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The state Department of Transportation (MassDOT) advises residents and visitors to check its online resources, drive with caution and if possible use public transportation over the holidays.

As always, I-90 Exit 9 connecting I-84 to Connecticut and New York experiences heavy traffic on peak holiday travel days. Drivers are encouraged to consider travel during the early morning or after 8 p.m.

Traffic congestion is also typical at the I-95 and I-495 Turnpike interchanges along with I-495 and I-93 northbound leading into New Hampshire, according to the state.

The I-93 Southeast Expressway HOV lane opened to traffic early on Christmas Eve at 1 p.m. to accommodate traffic leaving Boston.

Free coffee will be served at all 18 MassDOT service plazas between 10 p.m. on Christmas night, Wednesday, Dec. 25, until 5 a.m. on Thursday, Dec. 26, and between 10 p.m. on New Years Eve, Tuesday, Dec. 31, until 5 a.m. on Wednesday, Jan. 1, 2014.

MassDOTs Traffic and Travel Resources page includes links to all MassDOT travel resources. The state says now is the time to sign up for EZPass and avoid cash tolls.

Before traveling, visit MassDOTs online traffic camera webpage to check live traffic cameras across the state. The 511 traffic alert system alerts customers to traffic conditions throughout the holiday weekend.

The state advises drivers remember winter driving skills and tips for preparation. Motorists should drive with headlights on, observe posted speed limits, never drink and drive, make sure everyone is using a seatbelt and clear snow from vehicles before driving. More information on safe winter driving is available at the MassDOT website.

The Army Corps of Engineers painting contractors will suspend work on the Sagamore Bridge during the two weeks of Christmas and New Year's. All travel lanes will be open Dec. 21, 2013, through Jan. 5, 2014. After the holidays, work will resume on the Sagamore Bridge with lane restrictions Monday through Friday, 8 a.m to 4:30 p.m.

The MBTA Christmas Day through New Years Day holiday service schedule includes a Sunday service schedule for Wednesday, Dec. 25, and Wednesday, Jan. 1, 2014. The T will provide rush hour level service from 3 p.m. through 2 a.m. on New Years Eve, Dec. 31. Check out the full T schedule at mbta.com.

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State offers tips for holiday travel

MassDOT advises residents and visitors to check our online resources, drive with caution and if possible use public transportation over the holidays. As always, I-90 Exit 9 connecting I-84 to Connecticut and New York experiences heavy traffic on peak holiday travel days.

Drivers are encouraged to consider travel during the early morning or after8 p.m. Traffic congestion is also typical at the I-95 and I-495 Turnpike interchanges along with I-495 and I-93 northbound leading into New Hampshire.

The I-93 Southeast Expressway HOV lane will open to traffic early on Christmas Eve at1p.m.to accommodate traffic leaving Boston.

Free coffee will be served at all 18 MassDOT service plazas between10 p.m.on Christmas night,Wednesday, Dec. 25, until5 a.m. on Thursday, Dece. 26, and between10 p.m.on New Years Eve,Tuesday, Dec. 31, until 5 a.m. on Wednesday, Jan. 1, 2014.

The Army Corp of Engineers painting contractors will suspend work on the Sagamore Bridge during the two weeks of Christmas and New Years. All travel lanes will be openDec. 21, 2013 through Jan. 5, 2014. After the holidays, work will resume on the Sagamore Bridge with lane restrictionsMondaythroughFriday, 8 a.m to 4:30 p.m.

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MassDOT issues travel warnings for holiday travelers

Tuesday, December 24, 8:27 AM EST

By Karen Brune Mathis, Managing Editor

A permit application has been filed for the $985,000 interior build-out of the $1.04 million shell structure recently approved by the city.

Target Contractors Inc. is the contractor for the project, a 24,000-square-foot store for the North Carolina-based organic and natural foods grocer.

Plans show Earth Fare also will offer a 41-seat caf area near the entrance. The caf is near the coffee and yogurt bar.

The store is at 11901 Atlantic Blvd. in the center anchored by Academy Sports & Outdoors and LA Fitness. Belk also plans to build a department store there.

The center, developed by Sleiman Enterprises, is at northwest Kernan and Atlantic boulevards.

Earth Fare will include 13,510 square feet of sales area and 8,676 square feet for storage and preparation, along with mechanical and other space.

Earth Fare, based in Fletcher, N.C., near Asheville, calls itself "the healthy supermarket." It began in 1975 and now operates 31 stores in nine states, including a Florida store in Tallahassee. It started in 1975.

Publix Baymeadows to renovate

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Earth Fare store is a $2M project

Everyone wants to get the most bang for the buck, and the Downers Grove Public Library is no exception.

For a taxpayer-supported, public-serving organization, its our duty. We are working with our architects, construction managers, Library Board and members of the community to make sure that we get our moneys worth as we renovate our building. This is a challenging task.

