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By JOHN VARNER

The deal recently announced between UMass and the town of Amherst is a promising start, and the university and the town deserve credit for reaching it [“UMass, town, strike new partnership deal,” Gazette, June 29].However, when viewed in the context...

By JIM CAHILLANE

I was 13 when a local plane crash was news. World War II was over. America’s youth, destined to save democracy, headed home following years of boredom, hell, and travel.Poetry makes for easy summer reading. Pithy passages don’t tire the mind. Like...

By KAREN GARDNER

Once upon a time, a fellow named Mitch, a Republican who happened to be the Senate majority leader, decided that despite a few centuries of tradition and principle, he would create a new way of doing things. It wasn’t even a rule, just a principle...

By MARIEL E. ADDIS

Now, I could write about the upsetting judgment by the Supreme Court indicating that free speech and religious rights supersede the civil rights of individuals, namely those in the LGBTQ+ community, but I won’t. I could talk about how Moms for Liberty...

LAURA WASHINGTON

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is running for the 2024 Democratic presidential nominee. Anxious Democrats are taking note.The longtime environmental lawyer is the son and namesake of Robert F. Kennedy Sr., a former U.S. attorney general who was assassinated...

Thirty-five years ago, I was working to establish my career in education while simultaneously trying to pay my day-to-day bills. So I worked for a couple of years as a college dorm director. The job provided room, board, and a small stipend. I...

By NORTHAMPTON SCHOOL COMMITTEE

We, the Northampton School Committee, have joined with the Massachusetts Teachers Association and scores of other organizations and leaders across the commonwealth to endorse the Thrive Act because the failed 30-year experiment of testing, punishing...

By MATT L. BARRON

One of the major fights in the upcoming reauthorization of the 2023 Farm Bill will be over the commodity checkoff system. Checkoffs are mandatory Department of Agriculture fees assessed on a per-unit basis that many U.S. farmers and ranchers pay every...

By JOANNA BUONICONTI

As anyone who lives with a chronic condition knows, a multitude of positive and negative effects come with it. One positive that I’ve discovered — as a necessary result of growing up with my condition — is that I am an avid planner. I take a small...

By WILLIAM LAMBERS

Major League Baseball has produced many classic, inspiring moments over the years, including the World Series. But one of its most noble efforts is not well known.It was during the Second World War, when Major League Baseball launched a plan to raise...

By SARAH MATTHEWS

An opinion piece was recently published in this paper by an executive at FirstLight Power, the company that owns the Turners Falls Dam and Northfield Pumped Storage Hydropower Station [“Setting the record straight on flows and fish passage...

By JIM PALERMO

It was shocking to learn when doing research for this column that it was not Voltaire who said something like, “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to death your right to say it.” (Bartlett be damned.) It appears the adage may have been...

By RUTH FAIRMAN

There is a meeting regarding ZIP codes in Whately on June 29, at 6 p.m. at the Town Hall in the center of town.There are three ZIP codes for Whately, 01093, center of town; 01373, Rural Free Delivery; and 01039, West Whately through the Haydenville...

By GENE STAMELL

I have concluded there are two types of people in the world: those who are content with a B and those who will settle for nothing short of an A. Perhaps the term “Type A Personality” has its origins in our grading system, though I am too lazy to do...

By MARTY KLEIN

By MARTY KLEINThe Easthampton Deserves Better coalition (EDB) is a grassroots effort created in March 2023 by people who have concerns about the proposed Sierra Vista Commons development at the former Tasty Top site on Route 10. We are experts in our...

By ANA DEVLIN GAUTHIER, RACHEL MAIORE, and OWEN ZARET

On June 24, 2022, many of us were glued to our newsfeeds where we witnessed with horror the U.S. Supreme Court eliminate the right to bodily autonomy and personal choice for individuals in our country.One year later, we reflect on both 50 years of...

By RICHARD FEIN

Mr. President, I am concerned that you will be a weak candidate in the 2024 presidential election . Your age is a legitimate concern for the American people. At 80, you are already the oldest American president ever, and you would be 86 at the end of...

By SUSAN WOZNIAK

Humans are storytellers. We invented novels and poetry and plays to satisfy our need for stories. The tales we experience stir our emotions, sometimes allowing us to relax and often teaching us what we need to know.As I have been with my grandkids...

By MICHAEL PILL

The Ancestral Bridges Foundation’s Juneteenth event in Amherst included Civil War reenactors in the uniform of the Massachusetts 54th Regiment. Of more than 1,000 men, both free born and former slaves, who came from all over the country to muster into...

By CARRIE N. BAKER

Last June, the Supreme Court eliminated our constitutional right to choose for ourselves whether or not to continue a pregnancy, allowing states to force the dangerous and burdensome conditions of pregnancy, labor and delivery on unwilling women,...