News
by Maureen Turner | Aug 27, 2009 | News
Like many Democratic legislators, U.S. Rep. Richard Neal of Springfield has had to contend with his share of conservative hecklers as he's worked his way through his district trying to drum up support for the Obama administration's healthcare reform plans....
by Stephanie Kraft | Aug 27, 2009 | News
The current economic troubles have spawned pictures of streets lined with foreclosed houses, growing homeless populations and people camped out waiting for free exams at health care fairs. Now a new image embodying the current economic difficulties has surfaced in the...
by Mark Roessler | Aug 27, 2009 | News
When I was in college, I traveled to Europe several times. On three occasions I came into close and personal contact with the health care systems of Britain and the Netherlands, and I've never forgotten how profoundly different the experiences were from anything...
by Alan Bisbort | Aug 27, 2009 | News
Octomom will not go gently into the good night of obscurity. When Nadya Suleman, aka Octomom, gave birth to octuplets on Jan. 26, she became a poster girl for American excess. Already a mother of six, she sought, and was provided, fertility treatments so she could...
by Maureen Turner | Aug 27, 2009 | News
The Springfield School Department's central office, at 195 State St., is a handsome old building, but hardly hospitable to modern working conditions. Built at the turn of the last century, the building is run down, with an old elevator that reportedly makes some...
by Our Readers | Aug 27, 2009 | News
I feel sorry for Conor Hennessey (Letters, August 6, 2009) because I just had a free dinner given by the wonderful people of the Greenfield Farmer's Market. But then again, events like that could send us "down the slippery road of collectivism," to quote...
by Tom Vannah | Aug 27, 2009 | News
If the Northampton City Council cares what residents think, it will reject the direction taken last week by three of its members in sponsoring a non-binding ballot question about the city's plans to expand its municipal landfill. A working draft of a possible...
by Tom Sturm | Aug 27, 2009 | News
Lately I seem to keep getting spam emails from “Patients United Now,” brought to me by the Americans for Prosperity Foundation. The emails they send promote scare-tactic lobbying and advertising based on flimsy doomsday scenarios in which they foretell...
by Maureen Turner | Sep 1, 2009 | News
The Western Mass. Single Payer Network and Western Mass. Jobs with Justice have thrown their support behind a national boycott of Whole Foods.The boycott was sparked by a recent op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal by Whole Foods CEO John Mackey, which sounds a very...
by Mark Roessler | Sep 3, 2009 | News
On September 4, 1949, 60 years ago this Labor Day weekend, as they were leaving an outdoor holiday concert, the folk singers who wrote "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?" and "This Land is Your Land" were part of a crowd ambushed by an angry mob....
by Stephanie Kraft | Sep 3, 2009 | News
At press time, tensions in the battle over health care reform were pulling to the max in every direction. As one estimate warned that health insurance would cost nearly twice as much in 2020 as in 2008, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) was saying that the president might...
by Maureen Turner | Sep 3, 2009 | News
To look at the final numbers, it's hard to imagine that there was ever anything to worry about: last Monday, the Springfield City Council unanimously voted to take the former Mason Square library building, at 765 State St., by eminent domain.In fact, the outcome...
by Mary Serreze | Sep 3, 2009 | News
The Upper Roberts Meadow Reservoir is a hidden gem. Hugging the north side of Chesterfield Road, a couple of miles uphill and upstream from the popular Musante Beach swimming area in Leeds, the six-acre pond supports a variety of wildlife, including blue heron,...
by Advocate Staff | Sep 3, 2009 | News
It may not be true that we’ll never see his like again, but we don’t see it at the moment. Ted Kennedy took a lot with him when he died. He wasn’t a perfect man. His enemies still mutter the word “Chappaquiddick,” and there’s no...
by Alan Bisbort | Sep 3, 2009 | News
Now that the "Lion of the Senate" has roared for the last time, the jungle of Congress will get back to business as usual: selling out the American people. The tributes to Ted Kennedy in the last week from across the political spectrum have been impressive...