On Nov. 22, we opened formal bids from about 40 contractors. They were competing for contracts in a dozen trades (carpentry, plumbing, electrical, painting, to name a few).

To our dismay, the proposals from the lowest bidders in each trade added up to $433,000 more than our budget.

We didnt waste any time wringing our hands. Everybody got busy.

Our construction managers communicated with the lowest bidders, confirming that the bidders had correctly understood the project drawings and specifications.

Our architects examined materials and finishes and other design elements, looking for cost savings.

The staff revisited the plans for furnishings, equipment, and office arrangements.

The Library Board considered all the identified changes, making sure that we did not lose sight of the projects original goals.

We have made a great deal of progress. At the Library Board meeting on Dec. 11, our design and construction team presented preliminary savings totaling a little over $360,000.

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Ashton: Bids coming in over budget only a hiccup

Belleville #39;s Outdoor Lighting display part 2 of 7

By: Joe Flash

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Belleville's Outdoor Lighting display part 2 of 7 - Video

A day before Ambassador Meera Shankar was to return home after completing her tenure in the US in the summer of 2011, her maid, without informing anyone, left her official residence on the outskirts of the city never to return.

The highly-secretive Indian Embassy hushed up the matter from the media and is believed to have registered a formal complaint with police and the State Department, in addition to cancelling the maid's official passport.

The woman domestic worker, who served the Ambassador quite well during her tenure of more than two years in Washington, is still untraceable and believed to be living illegally in the US.

And she is not the only Indian maid -- officially called "India-Based Domestic Assistant" -- to have fled from the homes of senior Indian diplomats in the past few years.

Sources familiar with such incidents told PTI, strictly on condition of anonymity, that the number of such maids or India-Based Domestic Assistants from the Indian Embassy in Washington -- one of the largest Indian diplomatic missions -- could be at least a dozen in the past decade.

Not only maids, but security guards brought from India too are believed to have fled, mostly towards the end of their tenure.

The Indian Embassy did not respond to PTI's questions on the number of IBDAs currently with staff at its diplomatic posts in the US, including the embassy in Washington and consulates in New York, San Francisco, Houston, Atlanta and Chicago.

In 2012, the US issued a total of 54 A-3 visas, which are the ones for IBDAs or maids, to Indian diplomats. In all, as many as 1,141 A-3 visas were issued last year, while 749 applications were rejected.

A-3 visas are for the domestic help of diplomats and foreign officials who are in the US on A-1 and A-2 visas.

According to official figures made available to PTI by the State Department, the US issued A-3 visas for 32 Indian domestic workers in 2011, 50 in 2010, 60 in 2009, 38 in 2008, 35 in 2007, 40 in 2006, 60 in 2005,55 in 2004 and 47 in 2003.

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Several maids have fled homes of Indian diplomats in US

Leon Mathieus Christmas tree is usually the last thing he puts up during the holiday season.

Before that come the 11,000 lights, 22 inflatable displays and everything else that goes into making his lawn one of the brightest and most festive in Raynham each year.

When my wife and I first started it about 11 years ago, we had one blow-up and then the next year we would add another one and then we progressed that way, and then the kids came into our lives, said Mathieu, 51. Then we starting going from one per year and we started buying multiple per year.

The South Main St. lawn is chock full of characters on display from his 12-foot-tall Mickey Mouse, clad in a Santa costume, to his newest addition, a reindeer driving a steamroller that ran over grandma.

His friends say he gives Clark Griswold, from National Lampoons Christmas Vacation a run for his money.

Thats the running joke, our friends will call me Clark, Mathieu said.

Another new addition to Leons display is a purple and white cancer awareness ribbon he made out of plywood, hanging from a tree in his backyard. The ribbon is adorned with more than 250 lights.

I just made that a couple weeks ago, he said of the ribbon. That might be one that stays up year-round. I havent decided yet. I went into a store and I found some purple lights and then I bought the white twinkling lights to outline it.

Ive been a cancer patient since the early 80s, Mathieu said. Back then, I had a form of bone cancer. Three years ago I had the better part of three organs removed. I came down with the same type of cancer that Steve Jobs had. I had a neuroendocrine tumor in my pancreas, and at the end of this summer we found that it has spread to my liver.

These days it takes him a little longer to set up his display as he tires easily. He has always kept a positive attitude, however.

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Leon’s lights make Raynham glow for holidays

CHAPEL HILL LaMonte Armstrong met with Gov. Pat McCrory 11 days ago as the newly lighted Christmas tree twinkled outside on the Capitol lawn.

Carolers sang out melodies of good tidings, and Armstrong, in his ninth month of freedom after a wrongful murder conviction cost him 17 years of his life, took note.

