Opinion
The dangers of not voting
Although I sympathize with those who yearn for open primaries and agree that we need nationwide standards for federal elections, I would caution the letter writer who advocated not voting in the hope that the system would collapse to be careful what...
Student enrollment and population
It is a mistake to connect the decline in population to the decline in enrollment at the Greenfield Public Schools as School Committee Chairwoman Amy Proietti did in the front page article in Tuesday’s Recorder. As a 13-year veteran teacher of GPS, I...
What’s going on in Leyden?
What is really going on in Leyden. My only source of information is the Greenfield Recorder. It has been reported that a Selectman, police chief, police captain, town clerk and now seven members of the Council on Aging committee all have resigned. Any...
My Turn: Immigration myths: Part 1 — The ‘brokenness’ of the system
By Razvan Sibii
For more than two years now, my MO for this column has been this: I pick a topic related to incarceration or immigration that I think is important and interesting, I research it, I interview experts and people affected by the issue, and then I write...
Pushback: The Assessors Puzzle Box
By AL NORMAN
Ellie Mandell and her husband moved from Watertown to Greenfield in 2013. “I have environmental illness. Over time it became clear that our 1920s home in Watertown was making me ill,” she explains. “One of the reasons we chose Greenfield was that we...
Voting and U.S. democracy
Further to Judith’s Truesdale’s column “Election Reform Needed,” (Recorder, Jan. 13), whether or not you believe the last election was “stolen,” the fact remains that this foundation of democracy is not just rusty it is distorted to the point of...
Topsy-turvy way of doing business
I was struck by the irony of two headlines in the Recorder’s Jan. 13 edition: one entitled “Upward Bound program folding,” and the other “ServiceNet health work gets huge boost.” So, on the one hand, a program that has been proven to help...
My Turn: Guantanamo must be dismantled and not forgotten
By SHERRILL HOGEN
Thirty men have died since they were cleared and released from Guantanamo prison. What did they die of? Where were they? Does anyone know? Did we here in the U.S. care? Weren’t they “the worst of the worst” who plotted 9/11?Our government, through...
My Turn: In the fight against logging, conspiracy takes the (profitable) reins
By KATE LINDROOS CONLIN
The Massachusetts-based Partnership for Policy Integrity has been a vocal opponent of wood harvesting on public lands. They believe that ceasing to harvest wood would “expand our natural forests’ ability to store carbon.” This, of course, assumes that...
My Turn: A story of death with dignity
By ELLEN S. DICKINSON
On Dec. 27, 2021, my cousin Peg took death-with-dignity in New Mexico after a 7-year struggle with ovarian cancer. Peg’s story illustrates how important it is to have assisted dying legislation available.Because she and I grew up and settled almost a...
My Turn: What I learned about the Greenfield Human Rights Commission
By ROBERT KUBACKI
The harsh tone of Opinion Page letters and their vilification of Mayor Roxann Wedegartner and her decision not to re-appoint Greenfield Human Rights Commission (GHRC) Commissioner, Daniel Cantor Yalowitz, to another three-year term compelled me to...
On Martin Luther King Jr. Day, write for social justice
By WILLIAM LAMBERS
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. believed in writing letters. Dr. King wrote frequently, including the famous Letter from Birmingham Jail in which he encouraged activism for human rights stating, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”Martin...
As I See It: To ‘Be British,’ to ‘Be American’
By JON HUER
In the news media coverage of the death of Queen Elizabeth of England, we learned something about being “British,” as certain behavior was called “very British” and certain others “not very British.” What’s being “British?”The most historically famous...
Connecting the Dots: Vertical vs. Horizontal
By JOHN BOS
“You are intelligent,” he said. “That’s the newer of the two characteristics, and the one you might have put to work to save yourselves. You are potentially one of the most intelligent species we’ve found, though your focus is different from...
Shocked by column on plastics
I was shocked to read the column, Earthtalk, in the Greenfield Recorder on Jan. 9. In a full column, from the top to the bottom of the page, Earthtalk was supposed to answer the question “Why isn’t the government limiting plastics?”At no place in the...
Senior Center impressions
I have been wanting to write a letter about our Senior Center aka Council on Aging, for some time, but Marilyn Pelvis’ Jan. 12 letter prompted one. I’m always reading in your paper about all the activities at Senior Centers around me (Bernardston,...
My Turn: MLK event explores racism in the health care industry
By KIM AUDETTE, SUSAN TRIOLO, and AARON FALBEL
“Healthcare in America is not a right but a commodity,” says Jeneen Interlandi, a contributor to “The 1619 Project,” a book edited by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones. Interlandi believes the system is designed to treat those with...
My Turn: Election reform needed
By JUDITH TRUESDELL
The movie “Spotlight” showed how The Boston Globe uncovered and published the sex-abuse scandal in the Catholic church. The Spotlight team of investigative reporters, having found six priests who had abused children and been covered up by the church,...
My Turn: Instead of a pavilion, give UMass service works bonuses
By Robin Jaffin
While I was walking with my dog around the property and trails that surround the Arthur F. Kinney Center for Renaissance Studies building on the UMass campus, I noticed a Bobcat tractor ripping out the perennial beds behind the former Dakin home. I...
My Turn: Solar, trees and climate change
By MICHAEL SEWARD
Last month, the 2022 Massachusetts Climate Change Assessment was released. Among the most urgent impacts of climate change to the commonwealth stated in the report was forest health degradation, caused by warming temperatures, increased precipitation,...
