My Turn: Yes, Trumpism is a cult mentality

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...

Local to Global: Envisioning a world without nuclear weapons

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...

Urges permit rejection for SoulFest in Northfield 

Although Virginia and Howard Hastings detailed compelling and comprehensive logistical reasons about why Northfield is an inappropriate venue to host the massive Christian music festival SoulFest this summer (“My Turn: The Soul of Northfield,” Dec....

French King Highway rezoning would support living wage jobs 

I read in the Recorder that At-Large City Councilor Penny Ricketts had called for reconsideration for her vote on the rezoning of the French King Highway area land that could be supporting real “living wage” manufacturing jobs.The business that wants...

 A Plea For Safe Pedestrian Route From Turners to Greenfield

I almost killed someone with my truck last night. I was coming up the hill between Turners and Greenfield, and just as it curves to the right near the top, where the shoulder is less than a foot wide, and there was a car coming the opposite way. I was...

My Turn: White Christians still taking native children

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...

Pushback: A resolution to abolish home equity theft

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,...

Cellphone pouches are a bad idea

By Eve N. Bogdanove

Facebook is exploding about Superintendent Christine DeBarge’s decision to buy Yondr pouches to control student cellphone use.Here’s what parents are saying: It criminalizes student behavior rather than responding to needs. It show a lack of real...

Who is on our currency and why?

One dollar bill — George Washington (1732-1799).  He was commander of the Colonial Army in the Revolutionary War with England to gain our independence (1775-1783).  Washington was our first President of the United States of America (1789-1797).Two...

Speaking Out with Carrie N. Baker: State law should recognize coercive control is domestic abuse

By Carrie N. Baker

When the Connecticut mother of five Jennifer Dulos left her husband in June of 2017, she sought a restraining order against him. A judge denied her request because she could not show he physically abused her.In May of 2019, as she returned home from...

Post Offices serve as lifeline

It is a great honor to serve Bernardston as your new Postmaster. In my years with the United States Postal Service, I have seen firsthand the role the Postal Service plays connecting neighbors and our community to the nation. Our Post Offices serve as...

My Turn: Correcting the record: Shays Rebellion was no Jan. 6

By DANIEL BULLEN

With the anniversary of the Jan. 6 insurrection, Michael Steele and Miles Taylor published an article on MSNBC that invoked “Shays’ Rebellion” as a historical precursor for the insurrection, but these two events have very little in common, and come...

My Turn: More research needed on industrial solar arrays

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...

My Turn: Ben Franklin repented owning slaves

By CAROLE GARIEPY

I’m spoiled. My husband, Gerry, reads aloud to me every day, a shared time with stimulating topics we can think about and discuss together. He just finished reading “The American Story,” by David Rubenstein, which is about interviews with authors who...

My Turn: Good-bye Columbus and what might have been

Few historical figures have undergone such a radical transformation in recent years as that illustrious Genoese, Christopher Columbus. From being one of the most revered explorers who bravely sailed the ocean blue, he is now condemned as the worst...

My Turn: Time to retire the Northfield Mountain Pumped Hydro Storage Station

By SUSAN OLMSTED

After reading Alicia Barton’s (CEO of FirstLight Power Resources) My Turn column (April 23) promoting the Northfield Mountain Pumped Hydro Storage (NMPHS) Station as “an asset in fight against climate change” and “… the largest clean power producer in...

Opting out of MCAS

Recently Interim Superintendent Houle offered two informational sessions to the public regarding in person learning and during the first of those sessions she stated that parents are not allowed to opt their children out of the MCAS. That is wrong,...

The dangers of cell towers

By DAVID O. CARPENTER

I am a public health physician who has been involved in issues related to electromagnetic fields (EMFs) for several decades. I have served as dean of the School of Public Health at the University at Albany/SUNY. I have edited two books on effects of...

Teacher fails entire class

By DAVID SIANO

This article is the perfect analogy using grades instead of dollars to show what you can expect with the radical Democratic Socialist plans of Biden, Sanders and Harris.An economics professor at a local college made a statement that she had never...

Editorial: A refresher for op-ed submissions

The op-ed page is an important feature of a community newspaper in that it gives readers the opportunity to comment on issues they deem important.Certainly, the Recorder’s readers aren’t at a loss when it comes to opinions.Thank goodness for that.We...