What a Waste! She’s Speechless

--Boston School Committee member Rita Walsh-Tomasini got a standing ovation from graduates at South Boston High School for not delaying commencement ceremonies with a long speech. But there was a reason for her silence. Walsh-Tomasini was sitting on stage reviewing a copy of her speech when she heard colleague Joe Casper giving the same graduation address. “I have a speech that I am going to give to you that I consider to be quite inspirational,” Casper began, reading the two-page address he had found in a wastebasket in School Committee offices. “He’s reading my speech! He’s reading my speech!” Walsh-Tomasini exclaimed to Mayor Ray Flynn, seated next to her. “I never said it was my speech,” Casper said afterward of his practical joke. But Walsh-Tomasini was not amused, according to aide Jim Pardy. “Everyone is upset,” he said. “They’re worried about leaving anything confidential in there.” Casper said: “God meant me to do that, otherwise I would have written my own speech.” School Committee President John Nucci said Walsh-Tomasini called him the next morning. “She was talking about requesting a paper shredder,” he said. Casper said he has not heard from his colleague, but he sent her flowers with a note complimenting her on her speech.

--The Rev. John Freeman not only jogged 70 miles on his 70th birthday, he finished the run an hour faster than his 69-mile run of a year ago. Freeman, who ran on the high school track in Aloha, Ore., took 26 hours and 25 minutes, including rest breaks. “I was in much better shape for this run than I was for the 69er,” Freeman said, but he indicated that at his wife’s request he will not go 71 miles next birthday.

--Career-oriented women are likely to be less interested in sex than those who are unemployed or in boring jobs, a Masters & Johnson study shows. A study of 218 married couples indicated that inhibited sexual desire was twice as common in career women than in women with dull jobs or those who have never worked outside the home, Constance Avery-Clark, a research associate at the Masters & Johnson Institute in St. Louis, said. Limited time for intimacy appears to be an overriding factor in the lives of dual-career couples, she said. “These couples are often unable to spend much time together because of their demanding schedules, and the career wives frequently report difficulty making an effective mental transition from their professional lives to personal time with their respective husbands.” The study was drawn from couples undergoing marital and sex therapy at the institute between 1979 and 1984.