Search Results

Keyword search: florence

By BETHANY ROCHON

I am writing in response to the Trump administration’s efforts to dismantle our education system as we know it. Per the National Education Association (NEA), Donald Trump’s proposed education bill includes $4.5 billion in cuts to K-12 schools alone and $12 billion in cuts total to the Department of Education. While these cuts will do far more than reduce the number of mental health providers in schools (which is the very inevitable outcome), as a prior school counselor, that is the focus of my attention in this letter.

I’m writing to express my deep concern about HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy’s recommendation to stop giving Covid vaccines to pregnant women and babies. His policy is not just unkind — it’s dangerous.

By MICKEY RATHBUN

John Smith likes it when people stop outside his house, a lovely Carpenter Gothic on a quiet street in Florence, to peek at his garden through the fence. “I tell them, ‘Come on in and have a look around,’” he said. On June 14, Smith will invite the public to come in and look around his eye-catching garden. It’s one of six local home gardens on this year’s Northampton Garden Tour.

I am writing to add my voice to the chorus of community members who are appalled by the treatment of Evelyn Harris by Smith College. I have known Evelyn as a fellow musician, mentor and a dear friend for over 10 years. Evelyn’s many exceptional gifts are well known. But what is even more remarkable than her amazing gifts is how she has shared them with us for decades, and for very little material reward. To publicly brand this incredibly talented and generous member of our community with the academic conceit of “plagiarism” is both ridiculous and shameful.

Those who drive the streets of Northampton, both residents and non-residents, are totally fed up with the state of the roads throughout the city. I for one frequently drive roads trying to avoid having a tire blown by ever deepening potholes that have remained unfixed for weeks, months and even longer. I thought last year was bad but this year is the pits!

By RUTHERFORD H. PLATT

As a “senior citizen” myself, most of my older friends and mentors are dwindling away. On Tuesday evening, May 27, a longtime role model and friend, Alexander Polikoff, passed away peacefully in Keene, New Hampshire at the age of 98 with his family at his side. Although I saw more of Alex at our monthly lunch and conversation visits over the past three years than previously, I have known and admired him as a brilliant and tenacious civil rights lawyer since my early career as a fledgling environmental lawyer working in downtown Chicago in the late 1960s, near his public interest law firm.

By JOHN PARADIS

President Trump and his MAGA movement don’t own patriotism or the American flag. Both belong to all of us.

Thursday evening a small crowd of mostly senior music fans were waiting for the doors to open at the Parlor Room for singer-songwriter John Gorka. The forecast had said no rain. So, of course it decided to rain. Light, then heavy. Some had brought their umbrellas, many had not. My wife was trying to stay a little bit dry under the scant cover of a tree. A gentleman came walking by, with his umbrella. He paused, then walked over and handed his umbrella to my wife. And then walked away on down the street. Simply donating his umbrella to my wife. After the show, I left his umbrella on the front porch of the Parlor Room, hoping he might walk by and see it. Thank you sir. Your act fit perfectly with Gorka’s music.

By MARIEL E. ADDIS

In 2016, I told a woman I first met in 1987, and married five years later, that I would be transitioning to female. It had been a rocky nine years since I first came out, and, at the time we had been separated for nearly three years. In return, I was told that I would lose far more than I’d ever gain by transitioning to female.

By CAROLYN BROWN

“Tell Her This,” a podcast sharing women’s stories, will have a live show at Bombyx Center for Arts & Equity in Florence on Friday, May 23, at 7 p.m., preceded by a show featuring live stories told by local women at 7 p.m. the day before.

Before attending the March 2025 production of Hadestown at Northampton High, I consulted my classical mythology anthology and read the story of Orpheus and Eurydice. The production exceeded my high expectations. It was excellent. I had so much fun. The ending of the play, however, left me wanting this version: As the couple near the end of the journey from the underworld, Eurydice stubs her foot and involuntarily cries out. Orpheus, on hearing her distress, involuntarily turns around to see if she needs his help. That breaks the oath: his goodness, not jealousy. The moral is we cannot escape our reflexes, no matter how much we’d like to think we can.

This is a reply to the May 3 letter to the editor in which the writer criticized older Democrats [“Demanding student activism while denying them a seat at the table”]. It was unclear to me what upsets him about our activism. He claims that we are denying younger people a seat at the political table. In what way are we doing that? My attitude is that there is room at the table for every activist, for every progressive, for every Democrat. Because we have a lot of work to do and because there is a world of shared sentiment that will only serve us if we work together.

Valley Players’ third “Bard in the Bar” reading will be on Sunday, May 4, from 6 to 8:30 p.m. at Progression Brewing in Northampton.

An Italian friend reminded me recently about the resonance of Trilussa’s poem “The Numbers” in today’s world. Here is an English translation:

The flag has always been displayed in the proper direction, like the flag is looking at you, blue field to the flag’s right. It does not need to be illuminated 24/7, it needs to be lit up at night. I am sure with all the street lights on Cottage Street near the pond the one could put a good light sensor spotlight on one of them to shine on the flag at night.

By NATHANIEL READE

Ah, spring, when we wake from sweet sleep to the mellifluous song of the gas-powered leaf blower. Citizens! Neighbors! Would you like to fight the power, stick it to the oligarchs, and save time, money, and the planet, simply by doing less? It’s easy: just stop working so much on the damned lawn.

As an April 14 Gazette story stated, several members of the Northampton School Committee will be stepping down at the end of their terms, and I wish to thank all the School Committee members for their work. Special education is both a personal and professional passion, so I’m delighted to announce that I’ll be a candidate for Northampton’s Ward 6 School Committee seat.

Occasionally there is an opinion column in the Gazette that, to me, reaches a level of eloquence, thoughtfulness, creativity, honesty, collegiality, resourcefulness, and hope and guidance for a path forward that I must cut it out and hang it in my kitchen, sharing it with anyone who visits. Claudia Lefko’s recent column addressing the issue of what to do with downtown Northampton and the ongoing controversy surrounding it, “Main Street: Place-making or unmaking place?” [Gazette, March 12] is one such column.

By MARIEL E. ADDIS

As a guest columnist, the Gazette grants me one essay per month. In the current, fast-paced, news cycle since Jan. 20, 2025, every time I come up with an essay theme, or even fully write a prospective essay, some new “thing” pops up on my radar that I feel I need to address and I’m back to the drawing-board.

By JOHN PARADIS

On May 9, I will hold a white rose at noon at the intersection of King and Main streets in Northampton.