Category: Personal Essays
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Voices From Rosie’s Place: Live Your Dreams, Not Your Circumstances
Spare Change News is proud to present the next installment of “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, as they call the…
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At The Speed of Life
I was late to graduation, just like I was late for everything. Flying down the right-hand lane on South Livingston Avenue, doing close to 90 miles an hour with my 1958 Plymouth Belvedere convertible top down, when I heard a police car hit the wailers and saw the lights in my rear-view mirror. I pulled…
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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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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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Remembering Liam Cunningham
I have a confession to make. When I took over as editor of SCN in 2010, I had no idea what I was getting myself into. I had just graduated from Bunker Hill Community College and I was in WAY over my head. On top of that, I was quickly told we didn’t have the…
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Writing for SCN: A Vendor’s Perspective
The 2008 economic recession cost me my newspaper distributor job at Boston Now and opened up new opportunities for me at Spare Change News. After selling Spare Change News for two weeks, I answered a posting by then-editor Emily Johnson stating that she was looking for someone to write a story on community gardening. I…
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4,000 Miles Later: Discovering vulnerability and truth while running across the country.
People say habits are formed in 21 days. I say lessons are learned in 49. At least, that was the case for me this summer as I ran across the country with a group of 22 young adults raising money and awareness for young adult cancer. The opportunity to run for the Ulman Cancer Fund’s…
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Long Road to Recovery
Drug addiction destroys the “American dream” for many people. According to the National Center for Health Statistics at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in 2014 approximately 25,000 men and women lost their lives due to prescription drug addiction. My mother, Betsy Cartagena, from Roxbury, Massachusetts, lost her chance at the dream when she…
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Ode to Orlando
For the past few days, I’ve been riddled with overwhelming emotions. Hurt, anguish, resentment, anger. The list goes on and on. I had these same emotions during the 9/11 attacks, the Boston Marathon bombing, the attack on Paris and the attack on Brussels. But the attacks in Orlando really hit me deeply because it was…
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Mary McHale, Loving God by Serving Others
Mary McHale retired in 2009 after nearly forty years of volunteering at the Sancta Maria House, an all-women’s homeless shelter founded in the South End in 1972. She is still remembered fondly by many of the women whom she helped over the years. In McHale’s words, “I have friends from my old days that are…