Category: Opinion
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Tell Mass. legislators to step up funding for suicide prevention
A field of pinwheels represent suicide victims. Photo: Flickr Creative Commons I was recently asked to address a group of volunteers who wanted to talk to their representatives and senators about ensuring a small increase in the state budget’s line item for statewide suicide prevention in 2018, which is being discussed in the legislature now.…
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Comic addicts and signed book junkies
Photo credit: Wikimedia commons There are people who appear normal in everyday life but who are out there collecting comics, spending hours of their time like dope addicts, working feverishly to complete hard-to-come-by runs of particular issues. For example, #37 of “Swamp Thing” by Alan Moore is the first appearance of John Constantine, who has…
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Eight Dollars a Month: An Idea For Solving Homelessness
Some of the biggest problems we face in Boston are unemployment, city budgeting and understanding where our tax money is being spent. According to the U.S. Department of the Treasury, the national debt equated to $59,143 per person or $159,759 per working taxpayer in March 2016. Having such a high debt ratio to the population,…
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Sound the alarm: HUD will face cuts under Carson
Spare Change News co-founder and columnist James Shearer. File photo For those of you who thought homelessness and poverty couldn’t get any worse, strap in. The new head of Housing and Urban Development Ben Carson barely got his feet warm when the Trump administration revealed what’s in store for those on the bottom of the…
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Remember Them?
As I sit here putting together another column, the city of Boston and the entire state is being hit with our first real winter storm of the season. I can’t help but think of the homeless caught out in it—just this very morning, I saw a video of a group of homeless people and advocates…
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Letter to the Editor Regarding Trump’s Presidency
I was one of the millions of people who did not vote for Donald Trump. In fact, during the inaugural event, I was discomfited as the “historic” crowds of supporters were described, since Trump lost the popular vote by about 3,000,000 votes. Be that as it may; the die is cast. The question is what…
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The Legalization of Marijuana
The legalization of marijuana has brought back many memories. Let me tell you a story about my life in 1967. I was struggling with heroin addiction and had finally sworn off the stuff. But back then, being clean meant just not shooting heroin. Marijuana was a nothing drug. Everyone smoked. When I kicked heroin, my…
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Continuing to try to be the change
A few months ago, I had the opportunity to spend a weekend with a group of women in Upstate New York at an oasis. An oasis of intellectual thought and civil discourse, things I felt were missing from everyday life in this election year. The oasis is called Chautauqua. It’s mission statement declares that “it is…
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Faith Without Works is Dead
I held back the tears because I knew that if I cried, it meant that I didn’t have faith and that things were actually over. I was disgusted. I heard loud chanting and cheering through my dorm walls and it was then that I realized that I was not safe. I knew that going to…
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Bob Dylan Spoke for Me in the Refugee Camp
Photo: Xavier Badosa If you want to change the world, all you need is a guitar, some courage and a voice that could cut the still night air. Bob Dylan’s naked words in songs like “Masters of War” were close to that reality. As they left his lips in 1963 and drifted in the wind pushed by…