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By DEBORAH PASTRICH-KLEMER

By DEBORAH PASTRICH-KLEMER

By RICHARD FEIN

This column is about our growing and unsustainable national debt. Every year our federal government runs a budget deficit. For this fiscal year it is projected to be about $1.9 trillion. To fund that gap our government needs to borrow money by selling bonds. The sum of all the annual borrowing is our national debt. Currently the debt is about $36 trillion. In 2024, Americans paid $882 billion in interest on that debt. Because our government continues to run annual deficits the national debt will continue to grow and so will interest payments. The Congressional Budget Office projects that the national debt will be $52 trillion in 2035 and that interest payments over the next 10 years will total $13.8 trillion. Moody’s and the other two major credit rating firms have already lowered the credit rating of the U.S.

NORTHAMPTON — Bob Cahillane’s lifelong ties to the United States Navy, including a recently-wrapped 15-year stint as the area’s Blue and Gold Officer, may never have happened were it not for the “pissing match” he got into with his dad, the late “Big” Jim Cahillane, then mayor of Northampton.

By ALEXANDER MACDOUGALL

Mayor Gina-Louise Sciarra has appointed Katie Deppen, the city’s current superintendent of engineering in the Department of Public Works, as the next Central Services director.

By CAROLYN BROWN

NORTHAMPTON — The Smith College Botanic Garden is celebrating a rare and short-lived event: its corpse flower is blooming — but only for the weekend, most likely.

By ALEXANDER MACDOUGALL

NORTHAMPTON — Thornes Marketplace is offering a $250 gift card to anybody who can identify several young men who set fire to pride flags hanging from the department store’s awning on Thursday.

By THE REV. ANDREA AYVAZIAN

On May 25, 2025, a crowd gathered at the Sojourner Truth statue in Florence for a moving ceremony to honor six high school graduating seniors with the Sojourner Truth Social Justice Award for their leadership roles in their schools in Hampshire and Hampden counties. The Sojourner Truth Memorial Committee has tended the statue and garnered scholarships funds for 20 years.

By LAURA SPENCER

It didn’t take long in my time volunteering with Grow Food Northampton to be struck by just how many ways they show up for our community. During early morning shifts, the Community Farm staff guided us in harvesting produce like radishes, kale, garlic, and tomatoes that would be sent to local food pantries and cooked into healthy meals. I watched Molly, the education manager, bring school kids into the strawberry patch for a botanical scavenger hunt, and witnessed the children’s delighted faces when they were each allowed to pick one juicy red fruit right off the vine, all of them asking for more. I signed up for free classes about permaculture and soil health and how to tend to our gardens in the time of climate change.

By GARRETT COTE

Last summer, Miranda Wingfield completed the “Triple Crown of Open Water Swimming” – finishing the English Channel, Catalina Channel and 20 Bridges Swim to accomplish the feat.

By ALEXANDER MACDOUGALL

NORTHAMPTON — In a repeat of last year’s outcome, the City Council on Wednesday failed to approve Mayor Gina-Louise Sciarra’s budget for next fiscal year, owing in large part to the council president’s legal inability to cast the deciding vote.

By MEAGAN GONZALEZ

It took me a little while to figure out how to use my voice in this instance. It’s not something I do often. It’s not something I’ve ever done publicly like this before. But when I was an undergraduate student at Smith College, I had a professor who went out of her way to support the start of my career. She did this for me if I promised that I’d use my voice to help another woman the next time I was in a position to do so. I’ve tried to live this way ever since, but now I have met a big chance to honor my promise.

By ALEXANDER MACDOUGALL

NORTHAMPTON — The Northampton Reparations Study Commission will ask the city to extend its operations for an additional year, amid contentious debate among members over whether additional public input from Black community members is needed before submitting recommendations to the City Council.

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.

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.

By GARRETT COTE

After suffering its first regular-season loss in nearly two years, the Belchertown Post 239 Senior American Legion baseball team got back in the win column on Monday evening.

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.

By GRACE CHAI

NORTHAMPTON — A majority of one of the largest remaining unprotected farms in the city is now conserved for agriculture and wildlife habitat, thanks to a unique conservation effort that taps into federal funding.

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.

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.

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.