News
by Bruce Kluger | Oct 30, 2012 | News
When I was a boy, my bedroom was plastered with posters: a day-glo illustration of the Beatles from Yellow Submarine; a prehistorically pouting Raquel Welch in One Million Years B.C.; Clark Gable, chewing on a cigar and scrutinizing a poker hand in Gone With the Wind....
by James Heflin | Oct 30, 2012 | News
If you’ve wandered through downtown Northampton or been to ES Sports or Holyoke Country Club lately, you’ve probably seen large signs that say Iron Horse Entertainment Group (or other Eric Suher-owned businesses) Unfair. Sitting next to the signs,...
by Mark Roessler | Oct 30, 2012 | News
After our plane touched down in Newark, N. J., my family and I had an hour and a half to get to our connecting flight back to Hartford. We were flying in from Europe. Because we needed to go through customs, we needed to first retrieve our luggage, have our passports...
by Our Readers | Nov 5, 2012 | News
Iran: “War Is Failure” War is no answer to the present conflict between the U.S. and Iran. While I was glad to hear in the presidential debate talk about peaceful resolution of the conflict, I’m concerned that our feckless Congress and some of its...
by Our Readers | Nov 5, 2012 | News
Subsidies Enrich Landlords While reading the excellent article “No Place to Live” in the Oct.18th Advocate, I asked myself, Why are we allowing the 1 percent to impose so much suffering on our most vulnerable residents? We now live in a state where it is...
by Maureen Turner | Nov 5, 2012 | News
Recently, I had the chance to ask Michaelann Bewsee if she could imagine what her life would be like if she weren’t part of Arise of Social Justice, the poor people’s rights organization she helped found more than a quarter-century ago. She paused for a...
by Stephanie Kraft | Nov 5, 2012 | News
It’s a pity the old Greeks, who loved monumental visual ironies—cruel sight gags on the grand scale, like the living Antigone sealed in a cave while her dead brother moldered unburied—couldn’t watch what was happening in America during the last...
by Kathleen Broadhurst | Nov 5, 2012 | News
Florence has had a long history of supporting lesbian, bisexual, gay, transgender, questioning and intersex (LBGTQI) rights. It’s just little known. In a series of lectures entitled Stories of Our LGBTQI Ancestors, researcher Bet Power and the Sexual Minorities...
by Tom Vannah | Nov 12, 2012 | News
The night after the election, I ran into a friend and neighbor at a youth soccer banquet. Naturally the subject of President Obama’s re-election came up. In 2008, my friend said, he’d been over the moon when Obama beat John McCain. He’d walked around...
by Stephanie Kraft | Nov 12, 2012 | News
It looks like something out of a modernistic Alice in Wonderland: the entrance to the German Gerena Elementary School in Springfield’s North End as you see it from Main Street. Murals in bright blue and other primary colors frame the doorway to the tunnel that...
by Stephanie Kraft | Nov 12, 2012 | News
The best thing about last week’s election was that money didn’t buy it. Though staggering waves of cash flooded campaigns, the best-financed candidates often lost. That won’t stop movements against the Citizens United decision, movements aimed at...
by Our Readers | Nov 12, 2012 | News
Monopoly on Music Venues It is shameful that in our progressive community, there is a virtual monopoly on music venues. Eric Suher is the oligarch, and while he fosters a vibrant music scene, he also charges exorbitant fees on tickets. Those fees would be easier to...
by Tom Vannah | Nov 12, 2012 | News
Although the iconography of gambling and resort casino decor have never been my cup of tea, I will admit that spinning roulette wheels, rolling dice and blinking slots machines make pretty good b-roll for TV news. Which is to observe that the nightly presentation of...
by Pete Redington | Nov 16, 2012 | News
“I said it before and I’ll say it again,” noted slacker and political philosopher Ferris Bueller famously observed. “Life moves pretty fast. You don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.” It’s been a...
by Maureen Turner | Nov 19, 2012 | News
In October of 2011, a month after she entered the Massachusetts Senate race, Elizabeth Warren was interviewed by a group of liberal bloggers for a podcast called “Left Ahead.” It was a friendly interview, to say the least; “I’ve got to say,...
