News
by Tom Vannah | Nov 20, 2008 | News
A few weeks ago, I spent a half hour with my daughter's second-grade teacher, going over my daughter's progress in reading, writing and arithmetic. I had scheduled the meeting with my wife during an open house held for parents after work hours several weeks...
by James Heflin | Nov 20, 2008 | News
John McCain played with fire. Sarah Palin stoked the flames of the far right with abandon. We even saw McCain, with tight-lipped resignation, forced to tell a wild-haired supporter Obama was not a Muslim. The Republican duo tapped into the ugliest part of the...
by From Our Readers | Nov 20, 2008 | News
Only One RaceOne day when I was six years old, being raised in Northeast Washington, D.C., I asked my mother if I could go to the White House for lunch and play with Caroline Kennedy. Because I am African-American, the story was told and retold by my mother with a...
by Alan Bisbort | Nov 20, 2008 | News
Bill McKibben may turn out to be the George Orwell of this age. Like Orwell, he writes in crystal-clear prose about the most important issues of our time—climate change, overpopulation, globalization—and much of what he has forecast since his book The End...
by From Our Readers | Nov 27, 2008 | News
The War on Drugs: Unintended ConsequencesTom Vannah wrote an excellent analysis regarding the Bay State's new law reducing the penalties for simple possession of marijuana ["The Pot Test," Nov. 13, 2008]. He wondered about why law enforcement and others...
by Stephanie Kraft | Nov 27, 2008 | News
As the U.S. faces the dirty job of reforming the financial industry, the hot-button question is this: do we want public policy to favor the garnering of huge capital by a few people and institutions, or to favor financial security for as many people as possible,...
by Mark Roessler | Nov 27, 2008 | News
On Monday, Nov. 17, for the second time in its 14-year history, the Northampton Citizens Advisory Committee invited the public to participate in one of its meetings. More accurately, the CAC's chair, Mayor Mary Clare Higgins, let the public speak.In the past, the...
by Tom Vannah | Nov 27, 2008 | News
The numbers aren't very good for Deval Patrick, but that's no surprise. The governor's casino plan went down in ashes earlier this year just as the economy began to tank. Since then, any radiance Patrick still had was largely eclipsed by Barack Obama and...
by Stephanie Kraft | Nov 27, 2008 | News
Every day a family in Springfield loses its home—some days, more than one family (235 over the 180 days prior to press time). Holyoke, with 19 foreclosures in the last six months—11 of them within the last 60 days—by now has a higher foreclosure rate...
by Mary Serreze | Nov 27, 2008 | News
Who'd have thought that one of the hot-button issues facing Northampton these days would be—garbage, the stuff we think disappears after we throw it away? But the question of whether the city's landfill should be expanded in such a way that a part of it...
by Tom Sturm | Dec 4, 2008 | News
It seems that U.S. industry is on the brink of a possible divorce between the oil companies and the automobile manufacturers. Perhaps it is the sense of opportunity this situation presents that has rallied the Democrats to lobby for a bailout for Detroit (or perhaps...
by Maureen Turner | Dec 4, 2008 | News
Bill Dusty had hit a wall.For months, Dusty had been pouring his time and energy into his blog, The Springfield Intruder, which focuses on local news and politics. But after building a core audience, Dusty was having trouble expanding his readership. "I was...
by Alan Bisbort | Dec 4, 2008 | News
I have a friend who is currently trapped inside Thailand. He accompanied his sister, who's there on a government mission. Just prior to the headline-grabbing events in India, Thailand was racked by similar explosions. Protesters shut down the Bangkok Airport and...
by Mary Serreze | Dec 4, 2008 | News
While progressive cities all over the country have been developing "Zero Waste" plans, Northampton has, within the past 10 years, engaged in no real solid waste planning at all. After a committee convened by former mayor Mary Ford issued its final report in...
by Robert Freedman | Dec 4, 2008 | News
"AMMO" in large green letters was emblazoned on the license plate. Nothing else held my attention as I pulled into a driveway deep in the New Hampshire woods. "Live Free or Die," I thought. The front door opened. "Hi. I'm from the Obama...
