Category: Last Word
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LAST WORD: Mark G.
Selling Spare Change News provides an obvious financial reward for the newspaper’s homeless, formerly homeless or financially strained vendors. But for some, the reward has an extra therapeutic dimension, which proves beneficial in their transition from the streets, as the story of this week’s profiled vendor, Mark G., makes clear. Anyone who’s experienced addiction to…
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LAST WORD: Tommy D.
Tommy D. has fantastically blue eyes. Outside the Spare Change News headquarters, in the bright sunshine, it’s a little hard to tell exactly whether they’re blue, green or a mixture of both. When I mention how amazing they are, he replies jokingly that it must be something to do with his mixed Cuban/Italian ancestry. The…
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LAST WORD: Joe M.
One of Joe M.’s earliest memories is of jumping into bed at night and his mother saying, “Quiet, I’m praying.” Joe always respected his mother. Telling me about her now, he laughs at the little quirks in her character—for instance, the fact that she would always make Joe and his sisters go to church on…
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LAST WORD: SCN vendor Jon Denning
If you’ve ever passed through Harvard Square on a national holiday, you may have noticed a Spare Change News vendor in his early 20s carrying a holiday-inspired, cardboard sign. That’s Jon Denning. When we posted a picture of Denning with his last sign on the Spare Change News Facebook page—a message inspired by Martin Luther…
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LAST WORD: Algia Benjamin
Alabama in the early 1960s wasn’t the easiest place for an African-American woman to raise 10 children, but Algia Benjamin’s mother did just that—until they left for Boston in 1966. Growing up during the Civil Rights movement when segregation was still in place, Benjamin remembers his mother being so afraid that she sometimes felt reluctant…