“Hey, baby!” Linda Burston, with an illuminating smile and wide eyes, greets every woman who comes through the doors of Women’s Lunch Place. They always know when Linda is in the room; even among the clink clank of dishes being piled high, the scraping of metal fork against ceramic plate, the hum of conversation among dozens of…
Vendor Fred Boykin: Life in Dorchester, life with cancer
This is for all the victims of the world, all the people like me: we were not born with cancer, but it still chose us. You can be young or old, it still picks you. I had lung cancer at first, at the end of 2015. The hospital, Boston Medical Center, wanted to take a…
Holidays and Gray Hair
My birthday flew by, squashed between three holidays—Thanksgiving, Christmas/Chanukah and New Year’s Eve. While time was having its way with me, I had to go to the dermatologist to have various blemishes checked out. The older I get, the more I hate going to the doctor, even though, as my wife Mary Esther says, it’s…
Indigenous People and Homelessness: a Distinct and Growing Reality
Photo by Paul Fleurent Carole Lévesque is a professor at the Institut National de la Recherche Scientifique (INRS) who specialises in urbanization, culture and society. Over the course of two years, she headed a team of six researchers who studied the situation of homeless indigenous people in Montreal and Val-d’Or and wrote a report on…
Labor Pains and Growth in Recovery
Spare Change News is proud to present the second installment of its new monthly feature, “In Their Own Words,” which highlights the work of writers who meet at Rosie’s Place. In late 2014, Rosie’s Place, a community center for Boston’s poor and homeless women, started a memoir workshop. The intention was to have the guests,…
The Doomsday Clock
The Doomsday Clock is calculated by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. It first appeared in 1947 when it evolved into a magazine from a newsletter. The Doomsday Clock symbolizes the urgency of nuclear and other dangers, as determined by the broader scientific community, which is trying to communicate the level of danger to the…
Rising street paper star found dead on the street
Community organizer, activist, and editor-in-chief of the world’s newest street paper Raven Canon was found dead under a highway pavilion in Colorado Springs. On March 4, at 9:30 a.m., a homeless woman was found unresponsive on the streets of Colorado Springs, wrapped against the 29°F cold in a blanket. Raven Canon was at least the…
OUT ON HER OWN: A Story of LGBTQ Youth Homelessness
Photo by Mike DeSocio. Author’s Note: The central character in this story, Liniște, asked that she be referred to by a pseudonym for safety reasons. I met Liniște in September and spent five months following her throughout various parts of her life, closely observing her experiences with homelessness and sexuality. This approach seemed most appropriate…
Goodbye Harvard Square?
Late last week, I found out about a meeting taking place at Cambridge City Hall held by the Cambridge Historical Commission regarding the controversial proposal to gut the buildings that house the Curious George bookstore and Urban Outfitters and essentially turn it into a mall. I looked forward to the meeting with some excitement because…
Paying The Price
About two weeks ago, my chest started bothering me. I couldn’t really describe the feeling; it was like an itching across the inside of my chest. I didn’t know whether it was my heart or my lungs. When I was 11 years, I started smoking Camel non-filters and smoked regularly from then until my last…