by Maureen Turner | Sep 10, 2009 | News
When I asked Carol Lewis-Caulton to name her proudest moment from the two years she served on the Springfield City Council, I wondered if she'd choose one of the higher-profile issues she'd been involved in. Her work to make the Springfield Library and Museums...
by Our Readers | Sep 10, 2009 | News
Push the Single-Payer BillAs our health care crisis only deepens, as more and more of our money goes to rapacious insurance companies (who believe in redistribution of wealth only insofar as all of it goes to them), it is clear that only some form of a single-payer...
by Alan Bisbort | Sep 10, 2009 | News
Though I would like to think my country was better than this, it's clear that many Americans hate President Barack Obama for the color of his skin. Many more—though there's some overlap—hate him for being a "socialist" or...
by Mark Roessler | Sep 10, 2009 | News
In case you haven't noticed, 3D movies are making a comeback. Again.Since the start of the year, at least 14 new 3D movies have been slated for release from all the major Hollywood studios. It seemed that every week during the summer a new stereoscopic feature hit...
by Our Readers | Sep 10, 2009 | News
Bis in the ERTo Alan Bisbort: I've been meaning to write for months now to say how much I enjoy reading your column every week. You have such a great way of distilling all the rhetoric around us into a cogent point accessible to any reasonable person of any...
by Tom Vannah | Sep 17, 2009 | News
For Northampton Mayor Clare Higgins, recent controversy surrounding the shredding of a clerk's notes from a closed-session meeting may ultimately come down to a simple misunderstanding between former City Solicitor Janet Sheppard and the City Council's clerk,...
by Maureen Turner | Sep 17, 2009 | News
It is, at the very least, premature to say that Springfield City Councilor Tim Rooke's campaign to stop the School Department from moving into the old federal building on Main Street is making headway; despite the councilor's efforts, City Hall shows no signs...
by Stephanie Kraft | Sep 17, 2009 | News
A recovery that may soon show the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) on the upswing without a commensurate increase in new jobs: how is that possible?Tight credit is partly responsible, but so is the fact that the top layers of the economy are soaking up the money, not...
by Advocate Staff | Sep 17, 2009 | News
I'm writing regarding this year's Valley Advocate Grand Band Slam. In his "A Slammin' Time" article (Aug. 27, 2009), James Heflin writes about what a wealth of music and musicians there are in this Valley, and about how hard it was for the...
by Alan Bisbort | Sep 17, 2009 | News
Dahr Jamail is the embodiment of the citizen journalist. Though raised in the Republican enclave of Houston, the self-made reporter "unplugged from that matrix" at a young age to think for himself. When the Iraq War began in March, 2003, he was working as a...
by Stephanie Kraft | Sep 17, 2009 | News
Environment or economy? It's a false antithesis. Without a sound environment, sooner or later there will be no economy. Typical media reporting that tends to pigeonhole topics rather than illuminating relationships between them reinforce this false dichotomy. Now...
by Maureen Turner | Sep 24, 2009 | News
After a dozen years covering the protracted battle for ward representation in Springfield—the relentless work by reformers, the infuriatingly evasive tactics employed by city councilors determined to kill the effort, the plan's eventual 3-to-1 victory on the...
by Stephanie Kraft | Sep 24, 2009 | News
Some stories are best told by numbers. Here are the numbers that tell two stories: how patients have gotten lost in the morass of the health insurance system, and how doctors have gotten lost in it. Patients: Researchers from the California Nurses Association/National...
by Alan Bisbort | Sep 24, 2009 | News
The Informant is coming, hot on the heels of Michael Moore's documentary Capitalism: A Love Story. While Moore's grandstanding always carries the risk of detracting from his message, Matt Damon's note-perfect performance as Mark Witacre in the film...
by Maureen Turner | Sep 24, 2009 | News
Springfield City Councilor and mayoral candidate Bud Williams has seized on one of the most contentious issues to hit the city in recent months: plans to redevelop the former Longhill Gardens complex into low-income housing.Last week, Williams called for a moratorium...
