My Turn: ‘Protect and restore nature’

By FRIENDS OF CONTE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE

This summer’s epic flooding up and down the Connecticut River watershed, from the hillsides of Vermont to the low-lying farmland and neighborhoods in Massachusetts and Connecticut, is simply astonishing. Gurgling little brooks, once just a few inches...

My Turn: Thanksgiving in the sweet summertime

By JUDY WAGNER

Ah, Thanksgiving! It’s my favorite holiday of all, even though in recent years we have rarely celebrated with family. Kid schedules, work responsibilities, travel hassles, limited vacation and other challenges (like pandemics) lead us to plan other...

Columnist Daniel Cantor Yalowitz: Celebrating us and our new library

By DANIEL CANTOR YALOWITZ

“Libraries are … a place to gather that focuses its role on the social infrastructure which enables libraries to help fight inequality, polarization, and the decline of civic life…” — Eric Klinenberg, Palaces for the People (2018)“Libraries are … a...

Allen Woods: Apology for misleading words

I want to apologize for the phrasing used in my “The World Keeps Turning” column of July 22 [“Footing the bill for college”]. As several readers have pointed out, I left the impression that I didn’t value young people learning a trade and that...

Jeremy Williams: Making comparisons — The cost of student loans vs. military

If you’re the type of person who has a little jealousy towards student loan forgiveness, here’s a better way to look at it. Since this country is in a really bad way right now, wouldn’t you think if you took some stress off of some of people it would...

John Lund: Thoughts on cartooning

Because I was devastated about a comic strip that I really liked that only ran one year back in the mid-1980s, comic strip related memories from much of the 1980s and through the 1990s are painfully bad for me, with the 2000s at least only somewhat...

Walt Gorman: FirstLight protesters should have been arrested

The protesters who call themselves Connecticut River Defenders are a menace. These activists should’ve been arrested for blocking tour buses from entering the Northfield Mountain Pumped Storage Station [“Protesters temporarily block tour bus,”...

Sia Stewart: Responding to climate change must be a top priority

Phil Korman, Claire Morenon and Margaret Christie spell out very clearly the losses farmers are sustaining from this summer’s extreme weather [“Farms, floods, and climate change,” Recorder, July 25]. Amid the details of the heartbreaking damage and...

As I See It: Oppenheimer and me — Tales of fame and shame

By JON HUER

Today (July 20) we went to see “Oppenheimer,” a movie about a quantum physicist who built atomic bombs. And, surprisingly, I discovered intriguing facts and possibilities that connected the two of us — yes, Oppenheimer and me — the movie’s famous hero...

Judith Maloney: City doesn’t need another grocery

I would like to comment on having another grocery market in Greenfield. I have read all the reasons that the Aldi’s site has problems.For me and my family, it is the idea of yet another grocery, and especially a chain, in this town.I have lived in...

Terry Brown Huer: Capitalism’s golden calf

Judith Truesdell’s rousing but restrained article on capitalism (“What’s wrong with capitalism,” Recorder, June 24) was accompanied by the photo of the Wall Street bull, the symbol of capitalist wealth. It is the same golden calf that the Israelites...

Danielle Miller: Supports new Christian school

I think it’s great that Providence Christian Academy plans to “operate out of the former Greenfield Alliance Church at 385 Chapman St.” [Recorder, July 19]. And it should come as no surprise that a School Committee member is bothered by “the...

My Turn: No security for all — We got exactly the ‘peace’ Kennedy rejected

By DR. E MARTIN SCHOTZ

By DR. E MARTIN SCHOTZ“And is not peace, in the last analysis, basically a matter of human rights — the right to live out our lives without fear of devastation — the right to breathe air as nature provided it — the right of future generations to a...

My Turn: Mental health support network imperfect but crucial

By STEPHEN DITMORE

Columnist Jon Huer has apparently never accompanied a loved one in psychological crisis to an emergency room only to see them locked up involuntarily there for lack of a more appropriate walk-in crisis stabilization center. Perhaps he has also never...

My Turn: Revive citizens’ interest in workings of the court

By SUSAN WOZNIAK

The public lecture has long been the source of informal, social opportunities and continuing education. There were several such movements in America during the 19th century that opened exploration, science, arts and politics to ordinary people.In the...

Column on student debt left omissions

In his column “High court sometimes makes right decisions” [Recorder, July 24], Richard Fein cites the defeat of the Biden administration’s plan for student debt relief as a reasoned decision of the current Supreme Court. Fein states that “under the...

Disgusted by activists, time to innovate

I find it disgusting and simple-minded when after a weather event, activists in the valley use it to promote their climate agenda. It’s too cold, too hot, there’s too much rain, not enough rain, the drone goes on and on.Personally. I find it...

You don’t need a student loan to succeed in life

Everyone is entitled to their opinions and in reference to the column “Footing the bill for college” [Recorder, July 22], I respectfully disagree with its points. I do not have a college degree and never had any student loans, but was successful in...

Guest columnist William Lambers: Eisenhower’s gift to Korea after the armistice

Editor’s note: Today marks the 70th anniversary of the armistice ending the Korean War.It was on the night of July 26, 1953 when President Dwight Eisenhower announced to the nation the armistice ending the fighting of the Korean War. The armistice...

My Turn: ‘Oppenheimer’ sets stage for deep debate on AI science

By ANDREA POCAR

As a nuclear physicist, I was kindly invited by Isaac J. Mass to the Greenfield Garden Cinemas to the preview of the film “Oppenheimer,” by Christopher Nolan, an intricate depiction of the rise and fall of American physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, who...