Antigone in Boston

I was a Creon until I realized that it put me against Antigone. Now I’m not so sure. Last week, listening to public radio, I heard about the protests against the burial of Tamerlan Tsarnaev. I nodded in agreement as various voices denounced the alleged Boston...
Stagestruck: Vincent Dowling, 1929-2013

Stagestruck: Vincent Dowling, 1929-2013

When I first met Vincent Dowling in 1990, the year he founded the Miniature Theatre of Chester, he regaled me with tales of his early life as an itinerant actor, doing “fit-ups”—one-night stands on makeshift stages—in small towns all over his...

Reinventing Money

The American idiom “Don’t take any wooden nickels!” predates the 1930s, but that era’s bank crises did lead to the actual use of wooden currency. When local banks failed or were inaccessible, some merchants and towns issued wooden money as a...

News Briefs

Springfield Casino Plan Now Goes Before the Voters It was touch and go for awhile, but the Springfield City Council has signed off on an agreement with MGM to develop a casino in the city’s South End. The proposal will now go before residents, who will vote on...

From Our Readers

Pledged to Death The sub-headline in Maureen Turner’s piece, “A Report Finds the Warren/Brown ‘People’s Pledge’ Worked,” (May 14) was incomplete. It should have continued, “…for Elizabeth Warren.” I’ll bet...