In this edition: Pedestrian safety in Great Barrington (including crosswalk lights with a mind of their own), more details of what ICE is buying from Massachusetts companies, and yes, that Donna Summer song.
A high-profile tool used in federal immigration enforcement is manufactured in Pittsfield, Massachusetts—in the heart of deep blue Berkshire County. Few seem eager to talk about it.
A seventy-year-old man is in critical condition after being struck at a Route 7 crosswalk where pedestrian risks—particularly for elderly residents living nearby—have long been known. Upgrades have been deferred for years.
In this newsletter: Updates on a western Massachusetts hospital system’s data breach; a water company whose problems have outlived generations of regulators; public-records requests aging in place; and a look back at rogue-nation-identification tips first published on Reason Gone Mad in 2006.
A high-profile tool used in federal immigration enforcement is manufactured in Pittsfield, Massachusetts—in the heart of deep blue Berkshire County. Few seem eager to talk about it.
Even as it acknowledged a decade of improper access to patient data by a “rogue employee,” the largest employer in Berkshire County—and provider of health care to most residents—claimed a full audit would be an “undue burden.”
Concerned about PCB exposure and cancer, in January 2021, members of the Pittsfield City Council asked the Massachusetts Department of Public Health for an updated cancer-incidence study. After more than four years, they're still waiting. But when results are finally released, will they even matter?
With conspiracy-minded leadership installed at the F.B.I., and federal prosecutors now broadly applying the president’s controversial pardon, will a still-unidentified bomber escape justice?
With government transparency and press freedom under attack in Washington, a timely look at a little-known Great Barrington story from the nineteen thirties.
As plans for a PCB landfill in Lee, Massachusetts reach a critical stage, a group of Berkshire County residents rallied in Boston—near the headquarters of General Electric, the company responsible for dumping PCBs into the Housatonic River.
Organizations that protect journalists here and abroad are concerned about Trump's attacks on the press as he prepares to take office again. Labeling reporters "the enemy of the people" also recalls specific threats made against Massachusetts journalists in 2018.
With help from a trio of interior designers, and funding from the nonprofit Friends of Great Barrington Libraries, the downtown library's historic reading room gets a worthy overhaul.
“No, Amazon Prime Day is not a religious holiday. It’s an annual sales event created by Amazon for its Prime members. While it’s become a major shopping event,
Now ninety years old, Ralph Nader discusses his American Museum of Tort Law, the power of organized citizens to make a difference, and lessons he learned growing up in a small, working-class town a stone’s throw from the Berkshires.