Last week was a busy one in the news. The war in Gaza and Israel. The war in Ukraine. Election Day. The Republican debate. The Trump civil fraud trial in New York. The aftermath of the recent horrific mass shooting in Lewiston, Maine.

“The reality is that people with mental illness account for a very small proportion of perpetrators of mass shootings in the U.S., says Ragy Girgis, MD, associate professor of clinical psychiatry in the Columbia University Department of Psychiatry and the New York State Psychiatric Institute, in a recent issue of the Columbia Psychiatry News.

At least a handful of mobile phones lit up last Wednesday night with news of an in-progress mass shooting in Maine while our audience at The Cabot listened to a panel of experts speak about the US gun violence crisis. As if on cue, and as if we all needed a reminder of how frequent and devastating mass shootings are, a lone shooter was killing at least 18 people with a semi-automatic rifle (AR-15 style) in a bar and a bowling alley less than three hours north of us.

We (Therese and Judy) went out to dinner last Wednesday night. Our fashionably late reservations were for 8 pm so we left the North Shore at 7, heading to the Merrimack Valley. As we pulled into our dinner venue, the last bus pulled out of the terminal on Common Street in Lawrence. Why is this relevant? Because our dinner destination was the Buckley Transportation Center where folding tables are set up family style every Wednesday in the bus parking spaces to provide a warm meal and more for the homeless population of Lawrence.

This week, it is difficult to think or write about anything other than the war in the Middle East. 

Tracy Kidder doesn't walk by homeless people on the street anymore. He doesn’t act as if they are invisible. He makes eye contact. He speaks to them. And he usually gives them money.

We are excited to invite you to an evening with leading activists committed to stopping gun violence on our streets, in our schools, and inside our homes. If you have ever felt frustrated, discouraged, or confused about the gun law debate, join us on Wednesday, October 25 at 7 pm at The Cabot in Beverly to learn what we all can do to effect change and help protect people of all ages and walks of life.

We think the issue described below raises some ethical and philosophical questions worth chewing on. We hope you will share your ideas with us.

Statistics out last week about childhood poverty are staggering. The child poverty rate, calculated to include the impact of government tax and spending programs, was 9.7 percent in 2020, 5.2 percent in 2021, and 12.4 percent in 2022. To put that in numbers, according to John Cassidy in The New Yorker, “the number of children living in households under the poverty line went from 7.2 million in 2020 to 3.8 million in 2021 to nine million in 2022.”

We are no longer surprised when we hear that poor people and people of color have a harder time accessing good health care because they don’t have adequate insurance or don’t get sick days at work. We get that co-pays can make it difficult for many to purchase needed medications or go to doctors’ appointments.

Many of us are watching our children and grandchildren head off to school this week, some for the first time. Those of us in the Northeast can be pretty sure (and yes, we've know about the problem in Ludlow, MA, but it's an outlier) that the shelves in school libraries will not be emptied of books that depict characters with two mothers or fathers, or boys or girls questioning their sexual…

We thought it might be interesting to ask some friends, relatives, or colleagues – or reflect on our own experiences as immigrants – what voting was like in their countries of origin. Did every adult get to vote? Was it mandatory? Were there fines or punishments for not voting?

The son of a friend of ours lives in a western mountain state where he hunts for elk and deer. He then butchers the felled animals and feeds his family with the meat. His wife only eats the meat he has provided – other meat only if she knows how it was sourced. The deer and elk are hunted during…

I’ve reached the age when young people sometimes offer me their seats on the subway in New York City. I take it, knowing I could stand, if necessary. Is that cheating?

Some people think affirmative action is cheating. They say it’s giving seats to people who don’t deserve it.

The shock waves are still reverberating a year after the Supreme Court, in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, overturned 50 years of precedent – 50 years of protecting a woman’s right to choose whether or not to proceed with a pregnancy. In some states, women no longer have any choice and may even face imprisonment if they terminate their pregnancies. In other states, they must meet stringent standards, such as terminating before they may even know they are pregnant or a heartbeat can be detected. Doctors, too, face punishment for aiding women who seek abortions, sometimes even when the pregnant woman’s life is in danger. Too many women find themselves scraping together the money to travel out of their home states to places such as Massachusetts to seek surgical or medication abortions where they are still protected and legal.

In lieu of our normal newsletter, we have chosen to mark Independence Day, the Fourth of July, by reprinting abolitionist Frederick Douglass’s famous anti-slavery speech, delivered on July 5, 1852, to the citizens of his hometown of Rochester, NY. Many of us have read excerpts of this great speech, but not the entirety. We think it is worth considering without editing, as we face so much discrimination, hate, and bigotry in our country today. 

Is anyone else gobsmacked to learn that our Supreme Court Justices are not required to abide by any written ethics rules, not even those imposed on all other federal judges? 

We write about human rights every week and suggest actions we can all take, so we didn’t expect to be surprised by what might be said at last week’s Community Conversation at The Cabot about “Making Our Community Safe for Transgender Youth.”

Owning one’s own home has always been part of the American Dream. Finding a place in your price range can often require some compromise. Then making an offer and having your credit rating checked. Next is hunting for the best deal on a mortgage and coming up with the down payment. For those of us who are lucky, that down payment often includes loans or gifts from parents and grandparents.

Visiting a friend in a rehabilitation hospital last week, shortly after reading Matthew Desmond’s Poverty by America, it was impossible to ignore the varying levels of health care available to people in our country.