Opinion

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,...

My Turn: Time for words

By RUTH CHARNEY

‘While there is still time for words,” — let’s talk. I don’t recall who said these words, only that they resonate. Words are risky things, after all. Troublemakers. In company, we often censor our words to talk only about safe things, definitely not...

How to run a senior center 

I would like to send a great big “Thank you” to the South County Senior Center. Its director, Jennifer Remillard, and program coordinator, Sue Gorey, went above and beyond in welcoming Kathy Steinem and some of her Greenfield Senior Center Seated...

Questions coverage of former school 

The Recorder is once again blatantly and shamelessly taking sides in its coverage of the apparently endless controversy over the former Heath Elementary School.In your front-page story of Jan. 9, you report that our Selectboard received “roughly 30...

My Turn: Still just kids 

By MADDIE RAYMOND

Sometimes I forget that I’m not a kid anymore. Last April I turned 18, my early spring birthday marking the line that, at least on paper, separates childhood and adulthood. Yet there is more to being an adult than being able to get your ears pierced...

Guest columnist Gene Stamell: The miracle of thumbs

By Gene Stamell

In December, Andrea Ayvazian wrote a lovely column about the miracle of the human body. Her thoughtful piece reminded me of discussions I used to have with several third grade classes (I taught elementary school for over 35 years). I would pose the...

What about the Constitution?

Call me foolish but I just can’t let go of the following fact: If the constitution states clearly that election procedures — rules and regulations — are set by state legislatures, and a handful of attorneys general in a handful of states unilaterally...

Feelings about SoulFest

Maybe SoulFest isn’t appropriate fore the small town of Northfield, but not for the reasons one writer lays out in her letter to the editor “SoulFest not appropriate for Northfield,” Recorder, Jan. 5). Her stated concern is the mental health of the...

Astonished by town officials’ response to mass resignations 

I was astonished to read that all seven members of the Council on Aging in Leyden have resigned after submitting a letter to the Select Board citing continued “harassing” and “bullying” by a local resident (“Citing lack of support, Council on Aging...

Commentary: Climate change efforts won't work if they exclude people with disabilities

By Sébastien Jodoin, Penelope J.S. Stein and Michael Ashley Stein

At the recent United Nations climate negotiations in Egypt, disability activists urged governments to include people with disabilities in their plans to address climate change. In response, the member states adopted an “overarching decision” and a...

Darcy Sweeney: Unmanaged forests critical to mitigating the climate crisis

I couldn’t disagree more with guest columnist Mike Leonard’s diatribe against Gov. Healey’s ambitious goals to preserve the commonwealth’s forested lands, starting with her campaign promise to invoke a logging moratorium in our public forests...

Chaos and extremism in the House

The new Republican House majority is a collection of election deniers, QAnonconspiracists, and political arsonists hellbent on gaining power at the expense of our democracy. They’ll be in control of the House of Representatives for the next two years...

Farmland for food not lights 

There are positive ways to satisfy our needs for renewable energy, food, and forest carbon sequestration.Just as it is counter-productive to attempt to reduce climate change by logging carbon-sequestering forests, in order to build large solar arrays,...

Cult mentality

In Daniel Brown’s My Turn “Yes, Trumpism is a cult mentality,” (Jan. 3), he states that he was in a cult for a decade and a half. He now believes us Trump supporters are in a cult. That’s pretty humorous.You see, cultists see no faults in their cult...

My Turn: City leadership disappointing

By WENDY GOODMAN

I resigned from the Greenfield Human Rights Commission in October, in protest. The behavior of Mayor Roxann Wedegartner and her lack of engagement with the commission (other than to criticize or control) was insulting at best. I could no longer serve...

My Turn: After Singer sang, the curtain came down

By BILL NEWMAN

Rick Singer was, in the government’s words, “the architect of a massive, decades-long scheme to use fraud and bribery to secure the admission of high school students to elite colleges and universities ...” The scheme, known by its FBI code name,...

Congress must better support disabled veterans 

Our disabled veterans are grossly undercompensated. The consequences for all of us could be dire. In FY2023, a totally disabled veteran with no dependents is compensated at the ridiculous rate of $43,463 annually. The National Average Wage Index...

Speaker of the House battle

I am completely ambivalent in my feelings about the speaker fight in Congress. Maybe it will be resolved when this gets printed, but my concerns remain.On the one hand, I would love to see the moderate Democrats make a deal with the moderate...