Opinion
My Turn: To look or not to look
By SHERRILL HOGEN
I have been writing and rewriting this letter for a month. It is not time-sensitive, but it is urgent.There are things we — everyone including this writer — don’t want to look at, so we don’t. I don’t want to acknowledge how very close we are to a...
My Turn: Student debt — It doesn’t have to be this way
By IAN RHODEWALT
In my household of two, together we hold $132,829.70 in student debt. On a bitter cold day in early March on the week the Supreme Court was hearing oral arguments, at a student debt cancellation rally, 25 of us stood on the steps of the federal court...
My Turn: Investment in water is an investment in our communities
By JOSH SCHIMMEL
With the debate and passing of many public fiscal year budgets, it is a good time to reflect on what these budgets support and the values they reflect. As we do so, consider what could be more central to our quality of life, public health, economy,...
My Turn: Using parking spaces for outdoor dining is good for business and the city
By BETH DIAMOND, TIM DOLAN, BRYAN DOLAN, and DAN KHAN
We, the owners of Ice Cream Alley, would like to ask Mayor Roxann Wedegartner to reinstate outdoor dining in parking spaces in downtown Greenfield. As a business, we’ve made it our mission to make Main Street more beautiful, welcoming, vibrant, and...
Time to negotiate an end to war in Ukraine
I agree with the June 29 opinion column “Stop double standard; tell truth about Ukraine.” [Recorder, June 9]. I really worry — not so much for myself as for my children and grandchildren — that if we don’t, we’ll sleepwalk toward the ever-increasing...
Guns, fireworks and hypocrisy
So after reading several reminders about fireworks being illegal in Massachusetts and the potential dangers they possess, it made me think. Imagine that, you cannot possess a single pack of firecrackers but you an own as many guns as you want. Let...
Trump could be key to cease-fire in Ukraine
I read with interest Prof. Pat Hynes’ July 3 column advocating a negotiated peace between Russia and the Ukraine [“Negotiate for peace in Ukraine”]. It made a lot of sense and I only wish she was our ambassador to the United Nations. Prof. Hynes is...
My Turn: Quock Walker’s stand in 1783 deserves to be celebrated as Emancipation Day
By SHARON TRACY
Quock Walker, a determined and persistent self-emancipated western Mass. slave from Barre, took his case to the state’s highest court 240 years ago. On July 8, 1783, the chief justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court declared that “the idea...
My Turn: Half a loaf in the climate crisis? Healey initiative hurts forests
By DON OGDEN
Almost all those who study or seriously think about the climate crisis agree that it is the existential threat of our time. Many don’t think about it at all for that very reason. Such an overwhelming threat calls for an overwhelming response if future...
My Turn: Agricultural checkoff reform needs support from Sen. Markey
By MATT L. BARRON
One of the major fights in the coming 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...
Affirmative Action decision a heavy blow
Though I am a white woman of a “certain age,” I took/take the Supreme Court’s decision on affirmative action as a blow to the head and heart.Growing up in a mostly all white community in Fairfield County, Connecticut and attending a mostly all-white...
My Turn: Celebrating all the colors of independence today
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...
My Turn: Sharing some thoughts on the Fourth of July
By DANIEL A. BROWN
I’ve always enjoyed the Fourth of July, perhaps the most joyous holiday in the American spectrum. The day invokes memories of hot dogs and ice cream cones, kids riding bicycles festooned with American flags and, of course, fireworks.Greenfield has...
Headline didn’t convey ‘truth of the matter’
I have been through a few transformations in my life. In the biblical sense and in the way the word is commonly used, a transformation means that a person or a situation has improved in a significant way. When we want to convey that something has...
Retirees bedrock of community health care
I recently had the honor of attending a retirement luncheon for two of the amazing staff at the Community Health Center of Franklin County. The health center plays a critical role in our community, but we shouldn’t forget that the health center is the...
Columnist Daniel Cantor Yalowitz: Betwixt and Between — Living in liminality
By DANIEL CANTOR YALOWITZ
Liminality is a place when one feels they are between two (or more) states. Essentially, it’s an experience of not knowing precisely where we are or what is happening as we move from one way of seeing/being/doing to another.It is somewhat like the...
Local to Global: Negotiate for peace in Ukraine
A sign hung in a Greenfield storefront window: “Negotiate for Peace in Ukraine” — the most direct of the many “Peace,” “and singular “Make Tea Not War;” “Food For All, Not War; “Books Not War;” “Brew Beer Not War;” “Solar Not War;” “Shoes Not War;”...
As I See It: What if we hadn’t won independence?
By JON HUER
What better day is there than our Independence Day to rethink the meaning of our nation’s independence?So, let’s start rethinking: What if our Founders had not won our independence from England? We can wonder and speculate only because, if we had not...
My Turn: FirstLight sweeping public comment aside
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...
My Turn: The reckoning for those who refuse to see
By PAUL GUIMOND
When will MAGA supporters accept the fact that Donald J. Trump is a clear and present danger to the nation? MAGA followers have two choices: embrace reality or chase your conspiratorial tails “till kingdom come.”To date, no matter what deplorable fact...
Your Daily Puzzles
An approachable redesign to a classic. Explore our "hints."
A quick daily flip. Finally, someone cracked the code on digital jigsaw puzzles.
Chess but with chaos: Every day is a unique, wacky board.
Word search but as a strategy game. Clearing the board feels really good.
Align the letters in just the right way to spell a word. And then more words.