by Maureen Turner | Nov 19, 2012 | News
What would get you out of your post-Thanksgiving, couch-bound stupor and to the strip mall on the infamous shopping day known as “Black Friday”? A break on a Prius-sized television? A chance to grab a LEGO Star Wars Death Star at half price (oh, we...
by Mark Roessler | Nov 19, 2012 | News
A massive new metal sculpture now spans Main Street in Northampton. Its builder, Sam Ostroff, owner of Salmon Studios in Florence, had been uncertain when it would be installed, but given the size, weight and complexity of his steel and copper rendering, no one was...
by Stephanie Kraft | Nov 19, 2012 | News
The U.S. military’s long-strained relationship with the people of Okinawa is more tense than usual now that two American servicemen are being prosecuted for gang-raping a Japanese woman in mid-October. Okinawans, who are tired of hosting more than 20,000...
by Stephanie Kraft | Nov 19, 2012 | News
Late this summer, the U.S. Geological Survey announced that it had located several new veins of natural gas in the eastern U.S. One, known as the Hartford (Connecticut) Basin, extends well into Western Massachusetts. And so the possibility of fracking in the Valley...
by Maureen Turner | Nov 27, 2012 | News
After years of dormancy, the Amherst branch of the NAACP is being revived. The chapter will be reactivated at a public meeting scheduled for Monday, Dec. 3, at 6:30 p.m. at the Bangs Community Center in Amherst. Patrice Woeppel, an activist helping to reestablish the...
by Maureen Turner | Nov 27, 2012 | News
After months and months of beating the lemon off Elizabeth Warren, Howie Carr must have felt crushed when she beat Scott Brown in the U.S. Senate race earlier this month. Still, the prickly-penned Boston Herald columnist leaves the election with a consolation...
by Stephanie Kraft | Nov 27, 2012 | News
In what’s being called the era of “extreme energy,” meaning that sources once considered too difficult or dangerous to tap are now being mined for oil and gas, it’s urgent that we be informed about what that mining is doing to the environment....
by Stephanie Kraft | Nov 27, 2012 | News
He’s one of the country’s leading unelected power brokers, but his clout is eroding as more and more Congresspeople mutiny against him. He’s Grover Norquist, head of Americans for Tax Reform. Norquist has long demanded that Republican Congressional...
by Andrew Lam | Nov 27, 2012 | News
As a refugee from Vietnam, a country colonized by the French and then fought over by the Americans and the Soviet Union, I see the Obama presidency as spelling the end of a 500-year-old colonial curse. Decades ago, when English was still unruly on my tongue, I read a...
by Maureen Turner | Dec 3, 2012 | News
In the summer of 2011, I sat down for coffee and an interview with Alex Morse, then a candidate for mayor of Holyoke. I knew the rap against Morse, that he was too young and green (he announced his candidacy while finishing his senior year of college) to handle such...
by Stephanie Kraft | Dec 3, 2012 | News
Windows shattered through an area with a three-block radius when a gas pipeline leak exploded in Springfield the day after Thanksgiving. The blast that destroyed Score’s Gentlemen’s Club and damaged 41 other buildings has people all over the Valley...
by Our Readers | Dec 3, 2012 | News
What Sexism? I can see how the Huffington Post’s referring to [Republican presidential hopeful Michele] Bachmann lowering her suit’s neckline is sexist [“Fifty Shades of Sexism,”November 29, 2012], but I’m not really getting the...
by Our Readers | Dec 3, 2012 | News
Climate Change: Deal With It President Obama has done a lot I agree with, but there’s a lot I don’t support, too. I think he should close Guantanamo, end the war in Afghanistan faster, use that money for urgent domestic priorities, and enact much stronger...
by Stephanie Kraft | Dec 4, 2012 | News
Even as he was claiming that climate change had not been proven, President George Bush convened a quiet conference to discuss geoengineering, the manipulation of the climate to retard global warming. Then and later, many measures—including some that seemed to be...
