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Articles by Ron Powers
Massachusetts Fishing Report- October 16, 2025
In case you didn’t notice, there was a bit of a storm out there! The Nor’easter knocked out most angling, with rivers a notable exception. It’s strange days indeed when bonito are more buzz-worthy than bass and not just in Buzzards Bay. Captain Mark Rowell of Legit Fish Charters and Pete from Belsan Bait and Tackle in Scituate seized an opportunity to play hooky in the midst of the stormy weather, leaving little information along the South Shore.
Mark Twain in Love
On an empyreal spring evening in 1858, with the oleander in bloom upriver and early jasmine scenting the wind, the steersman for the Mississippi steamboat Pennsylvania, a bookish 22-year-old named Sam Clemens, guided the massive packet into the docks under the winking gaslights of New Orleans. As the Pennsylvania berthed, Clemens glanced to his side and recognized the adjacent craft, the John J. Roe.
New York Drug Kingpin and Associates Convicted
NEW YORK (AP) _ A drug kingpin who ran what investigators say was an especially violent operation was convicted in federal court Sunday of drug conspiracy, racketeering and money laundering. Prosecutors say Ricardo Melendez ran a gang that used violence to maintain discipline within its ranks and raked in as much as $10 million a month peddling heroin and cocaine in some of Brooklyn’s poorest neighborhoods.
Forever young
Dean and Kevin Powers, ages 8 and 5 By Ron Powers, BJ ’63, DHL ’12 I remember the moment that I promised myself I would never father a child. The moment happened 55 years ago. Yet I can still turn my eyes from whatever I am looking at and call it up with lapidary precision. That night. The glitter. That station wagon. The setting is Gaslight Square in St. Louis.
We can't wait for calmer times to address mental healthcare
OPINION Ron Powers, Register Opinion contributor Published 10:41 p.m. CT July 8, 2019 The next president of the United States will enter office with the weight of a wayward world on her or his shoulders. The burdens of reclaiming America’s broken civil society and of restoring the imperiled comity of nations will fill the agenda and test the endurance of any new chief executive. My friends in the mental healthcare reform movement and I understand this.
In 1963, we ran this profile of 10-year-old Jimmy Connors. Even then you could tell he was a brash basher.
Gloria Connors in the family backyard court with sons Jimmy, 10, and Johnny, 12. Post-Dispatch photo. Gloria Connors in the family backyard court with sons Jimmy, 10, and Johnny, 12. Post-Dispatch photo. East St. Louis native Jimmy Connors is one of the greatest players in the history of tennis, winning eight Grand Slam titles in his career. In June of 1963, the Post-Dispatch ran this profile of 10-year-old Jimmy.
Should We Reopen the Asylums?
In 1939 the British physician Lionel Penrose published an article that described an inverse relationship between prisons and asylums—the so-called Penrose Hypothesis. Widely respected in medical circles for his pioneering work on Down syndrome and other hereditary disorders, Penrose was better known for applying mathematical formulas to nagging social issues.
TKC 525 Amazon Publishing's Grace Doyle
Interview starts at 16:49 and ends at 43:56 “It’s interesting to think about readers around the world being able to find these books about a chemistry teacher turned homicide detective in Seattle, Washington. And I think that’s the global power of stories. Great stories are something that appeals to everyone.
A Biography Charts an Odysseus Sidelined by Mental Illness
Both the virtues and the defects of her immersion in the world of pop culture are on display here. The virtues offer satisfying recreational reading with moments of deep engagement. The defects tend to anesthetize the reader to the nature, provenance and consequences of chronic mental illness. Thus, while engrossing, thanks to its larger-than-life subject, the book misses an opportunity to consummate the promise of its subtitle.
Review: 'No One Cares About Crazy People: The Chaos and Heartbreak of Mental Health in America' by Ron Powers
"And really, end of the day, who the hell wants to read about schizophrenia anyway? Not me." That's Ron Powers, speaking of himself while echoing the remark by onetime Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker aide Kelly Rindfleisch that became the title of Powers' latest book: "No one cares about crazy people." Powers cares a great deal, for reasons spelled out on his first page. Kevin, the younger of his two children, hanged himself in 2005, just before turning 21.
Who Would Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer Grow Up to Be?
Jon Clinch came the closest. In 2007, Clinch brought out “Finn,” a technically praiseworthy first novel that elevates Huck’s good-for-nothing father to central-character status. Clinch’s treatment is diminished by two shortcomings. One is that he portrays Pap as a psychopath, unable to control his mayhem and his cannibalism. (Although to be fair, cannibalism-recovery services may not have existed back then.) Psychopaths lack free will and moral choice.
The New York Times
Highlights from the Archives By RON POWERS An unfinished novel by Richard Wright concerns a police officer who suspects his son may be a killer. February 24, 2008 booksReview By MICHAEL ANDERSON Richard Wright was the grandson of four former slaves, the son of a Mississippi sharecropper; he did not complete a full year of schooling until he was 12 years old, and his formal education ended five years later with his graduation from the eighth grade.
Powers:Why is Texas killing mentally ill man?
On Wednesday night, barring an intervention of common decency, common sense and common compassion, the state of Texas will execute a man who scarcely comprehends who he is, let alone the reason why he will be put to death. The man is Scott Panetti, a hopelessly unhinged paranoid schizophrenic. No one disputes that in 1992, Panetti gunned down the mother and father of his estranged wife in cold blood. No one disputes that this was a horrendous wastage of innocent human life.
Atrocity of Texas killing a mentally ill man(Opinion)
Editor's note: Ron Powers is at work on a book about mental illness and the state of America's mental-health care. He is the author of, among other books, "Mark Twain: A Life" (Free Press) and "Tom and Huck Don't Live Here Anymore: Childhood and Murder in the Heart of America" (St.Martin's Press).
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