Slavery and Public History

by | Oct 2, 2008 | The Public Humanist

Molasses, sugar, palm leaves, and cotton. Tea, coffee, rum. All of these were staples of eighteenth and nineteenth-century New England life. None of them were produced in New England, and obtaining them involved some practices we would now find morally objectionable,...
Question Reality

Question Reality

by | Oct 2, 2008 | Stage

Interdisciplinary theater artist Djola Branner does not write plays. He creates what he refers to as "collage[s] of movement, text and melody." Branner co-founded the acclaimed Pomo Afro Homos (short for Postmodern African-American homosexuals), a prominent...

Big Box Battle

by | Oct 2, 2008 | News

In Greenfield, a group of citizens is fighting plans by a Connecticut developer to build a massive store and parking lot on a piece of land that's home to several wetlands. The developer has not said which company would rent the store, which would be bigger than...
Library Politics

Library Politics

by | Oct 2, 2008 | News

Springfield Mayor Domenic Sarno says that his preference for buying a new building for the long-missing Mason Square branch library—rather than taking the old site by eminent domain—is untainted by the base concerns that might guide other, lesser...

The Dean of Deregulation

by | Oct 2, 2008 | News

The Big Bailout involves not just numbers but people. One of those people is ex-U.S. senator Phil Gramm (R-Texas). This summer, as home foreclosures soared toward a rate unparalleled since the Great Depression, Gramm said that recession in America was...