by Maureen Turner | Dec 10, 2012 | News
Last week, the state put into effect a final version of new regulations governing how homeless families qualify for emergency shelter. And while the new regulations are an improvement over earlier proposed rules, they still contain gaps that leave some families are...
by Maureen Turner | Dec 10, 2012 | News
The competition was fierce: would the winner be LEGO’s “Friends Butterfly Beauty Shop” featuring little plastic dolls who, the marketing copy notes, enjoy shopping, gossiping and “get[ting] primped and pretty”? Or maybe the 7-11 Slurpee...
by Our Readers | Dec 10, 2012 | News
Israel: Two Voices The Hadassah trio who penned a letter to the Advocate (Nov. 29) seeking support for Israel sound well-meaning, but they narrowly express concern for only Jewish victims in the decades-long Israeli/Palestinian conflict. Behind what the authors call...
by Stephanie Kraft | Dec 10, 2012 | News
At press time, the news from the world conference on climate change at Doha, Qatar was mixed: encouraging (there’s still time to keep the temperature from rising more than 2 degrees by 2020); discouraging (as yet no program has been proposed that will accomplish...
by Maureen Turner | Dec 10, 2012 | News
Historian David Kyvig, an expert on the Prohibition era, has an apt analogy for describing the ratification of the 21st Amendment, which repealed alcohol prohibition. After a dozen years of contentious debate over the matter, a majority of states approved the...
by Maureen Turner | Dec 10, 2012 | News
It’s not surprising that Springfield mayor Domenic Sarno’s attempt to lower the qualifications for the city’s fire commissioner position has generated some controversy. Sarno has asked the City Council to amend the ordinance that set those...
by Richard M. Evans | Dec 10, 2012 | News
The Law in a Nutshell The new medical marijuana law in Massachusetts does two things. First, it protects patients, providers and health care professionals who observe its terms from the state marijuana prohibition laws that criminalize possession, distribution, and...
by Tom Vannah | Dec 10, 2012 | News
Does Ed Ralicki worry a lot? The tall, lanky, mustache-sporting skier grins. Ralicki’s eyes widen. He shrugs. “Yes,” he says, sounding a bit surprised at his own answer. “At times I do worry a lot.” How could he not? A 37-year...
by Pete Redington | Dec 14, 2012 | News
“Don’t tell me to act like a man,” Landry Clarke told Tyra Collette on the popular television show Friday Night Lights. “Because if that’s your definition of a man, then that’s extremely sad.” On Saturday morning, December 1,...
by Maureen Turner | Dec 17, 2012 | News
He may have delivered his official Senate farewell speech last week, but Scott Brown continues to give hope to his fans—and heartburn to his critics—that he just might make another run for the office down the road. In a Dec. 12 address on the Senate floor,...
by Stephanie Kraft | Dec 17, 2012 | News
Since 42 buildings were damaged by a natural gas pipeline explosion in Springfield the day after Thanksgiving, more gas leaks have occurred across the country, according to Natural Gas Watch. In Richmond, Va. on Nov. 27, dozens of homes had to be evacuated because of...
by James Heflin | Dec 17, 2012 | News
Something to get straight right out of the gate: according to current Mayan spokespeople, the world isn’t actually supposed to end this week. Which is good, because Arrested Development won’t be back until spring. The big deal day is apparently only the...
by Stephanie Kraft | Dec 17, 2012 | News
The battle that centers around tax hikes for the wealthiest of Americans is historic—historic because it points up a question about whether the American people want an economy that allows ordinary citizens to live a decent life, secure in regard to basic...
by Stephanie Kraft | Dec 17, 2012 | News
If you’re worried about whether your house will lose power in the next bad weather event, be it a traditional winter icestorm or a freak disaster like the October, 2011 snow that felled trees with leaves still on them, the state Department of Public Utilities...
by Maureen Turner | Dec 17, 2012 | News
It suffices to say that the last few weeks have not been a high point of Alex Morse’s budding political career. To recap: late last month, the Holyoke mayor-who won office in 2011 in large part on the strength of his anti-casino position-dropped a bombshell,...
