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A house on Great Road in Stow was engulfed in flames tonight, setting off a three-alarm fire. Unfortunately, I was about an hour late to it, so I wasn't able to get a good image of the whole house ablaze. In this situation, I decided to focus on small scenes where the action would fill the frame, and this one appealed to me the most. To get to it, I had to trek through the woods knee deep in snow, then climb up upon an old truck to get a better angle. And because I forgot my gloves (and snow boots), I did not stay all that long.

External link: Fire Destroys Great Road Property (January 26, 2011 article and photos by Nancy Arsenault of The Stow Independent newspaper)

The Stow Center School project is well underway. Its current phase is pouring and finishing all the concrete foundations. According to clerk of the works Glen Davis, the steel beams will be delivered and erected in early January. Although, that piece of information was told to me before the current blizzard. Please feel free to visit here for regular updates of the project.

Related post: Stow Elementary School Groundbreaking (June 20, 2010)

Does anyone remember September 11th? When foreign nationals came to the US to train as pilots and then hijacked jets and flew them into buildings. As a result of that tragedy, our country, and countries around the world, dramatically changed its aviation security regulations. In the US, the Transportation Security Administration was formed. Most people know of the TSA because when boarding commercial flights, passengers now must be subject to strict security. Part of that security is ensuring that all foreign flight students be checked against terrorism, criminal and immigration databases.

The Boston Globe reported today, that the owner of the TJ Aviation Flight Academy at Minute Man Air Field in Stow, MA, Thiago DeJesus, is a Brazilian immigrant who was charged in July with being in the United States illegally. Yet, he was still giving flying lessons to, you guessed it, illegal immigrants. In total, there have been 34 arrests made beginning in July and ending last week. What happened to those TSA databases?

While there has been no connection made to possible terrorist activities, it still seems ludicrous that all the arrested immigrants are free pending deportation hearing in federal immigration court. Did anyone think it may be possible they will perhaps skip their deportation hearings? Not likely, you say? The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency has estimated that about 30 percent of illegal aliens who are ordered to appear for immigration proceedings fail to show up. Of those who do appear, about 85 percent become fugitives if a judge orders them to be deported.

Image: Flight approach to Minute Man Airfield in Stow, MA from July 2007.