I don't mean to be disrespectful, but I have some questions in the wake of the Alabama Supreme Court ruling that frozen embryos are children. If they are, indeed, children, shouldn't keeping them in freezers at some -230F or colder be a barbarous form of child abuse? Shouldn't the parents be prosecuted? Who else along …
Frigid weather, fiction to warm your spirits
Small Mercies by Dennis Lehane is as effective a thriller as his previous books, once again taking a deep dive into the social and political environment in South Boston, this time in the lead-up to the 1974 school busing crisis. That event was raw, for both Blacks and Whites, but it's just the backdrop for …
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Cry the beloved city! Reflections on the Newton teachers strike
The City of Newton's shameful, illegal, and history-making 11-day teachers strike is over. Finally, Newton’s 12,000 school kids are back in class, where they belong. Those of us who have lived in Newton for a long time are heartbroken that the dispute came down to that illegal action. The turbulence and incivility, the willingness to …
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During frigid temps, some non-fiction books to warm you
Master, Slave, Husband, Wife: an epic journey from slavery to freedom by Ilyon Woo is the story of Ellen Craft, a light-skinned enslaved woman and skilled seamstress, and her husband William, also enslaved and a skilled cabinet maker, and their 1848 flight from their masters in Macon, Georgia to Philadelphia, Boston, Canada and England. Ellen …
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Will raw politics kill immigration reform?
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 …
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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Marjorie Arons-Barron 