Inaugural 'SwampyCon' unifies fandoms at Swampscott Public Library wickedlocal.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from wickedlocal.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
North Shore Medical Center to dislay
Linda Werbner
Sign up for the Swampscott Reporter’s newsletter.
“Ginormous” is the word cardiologist Dr. Lawrence Block used to describe the bulky, near-hockey puck sized pacemakers of the early 1960s that came with batteries. Compared to today’s tiny pill-size devices, his description says a lot about the speed of technology.
“Over the last three decades there have been tremendous improvements,” said Block. “They’ve gotten smaller and smaller and smarter and smarter.”
These life-saving devices stabilize heart rhythms by applying electrical impulses to the heart. Initially, the pacemaker had a single wire which went through a vein into the right ventricle,” he said. “By 1990, two-wire systems were developed enabling coordination of the upper and lower chambers and improving the heart’s pumping function. And today the batteries last up to 10 years or more.”
Swampscott businesses trying to survive COVID era
Linda Werbner
Sign up for the Swampscott Reporter’s newsletter.
“I’m hanging on by a shoestring,” said Lisa Boemer, owner of The Hiccup, Inc., a quirky Swampscott gift shop when asked how her fledgling business is faring nearly a year into the pandemic. “It’s day by day.”
To add to her worries, Boemer recently learned that she does not qualify either for the small business loans or small business grants being administered through the Swampscott Community and Economic Development Department because she opened her shop on Feb. 29, two weeks after the Feb. 15 cut-off date.
The Swampscott Reporter s top 10 stories of 2020
Most read articles are an eclectic mix in a year like no other
Sign up for the Swampscott Reporter’s newsletter.
From ‘Vinnie the turkey grinding traffic to a halt in Vinnin Square to the town’s initial Black Lives Matter protest, the Swampscott Reporter’s most-read stories are a wide-ranging bunch.
They were written in a year like no other, so without further adieu, find the newspaper’s most-read stories in 2020 in a countdown from 10 to one below.
The children combated isolation and social-distancing drawing pictures with chalk on the Orchard Circle sidewalks and asphalt.