INTRO TEXT When Fran Alibozek of Adams learned she had colon cancer three years ago, she didn’t know which was more frightening, the fight she had ahead of her or the bill she’d undoubtedly run up in the process. Alibozek, who was 63 at the time, was working as a bagger at Stop & Shop, […]
B.J. Roche
Posted inUncategorized
Second Chances
Carlos X. Garcia wants to be a radiologist. “At first I wanted to be a nurse, but you have to stick needles into people,” the 18-year-old explains as he presents a PowerPoint “autobiography” as part of a “presentation of learning” ceremony at Holyoke Community College one evening in February. “Then I was going to be […]
Posted inArts and Culture, Uncategorized
The glory days of cub reporting
First Job: A Memoir of Growing Up at WorkBy Rinker BuckPublic Affairs, New York, 396 pages. Several years ago I was at a reunion of journalism alumni at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst when I heard the following: “Heeeey! How ya doing? I haven’t seen you since that double fatal in Winchendon!” This is not a […]
Posted inEducation
Lost in translation
Today is all about the letter Y, announces Kathleen Harvey to the 15 Latino students who make up her kindergarten class. “Y for yo-yo,” she says slowly, pointing to the letter and the accompanying word on a large chart. Kathleen Harvey prompts Robert Abreu, Shelly Toro, and Johanse Silva at the Kelly School in Holyoke. […]
Posted inUncategorized
NotSo Green Acres
Every now and then I’ll be talking to my friend Jack, who works in Boston and lives in Newton, and he’ll say: “So, when are you moving back to civilization?” By “civilization,” of course, he means inside the Route 128 ring, where golf courses and cemeteries count as open space. Where buyers actually pay more […]
Posted inUncategorized
Starr power at the Springfield UnionNews
For a bunch of upstarts taking on the mayor, Springfield resident Karen Powell and her group, the Citizens Action Network (CANE), haven’t done too badly. They had already stopped a needle-exchange program in the city when they found a new cause: Mayor Michael J. Albano’s plan to build a $21.3 million minor-league baseball stadium downtown. […]
Posted inUncategorized
Holyoke teens take control of their neighborhood
It’s a quarter to five on a Friday afternoon and Holyoke Mayor Michael Sullivan is talking on the telephone about the problems facing young people in his city. There’s a lot to talk about: 11 murders in the year leading up to his inauguration–two on the day he took office. The highest teen pregnancy rate […]
Posted inUncategorized
Lorna Burt is on the Case
“This next case is my worst nightmare,” says Hampden County Superior Court probation officer Lorna Burt as she steers her Nissan Pathfinder off the main drag onto a side road of a small Western Massachusetts milltown. “Jack,” who is 32, was convicted in 1990 of a second offense of indecent assault and battery on a […]