Moving On and Counting Down: #9

TOP TEN POSTS ABOUT LITTLETON, MASSACHUSETTS * * * NUMBER NINE: Click to read: Is this Weird, Littleton? * * * Of all the people I spent time with in town, Jim Karr was by far my least favorite to be around. From the start, Karr and others made it clear that I was not […]

Moving On and Counting Down: #10

A month from now, I will no longer call myself a resident of my hometown of Littleton, Massachusetts, where I’ve lived practically my entire life in the house my parents built with their own hands. There are many factors contributing to this late midlife uprooting, though the primary one is lack of community, and it […]

Now in the Permanent Public Record

After gathering sixty-two signatures, ensuring my name would be on the ballot, I knew I’d be invited to Candidates’ Night. I also knew the event would be recorded by LCVT, making it part of the permanent public record of the Town of Littleton. My blog and my Substack are not part of the public record, […]

It’s Time to Call in the Feds, Littleton

A few years back, the Boxborough Select Board asked the FBI to conduct an investigation into allegations of police corruption in town. At the time of the 2021 federal criminal probe, Littleton’s Assistant Town Administrator Ryan Ferrara had been serving as Boxborough’s Town Administrator—a small-world fact I thought worth pointing out. In Massachusetts, the FBI […]

The Problem that Won’t Go Away*

A year ago, I ran for a seat on the Select Board on a single issue. I focused my entire campaign around bringing attention to the 220 households in Littleton that fall under the poverty line and what the Select Board could do, as the town’s policy-maker, to end poverty in town. I didn’t expect […]

Littleton’s Corporate Freeloaders

In January 2021, the Littleton Select Board entered into a Host Community Agreement with a Delaware LLC that allowed for the construction of a 143,640-square-foot Amazon Distribution Center at 151-153 Taylor Street. In the last couple of years, a constant stream of Amazon-branded delivery vans either painted dark blue with pithy ad lines like “Warning: […]

The “Nothing to See for Now” LCC

On March 13, 2023, the Littleton Select Board’s agenda included “Cannabis Host Community Agreements.” When the agenda item came up at the Select Board meeting, the matter was postponed. To operate a cannabis business in Massachusetts, the cannabis business must hold a Host Community Agreement with the municipality where the business is conducted. In Littleton, […]

The Memorializing of a Rapist

In 1997, a woman filed a police report with Ayer Police Department. In it, she alleged that Matt King had raped her. At the time, King was a sergeant with the Littleton Police Department, and Tom O’Dea was Littleton’s chief of police. After placing King on paid administrative leave “for reasons of my own as […]

Open Letter to the Administrators of Facebook’s Constructive Conversations for Littleton

Dear Jan Huber OCallaghan, Erica Podgorni, Elieen Wedegartner, and Katie Carruth. Soon after I pulled nomination papers to run for a seat on our town’s Select Board, I reached out to one of the members of your Facebook group—Constructive Conversations for Littleton Women (CCLW)—and asked her to keep an eye out for anything that might […]

Why Reward Bad Behavior, Littleton?

If you plan to go to Special Town Meeting on Tuesday night, you’re going to hear from the Planning Board on Article Five, which, I predict, will be pitched as an administrative update to the current bylaw—a no-big-deal change. This is not true. If Littleton town meeting voters approve Article Five, Sanctuary Medicinals will be […]

Jenna Brownson

upmarket novelist obsessed with loyalty and its inevitable betrayal