by Our Readers | Sep 30, 2009 | News
Car Party Is OverI was horrified to hear of the hit-and-run incident on Montague Road (Rte. 63) in North Amherst. Two bicyclers were hit on a Saturday night; one was killed, the other was severely injured. I happened to be riding my own bicycle near that scene right...
by Stephanie Kraft | Oct 1, 2009 | News
There's a flaw in our election system that's frustrated thoughtful voters for a long time. It's the winner-take-all structure of our balloting: the fact that you find yourself having to worry about the "horse race" level of the election to feel...
by Stephanie Kraft | Oct 1, 2009 | News
Speech-Less: Tales of a White House Survivor, a new book by Bush 43 speechwriter Matt Latimer, offers vignettes that are riveting for at least two reasons. First, they shed some light on what the president who rigidly stuck to his script and expressed so little of...
by Advocate Staff | Oct 1, 2009 | News
Bourgeois Town Rule Book3-12 Players, Ages 10 – 110Published by the Valley Advocate Games DivisionEdited and designed by Mark RoesslerIllustrated by Standard DesignContributing Editors: Stephanie Kraft, Maureen Turner, Tom VannahComponents1 Rule Book, 2 dice, 8...
by Our Readers | Oct 1, 2009 | News
Biomass Plants Are ClunkersWe are taking gas guzzlers off the road, but poised to subsidize biomass electricity generating plants. The efficiency of biomass incinerators is 15 to 25 percent, meaning 15 to 25 percent of the energy in wood is captured and converted to...
by Tom Sturm | Oct 8, 2009 | News
Mayoral elections are still something of a novelty in Easthampton; until 1996, the city was but a town, and was run by a Board of Selectmen. In that year, the board was dissolved and a City Council formed, and Easthampton elected its first and only mayor, former...
by Tom Vannah | Oct 8, 2009 | News
Bill Dwight apologized repeatedly, trying to put the story to rest. But he also pushed it, used it as fodder for his WHMP radio show. Last week, the former Northampton city councilor and longtime ally of Mayor Clare Higgins opened his radio show at least four times...
by Stephanie Kraft | Oct 8, 2009 | News
It's easy to think the debate on health care lies black, blue and bleeding somewhere between Capitol Hill and the scenes of the summer's "Town Meetings." It's easy to think that the President who promised us health care reform has failed us. That...
by Maureen Turner | Oct 8, 2009 | News
To say that Danny Young did not win his seat on the Anamosa, Iowa, City Council by a landslide is an understatement of extreme proportions. Young won that seat in 2006 with just two write-in votes, one of them cast by his wife. The definition of the reluctant...
by Alan Bisbort | Oct 8, 2009 | News
Two nights a week I work in a newsroom housed inside a former train station. Not just any train station, but one of the showpieces of New England, a majestic red-brick structure designed by McKim, Mead and White and topped by a venerable Seth Thomas clock tower...
by Alan Bisbort | Oct 8, 2009 | News
In 2005, the various commissions in the town of Middlebury, Conn., approved a development called Ridgewood. This massive project was slated to add 326 "well-appointed and spacious luxury residences" on 314 acres, a nine-hole private golf course, private...
by Stephanie Kraft | Oct 15, 2009 | News
Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont had his own reaction to the scandal that led Congress to defund ACORN, the multi-state anti-poverty and voting rights organization. Freelance videos recently purported to show ACORN employees giving advice on how to evade taxes and run...
by Our Readers | Oct 15, 2009 | News
Nukes, Weapons Linked It is an honor to have a U.S. president awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. It has occurred rarely in history. It is important to remember in the discussion of the control or abolition of nuclear weapons, though, that nuclear plants play a critical...
by Stephanie Kraft | Oct 15, 2009 | News
Well-watered farmland and forest like the Valley's is becoming rarer and rarer in the U.S. and the world. Developers and even governments—China's is one example—are buying agricultural land in other countries—a practice which, if not...
by Maureen Turner | Oct 15, 2009 | News
In 1981, Dick Evans, a Northampton attorney and long-time advocate for drug law reform, drafted a marijuana legalization bill "just to see what one would look like," he said.Evans got the bill before the state Legislature via the right to petition, a law...
