Vaccines against COVID-19 produced by Cambridge-based Moderna should start going to shelter guests at Pine Street Inn as early as next week or the first week of January. Pine Street Inn President Lyndia Downie said Massachusetts is one of the few states that is prioritizing shelters for the unhoused in its rollout of a vaccine.…
News
Senior Living in the Days of the Plague
The COVID-19 pandemic has me rethinking assisted housing for seniors. I’m watching the death toll among nursing homes and veteran facilities skyrocket. They are like petri dishes enabling the virus to leap from one human being to the next. I’m 74-years-old and my wife is 72. I’m grateful that we haven’t made the transition to…
“They Were Locked In, We Were Locked Out”: A Story of Lockdown and Homelessness in Harvard Square
It was 22 March 2020. There were about 12 of us living in the shelter. Saturday morning was our last day there. We had no place to go. It would be my first day outside with nothing open, no restrooms, no place to sit and have a hot cup of tea, it really was hard…
Refugees sleeping rough on outskirts of EU
Usually, seeing homeless people is no reason for joy. But in Budapest it is – last year, head of state Viktor Orbán and his right-wing national government passed a law criminalising homeless people for sleeping rough. They are given three warnings and then imprisoned. Thankfully, the law is not enforced everywhere. The criminalisation of homeless…
Shelter guests will begin to receive COVID-19 vaccines in late December, early January
Vaccines against COVID-19 produced by Cambridge-based Moderna should start going to shelter guests at Pine Street Inn as early as next week or the first week of January. Pine Street Inn President Lyndia Downie said Massachusetts is one of the few states that is prioritizing shelters for the unhoused in its rollout of a vaccine.…
Boston to make case for new Long Island bridge to Quincy
The City of Boston is hoping to convey that rebuilding a bridge to Long Island is the best option for accessing and reopening a recovery campus for addicts during a meeting on Tuesday, May 7, in Quincy. The public meeting, being held at the Kennedy Center facility for the Quincy Council on Aging at 7…
Progressives in Congress try to protect homeless, prevent more homelessness
Editor’s Note: For the first time in its nearly 30 year history, Spare Change News if off the streets. While we want our vendors to earn a living, we don’t want them to risk their health to do so. In an effort to provide them with some kind of income while the pandemic rages, we’ve…
Daily Table: An Innovative Approach to Accessing Healthy Food at the Grocery Store
In the years after his 2012 retirement, Doug Rauch began to formulate a plan for a grocery store with healthy food options sold at a reasonable price. Three years later, in 2015, the former president of Trader Joe’s opened Daily Table, a non-profit retail grocery store, in Dorchester. In 2018, a second location opened in…
Arts & Culture
“Remember”
By Al Action, Vendor-Writer Love isn’t overrated. It’s no accident we met. It was a match made in Heaven. Give me a minute of your time. Sit down next to me for a moment. Let’s talk. You think I love you. I think you’re right. You gave me a life I always wanted. A life…
“Remember”
By Al Action, Vendor-Writer Love isn’t overrated. It’s no accident we met. It was a match made in Heaven. Give me a minute of your time. Sit down next to me for a moment. Let’s talk. You think I love you. I think you’re right. You gave me a life I always wanted. A life…
Champion of the Underdog: An Interview With Dolly Parton
“As a writer, I have to leave my heart open,” Dolly Parton begins. “That’s why I have always said I never could harden my heart, even against hurt or anything. Because as a writer, if you harden your heart, you’re not going to feel all that emotion you need to feel, and you won’t be…
‘Friends’ Star Inspired to Action by Friend’s Homelessness
David Schwimmer, former star of “Friends,” turned his artistic talent to telling stories that highlight the struggle of homeless people after discovering that his friend had been living on Skid Row, hiding his homelessness even from those who knew him best. Photo Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons “I had a friend who was homeless for two…
The Business of Fancy Dancing by Sherman Alexie: A Movie Review
“I’ve had sex with one Indian woman, 112 white boys, sixteen Black men, seven Asian men, three dudes of ambiguous ethnic identity, one really homely guy, and zero Native American men.” — Seymour Polatkin, poet. I just finished watching “The Business of Fancy Dancing” again and I feel as if this is one of the…
Columns
Razorblade Tears by S. A. Cosby: A Book Review
This amazing story is about a Black ex-con father, a white racist ex-con father and two families wracked by the pain of two sons, one white and one Black, who get married and have a surrogate mother gift them with a beautiful female child. Ike Randolph was set free from prison fifteen years ago and…
Bizarre Boston: Raising Hell at Harvard
When I think about college students raising hell, I picture kegs of beer, red plastic Solo cups and loud music. Oh, and maybe a beer funnel or two. In my mind, the phrase “raising hell” is just a metaphor for having a wild time. However, maybe it’s not always just a metaphor. For some Harvard…
Uncertainties and Impermanence
My wonderful wife, Mary Esther, and I just returned from a visit with the surgeon who will be operating on her back. It’s much more involved than we thought it would be, and we are meditating every day just to help us cope. We’re trying to keep it in the day, but we can’t help…
LAST WORD: Christina Sukghian Houle
About a month ago, an artist called Christina Sukhgian Houle dropped into the Spare Change News’ headquarters to meet with some of the vendors. Christina has joined forces with the newspaper’s co-founder, James Shearer, with the goal of making a documentary on homelessness in the Boston area. Christina is a relatively recent transplant to Greater…
Razorblade Tears by S. A. Cosby: A Book Review
This amazing story is about a Black ex-con father, a white racist ex-con father and two families wracked by the pain of two sons, one white and one Black, who get married and have a surrogate mother gift them with a beautiful female child. Ike Randolph was set free from prison fifteen years ago and…
“They Were Locked In, We Were Locked Out”: A Story of Lockdown and Homelessness in Harvard Square
It was 22 March 2020. There were about 12 of us living in the shelter. Saturday morning was our last day there. We had no place to go. It would be my first day outside with nothing open, no restrooms, no place to sit and have a hot cup of tea, it really was hard…
The Avoidable Crisis
Stanley Forman: 40 Years After the Soiling of Old Glory
The photo was chilling. Before a crowd of onlookers, a white man appears to be attempting to stab a black man with the tip of a flagpole. “It really showed racism,” said photographer Stanley Forman 40 years after he took the Pulitzer Prize-winning snapshot of an anti-busing protest that had turned violent. “It was whites…