He spent all of his adult working life in local shoe factories. His job was nailing heels to unfinished shoes using a machine his employers leased from the United Shoe Machinery Company of St. Louis. His employers paid royalties for each dozen pairs of shoes he produced.
He was employed the first few years by the A.
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President Obama has proposed a health care plan that would cover all Americans regardless of income and social status, and as expected, the medical profession is defiantly opposed to any new suggestion or conception that might threaten the grip that doctors and hospitals now hold over the sick and infirm.
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Yes friends, once again it's circus time in the Berkshires. And that doesn't mean my in-laws are coming for dinner; that was last week. It means that once again the Cole Brothers circus is back at the American Legion field in Dalton for its annual two-day visit on Monday, June 29, and Tuesday, June 30.
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I don't play cards for money. This surprises some people who know that I am a gamer by nature, constantly playing board games, card games and whatever other types of games I can find in the offering.
But one game I won't play is poker, where I have to put up my own money. Another game I won't play is Five-card Rabid Weasels Down Your Pants.
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So, what if Obama is really, really wrong about the big stuff like energy, education, the economy, the environment, taxes, spending and health care? We are currently blazing a political path into parts unknown, and millions are lined up wearing smiley faces for the long march.
What am I talking about?
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Let's state the obvious: Getting to universal, accessible, affordable health care is upsetting a lot of vested interests, including insurers, health care providers and their Republican toadies in the U.S. Senate. But we've seen this movie before.
In 1935, opposition to Roosevelt's Social Security Act was strongest in the business community, and as biographer Jean Edward Smith
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When you elected me as your governor, I promised to be the governor of the whole commonwealth. That means getting out of the Statehouse and its sometimes inward-looking focus and staying connected to you in your own neighborhood. It means hearing directly from you.
That's why this summer I am once again traveling to communities across the state to hold a series of informal town hall
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There are moments when I am so outraged I don't know what to say first. That happened when I read that Don McCauley, head of Minuteman Wind, was shopping his Savoy wind project to the towns of Wellesley and Concord in eastern Massachusetts. He wants them to invest in the five-turbine facility planned for West Hill.
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I don't know about you, but one thing that really bugs me is false or misleading advertising and promotions that misrepresent or misconstrue a product or service to lure customers.
I recently received a flier in bold block letters that promised an automotive brake job for $99, but when I inquired about it, I was told that the price of $99 only pertained to the brake pads.
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Employment opportunities for 16-19 year olds in the United States have collapsed to record new lows in the past year. Fewer than 30 percent of the nation's teens have been working in recent months versus 45 percent in 2000 and nearly 50 percent in 1989.
The drop in teen employment rates have exceeded those experienced by all working-age persons in the U.
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Back when I was in school, long before same-sex marriage was an issue, we studied homophones. And I remember the mnemonic devices that were suggested as aids to memorizing the difference between words like "principle" and "principal."
We were always told that the head of a school is a princiPAL because he is your pal -- which as far as I could tell, was completely false.
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This is a pop quiz about words. What famous father's-rights activist uttered these words: "We know the statistics -- that children who grow up without a father are five times more likely to live in poverty and commit crime, nine times more likely to drop out of schools and 20 times more likely to end up in prison.
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As I sit in my back yard under my favorite shade tree, I look south across a slight swale that leads up to a hill on my neighbor's property about 300 yards away, and suddenly a couple of horses appear. My mind wanders back to the time of my youth and some of the experiences I had with horses while growing up on the farm.
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You are getting up there in years if you can remember the old Mark Hopkins School and its clock that tolled the hour. It was the only North Adams grammar school to have a gymnasium. It was located on Church Street. Today, the land on which it stood is the site of MCLA's admissions office and parking lot.
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Massachusetts Rep. Ann Gobi's, D-Spencer, proposed House Bill H2759 would eliminate outright the tax exemption currently granted to private colleges that recognizes the tremendous public good and education these private colleges provide to our citizens.
Other nonprofits would remain exempt, including public colleges, churches, hospitals, cultural institutions and large social service
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