In the News

The phrase “freedom is not free” reverberated several times at Amesbury Middle School as more than 100 people gathered outside the Main Street school Monday morning for the city’s annual Veterans Day ceremony.

A federal project to dredge Gloucester’s Annisquam River will be able to move forward after the state recently awarded a $2.4 million grant to support the work.

Rep. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.), a four-tour veteran of the Iraq War, has dropped out of the presidential race. But, while campaigning, he pledged to expunge the records of men and women dishonorably discharged for serving in the military as homosexuals.

PEABODY — U.S. Rep. Seth Moulton, who served four tours in the Iraq War as an Marine Corps infantry officer, led off his fifth annual Veterans Town Hall in an attempt to bridge the gap between those who served and those who did not.

Moulton, who lives in Salem, said people come up to him every day asking him to do more for veterans.

DANVERS — On Monday morning, Robert H. Roy, a disabled Vietnam combat veteran, told the large crowd gathered inside Thorpe Elementary School how this year marks the 100th anniversary of Veterans Day.

The giant dredge that will return the Annisquam River to safe navigability is expected to arrive in Gloucester next week, and the project, which has had more twists and turns than the ancient river itself, physically will begin in earnest.

For nearly a decade, Iraqi citizens worked side by side with US military forces, diplomats, contractors. They were the translators, the cooks and drivers, the aides who helped guide and explain their culture. They were a critical part of the US effort — and now they have been virtually abandoned.

IPSWICH — Congressman Seth Moulton remembers not knowing anything about composting, going to school one day in Marblehead, where he grew up, learning about composting and coming home and telling his parents, “We’re going to compost.”

And they did.