by Tom Vannah | Dec 4, 2008 | News
The ostensible objectives of deregulation and other so-called pro-business policies articulated by free market-loving politicians are ones most of us can get behind. What consumer, after all, doesn't want a vibrantly competitive marketplace loaded with diverse...
by Maureen Turner | Dec 4, 2008 | News
In Hampden County, a regrettable record was set during fiscal year 2007-2008: 1,027 properties were foreclosed on during the 12-month period, almost double the number from the previous year, according to a report released by Registrar of Deeds Donald Ashe in...
by our readers | Dec 10, 2008 | News
Friedman "Compelling"I am usually a fan of or at least sympathetic to Alan Bisbort's Advocate columns, but his recent critique of Thomas Friedmans Hot, Flat and Crowded ["Friedman Unit," Nov. 20, 2008] was absolutely baffling. Given the tone...
by Alan Bisbort | Dec 11, 2008 | News
To give is to receive, they say, and I don't doubt it. For example, every time I give money to an organization, I receive a note thanking me for my donation and asking me to give more money, in the convenient pre-stamped envelope. Is there an echo in here? Or is...
by Tom Vannah | Dec 11, 2008 | News
In the epic primary battle between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, I chose Obama.It is true that I found Clinton's stump style very annoying, that Obama was honey to her vinegar, that she never seemed able to disagree without being disagreeable. Still, it...
by Stephanie Kraft | Dec 11, 2008 | News
The Jurassic Park that is the Detroit auto industry as we've known it—the gas-guzzler-building oligarchy that thinks what's good for it is good for everybody—is doomed, bailout or no bailout. It's doomed because too many people have caught on...
by Mark Roessler | Dec 11, 2008 | News
The former Strathmore Mill in Turners Falls, Massachusetts is currently under development by the Swift River Group to become a digital media production studio and institute. Below are links to a 17-panorama tour of the former paper mill. Each panorama permits visitors...
by Mark Roessler | Dec 11, 2008 | News
As hard times sweep across America like an early frost, much of New England still works and dwells in the remnants of what life was like before the last major economic ice age. The post-war good times that the nation enjoyed after the Great Depression eventually left...
by From Our Readers | Dec 11, 2008 | News
Bells Tolling, Not JinglingIt's almost Christmas and many of us only feel sad. Not much money to buy presents, and a government (though now it seems to be in more capable hands) that seems to be deliberately enlarging the ever-present, ominous disconnect between...
by Mark Roessler | Dec 18, 2008 | News
Several years ago, the front of the Amherst Historical Museum was painted, but the other three sides of the building were left undone.To keep up appearances for foot traffic, the facade was coated in a bold mustard orange with royal red trim, but the sides and back...
by Natalia Munoz | Dec 18, 2008 | News
Not long ago, two Puerto Rican friends and I met in front of Easthampton City Hall and unexpectedly ran into a piece of our history.Bolted onto the outside wall is an iron plaque that commemorates American veterans of the 1898 Spanish-American War. That plaque is a...
by Alan Bisbort | Dec 18, 2008 | News
Henry David Thoreau may have died because he needed $30. In his day, Thoreau didn't retreat to Walden just to prove a point; he had little choice. As a marginally employed pencil maker and surveyor—considered "lazy" by the upright citizens of...
by Mark Roessler | Dec 18, 2008 | News
Broken, the Citizens Advisory Committee absolved themselves of further responsibility and gave permission to MassDevelopment to do whatever they liked on Hospital Hill.After more than 10 hours of presentations, public statements and deflected questions, on Tuesday,...
by Tom Vannah | Dec 18, 2008 | News
WHMP's Bill Dwight began a recent radio interview with Northampton Mayor Clare Higgins with an odd reference to the disgraced governor of Illinois."You don't seem to have the same vision that Gov. Bagojevich, or whatever his name is, had&"...
by Tom Sturm | Dec 18, 2008 | News
Some time ago, just after the death of the Reverend Jerry Falwell, the Advocate published a piece I wrote entitled "Farewell to Falwell." In this piece, I posthumously tarred and feathered the Reverend with his own words, which (and I stand by this opinion)...
