News
by Mark Roessler | Apr 1, 2010 | News
Caleb Rounds spends much of his working day alone in a windowless cell of a room, conducting scientific plant research in near-total darkness. It’s just as he’d like it. Even the light switches in the UMass lab where he works have all been installed upside...
by Maureen Turner | Apr 1, 2010 | News
For women’s rights activists, fully embracing the newly, finally passed federal health care reform is a tough job. While the law does not include the sweeping anti-abortion provisions pushed by political conservatives, it’s still far from a pro-choice...
by Stephanie Kraft | Apr 1, 2010 | News
The United States’ nuclear reactors have already accumulated enough high-level radioactive waste in the form of spent fuel—63,000 metric tons—to fill the Yucca Mountain repository in Nevada if plans for that repository hadn’t been cancelled....
by Tom Vannah | Apr 1, 2010 | News
As disappointed as I’ve been in Deval Patrick—a governor who looks likely to leave office with as few positive and lasting contributions to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts as that uber-opportunist, Mitt Romney—I don’t agree with some of the...
by Stephanie Kraft | Apr 2, 2010 | News
Soon it will be time to start talking about the costs of the disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan, and the potential costs of a comparable accident here. If there were such an accident in the U.S., we would learn more about the real costs of...
by Mark Roessler | Apr 2, 2010 | News
“There are two things you don’t want to see being made—sausage and legislation.”—Origin uncertain; often misattributed to German Chancellor Otto von Bismark Driving along Route 116 between South Deerfield and Conway, just as the road...
by James Thindwa | Apr 2, 2010 | News
Public school teachers have taken a beating from politicians, opinion-makers, business and foundation leaders and just about everyone else. Lazy teachers, it is said, have wrecked our public education system. A March 2010 headline in Newsweek put it bluntly:...
by Our Readers | Apr 2, 2010 | News
Potter Off Key on Iran Andrew Potter, in his piece using the 1979 Iranian revolution that overthrew the shah as an example of the way hopeful protests can result in totalitarian rule (“Paradox In The Middle East,” March 24, 2011), somehow neglects to...
by Markos Moulitsas | Apr 2, 2010 | News
In the aftermath of the GOP’s big 2008 losses, Karl Rove outlined a road map back to the majority. Among Rove’s key principles was that “[t]he GOP won’t be a majority party if it cedes the young or Hispanics to Democrats. Republicans must find...
by Our Readers | Apr 2, 2010 | News
Opposition Rhetoric Skewed Poor John Boehner! So bitterly you wept as you bemoaned the Democrats ramming health care through Congress, and so pitifully you sob that they’ve violated the will of the American people! But you see, John, I have an attention span, so...
by Lauren Else | Apr 6, 2010 | News
Not long after the House of Representatives voted to repeal last year’s landmark healthcare reform legislation and a federal judge ruled the bill’s insurance mandate unconstitutional, Vermont’s leaders decided to take matters into their own hands. On...
by Tom Sturm | Apr 6, 2010 | News
Fledgling biofuels company Qteros has just been granted a patent for its process of creating fermentation of biomass by a unique, naturally-occurring anaerobic microorganism, an event that will likely catapult the Marlborough-based company onto the global stage. The...
by Mark Roessler | Apr 6, 2010 | News
One of the “clearest signs of the health and success of a community,” says Craig Della Penna, “is the number of bicyclists and pedestrians you see on the streets.” For well over a decade, Della Penna has devoted himself to increasing this...
by Our Readers | Apr 8, 2010 | News
Crossword Replacement Protested I object to your replacing the crossword puzzles in your paper with those of a highly amateurish nature. Henry Hook, Cox and Rathvon are highly regarded among cryptoverbologists. You have replaced them with puzzles of a pre-kindergarten...
by Maureen Turner | Apr 8, 2010 | News
Look: you’ve got about a month until Mother’s Day. This year, are you going to come up with a gift worthy of the woman who carried you for 40 long weeks (or in some cases, longer—not that anyone’s holding any grudges)? Or are you going to wait...
