Search Results

Keyword search: columns

By JIM and LISA MCGOVERN

You have cancer. Words nobody ever wants to hear — but each year, nearly two million of our fellow Americans hear them. More than 600,000 die annually after battling these diseases, including over 12,000 people in Massachusetts alone.But it does not...

By SHERRILL HOGEN

I was in Palestine last October. It had been three COVID years since I had seen my adoptive family there. I prepared for the trip by buying gifts for all eight of them: my “sister,” her husband, their six grown children, and innumerable grandchildren....

By Gene Stamell

My mother was a big advocate for guilt. “Guilt builds character,” she would say. “If you feel some guilt, you will become a better person.”I’m not sure her opinion influenced my choice of spouse, but my wife of 43 years once told me that she has...

By Richard Szlosek

For the past three years, the Standing Committee of the Calvin Coolidge Museum and Forbes Library have been sponsoring a monthly presidential book club. The next president to be discussed is Jimmy Carter and the book that has been chosen is the 2021...

By Michael Weiler

Since the COVID pandemic began, UMass’s 1,400 service staff workers have done extraordinary, even heroic work. To recognize them, an anonymous donor has pledged $7 million dollars to construct a pavilion on UMass land, dedicated to service staff....

Ray Bradbury’s classic book, “Fahrenheit 451,” shows a dystopian fascist future where people take pills and watch state-run TV to stay compliant in a world where books are outlawed and burned when found. The only hope for the future of humanity is the...

By WILLIAM LAMBERS

With the Doomsday Clock now 90 seconds to midnight, the closest to nuclear war ever, it’s clear diplomacy must be brought back into action to reduce the threat.The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists just made the annual Doomsday Clock announcement...

By Caroline Johnson

Of late, I have been fortunate enough to be invited to participate in lively City Council meetings regarding issues related to cannabis legalization and adult-use retailers. As one Florence resident recently put it, “Truly, this is the nicest problem...

By MARIEL E. ADDIS

Unless you’ve being living under a rock, you are probably well aware that Prince Harry has a new book called “Spare.” While I don’t intend to purchase or read the book, by all accounts, it is a written version of what Seinfeld character Frank Costanza...

By KARL MEYER

On Jan. 12,Vince Yearick, director of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s (FERC) Division of Hydropower Licensing, gave a new fat gift to FirstLight Power for its Northfield Mountain Pumped Storage Station in Massachusetts. Parent-owned by...

By Jonathan Kahane

Grüezi mitenand. After a three-year hiatus, I find myself back in Switzerland again visiting family and friends. Before Covid, I would come here to enjoy camaraderie, alpine vistas, skiing, hiking, chocolate, watches, cheese, it’s touted “purist...

This column marks the beginning my sixth year of writing for the Daily Hampshire Gazette. That first January I wrote about the scarcity of snow. As I weighed what to write this month, idea after idea presented itself. I tossed them because the near...

By MICHAEL SEWARD

The town of Hadley has contributed to the housing shortage with its prohibition of more than one housing unit on a single lot. The Gazette recently reported that planners in Hadley may tweak their “inclusionary bylaw,” because it hasn’t resulted in...

By ALLEN WOODS

The images are tragic for anyone with a bit of empathy: three women and three children, including a 1-year-old baby, die in a desperate attempt to flee a homeland filled with violence and instability. The country they had hoped to reach did not want...

>small 2<>small 0<>small 2

Title IX of the Civil Rights Act spurred a revolution in women’s participation in high school and college sports in the United States.In 1972, when Title IX became law, only 7 percent of high school athletes were women; last year 43 percent of high...

By Robin Goldstein

I write to express my opposition to Northampton’s recently passed ordinance that establishes a cap on the number of legal cannabis retailers. If the ordinance is vetoed, then City Council members will have another chance to vote on it, and I hope that...

By Ezra Parzybok

Florence cannabis prohibitionists succeeded in blocking a pot shop in their backyards — making the mayor defy the ordinance on by-right retail cannabis, a progressive policy of ‘normalization’ in response to an irrational and failed drug war....

By Cynthia Loring MacBain

The report of the time at which the Doomsday Clock is currently set was announced Tuesday (Jan. 24). Anticipating what that “time” will be brings back memories of the Cuban Missile Crisis. My baby was just four months old.I had seen the movie “On the...

By DANIEL A. BROWN

I collect old LIFE magazines and was recently surprised to see a two-page advertisement in a February 1962 issue by Esso (Later Exxon) boasting that each day, they “Supply enough energy to melt 7 million tons of glacier!” Those were the exact words...

The new coalition government in Israel is the most ultra-nationalist, theocratic in that nation’s history. Many of Israel’s friends are deeply concerned about Israel’s future as a Jewish Democratic State living up to the ethical standards enshrined in...