Columnist Johanna Neumann: Save Massachusetts’ native bees

By JOHANNA NEUMANN

This week marks National Pollinator Week. This annual celebration in support of pollinator health reminds Americans how essential bees are to our environment and our lives, and what action we can take to protect these remarkable winged insects.

Brian Cooper: Groundhog Day on opinion page

Regarding the June 16 guest column response to Gazette columnist JM Sorrell’s recent column on the conflict in Gaza:

Frances Borden: What is a neighborhood?

A recent guest columnist asked your readers “What if this were your neighborhood?” (Gazette, June 13). I can provide an answer to that question because as long as I have lived in Haydenville, I have considered that it is my neighborhood. Am I to understand now that I was wrong — that South Main Street is exclusive to those who live on that one block on a road my family and I walk or drive on everyday?

Guest columnist Jonathan Kahane: Time to enshrine Rose, ‘Shoeless Joe’

By JONATHAN KAHANE

Well all I can say is, “It’s about darn time!” Pete “Charlie Hustle” Rose, and “Shoeless” Joe Jackson have been “reinstated” into Major League Baseball after committing their “heinous” crimes. They are now both eligible to be voted into the Baseball Hall of Fame (HOF). It’s a shame that this didn’t happen while they were alive. Rose was banned, because he was caught betting on MLB games. Jackson was punished for purportedly being part of the “1919 Black Sox Scandal” where eight players were accused of throwing the World Series to the Cincinnati Reds. (They were never found guilty.)

Kevin Whitney: Community made access to the best emergency care in region possible

Recently, nearly 200 donors, legislators and media representatives toured our Emergency Department (ED) at Cooley Dickinson Hospital (“Cooley’s new ‘front door’ on display,” Gazette, June 7). Our long-awaited project, which is being completed in phases, expands the ED by 40%. It features new equipment, more private rooms and a floor plan designed with patients in mind. Earlier this year, we opened a dedicated space to provide a calm, healing environment for those needing mental and behavioral health support. Additional ambulance bays await our region’s EMS teams as they bring patients to our ED. The new addition opens in July and renovations in the existing ED continue through early 2026. Our ED is open throughout the project.

Mandaryn Gerry: Northampton Education Foundation Plant Sale raises over $10K

The Northampton Education Foundation had its 28th Annual Plant Sale on May 10 on the lawn of the Smith Vocational and Agricultural High School. Each year hundreds of plants are donated from backyards across the valley, and volunteers spend the night before the sale getting everything ready. The day brought with it all the weather that spring can muster, and plant lovers came from all over to see what they could add to their gardens. Everyone joined in the countdown to the 9 a.m. start time.

Columnist Tolley M. Jones: Free-ish since 1865

By TOLLEY M. JONES

On Jan. 1, 1863, The Emancipation Proclamation became law in the United States. It declared that “all persons held as slaves … shall be … forever free and the …Government of the United States … will do no act … to repress such persons … in any efforts they may make for their actual freedom.”

Columnist Bill Newman: Signs of the time

By BILL NEWMAN

Last Saturday, “No Kings Day,” saw large demonstrations in Northampton, Easthampton, Greenfield, Springfield, Sunderland, Cummington, Shelburne Falls, Pittsfield, Amherst, Granby, Williamsburg, Ashfield, Orange and Boston. They were among the more than 100 protests in Massachusetts and over 2,100 across the country in cities and towns, big and small. The common denominator? Devotion to resistance and the fervent hope, if not always the firm belief, that we can mitigate, if not totally prevent, the fascist takeover of the United States now in progress.

Bethany Rochon: Proposed gutting of Dept. of Education immoral, destructive

By BETHANY ROCHON

I am writing in response to the Trump administration’s efforts to dismantle our education system as we know it. Per the National Education Association (NEA), Donald Trump’s proposed education bill includes $4.5 billion in cuts to K-12 schools alone and $12 billion in cuts total to the Department of Education. While these cuts will do far more than reduce the number of mental health providers in schools (which is the very inevitable outcome), as a prior school counselor, that is the focus of my attention in this letter.

Cheryl Muzio: Language should be more precise on legislation

I am writing concerning the above-the-fold article titled “Panel not ready on assisted suicide proposal” (Gazette, June 5). The article references the current Massachusetts Bill H.2505, which is entitled An Act Relative To End Of Life Options. A close reading of this bill reveals that it supports medical aid in dying to terminally ill individuals, allowing them to enlist the help of medical professionals in order to end their suffering. Surely, journalists understand the power of words, and the emotional valence of the term assisted suicide brings to mind assisting a despondent, otherwise healthy individual take their own life. In contrast to this, medical aid in dying entails providing compassionate assistance to a terminally ill individual, allowing them to choose to end their suffering, in a well-informed and dignified manner. As the Gazette continues to cover this issue, I would encourage the editors to avoid coined terms and to refer to the proposed legislation as the end of life options bill.

Jim Reis: Behind and speeding backward

Don’t go to Scandinavia (Sweden, Denmark, and Norway) unless you want to be shocked by how advanced and better off they are than us, especially now. We just returned from a trip there. While I know there are big differences between our countries, and that they also have challenges too, we could still learn so much from them. Stockholm — no trash or dog poop anywhere to be seen. A person on our tour got sick and two hours later a doctor came to our hotel and wrote her an antibiotic prescription so she could rejoin the tour a couple days later.