by Theo Anderson | Apr 8, 2010 | News
There’s no denying it: the past winter was a bleak, brutal season for climate scientists and global warming activists. The most obvious change, climate-wise, was in the realm of public opinion, which cooled considerably to the idea that human activity is warming...
by Maureen Turner | Apr 8, 2010 | News
Peter Wagner knows firsthand just how hard it is to get people excited about a topic as seemingly dry and technical as the U.S. Census. As the executive director of the Prison Policy Initiative, a non-partisan research organization in Easthampton, Wagner has spent...
by Stephanie Kraft | Apr 8, 2010 | News
There’s still time for households that didn’t get their census forms in by April 1 to be counted. From May into early July, census workers will be following up with house-to-house visits and visits to special environments, such as nursing homes, college...
by Tom Vannah | Apr 8, 2010 | News
When Tim Cahill announced last week that Fitch Ratings had raised the state’s bond rating, the state treasurer didn’t exactly lay it on thick: the rating upgrade, a press release from his office explained, was “due to the rating agency’s rating...
by Matt Welch | Apr 9, 2010 | News
Anyone who was expecting the “anti-war” presidential candidate Barack Obama to be anything like an anti-war president was simply not paying attention to how he campaigned. It wasn’t just the daily vows to escalate in Afghanistan, or the repeated...
by Stephanie Kraft | Apr 9, 2010 | News
“I don’t think right after a major environmental catastrophe is a very good time to be making American domestic policy,” U.S. Senator Mitch McConnell said on Fox News Sunday in the early days of the Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster. But if the...
by Our Readers | Apr 9, 2010 | News
Nature To Be Respected, Not Conquered Several years ago, when the gray wolves were bordering on extinction, I saw a Victorian painting of a winter’s night which depicted a small child and her father in a horse-drawn sled racing frantically through the woods,...
by Maureen Turner | Apr 9, 2010 | News
Last month, the Springfield School Department announced some embarrassing news: due to a payroll error, about 1,400 city teachers had been receiving more money than they were due in their paychecks. The overpayments, which stretched back to September, totaled about...
by Ted Rall | Apr 9, 2010 | News
“It was Bill Clinton who recognized that the categories of conservative and liberal played to Republican advantage and were inadequate to address our problems,” President Obama wrote in his book The Audacity of Hope. “Clinton’s third...
by Story and photos by Mark Roessler | Apr 13, 2010 | News
South Hadley’s Dinosaurland first opened its gates in 1950, when Carlton Nash quit his day job at the Holyoke Water Power Company and decided to stake everything he had on a set of dinosaur tracks he’d discovered in the woods of South Hadley nearly 20...
by Maureen Turner | Apr 13, 2010 | News
As the governor’s race heats up, prepare for the various campaigns to begin making the requisite token gestures toward us forgotten folks out here in the western part of the commonwealth. (Note to the Patrick/Murray ticket: Worcester is not Western Mass. And...
by Maureen Turner | Apr 15, 2010 | News
Back in February, Springfield City Hall offered a promising timeline for returning full library services to the Mason Square neighborhood: City Solicitor Ed Pikula told the Advocate at the time that the Springfield Urban League would need to vacate its building at 765...
by Maureen Turner | Apr 15, 2010 | News
The headline of the press release announcing a recent poll on the quality of life in Springfield offered at least a partially positive outlook: “Residents & Express Optimism for the Future.” Indeed, almost half of respondents to the...
by Maureen Turner | Apr 15, 2010 | News
Holyoke is a city that derives a deep sense of pride from its immigrant history. Now a city councilor is asking his colleagues to voice their support for a proposed federal law that would extend rights already given to immigrant partners in straight couples to gay...
by Stephanie Kraft | Apr 15, 2010 | News
Banks are out as middlemen in the student loan industry. That’s one of the changes brought about by the new health care reform legislation. That change saves some $8 billion a year in subsidies flowing from the government to the banks and makes the government...
by Stephanie Kraft | Apr 15, 2010 | News
A bill that would require all bars, and all restaurants serving alcohol, to have liability insurance covering drinking-related injury or death is making its way through the Legislature. It passed the House 145-4 earlier this month, with all Western Massachusetts reps...
