Stories
George and Maxine Maynard have what you might call a complicated relationship with New Hampshire’s state motto.
And when the U.S. Supreme Court takes up a controversial free speech case next month, the Maynards’ decades-old legal battle over the state’s ubiquitous “Live Free or Die” will be back in the spotlight.
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Seven weeks ago, Hurricane Maria roared through the center of Puerto Rico. Winds battered the palm leaves and rain poured over the houses in the town of Barrancas.
An estimated 8,000 immigrants in Massachusetts are awaiting decisions that will determine their fate in the United States.
Fishermen up and down the New England coast say it has been decades since they’ve been able to catch so many Atlantic bluefin tuna, so fast. Once severely depleted, populations of the prized sushi fish appear to be rebuilding.
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Angel Rodriguez stood on the porch of his apartment overlooking the bay of San Juan. In the distance, a military helicopter was lifting off from an airstrip near the city’s convention center where the hurricane relief effort was being staged.
It was mid-October, more than four weeks after Maria, and San Juan was still recovering. But Rodriguez said that compared to the east side of the island where he grew up — where the hurricane first made landfall — the city looks like “Disneyland.”
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For immigrants in the country illegally, the fear of running into U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents has made some public places appear threatening. In the current environment, that can include a visit to the emergency room.
During a July morning at the New England Aquarium Animal Care Center in Quincy, Massachusetts, a clinical volunteer checked the heart rate of a Kemp’s Ridley sea turtle with a Doppler instrument as a part of its physical exam.
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We drove to Caguas, a city south of San Juan, four weeks after Hurricane Maria hit. Our guide was Luis Cotto — a former Hartford city councilman now living in Cambridge, Massachusetts. We traveled to Puerto Rico to tell stories; he traveled to deliver thousands of dollars in inflatable solar lights and water filters to people who need them, including members of his family.
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Blanca Ortiz-Torres was sitting in a Puerto Rican oasis. She was at a working bakery in the tiny mountain town of Maricao that had both a generator and a cistern and, as a result, could serve cold drinks, hot coffee, fresh pastries, and pizza.
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Oily and smelly – Atlantic menhaden are one of the least sexy fish imaginable. But this humble fish, also called “bunker” or “pogie,” has deep roots off the coast of New England.
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