by Our Readers | Oct 15, 2009 | News
I really loved your board game, and thought when I opened your paper to glimpse it that great minds think alike. I have a similar game in mind, "Stateball," that will be played like fantasy baseball but will auction state's economies, then follow them...
by Tom Vannah | Oct 22, 2009 | News
He's a grandstander. A panderer, covering his own lack of significant accomplishments by carping at the mayor and his colleagues on the City Council as they do their best to guide the city through difficult times with ever-diminishing resources and an increasingly...
by Our Readers | Oct 22, 2009 | News
Obama and the NobelOn October 9th, the Nobel Committee announced that it had selected President Barack Obama as the recipient for its 2009 Peace Prize. My initial reaction was "For what?" After all, he has not even had a full year to accomplish much....
by Alan Bisbort | Oct 22, 2009 | News
The recovery of the nation's economy entirely depends on a New York Yankees-Los Angeles Dodgers World Series. That's how thin is the ice upon which we are collectively treading, and that's as logical an economic prognostication as any of the others...
by Maureen Turner | Oct 22, 2009 | News
Parishioners at Indian Orchard's Immaculate Conception Church are not alone in their grief over news that their church has been scheduled for closing. This summer, the Springfield Roman Catholic Diocese, which includes the four western counties, announced that 14...
by Stephanie Kraft | Oct 22, 2009 | News
In the lofty auditorium of Northampton's First Churches on October 10, an audience of perhaps 200 listened as San Francisco architect Richard Gage presented evidence that the World Trade Center's Twin Towers and WTC Building 7 were brought down on Sept. 11,...
by Alan Bisbort | Oct 22, 2009 | News
Barack Obama should apologize for winning the Nobel Peace Prize. He should really be big about this and just give it back to the socialists in Norway. Because if he doesn't give it back, then he really is the Antichrist. These and other similar sentiments are...
by Tom Sturm | Oct 29, 2009 | News
The polls will be bustling next Tuesday at White Brook Middle School, one of Easthampton's largest voting locations. Since it's an odd year, chances are you might even catch a glimpse of the person you're voting for, since the city's unusually closely...
by Stephanie Kraft | Oct 29, 2009 | News
'Tis the season when the state treasurer's office comes forward with its list of owners of unclaimed property. Hundreds of names have been paraded through the papers to 1) notify people who might be shocked to learn that their forgotten bank account has made...
by Maureen Turner | Oct 29, 2009 | News
A few days ago, one of my favorite Springfield politicos (yes, I have a few, and yes, the list is short) asked me what I thought of next week's mayoral contest between incumbent Domenic Sarno and his challenger, city councilor Bud Williams. "Not exactly the...
by Stephanie Kraft | Oct 29, 2009 | News
Nuclear weapons: they served their purpose in World War II because only one side had them. The more there are, the more useless they are except to terrorists—and the more likely it is that terrorists will get them.President Obama's unexpected Nobel Prize,...
by Tom Vannah | Oct 29, 2009 | News
This is one man's opinion.I don't live in the city of Northampton, although, like many people in the Pioneer Valley, I regard it as an important center of political, cultural and economic activity in our region. Northampton has been an important place to me...
by Alan Bisbort | Oct 29, 2009 | News
It seemed like such a simple request. The town where I live, Cheshire, Conn., was the scene of one of the most publicized acts of brutality in recent years—the July, 2007 home invasion and murders of a mother and two daughters. Some residents, still traumatized,...
by Maureen Turner | Oct 29, 2009 | News
When Tom Walsh decided last summer not to go through with plans to run for the Springfield City Council, he told the Advocate he'd decided to defer any political aspirations of his own to concentrate on his day job. Walsh is communications director for Mayor...
by Our Readers | Nov 5, 2009 | News
I wanted to thank Maureen Turner for her well researched and well-written article concerning the scheduled closing of Immaculate Conception Church in Indian Orchard ("Praying for Salvation," Oct. 22, 2009). For those of us in the Springfield Catholic Diocese...