Columnist Sara Weinberger: Trump’s vile tactics against immigrants hurt everyone

By SARA WEINBERGER

Donald Trump and his supporters may call it the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. But for many, particularly immigrants and their allies, the budget reconciliation bill is atrocious, appalling. and abominable. Trump’s master plan to rid this country of all immigrants of color has targeted thousands of documented and undocumented immigrants for detention, with the goal of deportation. ICE has become more aggressive, by surveilling people in unmarked cars, then swooping in to homes, workplaces, and even schools. They kick in doors and smash car windows to gain entrance. They target young people in order to gain access to their parents. Daily arrest quotas for ICE agents have risen from 1,000 to 3,000. Terror-stricken parents are afraid to leave home or send their kids to school. Yet, none of this is enough to satisfy Trump’s thirst for violence against those he has targeted as the enemies of America.

Guest columnist Jonathan P. Levin: Column on Israel, antisemitism ‘dehumanizing’

By JONATHAN P. LEVIN

It is so distressing to me to read JM Sorrell’s column, “Terrorism apologists or useful idiots?” in the June 4 Gazette. I don’t know if I’m more distressed at the content of the column, and its invective, or at the Gazette for publishing it. I hardly know where to start concerning the content of the column. I have no bone to pick with Sorrell’s support for the state of Israel. I do have a bone — many, in truth — to pick regarding her condescension, her denigration, her disdain for people who hold views different from hers regarding the Palestine-Israel horror.

Guest columnist John Berkowitz: Ukraine War — If we don’t face the music, it could blow up in our faces

By JOHN BERKOWITZ

I think it’s urgent that the current negotiations end the war in Ukraine soon, even if Ukraine has to make some territorial concessions and stay out of NATO. If we keep helping Ukraine escalate — such as its recent drone attacks on Russian bases housing nuclear-armed strategic bombers, and last year’s attack on Russia’s early-warning radars that damaged three out of a total of 10 — it will only bring even more suffering and devastation to Ukraine, while risking an unimaginably worse WWIII/nuclear war with Russia.

Guest columnist Joseph Levine: Antisemitism, anti-Zionism and the rights of Palestinians

By JOSEPH LEVINE

The recent murder of two Israeli embassy employees in Washington and the attack on the people attending a vigil for the Israeli captives in Gaza has poured fuel on the fire consuming the movement for Palestinians rights, supposedly justifying the harshest crackdown on protected political speech since the days of McCarthy and the congressional Un-American Activities Committee. The almost universal response to these crimes  – blaming the people who are protesting the unprecedented carnage wrought by the Israeli military in Gaza — highlights several troubling features of the state of debate over Israel/Palestine at this time.

Guest columnist Marietta Pritchard: Talking to Ukraine

By MARIETTA PRITCHARD

We don’t often discuss the war, but one day last week Olesya and I spent a few minutes doing just that. She told me with some pride about the destruction of the bridge to Crimea, which I hadn’t yet heard about. Somehow tons of explosives had been planted there. And this came on the heels of daring drone attacks on Russian air force bases. Many drones were being made by Ukrainians in their homes, she said, using 3-D printers and other easily accessible materials.

Columnist Olin Rose-Bardawil: Calling out a ‘monstrous’ war

By OLIN ROSE-BARDAWIL

Two weeks ago marked 600 days since the war in Gaza began. Six hundred days and nearly 100,000 casualties later, many have woken up to the clear immorality of Israel’s assault on Gaza. However, there are still many Americans who cling to a few talking points that allow them to justify the brutality — talking points which, over 600 days in, seem just as tired and trite as the war itself.

Guest columnist Gerry Shattuck: What if this were your neighborhood?

By GERRY SHATTUCK

On Monday, June 2, at the Williamsburg annual Town Meeting, Article 27: South Main Street Shared Use Path Easements, failed to pass by the required two thirds majority vote. This came as welcome news to South Main Street residents and abutters. The article was written extremely broadly; it specified neither dollar amounts nor spending limits, and it would have granted the Select Board sweeping authority to “acquire … by eminent domain, permanent and temporary easements, on and off South Main Street” as part of a project to build a shared use path through the neighborhood. It authorized the board to “raise and appropriate, transfer from available funds, and/or borrow a sum of money to fund the foregoing project and any and all costs incidental or related thereto …”

Betty Ussach-Schwartz: The war of the titans

It was predicted that there would be a falling out of Donald Trump and Elon Musk. What wasn’t imagined or hypothesized was the extent and viciousness of the war. Almost simultaneous to this feud, but not as prominently reported, is the vicious attack Trump has made upon Leonard Leo. Leo, the architect and leader of the Federalist Society influenced and aided Trump in filling the Supreme Court with hand-picked conservative judges who have enabled and empowered Trump in his quest for exclusive power and riches. But the justices may have a greater allegiance to Leo and their tenure will surpass Trump’s presidential term. This battle will be by surrogates of Leo in the Supreme Court and members of Congress, who fear being challenged by candidates subsidized by Musk. Trump may have met his match finally and may succumb to this attack upon his agenda, his competence and his hold upon the three branches of government. Fending off Musk and Leo may be the greatest onslaught Trump has ever experienced and may be end of the Trumpian era.