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By TERRENCE MCCARTHY

I just bought Tracy Kidder’s new book “Rough Sleepers.” The title refers to people.who are experiencing homelessness in the state’s capital city, Boston. Kidder’s focus is on Boston physician Jim O’Connell’s mission to help that city’s legions of...

By CHRIS MATERA

Can we try to be honest with ourselves? Most scientists say we currently live in the middle of growing climate and biodiversity calamities.Massachusetts has an excellent opportunity to help mitigate these existential threats by ending the senseless...

By MUSBAH SHAHEEN

‘I feel scared being a Jew,” said my friend as we debriefed the war in the Middle East. As a Muslim who was raised in Syria and was fed from a very young age political anti-Israeli and antisemitic propaganda, I often refrained from commenting on the...

“To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.” — Ralph Waldo EmersonThe person I’m writing about, who is very close to me, has read this and given permission to publish it.I’ll call him...

By BARRY ROTH

Editor’s note: The following was submitted to the U.S. State Department by Rep. Jim McGovern at the author’s request, on Dec. 21, 2014. Nothing came of it. At the time of this writing December 21, 2014 (the winter solstice) things appear very dark and...

By JOSEPH SILVERMAN

A recent article reported on a climate science expert who resigned from the Hadley Climate Change Committee after she responded to challenges from committee members with an emotional outburst that included profanity [“Climate panel member quits,”...

By RICHARD FEIN

In four previous columns I have written about my love for my Jewish religion and for the State of Israel. It is because of that love that I am appalled by the Netanyahu government’s attempt to undermine that nation’s democracy and for its occupation...

By ELIZABETH VOLKMANN

Now that our first frost has brought our sweet autumn weather to an end, the colorful leaves that delivered such joy have lost their grasp and fluttered to the ground. Browned, dried and litter-like, they invite our immediate impulse to mow, mulch,...

By SUSAN WOZNIAK

I was surprised by the statement that typefaces decorated with serifs are easier to read.Surprised because a typeface with serifs can look crowded. They can also look out of date. Fans of serifs might easily say, “But, serifs are a tradition!” I might...

By MARISA LABOZZETTA

I grew up in a predominantly working-class Italian American neighborhood in Brooklyn.My father, the sole college graduate, was an exception who worked his way through school laboring in the construction world along with the rest of his family by day...

By CARRIE N. BAKER and MAX FALLON-GOODWIN

‘They stripped me down, they cut my hair off, they poured the liquid in my hair and told me to go to the showers,” testified 72-year-old Dora Brought Plenty about when she first entered the Indian boarding school where she spent her childhood...

By JOHN PARADIS

Last week, I watched a 1-pound eastern gray squirrel roll a 10-pound pumpkin across our yard to the edge of our woods.Then, in a matter of minutes, the rodent gnawed off the stem and chewed a hole. It continued to bore inside, eventually fitting its...

By WILLIAM LAMBERS

It was Thanksgiving in 1963 when a group of 25 people in Plymouth, Massachusetts had an idea: Let’s skip Thanksgiving dinner. These men and women, in the town where America’s first Thanksgiving was held by the Pilgrims, decided to fast at Plymouth’s...

By JIM CAHILLANE

Editor’s note: This column was penned by the late Gazette columnist Jim Cahillane and was first published in the Gazette on Nov. 17, 1993, six days before the 30th anniversary of John F. Kennedy’s assassination.Recently while rooting around in the...

By IAN RHODEWALT

My first union job, and my first strike for cost of living increases, was as a teacher in Ramallah in the occupied West Bank. Several weeks ago, trade unions in Palestine put out an urgent call of solidarity to unions around the world on on Oct. 16 to...

By RUTH LEAHEY

On Nov. 9, the Whately Grange presented a Quilt of Valor and many Patriots Awards to local veterans from Hatfield, Williamsburg, Buckland and other area towns.The handmade Quilt of Valor quilt was presented to retired U.S. Air Force Col. Marcus J....

By RAZVAN SIBII

No. The border isn’t open. Not even close. It’s is full of walls and fences, sensors and cameras, patrol cars and helicopters, rivers and mountains. And running this gauntlet is extremely dangerous business that often costs desperate border-crossers...

By SARA WEINBERGER

Tuesday morning, I’m driving to the Ashley Reservoir in Holyoke to meet a friend for a morning walk. The radio is tuned to NPR. A news brief reports two back-to-back headlines: Officials at Gaza’s Al-Shifa Hospital, without power to operate incubators...

By JONATHAN KLATE

I am a Jew.My father and all of my grandparents emigrated from the pale of settlement in Eastern Europe, as did my wife’s Jewish father. It was difficult to know where they lived exactly and for how long; Ukraine, Moldova, Russia, Hungary, Belarus …...

By REV. ANDREA AYVAZIAN

I have been writing monthly columns for the Gazette since 2009. Often, in November, I would write how painful I find it that the story of Thanksgiving has been misinterpreted, white-washed, and taught incorrectly in schools nationwide.I also have...