by Maureen Turner | Apr 16, 2010 | News
Another federal census, another legislative redistricting process, another opportunity for politicians to try to manipulate that process for their and their party’s gain. Across the nation, federal, state and local legislative district lines are about to be...
by Stephanie Kraft | Apr 16, 2010 | News
The first government shutdown in 15 years made news a few days ago by not happening. Still, it’s worth reviewing what it would have been like if up to 800,000 government workers had had to leave their desks until further notice. And it’s worth noting that...
by Maureen Turner | Apr 16, 2010 | News
Twelve years ago this spring, Patrice Woeppel was heading to her office in the Florida hospital where she worked as clinical director when she slipped on a dirty floor and fell to the ground. “I landed on my hands, then onto my left hip,” Woeppel writes in...
by Stephanie Kraft | Apr 16, 2010 | News
April 15, the perennial income tax filing day, is not tax day this year. Thanks to a holiday many of us never heard of—Emancipation Day, the day slaves were freed in the District of Columbia by edict of Abraham Lincoln in 1862—this year we don’t have...
by Our Readers | Apr 16, 2010 | News
Riffers Live, Puppets Died James Heflin’s article “The Wisecracking Puppets Who Wouldn’t Die” [April 8, 2010] was a frustrating piece to read for a longtime MST3K fan. Heflin cites several episodes from the series and states: “All that...
by Our Readers | Apr 20, 2010 | News
GOP and Taxes: The Aha Moment Republicans don’t increase taxes on the wealthy during an economic downturn—it will exacerbate the problem. Republicans don’t increase taxes on the wealthy during a recession—it will slow recovery. Republicans...
by Robert B. Reich | Apr 22, 2010 | News
Senate Republicans just debuted their new strategy for financial reform: refuse to cooperate with Democrats on the grounds that the Dems are too willing to give Wall Street what it wants. I’m not making this up. In a Senate floor speech, Minority Leader Mitch...
by Maureen Turner | Apr 22, 2010 | News
Well, that was fast, wasn’t it? Last week, the Massachusetts House of Representatives (not typically known for its speediness) passed a bill to expand gambling in the state just a few days after it was filed by Speaker Robert DeLeo. It now heads to the Senate....
by Stephanie Kraft | Apr 22, 2010 | News
You may not know how much filmmaking and animation talent finds its home in the Valley. Take Larry Jackson of Amherst, formerly of Los Angeles, who earlier in his career was senior vice president for production for the Samuel Goldwyn Company as well as an executive...
by Our Readers | Apr 22, 2010 | News
Let’s Hear It for Pickles Regarding Mark Roessler’s great article on pickles [“The Pickles All Around Me,” April 8, 2010], one comment: M & M Green Valley Produce is open year round. Their hours for now are nine to six, seven days a week....
by Maureen Turner | Apr 22, 2010 | News
In The Hoboken Chicken Emergency—a quirky 1977 children’s novel by Daniel Pinkwater—a kid named Arthur Bobowicz is sent out to buy the family’s Thanksgiving turkey and instead returns home with a live chicken. And not just any chicken: a...
by Stephanie Kraft | Apr 22, 2010 | News
With 29 miners dead at the Upper Big Branch coal mine in West Virginia, it’s time to notice what a long story lies behind this disaster. Last year the mine was cited for more than 500 safety violations, up 200 percent from 2008. In the weeks prior to the deaths,...
by Tom Vannah | Apr 22, 2010 | News
As Baystate Republicans gathered in Worcester’s DCU Center last weekend to choose a gubernatorial candidate—former Harvard Pilgrim Healthcare CEO Charles D. Baker came away with a crushing victory over feisty ex-Mass Turnpike official Christy...
by Maureen Turner | Apr 23, 2010 | News
In 2000, veteran activist Lois Ahrens came up with the idea of a course, through Amherst’s Center for Popular Economics, that would look at what we as a society truly pay for our system of mass incarceration—a system that, as of 2009, saw just under 2.3...
