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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...

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,...

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,...

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...

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...

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...

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,...

By ALLEN WOODS

It’s always dangerous for me to watch TV since I am especially susceptible to infectious earworms that repeat a musical chorus or catch-phrase long after the commercial has ended. (I thought “earworm” was a humorous term, but like everything else...

By J.M. Sorrell

Humans have a tremendous capacity to deny and ridicule reality. Wisdom comes from seeing things as they are whereas foolishness rules when we engage in willful ignorance. Our fears or arrogance regarding tough truths are counter to evolution; yet we...

By JUDY WAGNER

The first measurable snow of this winter gently and persistently covered the landscape in a soft blanket of white for two days. Trees were flocked and decorated. Grasses were smoothed; hardly any drifts marked the surfaces. It was a peaceful scene,...

By JOANNA BUONICONTI

As we enter into this fresh new year, I cannot help but be in a deeply reflective state as I find myself pondering what the year 2022 brought into my life — the good along with the bad. It is a tradition I adopted years ago, but recently, I have begun...

By SUSAN WRIGHT and BERHARD PORADA

We are writing to express our opposition to the permit requested by the D.L. Moody Center for the SoulFest 2023 concert. We are opposed to this event taking place in our community primarily because of the size of the proposed event, the lack of...

By MIKE LEONARD

During her campaign, Maura Healey said she had a “forest management plan” but it had nothing to do with forest management. Instead, her plan is to undermine what’s left of the forestry sector here in Massachusetts which will accelerate the decline of...

By DANIEL A. BROWN

Donald J. Trump exhibits behavior that were your teenage children doing the same, you would ground them for a decade. Any women with a husband who delights in daily lies, insults and cruelty would divorce him in a heartbeat. So how then does Trump get...

By H. PATRICIA HYNES

January 22 marks the second anniversary of the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, a global lifeboat supported by 70% of the world’s countries. Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of Energy’s 2023 budget request for nuclear weapons’ upgrade is...

On Nov. 9, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a case challenging the constitutionality of the 1978 Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA), which gives a preference for Native American people to foster and adopt Native American children. The lead...

By AL NORMAN

Tonight, the Greenfield City Council may take the first step towards ending an unconstitutional state law that has come to be known as “home equity theft.”Massachusetts is one of only 13 states that allows home equity theft. In Alabama, Arizona,...

By DEVLIN SELMAN

Not all industrial solar arrays are a “sunny” great thing. Large solar companies such as Nexamp offer “too good to be true” incentives for landowners to lease their land and build a solar “farm” to capture the sun’s energy so they can do “good!” We...

Our most recent large weather event created different conditions depending on exactly where you happen to live. Some got rain, some got sleet and a few folks who lived in the highest elevations may even have had some snow. For me, the storm brought an...