Rolf Parker
Promotion of harm
Diane Eickhoff, the author of Revolutionary Heart: The Life of Clarina Nichols and the Pioneering Crusade for Women's Rights, took exception to the historical column I wrote about Clarina Howard Nichols. Her recent Counterpoint leads readers into some inaccuracies that I feel are important to address.
Eickhoff's response gives the incorrect impression that Nichols' attitudes toward indigenous people have been fully examined and that she has universally been found to be benign by historians. As partial evidence of Nichols' lack of bigotry, Eickhoff points out Nichols' son's marriage to a Wyandotte woman.
Hatred from a hero
Clarina Howard Nichols was a groundbreaking 19th-century newspaper editor in Brattleboro, known for her advocacy for the abolitionist movement. But what are we to make of her publishing hateful articles advocating the genocide of Native Americans?
When I was 7 years old, two things frightened me about living in our small town in Connecticut: the brutal murder of Barbara Gibbons, and the wrongful conviction of her son, Peter Riley. I heard my father, the managing editor of the Lakeville Journal (which fought for Riley's freedom),
Heirloom peas and colorful stories from local lore
Let’s have some fun exploring the connections to our past in this place we call home
There is, practically speaking, an infinite number of interesting stories buried in the pages of our region's old newspapers. There is a myth, repeated in the book Life Along the Connecticut River (published in Brattleboro in 1939), that when the first Europeans came to the river, the water was...
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Avenues of access to vapes for teens
One other thing to note, perhaps, is that there are two entryways of these products into our schools. One is via online sales that are not regulated,, but the other way is that high school students who are 18 purchase them stores, and sell them and give them to classmates. Unregulated online sales are a problem, but only part of the problem.
Flash fiction can be soulful, dreamy, and poignant as well as pithy
As a board member of Write Action, I was of course grateful that the Commons published information about our annual Writing Contest. The article gave links to our site (www.writeaction.org) for those who might want to submit an entry, and shared other important details, including the theme (hope) and that the stories are to be no more 820 words long. However, there was one small - but, to my mind, vital - correction that needs to be made. The article...