Spunky and ambitious: that’s the North Quabbin Community Co-op, which last summer got $23,500 from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and Holyoke-based Common Capital to do a feasibility study on moving to a more visible location in downtown Orange. Now the Coop has gone on Kickstarter to raise $7,500 to move the store to a site it’s selected in Orange, and hire a full-time manager. The deadline for raising the money is February 13; at press time the campaign had raised $4,851.
The coop sells local produce and other products from more than two dozen farms and vendors in Franklin County and the North Quabbin region. In operation for four years, it has moved $100,000 worth of fruit, vegetables, soap, cheese and other products from suppliers to customers. Minimum donation is only $1; the coop will lose all it’s raised so far if the rest of the $7,500 doesn’t come in by the deadline. For more information and to donate, visit http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1807827556/grow-the-north-quabbin-community-co-op.
Worth Quoting:
“Should I have gotten the mammogram that started all this handwringing? Medical researchers are still trying to answer that question. A study in the December 2013 issue of JAMA Internal Medicine found that a woman in her 40s, after a decade of annual mammograms, is between 7 and 100 times more likely to be needlessly treated than to be spared a breast cancer death. But that’s a big range.
“I’ve met women with my diagnosis who chose more extensive treatment than I did, and some who chose less. We are all pulling from the same data, and presumably we want the same outcome—a long and comfortable life, with little regret. But we vary greatly in our tolerance for risk-taking, our trust of technology, our appetite for medical intervention.”
WFCR reporter Karen Brown, writing about her breast cancer diagnosis and the controversy over the age at which women should get mammograms, in the Jan. 20 Boston Globe
“Too many of my colleagues in D.C. are more interested in defending Duck Dynasty than the Voting Rights Act.”
U.S. Rep. Jim McGovern, via Twitter, on MLK Day
By the Numbers
$1.1 billion: That’s what Gov. Patrick proposes for higher education funding—a $68 million increase.
$25: That’s the minimum per-student increase every school district will receive under Patrick’s spending plan. Poorer districts will get an even higher bump per student.
$204 million: That’s the proposed increase in Gov. Deval Patrick’s fiscal 2015 budget—the last he’ll submit as governor. The figure includes a $100 million increase in local education aid, bringing “Chapter 70” spending to more than $4 billion, the highest level in state history.