by From Our Readers | Dec 18, 2008 | News
Speakout on PanhandlingI read and reread your "Northampton's Guide to Not Giving" (Nov. 27, 2008) and its companion piece, "Don't Be Fooled," and I must admit to some mixed emotions here, as I suspect many of your readers may. I am kind,...
by Mark Roessler | Dec 18, 2008 | News
On Saturday, Dec. 13, at Northampton High School, Notre Dame's Urban Design team will present the fruits of their efforts to re-imagine the Paradise City. Though city officials initially resisted Notre Dame's work in Northampton, then tried to put limits on...
by Tom Vannah | Dec 25, 2008 | News
For some of us, the current economic crisis remains a fairly abstract concept—something we see reported in our newspapers and on TV, but that we have yet to experience directly. Meanwhile, the media provide a view of a world that, despite the horrifying...
by Stephanie Kraft | Dec 25, 2008 | News
In Springfield, attorney Eugene Berman, who heads up a team of lawyers offering free or low-cost help to people facing foreclosure (to reach them, call 413-322-7404), recently told the Advocate that another wave of catastrophe is building for next year because many...
by From Our Readers | Dec 25, 2008 | News
"Blood From Turnip" PlanKudos to Tom Vannah for his incisive editorial "Do Not Resuscitate" [Dec. 11, 2008]. Tom hits many nails right on the head. But I'd postulate that, far from viewing the individual health insurance mandate as "fairly...
by Stephanie Kraft | Dec 25, 2008 | News
As you read this, remember that the melting of the ice caps that anchor the planet's climate is accelerating. Desertification is advancing, part of a warming action that threatens the next generation with grave shortages of water and arable land. Those conditions,...
by Alan Bisbort | Dec 29, 2008 | News
The Reverend Rick Warren wants us to lead "purpose driven lives." We, of course, would love to do this, but every time we turn around some member of the clergy, like the Rev. Warren, is quite purposefully pissing on our leg—metaphorically and...
by Maureen Turner | Jan 1, 2009 | News
In the 15 years since Greenfield voters famously turned back a Wal-Mart proposed for their town, the Big Box battle has played out time and again across the Valley, with mixed results. While the communities and corporations vary, the arguments are strikingly similar....
by Max Hartshorne | Jan 1, 2009 | News
Lily was late, but apologetic. I met her in the lobby of my Tehran hotel. She was out of breath from the long walk and the long bus ride from central to North Tehran, the area where the rich live in today's Islamic Republic of Iran. She says she's barely able...
by Stephanie Kraft | Jan 1, 2009 | News
Not widely known as a hot investigative publication, the AARP Bulletin offered a heartbreaking picture of homelessness in California around the time the large financial services crashed. Seventy-three thousand are homeless in the Los Angeles area alone—a number...
by Alan Bisbort | Jan 1, 2009 | News
On a slow news week such as the one between Christmas and New Year's, it is altogether fitting and proper that America's pundits would pad out their copy with trivia, even as the nation is gripped by an economic crisis.Take this breaking news story, written by...
by Maureen Turner | Jan 1, 2009 | News
A word of warning to Cinderella: should you ever encounter Susan Linn in a dark alley, you’d be wise to turn and run the other way.It’s not that Linn has anything against story book heroines per se. Indeed, Linn, a child psychologist and Harvard professor,...
by Maureen Turner | Jan 1, 2009 | News
"The journey back to our building has begun!" Liz Stevens said after last week's meeting of the Springfield Library Foundation.Stevens, chair of the Mason Square Library Advisory Committee, was celebrating the Foundation's move to begin the...
by Tom Vannah | Jan 1, 2009 | News
I'm not a big numbers guy. I liked math OK when I was in school, but it never became an overriding passion. I find some statistics interesting and helpful—things like batting averages—because they can give a general statement (Red Sox slugger Dustin...
by Stephanie Kraft | Jan 8, 2009 | News
Some 40 million people have been plunged into chronic hunger this year because of the global food crisis, taking the estimated number of the hungry to more than 960 million, the head of the UN food agency said last month.A billion people hungry, even more living...
