Do we really need to arm the Statue of Liberty? It’s no secret that there is an immigration crisis in this country. Since Biden became President, more than three million migrants have crossed the border, and an estimated 1.7 million more have snuck in or overstayed their visas. The influx is now a problem for …
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Healey’s State-of-the-State – a gift of optimism
Governor Maura Healey's report January 17th on the state of the Commonwealth was nearly an hour of celebration: what her new administration has accomplished, what challenges remain, how she intends to address each and every one of them. The standing O's from the full house were as stretch-and-dip a workout as at the Boston Sports …
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Reflections on my 1,000th blog
This is the 1,000th blog I have written since creating marjoriearonsbarron.com. These essays follow 20 years and several thousand editorials written and aired for WCVB-TV, Channel 5, Boston's ABC affiliate. Above my desk at the station hung a framed picture of a self-satisfied, slightly overweight pussycat with the inscription, "Everyone has a right to my opinion." Back …
More winter reading – pt. 2, non-fiction books
Facing the Mountain by Daniel James Brown is the story of Japanese American patriots fighting for the U.S. in World War II while their parents and siblings were incarcerated in concentration (euphemistically termed relocation) camps in the West and South. In this intensely moving and deeply researched narrative, Brown lays out in grueling detail the …
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Haley and DeSantis – a So’s ya mutha! debate
Former Ambassador Nikki Haley and Governor Ron DeSantis were like two playground kids pretending to be scorpions in a bottle in Wednesday night's debate, jabbing at each other, oblivious to the big foot about to crush them both. You lie. Nah, you lie. Back and forth they went, with slanted opposition research about each other's …
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Books as companions when it snows – pt. 1, fiction
North Woods by Daniel Mason is an exquisite book about a house in a forest in western Massachusetts, and all the people who have lived in that house going back to colonial times, starting with a pair of lovers fleeing the constraints of Puritan society. Each chapter is devoted to successive inhabitants of the house, …
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Harvard president gone – for the right reasons
Few windows into today's higher education leadership were as shocking as the testimony of three distinguished university presidents (from Harvard, Penn and MIT) before the star chamber hearing of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce last month. In their obtuse, overly lawyered statements on anti-Semitism on their respective campuses, they wrapped themselves in a …
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Headlines you may – or may not – see in 2024
It's bedtime for 2023. It has been an ugly year. Ukraine. Hamas'October 7th attack. Bloodshed in Gaza. Wildfires and floods from global warming. House of Representatives chaos and gridlock. Biden's slump in polls. Social media's pollution of young minds. Misinformation. Disinformation. Need I go on? In this posting, I present my traditional list of headlines we could …
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Fed up with Congress? Here’s one of the good guys!
Small wonder that public approval of Congress ranges between 13 and a scant 15 percent. The year started with chaos and the gelding of Speaker Kevin McCarthy after 15 marathon rounds of voting. It ends with the House commencing an evidence-free impeachment inquiry of Joe Biden, after spending three weeks defenestrating McCarthy, who may be best remembered for reneging …
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Fiction for frosty nights
As the nights get shorter and colder, here are some novels to curl up with by the fire, even if you read them on Kindle. The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store by James McBride is a delightful novel set in Pottstown, Pennsylvania in the 1930’s, largely in a section of town called Chicken Hill. It’s …
Marjorie Arons-Barron 