If you enjoy our news coverage please consider making a $1 donation Newly elected Methuen Mayor Neil Perry will take office on January 6th. He was elected last month with 71% of the vote, a clear mandate for change. Perry holds the Methuen Mayor’s Report on The Paying Attention! Podcast on the first Tuesday of each […]
By: John Cuddy – November, 2019 Haverhill’s Gerard Boucher joined the US Marine Corp to avoid getting drafted by the US Army. On the wall of his home sits a Bronze Star and three Purple Hearts, so he certainly picked an unusual way to avoid the draft. Talking to Gerard and his close friend Carolyn […]
THANK YOU JEN KANNAN I want to personally thank Methuen City Council Chairman Jen Kannan for her decades of service to this community. Whether you supported Jen or not in this mayoral election, she has given of herself to the city of Methuen and the Merrimack Valley and made a lot of people’s lives better […]
The Methuen city council is made up of nine members. Two councilors are elected from each of the three districts, and three councilors are elected city-wide or “at-large”. The Methuen city council is in charge of passing the municipal budget, must ratify the mayor’s hiring or firing of department heads and must approve all […]
By: Paul Murano – Oct. 2019 A Moral Relativist (a), and Natural Law theorist (b), Discuss Homosexuality a) Homosexuality is something you’re born with. There is no moral issue with homosexuality. b) Some people may experience same-sex attraction from an early age, but this isn’t relevant to the ethical question, which is whether one ought […]
By: Bill Cushing – Oct. 2019 Netflix’s ‘Unbelievable’ is the streaming network’s latest bingeworthy drama. It stars Emmy winners Toni Collette and Merritt Wever as two detectives investigating a series of sexual assaults. But even though they are the series top billed stars, they don’t even appear in the first episode. The first hour (and […]
VOTE NOVEMBER 5th IN LOCAL ELECTIONS – HERE’S WHY ITS IMPORTANT November 5th is Election Day for cities in the Merrimack Valley. In Methuen and Haverhill voters get to decide who their mayor will be for the next two years. In Lawrence, Mayor Dan Rivera has two years left in his term and cannot […]
By: Dani Lengevin – Oct. 2019 “How fortunate for governments that the people they administer don’t think,” Adolf Hitler. This should be the current administration’s mantra. As far as I can see, Trump’s administration and most of his followers don’t think or at least have checked the part of their brains that has a conscience […]
The Paying Attention Podcast debate page ◊ The Methuen City Council is made up of nine members; three city councilors are elected at-large (city-wide), and two councilors elected from each of the three districts (East, Central, and West). In the West End, both incumbent city councilors George Kazanjian and Lynn Vidler are not seeking reelection, leaving two […]
BY: Bharani Padmanabhan – Oct. 2019 On September 24, 2019 Governor Charlie Baker suddenly declared a public health emergency and invoked MGL chapter 17 § 2A, which allows the Public Health Commissioner to “during such period of emergency, take such action and incur such liabilities as he may deem necessary to assure the maintenance of […]
Last month, less than 5,000 people voted in the Methuen preliminary election for city council. Methuen has approximately 57,000 people residing in the city limits. That means less than 10% of the people in Methuen bothered to participate in the decision of who represents them in city government. In Lawrence the numbers were frighteningly lower. […]
By: Bill Cushing – Sept, 2019 The new TV season is upon us and just like every year there are lots of new shows. Which shows are worth devoting your time to? Well, hopefully this column will help you decide the answer to that question. Here are some of the shows I think will […]
By: Pal Murano – September, 2019 In our era that emphasizes love as mercy, let us not forget that love is also justice. Compassion and mercy encompass only one side of love. Truth and justice make up the other. It is like the two sides of a coin: it fails to be a coin without […]
By Dani Langevin – Septmber, 2019 I have three grown children. My oldest, a daughter, recently gave birth to my first grandchild, a boy. How lucky he is to be a white male born into this world. At no time will he be discriminated against because he is white or male. He will not be […]
By Diana DiZoglio – Sept. 2019 Hello Valley Patriot Readers, Distracted driving, the act of driving while engaging in other activities that divert the driver’s attention away from the road, has become an epidemic on our roadways. We’ve all seen the constant news headlines reporting car crashes and fatalities. Take, for instance, a recent early-morning […]