by Pete Redington | Apr 23, 2010 | News
Last week, perennial NBA All-Star and five-time champion Kobe Bryant called an official who had just hit him with a technical foul a “fucking faggot.” The offensive slur was captured on national TV, prompting basketball analyst Steve Kerr to suggest,...
by Stephanie Kraft | Apr 23, 2010 | News
A bill to reduce the bargaining power of public employee unions in Massachusetts has been filed in the state Legislature (see related article “It Can Happen Here”). A few weeks ago the Advocate had a short chat with a local labor leader who told us he was...
by Maureen Turner | Apr 23, 2010 | News
When Rick Sullivan, the former mayor of Westfield, became the new secretary of the Mass. Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs, opponents of a power plant proposed in Springfield hoped the new hire might be good news for their cause. Critics of the...
by Stephanie Kraft | Apr 23, 2010 | News
As public employees in Wisconsin and other states fight to hang on to collective bargaining rights, a bill to reduce those rights for public employees has been filed by Republicans in the Massachusetts Legislature. The Massachusetts bill doesn’t go as far as the...
by Maureen Turner | Apr 23, 2010 | News
In 2001, the Monsanto corporation sued a 70-year-old farmer from Saskatchewan, Canada, named Percy Schmeiser for violating its patent on an herbicide-resistant canola seed the company had developed. Monsanto’s suit alleged that Schmeiser had knowingly planted...
by Mark Roessler | Apr 23, 2010 | News
When I arrived at Berkshire Brewing in South Deerfield to take co-owner Gary Bogoff’s photograph for this year’s edition of the Best of the Valley, I hadn’t initially realized I was interrupting him in the middle of some delicate, exacting work....
by Tom Vannah | Apr 23, 2010 | News
Before he began writing his blog Talk Dirt to Me—you can find it at valleyadvocate.com—Caleb Rounds had already made an impression on a couple of Advocate editors who’d had the chance to see his garden up close and personal. For all the thousands and...
by Our Readers | Apr 27, 2010 | News
Help for Injured Workers “Work at Your Own Risk” (April 14, 2011) exposed how inadequate the workers’ compensation system is. Patrice Woeppel’s book, Depraved Indifference, is excellent. We are very fortunate in Western Massachusetts to have an...
by Maureen Turner | Apr 27, 2010 | News
Earlier this month, as the Massachusetts House took up–and quickly passed–Speaker Robert DeLeo’s bill to build two casinos and add slots machines at four racetracks, Jill Stein, the Green-Rainbow party’s gubernatorial candidate, headed to the...
by Maureen Turner | Apr 29, 2010 | News
In response to a recent Advocate article about a less-than-flattering WNEC poll on the quality of life in Springfield (“Improvement Needed,” April 15), one proud city resident wrote to offer a very different view of the city. “Springfield has been...
by Our Readers | Apr 29, 2010 | News
Build a Casino, Already The question of a casino in this state is ridiculous, and I find writing about it just as silly. The main question is this: do we, as a state, wish to continue to help fund our neighboring states or keep Massachusetts dollars in Massachusetts?...
by Tom Vannah | Apr 29, 2010 | News
It’s important to read a daily newspaper, and it seems to become more important, at least for me, the older I get. When I picked up the daily habit as a kid, it was the sports page, particularly the box scores for my beloved Red Sox, which attracted me. Now...
by Stephanie Kraft | Apr 29, 2010 | News
Americans need to take a deep look at the relation between our own policies and two nagging problems. One is the situation in Haiti; the other is the situation in Mexico. In both cases, our trade policies contributed to crises we now describe another way. We...
by Mark Roessler | Apr 29, 2010 | News
This weekend, high school Ultimate teams from across the Northeast will converge on the Valley for the 19th Annual Amherst Invitational Tournament. The game—the object of which is to score points by tossing a flying disc to a team member in the opponent’s...
by Stephanie Kraft | Apr 30, 2010 | News
The conviction in New York earlier this month of three men involved in the Al Bruno shooting in 2003 brings back memories of the night the mob leader was blown away in the parking lot of the Mt. Carmel Social Club in Springfield’s South End. In a city whose...