Armstrong, who lives and works in Chapel Hill, was with his lawyers that Friday afternoon elaborating for the governor on the miscarriage of justice that caused him to miss out on many key moments of his 63 years. His daughter, not quite 7 at the time of his imprisonment, blossomed into a woman while he was behind bars. His older son, who was playing college football at the time, matured into the kind of man that Armstrong enjoys being around today.

The father and son were together on Monday morning, sharing a meal at a Bob Evans restaurant between Durham and Chapel Hill, when Armstrongs phone lit on top of the table.

Armstrong looked up from his plate of eggs, sausage and grits toward his son, who was filling up on a plate of pancakes. The number in the phone window was a Charlotte one and Armstrong almost didnt pick up. But on the fourth ring, he answered, and McCrory, the former Charlotte mayor, was on the other end with long-awaited tidings.

He asked me what I was doing and I said I was eating breakfast with my son. I said we were doing a sort of Christmas breakfast, Armstrong said. And he said, OK. What Im about to say will probably make your Christmas even more joyous. And then he said, I just finished signing a document of pardon of innocence for you. And I said to him, Fantastic, governor. Thank you so much.

With that the governors first pardon of his term Armstrong is eligible to file a claim under a North Carolina law that allows compensation of up to $750,000 to persons wrongly convicted of felonies.

Armstrong was wrongfully convicted of murdering an N.C. A&T University professor found dead in her Greensboro home in July 1988. He maintained his innocence throughout from the first time Greensboro police interviewed him to when a Guilford County jury returned a guilty verdict to his arduous appeals of his life sentence.

Duke Universitys Wrongful Convictions Clinic took up Armstrongs case more than seven years ago and helped spur his release in June 2012 with a vacated conviction.

But it was not until March 18 that Armstrong learned the murder case against him had been dismissed. He no longer faced the possibility of another trial or another wrongful conviction. He finally was free of accusations that he had a hand in the fatal stabbing and strangling of Ernestine Compton, a beloved college professor at N.C. A&T.

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McCrory pardons Chapel Hill man wrongly convicted of murder

THREE LIVES HAVE BEEN TOUCHED FOR THE BETTER THIS HOLIDAY SEASON. THE MAGICAL INGREDIENT, SHOES. IT'S A POSITIVELY JAX STORY ABOUT A MAN YOU MAY HAVE SEEN ON THE WESTSIDE ON I-295 AND NORMANDY BOULEVARD. JOHNNY ADDISON MOWS LAWNS FOR A LIVING AND ADVERTISES HIS SERVICES BY STANDING ON A STREET CORNER WITH HIS LAWN MOWER AND A SIGN THAT SAYS "WILL WORK FOR FOOD." HE DESPERATELY NEEDED WARMER SHOES NOT LONG AGO AND ONE SUNDAY, HIS PRAYER WAS ANSWERED. WHEN HE'S NOT MOWING THE LAWN, YOU'LL FIND 42-YEAR-OLD JOHNNY ADDISON ROAMING THE WESTSIDE, PUSHING HIS MOWER, HOPING SOMEONE WILL GIVE HIM WORK. I'M VERY CONTENT. I'M BLESSED. I CAN'T COMPLAIN. WE CAUGHT UP WITH JOHNNY AT THE PLACE HE CALLS HOME, BEHIND THIS DILAPIDATED HOUSE ON A SLAB OF CONCRETE. YOU SEEM HAPPY. I'M VERY HAPPY WITH IT. JUST COMING HOME EVERY NIGHT TO MY TRANSITER RADIO AND MY CATS, HAVING THEIR ATTENTION, MY BED, I LOVE IT. I MEAN, I MAKE THE BEST OF A NEGATIVE SITUATION. THIS IS, WELL, HOME. ONE OF HIS MOST PRIZED POSSESSIONS, THE SHOES ON HIS FEET, GIVEN TO HIM BY A GOOD SAMARITAN WHO READ HIS HAND MADE SIGN HE WAS HOLDING ON AN INTERSTATE OFF RAMP ONE COLD SUNDAY MORNING. IT WAS REALLY COLD, WINDY. I THINK IT WAS HITTING AROUND THE 40'S THAT DAY. AND I HAD SANDALS ON, NO SHOES ON WHATSOEVER. HE WAS LIKE, SIR, DO YOU REALLY NEED SHOES? I SAID YES, SIR, AND I'M WILLING TO WORK FOR THEM RIGHT NOW. I SAW HIM TAKING THEM OFF AT THE WHEEL AND HANDED THEM TO ME. I THOUGHT YOU'VE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME. IT HAPPENED SO QUICKLY AT THE INTERSECTION. JOHNNY NEVER GOT A GOOD CHANCE TO REALLY THANK THAT GOOD SAMARITAN AND THAT GOOD SAMARITAN HAD NO IDEA HE WAS BEING WATCHED BY SOMEONE ELSE. IT TOOK A FEW DAYS, BUT WE FINALLY TRACKED DOWN THAT GOOD SAMARITAN. I WAS ACTUALLY LOOKING FOR NATE WES COT. IS THAT YOU? ANOTHER DRIVER CONTACTED ME ON FACEBOOK, ASKING ME TO PASS ALONG A GIFT TO NATE, LETTING HIM KNOW SOMEONE ELSE ALSO APPRECIATED HIS ACT OF KINDNESS. THIS PERSON WANTS TO ANONYMOUSLY REWARD YOU AND SAY THANK YOU FOR DOING JUST A GREAT THING. THIS IS FROM THEM. I APPRECIATE THAT. WOW, ALL RIGHT. I DIDN'T WANT ANYTHING FROM THAT. I JUST WANTED TO GIVE HIM SOME SHOES. NATE'S GIFT WAS A SURPRISE, JUST LIKE THE SURPRISE GIFT HE GAVE JOHNNY. AND AGAIN, I'M WEARING THEM. VERY COMFORTABLE, TOO. PAYING IT FORWARD, ONE STEP AT A TIME. YOU DO SOMETHING GOOD, SOMETHING GOOD WILL FIND YOU, EVERY TIME. NEVER FAILS. I PROMISE YOU. NATE, THE GOOD SAMARITAN, WAS GIVEN A RESTAURANT GIFT CARD BY THAT ANONYMOUS GIFTER. NATE WAS ALSO GIVEN A SPORTS AUTHORITY GIFT CARD WHICH HE SAYS HE'S GOING TO USE TO BUY EVEN MORE SHOES AND GIVE THEM TO OTHER PEOPLE IN NEED. AMAZING JOY. WHAT AN IMPRESSIVE SURPRISE FOR NATE, OF COURSE. JOHNNY GOT HIS PAIR OF SHOES, BUT HE SAYS IT GETS TOUGH FOR HIM ON THE STREETS, ESPECIALLY DURING WINTER. WHAT WILL HE DO? JOHNNY IS HOPING ALL THIS GOOD KARMA WILL SEND HIM WINTERTIME WORK, HELPING SOMEONE MOVE, PAINT A HOUSE, WASH A CAR. IF YOU'VE GOT WORK FOR JOHNNY, WE POSTED HIS CONTACT INFORMATION ONLINE.