by Stephanie Kraft | Dec 21, 2012 | News
Now our much-vaunted allegiance to the Second Amendment, broadly interpreted—so broadly that it puts guns on our streets that have no legitimate use except on the battlefield—has given us 20 more martyrs. Very small martyrs, the youngest barely six years...
by James Heflin | Dec 21, 2012 | News
There’s an old joke in which a man passes another on the street corner every day. The second man always leans in a doorway, snapping his fingers endlessly. When, finally, curiosity gets the better of the first man, he asks the snapper, “What’s with...
by Pete Redington | Dec 21, 2012 | News
What to make of the recent Wozniacki-Williams towel-stuffing tennis incident? In an exhibition match against Maria Sharapova in Brazil earlier this month, Caroline Wozniacki mocked Serena Williams by stuffing her shirt and skirt with towels. It was not the first time...
by Valley Advocate Staff | Dec 21, 2012 | News
It’s been a long time since a Northampton mayor has been considered for a halo by the angels at the Valley Advocate office. To be sure, not everything David Narkewicz has done in his first year in City Hall’s top job has delighted this...
by Pete Redington | Dec 21, 2012 | News
A new project called Rolling Jubilee has emerged out of the Occupy movement with the purpose of purchasing people’s debt and then abolishing it. As of this writing, the project has already raised close to half a million dollars since its launch last...
by Our Readers | Dec 21, 2012 | News
Straw Hat for Warren I was disappointed to read Maureen Turner’s column (“Warren’s Hick Problem,” November 22, 2012) suggesting that Elizabeth Warren is not in touch with small farmers. Nothing could be further from the truth. Turner’s...
by Maureen Turner | Dec 28, 2012 | News
Depending on your perspective, Holyoke Mayor Alex Morse’s recent handling of the casino issue in his city is evidence of his lack of leadership ability and, indeed, his lack of trustworthiness—or it’s an example of the often messy but ultimately...
by Ted Rall | Dec 28, 2012 | News
After the election, Kerry Eleveld wrote a piece for The Atlantic titled “Why Barack Obama Will Be a More Effective Liberal in His Second Term.” “In response to their initial disappointment with the president’s early performance, many...
by Our Readers | Dec 28, 2012 | News
Newtown: Afterthoughts This letter is in response to the articles covering the Newtown school shooting and the ongoing debate regarding gun control. The second amendment of the United States Constitution states:“A well regulated militia, being necessary to the...
by Stephanie Kraft | Dec 28, 2012 | News
This may be the year more people break away from the Wall Street economic paradigm and give their investment money, large or small, a new life helping the 99 percent. It’s possible—and only small sums are needed to get a start. A thousand dollars and even...
by Our Readers | Dec 28, 2012 | News
“Shootings of Innocents” Like millions of others, I am dazed with sorrow since the massacre at Sandy Hook. I attended several vigils since that Friday; did you as well? We’re all heartbroken. President Obama, a father, was clearly stricken with...
by Our Readers | Jan 7, 2013 | News
Morse: What Convictions? This young man has firm values? Really (“Morse Remorse,” January 3, 2013)? While it is one thing to have sincerely held convictions, it is quite another to pretend to have them in accordance with whatever will further one’s...
by Stephanie Kraft | Jan 7, 2013 | News
There’s a simple fact about guns that helps to explain why so many unqualified people—people with criminal histories, mental health problems, anger problems, drinking problems—get them in spite of the laws governing licensing and registration....
by Maureen Turner | Jan 7, 2013 | News
The committee that oversaw the 2011 legislative redistricting process recently released a report on its work—and it doesn’t mind saying that it did a pretty good job. The December report was signed by the two Statehouse leaders who chaired the...
by Dr. Jill Stein | Jan 7, 2013 | News
As daylight begins to shine on the fiscal cliff deal just passed by Congress, it’s clear the expected bipartisan betrayal has occurred. And even worse, it lays the groundwork for much more to come. In brief, the deal protects wealthy households earning up to...
by Tom Sturm | Jan 7, 2013 | News
Massachusetts residents will have a little less than a year to continue enjoying shopping tax-free on Amazon.com, thanks to a recent agreement between Beacon Hill and the multinational online retailer. “We are thankful Amazon was willing to come to the table and...
