In early April, I started planning a month-long backpacking trip across Washington State with my two younger sisters. I’m an avid hiker, and I love to camp, but I had never attempted anything of this magnitude before. The idea was thrilling - what an adventure! - but it also scared the hell out of m...

Monday morning, three weeks ago, I went to my primary doctor for help with shortness of breath. With concern writ large on her kind face, she said, “I think you should go to the ER.” As an avid daily walker with a two-plus-mile habit, I was startled and reluctant. She suggested we make four loops ar...

Last week’s deluge of rain that flooded sections of Scotch Plains, Westfield and Cranford—the latest “once-in-a-hundred-years” storm to hit our area in recent years—spurred some online debate about the reasons for the excessive flooding that’s becoming more commonplace. Some say climate change is th...

This is from the April 11, 1977 issue of The New York Times: “Three months ago, the states of New Jersey and New York began allowing right turns on red lights in line with a nationwide trend designed to save energy and reduce automobile pollution by cutting down on the time that cars spend at stopli...

Last month, the New Jersey Assembly was scheduled to vote on a bill, A-3558, endorsing the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of Antisemitism. The IHRA standard is used by 37 other states, at least 46 countries, and more than 1,200 organizations, municipalities and uni...

“I can’t wait to tell you about Ella’s prom day,” exuded my friend Bobbi about her beloved granddaughter. Instead of paying for expensive updos, professionally applied makeup, and florist corsages, Ella and her friends did it all themselves. And what fun they had! Ten girls gathered at Ella’s house ...

I paused my newly acquired internalized censor,whichwagsitsfingerwhenever I slip and say the “taboo” words: diversity, inclusion, or equity (DIE). A reflective pivot prompted me to wonder if that trio of words had DIEd, and is now replaced by uniformity, exclusion, and inequality.What happened to th...

This week, the Class of 2025 at our area high schools are celebrating their long-awaited graduations, savoring their accomplishments and preparing to begin the next chapter of their lives. Entering ninth grade in the shadow of the pandemic, these young adults ably dealt with unprecedented challenges...

Publisher, The San Fernando Valley (California) Sun/El Sol NewspapersThe United States Postal Service is on the brink of a self-induced collapse. The failed policies of the Delivering forAmerica Plan have driven away customers through a combination of sky-high rate increases and degraded service. Da...

A collaboration with the Westfield High School Journalism Program