on North Quincy Street near Abington's border with Brockton. The second is a 192-apartment complex called Abington Commons at i I. iin ii.

By Paul E. Kandarian GLOBE CORRESPONDENT MANSFIELD Susan McCann of Norton knows the unwritten rule of commuter rail: If you dont get to the train station by 7 a.m, forget getting a parking space. There are only 775 of them in the lot with 300 reserved for Mansfield residents and an average 1,700 riders a day taking the from Mansfield to Boston. So, even though McCann doesn't have to be at work in Boston until 10 a.m., she gets to the Mansfield station at 6:30 a.m. At the office by 7:30, she just reads or listens to the radio until Developers for both projects are seeking comprehensive permits from the state by promising to set aside 25 percent of the new units as subsidized housing.

With such a permit, the projects can receive exemption from zoning controls, density requirements, and other municipal concerns, including the sewer policy. .4 Ik GLOBC PMOTOSSEAN DOOGHtRTY The law, more commonly known as the "antisnob-zoning" law, was written cnris wormier uayes to camera; leaas a reaaing group at book tnas in iviansneia. participant ta warscn of Mansfield (top) reads Sinclair Lewis's "Elmer Gantry," last month's selection. Book clubs grow as members embrace learning, friendship in 1969. Over the years, critics have said that some developers have used the threat of building affordable housing with a comprehensive permit as a way to win concessions from local zon ing officials.

Once concessions are granted, the plans to build subsidized housing are dropped. Jon Witten, a planning consultant hired by Abington and lawyer specializing on housing issues, says this is one of the many ways the law is misused. "It was a laudable statute in 1969 to By Leslie Anderson GLOBE CORRESPONDENT MANSFIELD If if Tuesday, it must be "Elmer Cormier Hayes, reading group leader, pulled up in her minivan to a brightly lit book- store on North Main Street for her sixth book club in the month. Inside, six women and one man were sitting in folding chairs, each with a copy of Sinclair Lewis's classic 1927 novel about a hypocritical Southern preacher. "Had you read it before?" Cormier Hayes asked, gazing into their eyes.

"Did it hold up?" "If so contemporary," replied Ed Harsch, who attended the drop-in reading group at Book Ends last month. "It could have been Clinton." Ah, sparkling discourse in a civilized setting. If what we all imagine when we join a book club. And more readers predominantly female appear to be joining every year. Local independent bookstore owners report a steady increase in the number of customers who are buying copies of The Red Tenf or The House of Sand and Fog" to debate in their living rooms over a plate of hors d'oeuvres.

Even a book club with the best intentions, however, can sometimes slide into a monthly rut of abuse-filled tomes, wandering conversations, and testy sniping not to mention feverish housecleaning by the hostess. For these readers, a few lessons can be learned from the book-club veterans who haunt the region's bookstores and libraries. "If there are people who are taking over digressing all the time, talking about their personal life people will just leave the group," said Cormier Hayes, who leads book groups in Mansfield, Foxborough, and Seekonk. "You have to really learn BOOK CLUBS, Pag 4 she starts work. Help is on the way, but it may be a long time coming: A $15 million proj-; ect wiD go out to bid next spring to build a new station and more than; double parking in Mansfield.

But it will take two to three years to complete, and while most commuters in Mansfield know of the plan, they aren't holding their breath. Such talk has been around for years, they say. i "If nonsense, if just insane," said Marie McPherson, an insurance company employee in Boston who has been taking the to work for the last year-and-a-half and has gotten four tickets from not getting to the station early enough and having to park on side streets. "If purely left to chance parking on the street and not getting a ticket" Expanded parking would be nice, she said, but added with a resigned shrug, "In the meantime, what are we PARKING, Pag 7 GOP loses tenuous foothold in region By Robert Preer GLOBE CORRESPONDENT The Republican Party's fragile political base in the suburbs south of Boston continued to erode in last week's election. The open state representative seat that Republican Mary Jeanette Murray of Cohasset held for the past 24 years fell to the Democrats, as Garrett J.

Bradley, a lawyer and member of the Hingham Democratic Town Committee, easily defeated GOP candidate Mary Anne McKenna of Hingham and independent Walter S. Murray of Hull Democrats also won two Plymouth County offices sheriff and register of probate which had been held by Republicans. Joseph F. McDonough of Scituate, chairman of the Plymouth County Commissioners, ousted Republican Sheriff Charles N. Decas of Wareham.

Sheriff is a prized office, controlling hundreds of patronage jobs at the ELECTION, Pag enforce diversification of housing. But it can be used to put communities at a severe disadvantage," said Witten, whose office is in Sandwich. The spectre of 512 new housing units poses a problem for Abington because more than 700 existing homes, and an additional 245 dwellings that are not yet built, are to be connected to ABINGTON, Pag 10 1 Plymouth parade takes steps toward healing SU By Helen Graves GLOBE CORRESPONDENT PLYMOUTH The annual Thanksgiving parade Saturday in Plymouth goes international this year, with 27 countries represented, and Native Americans participating to a greater extent than ever. Parade organizers have capitalized on this year's United Nation's proclamation of 2000 as The International Year of Thanksgiving" by inviting local representatives of UN member countries to participate, from Austria and Brazil to Nepal and Turkey. The quest for international harmony has extended to the Native American community as well, in an effort to diffuse the tensions that erupted in nationally broadcast arrests of Native American protesters during their annual National Day of Mourning on Thanksgiving Day 1997.

For the first time this year, Native American dignitaries will walk in the parade. They will then, as last year, join local officials on the reviewing stand. The Federation of Old Plimoth Indian Tribes also will sponsor a weeklong "First People Pavilion" leading up to Thanksgiving, at the foot of Cole's HiQ, showcasing PLYMOUTH, Pag 10 LOK iTVf PHOTWIOHN KM) Members of Collage International Dance Ensemble, representing Turkey, practicing for Plymouth's Thanksgiving festivities. Reporting on: Abington Avon Braintree Bridgewater Brockton Canton Carver Cohasset Dedham Duxbury East Bridgewater Easton Foxborough Halifax Hanover Hanson Hingham Holbrook Hull Kingston LakeviHe Mansfield Marshfield Middleborough Milton Norton NorweO Norwood Pembroke Plymouth Plympton Quincy Randolph Raynhazn Rockland Scituate Sharon Stoughton Walpola West Bridgewater Westwood Weymouth Whitman.