by Advocate Staff | Jan 1, 2009 | News
A halo to Hampden District Attorney William Bennett for clearing out the pipeline of marijuana possession cases after the passage in November of a public referendum that made possession of an ounce or less of weed punishable with a civil fine. "I'm going to...
by Tom Vannah | Jan 8, 2009 | News
Back in the early 1990s, I wrote a profile of a Rhode Island-based venture capitalist named Arthur D. Little for the now-defunct magazine, New England Business. I knew something about Little before my editor assigned the piece: a long-distance runner, he was a popular...
by Stephanie Kraft | Jan 8, 2009 | News
What with the Bush administration leaving after eight years, there's a lot of talk about legacy these days. Legacy is a hard word to define; it can even take on different aspects as years go by. Last week an American statesman died, leaving a legacy that clarifies...
by From Our Readers | Jan 8, 2009 | News
A Call to RevolutionAmerica, what happened? This is what the experts have been warning us about. Now it's right in our face, and it won't go away. We are on the brink of a major energy crisis. This doesn't mean tomorrow we will all be riding bicycles to...
by Maureen Turner | Jan 8, 2009 | News
Suzanne Strempek Shea loves Barack Obama—button-wearing, campaign-check-writing, canvassing-in-New-Hampshire-on-Election-Day loves him. To put it in the universal language of pet lovers: "I'd leave my dog with him," she says.Strempek Shea isn't...
by From Our Readers | Jan 8, 2009 | News
Right on Health InsuranceYour editorial of December 11 about health insurance ["Do Not Resuscitate"] was exactly to the point. The problem with mandating that every citizen of Massachusetts purchase health insurance from private companies if they do not meet...
by Alan Bisbort | Jan 8, 2009 | News
On Election Night this year, high on most thinking Americans' wish lists were victories for Barack Obama and Al Franken (D-Minn.) and defeats for Senators Mitch McConnell (R-Ken.) and Saxby Chambless (R-Ga.). Perhaps guilty of premature exaltation, I felt...
by James Heflin | Jan 15, 2009 | News
Three years ago this month, the Pioneer Arts Center of Easthampton, which produces concerts and plays and offers theater and music classes, had its doors shut. The rented space had been outfitted, in an extensive renovation, with plentiful seating and a new theater...
by Tom Sturm | Jan 8, 2009 | News
I am inspired to creatively ponder the possible futures of the neo-conservative posse now that President-elect Obama has ridden in on his white horse and the oil can of power has been cast into Mt. Doom.As a template, I have looked to the end of 1978's National...
by Stephanie Kraft | Jan 15, 2009 | News
Jeremy Hammond, editor of the online Foreign Policy Journal, points out that Israel is no less responsible for the breakdown of its cease-fire with Gaza than Hamas is. His claim, which is verifiable from news sources, challenges the usual American media description of...
by Tom Sturm | Jan 15, 2009 | News
This past August, Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick signed into law two bills that have gotten a lot of people excited—and probably made some regional power companies groan. In truly savvy political maneuvering and creative management of both tax structures...
by Stephanie Kraft | Jan 15, 2009 | News
There's no law to keep newspapers from grabbing whatever comes across an editor's desk and cramming it into a column with the discreet disclaimer "Viewpoint." But the paper would be doing its readers more of a service to put a note somewhere, even in...
by Victor Kamber | Jan 15, 2009 | News
A hopeful sign as the 111th Congress convenes and President-elect Obama prepares to take office is a new spirit of bipartisanship, brought on by the worst of times. On both sides of the aisle, there is more fear than loathing. Every day more people lose their jobs,...
by Alan Bisbort | Jan 15, 2009 | News
Isaac Newton's third law of motion says that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. While some Americans may feel that we are not subject to any laws of science, this one at least, seems to also hold true in the laboratory of politics. The eight...
by From Our Readers | Jan 15, 2009 | News
Make Those GradesWhile Penelope Trunk's advice for college students ["Making the Grade," Jan.1, 2009] is sound overall, it seems intended for shy students who plan to end their education after receiving a B.A. or B.S. However, students' social skills...
