Bob Waite

1 week ago | thelocalnews.news | Bob Waite

- Advertisement -Please Support Local Advertisers by Bob WaiteI’m no economist. I only took three economics courses while at university: macro, micro, and economic history. So I don’t pretend to be an expert on things such as tariffs and trade. But I do know something about good jobs and ones that are so tedious that parents want to transition their kids out of them if at all possible. Jobs in the textile industry fall into that category. Ipswich once had a lot of those jobs.

1 week ago | thelocalnews.news | Bob Waite

- Advertisement -Please Support Local Advertisers by Bob WaiteI’m no economist. I only took three economics courses while at university: macro, micro, and economic history. So I don’t pretend to be an expert on things such as tariffs and trade. But I do know something about good jobs and ones that are so tedious that parents want to transition their kids out of them if at all possible. Jobs in the textile industry fall into that category. Ipswich once had a lot of those jobs.

1 week ago | thelocalnews.news | Bob Waite

- Advertisement -Please Support Local Advertisers by Bob WaiteI am writing this from Kerala, India, surrounded by thousands of acres of tea plants. But I am thinking about the Crane family, who did so much for Ipswich. When a group of schoolgirls had a dream of building a local hospital, the Crane family stepped in to provide the dollars to push their effort across the finish line.

2 weeks ago | thelocalnews.news | Bob Waite

- Advertisement -Please Support Local Advertisers by Bob WaiteSocks drive me nutsy-cuckoo. Historians say the first pair of socks were found on a mummy in an Egyptian tombdating to the third century A.D.I’m pretty sure they were mismatched. I have a bedroom chair piled high with socks without partners — a kind of singles’ club. Asad, Tinder-less singles’ club with no prospect of finding a match. In addition to losing socks, I wear them out too quickly.

1 month ago | thelocalnews.news | Bob Waite

- Advertisement -Please Support Local Advertisers by Bob WaiteI never listened to Radio Free Europe — their broadcasts were in languages I didn’t understand — but I did visit their headquarters in Munich, Germany. It was March Break 1971. I was driving from my U.K. university to Moscow and back in my Triumph Spitfire. I somehow convinced my then-girlfriend, a member of Ipswich’s Polish Woleyko clan, to accompany me on this improbable journey in one of the world’s most unreliable cars.