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The circle is large for a parlor room chat 50 people.

They are seated in folding chairs in a room with a Jesus portrait on one wall and a woven picture of the Last Supper on another. One person speaks and then theres 15 to 20 seconds of silence, as if everyone is savoring the words just spoken. The silence is broken by another voice, then the silence falls again, and the cycle repeats. The group is discussing something fairly radical what their churchs Sunday morning services should look like and even whether to have one at all. Yet, theres no rancor here. Just an exchange.

Members of Englewood Christian Church have been gathering for these Sunday night conversations for 17 years, but theyve been holding regular Sunday morning services for more than a century. In the 1970s, the church bused in folks from all over town for the Sunday morning service that would attract 1,100 people. Today, 200 may come on a really good Sunday, and in this circle of friends, that doesnt bother anyone in the least.

More interesting to just about anyone you speak with at Englewood is what goes on around the church for the 166 hours a week other than Sunday mornings. And thats quite a lot. So much, in fact, that the Sunday morning ritual that is the staple of American Christianity is now almost an afterthought.

Sunday service is still held, said lifelong Englewood member Jim Aldrich, 62. But it may be the event that is most not a part of what Englewood is now.

Still, the event, as Aldrich calls it, is the one constant that has remained at Englewood through the 118-year lifespan of the church. It was there when the church was born in the late 1900s in the middle of the citys newest streetcar suburb. It was there in the early 20th century, when a pastor was fired for not allowing the Ku Klux Klan to meet in the building. It was there during the booming mega-church years of late 1960s and early 1970s. It was there during the long, slow decline of both the church and the Near Eastside neighborhood that surrounds it.

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But today, Englewood looks at its mission as one of almost communal living with its surroundings. The churchs focus has morphed into improving neighborhood quality of life providing housing, offering quality child care, creating jobs. What happens for two hours a week on Sunday morning seems almost inconsequential.

Some people think if you dont have Sunday morning, if you dont have a worship service, you dont have a church. I think we are beyond that now, Aldrich said. If we didnt have Sunday morning we would still exist as a church. And thats the best thing you can say about where were at right now.

Where Englewood is right now is more firmly tied than ever before to the Near Eastside, an area that has been decimated by factory closings in the past 40 years and the abandoned houses that followed, a place where many residents still struggle to get by in an area where crime is always a looming concern.

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Englewood Community Church, by being a good neighbor first, tries to live its faith