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By BRETT ALBERT

About 10 years ago, the two major urban centers of central and western Massachusetts decided to engage in new regional industrial policy to spur on their local economies. Worcester and Springfield had been effectively hollowed out by decades of...

By RICHARD MCCARTHY

Sometimes life teaches you things you never wanted to know.As I alluded to in a previous column, I broke my femur, or thigh bone, this past March 25th, when I went down on a patch of ice while bicycling. For those of you who do not know, the femur is...

By JOHANNA NEUMANN

Happy 2024. After my last column, I got feedback from a reader who pointed out that I missed a topic in my round-up of environmental progress in 2023. She mentioned that I had completely failed to mention Amherst voters overwhelmingly approving plans...

By DAVE KING

Another Martin Luther King Jr. Day has come and gone, when legions of politicians trot out MLK’s “I have a dream” speech to remind us we should be striving together in harmony for a world where all peoples can enjoy our country’s prosperity....

By JOHN SHEIRER

Four years ago, my column in this newspaper predicted that Donald Trump would lose the 2020 presidential election. Readers who opposed Trump told me, “I wish I had your optimism,” or “That’s what you said in 2016,” or “His crazies have gotten worse...

By MICHAEL SEWARD

After about 100 years of exclusionary zoning, there was bound to be a reckoning. Antiquated and discriminatory housing policies among the towns of the Pioneer Valley resulted in a severe housing shortage. The housing proposal presented at a recent...

By ERIC COCHRANE

Two years ago, before I moved to Somerville, a neighbor asked my thoughts on development in western Massachusetts. I have pondered the question, and have concluded that mixed-use development, when built densely and with universal design in mind, is a...

By RICHARD S. BOGARTZ

By RICHARD S. BOGARTZ

By JOHN SHEIRER

Nearly 40 years ago, I entered a college classroom as the instructor for the first time. I was a 23-year-old graduate teaching assistant, charged with my very own section of English composition. Twenty-five students silently inspected me as I placed...

By RAZVAN SIBII

Immigration is a complicated issue. It’s difficult to decide which of the millions of people in need of urgent assistance should be welcomed into the country. It’s difficult to figure out what “assimilation” means and to what extent we should ask...

By JOHANNA NEUMANNThinking globally and acting locally has long been a saying in the environmental movement. In the spirit of being grateful for every bit of incremental progress we make to protect our water, our air and our open spaces, here, in...

By MICKEY RATHBUN

A recent headline in the New York Times caught my eye: “Mars Needs Insects.” As the article explained, if we are to create a human-friendly habitat on Mars, we will need to grow food there.Unlike the nutrient-laden soil that covers the earth, the...

By SUSIE MOSHER

The article “Bill seeks to give terminally ill options” published in the Gazette on Oct. 23 gave a slanted report on the public hearing held at the State House on Oct. 20. From reading the article one would be led to believe opponents of the Medical...

By MUSBAH SHAHEEN

‘I feel scared being a Jew,” said my friend as we debriefed the war in the Middle East. As a Muslim who was raised in Syria and was fed from a very young age political anti-Israeli and antisemitic propaganda, I often refrained from commenting on the...

By JONATHAN KLATE

I am a Jew.My father and all of my grandparents emigrated from the pale of settlement in Eastern Europe, as did my wife’s Jewish father. It was difficult to know where they lived exactly and for how long; Ukraine, Moldova, Russia, Hungary, Belarus …...

By ILANA REDSTONE

I haven’t lived in Amherst in many years, but the crisis with the School Committee has drawn me back in.I grew up in Amherst. This was in the 1980s (ARHS class of 1990) so a few things have changed since then, of course. Mr. Saulsberry doesn’t teach...

By RUSS VERNON-JONES

The climate news has been especially brutal recently — both locally and globally. While it’s important to face how bad things are, I think it is wise to also put our attention on good climate news wherever we can find it. Here are some of the local...

By AMANDA ALIX

Dan Winslow’s melodramatic guest column for the Amherst Bulletin and Daily Hampshire Gazette casts Shutesbury as the villain and W.D. Cowls Inc., and Amp (now PureSky) Energy as the victims vis-a-vis the lawsuit filed by Cowls and Amp claiming the...

By KAIRO SERNA

Since the Amherst-Pelham Regional School Committee’s refusal to protect students against homophobic and transphobic attacks on students, along with their lack of transparency and suppression of public dissent, Amherst residents are calling for...

By JEFF LACY

Dan Winslow’s hard swipe at my town [“Wrongly blocking solar in Shutesbury”] was featured prominently as a guest column in both the Recorder (July 21) and the Gazette the next day. He accuses the town of being intolerant of large-scale, ground-mounted...

By COURTNEY MEYER,CAROLYN HOLSTEIN,EMMA DRAGON and DAN REGISH

The future of Hadley’s iconic Russell School building is at stake. Will the town invest in this historic building? Residents resoundingly push for yes.This one-of-a-kind 1894 Italianate structure functioned as Hopkins Academy from 1894 to 1909 and...