Stories
Stephen Theberge grew up a few blocks from the harbor in New Bedford, Mass., and his memory of the waterway in the 1980s isn’t pretty. “It was abysmal,” said Theberge, recalling the sight (and smell) of raw sewage and garbage lapping the shores where he used to fish. One image still sticks with him: “The…
Read More
German Chavez was 14 years old when he first started using a gay dating app called Grindr to find adult men to pay him for sex. He needed to help his troubled single mother pay the bills, he said, and had no trouble finding men to purchase him on the popular location-based mobile app. Now…
Read More
Abdulla Aldhaheri is a freshman at Brown University, but he’s never actually been to the hilltop campus in Providence, R.I. The pandemic meant he started college remotely, from his home in the United Arab Emirates. “I really want to come to campus, I feel disconnected,” Aldhaheri said. Aldhaheri — like other international students — is…
Read More
In less than a year, an incinerator in Hartford that takes in roughly half a million tons of garbage annually is scheduled to close. But as the shutdown grows closer, there’s less and less agreement about where all that trash will go. Right now, the Materials Innovation and Recycling Authority (MIRA) handles about one-third of…
Read More
As a summer without COVID-19 restrictions gets underway, people are resuming activities — large and small — that the pandemic had paused or postponed. After spending a quarter of his life in a pandemic, four-and-a-half-year-old Fergus Whelley got invited to a birthday party a few weeks ago. It was the first one he’d ever been…
Read More
On a clear morning in early June, cotton sacks filled with shucked scallops hit the scale at Gambardella’s dockside warehouse in Stonington, Connecticut. They’re being offloaded from the Furious, a scallop boat just back from a 12-day trip. Owner and longtime fisherman Joe Gilbert runs four scallop boats out of this dock. Up in the…
Read MoreThe United States is poised for the birth of a brand new industry, one that will invest tens of billions of dollars in our economy, reshape our coastal communities, and one that could be one of the sharpest knives in our fight against climate change: offshore wind. It may also represent the first time truly…
Read More
One of the newest frontiers in mental health care is psychedelic drugs — like MDMA or psilocybin in magic mushrooms. But, for now, those drugs are illegal and can’t be subscribed. Efforts across the country to decriminalize psychedelics are gaining steam in some places, including western Massachusetts, but some people want to slow down the…
Read More
This summer, a Steamship Authority ferry will depart the terminal in Woods Hole 31 times a day. So on a recent Sunday morning, the surrounding area was packed with buses, taxis, and travelers sitting on luggage as they waited to board. “So the buses are diesel. You can smell them a little bit,” said Doug…
Read More
Eddie Morán’s loved tacos for as long as he can remember. “They’re simple, easy and fast,” Morán says. He even has a taco tattoo on his left wrist. At his restaurant, Lalo’s Taqueria in Lebanon, he makes food that’s pretty (and Instagrammable), locally-sourced and affordable. At lunch time, pop music plays as customers check out…
Read More