Carol Gerwin

Jennifer Howard has long loved to hike along the Taconic Trail in the Berkshires, from the hollows to the lowlands to the ridge. The birds, the wildflowers, the views – they always remind her how lucky she is to have access to some of the state’s most beautiful natural resources. Now Howard is doing her […]

Nothing defuses labor militancy like a few years of prosperity. The state’s coffers flush with tax revenue, public employee unions are winning raises they didn’t see in the recession of the early ’90s. So it’s been a while since Massachusetts has seen one of those peculiarities of organized labor: the illegal strike. But for much […]

When Kathleen Casavant was growing up in the 1950s and ’60s, her mother stayed home to raise her and her three brothers. There was never any worry about getting time off from work. No matter what came up – an illness, a doctor’s appointment, another baby–her mother was free to take care of it. Most […]

Union forces have been gaining strength in Massachusetts, if their membership rolls are any guide. An estimated 30,000 workers joined unions in 1998, bringing the state’s total organized labor force to about 453,000 people, according to federal statistics. And there is other good news for local labor leaders: Organized labor’s share of the total work […]

When he took office in January, Gov. Paul Cellucci promised to make up for what some consider the single biggest failing of the Weld-Cellucci administration. He vowed to rebuild the Massachusetts Republican Party, which has languished under years of executive neglect. A look back at the last half-century of voter registration records shows just how […]

Protestants may have ruled in colonial Massachusetts, but there’s little doubt who’s in charge on Beacon Hill today: Catholics. Massachusetts is one of the most Catholic states in the country, with about half the population considered adherents. (By contrast, only about one-fourth of the U.S. population is Catholic.) By some measures, Massachusetts has the second […]

It’s 10:30 a.m. and time for social studies. “Good morning, class!” Angela Deuso, 22, beams from the front of the room. “Good morrrn-ing!” her pupils sing out together. The students are surrounded by science projects, maps, and globes, but this is no elementary school. It’s a teacher-education course at Framingham State College. Deuso and a […]

Every time the debate over public financing of private and religious schools heats up in Massachusetts, we hear the same legal arguments from each side of the debate: Funding advocates claim the state’s ban on government aid to private and parochial schools was motivated by 19th-century anti-Catholic bigotry and has no place in contemporary law. […]