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  Judy & Barbra Two Reasons To Smile Dan Rather and Team Steady Oct 11 Credit: Getty Images This week marks 63 years since one of the best duets of American standards was arranged and recorded. On October 4, 1963, Judy Garland and Barbra Streisand sang their intermingled versions of their signature songs “Get Happy” and “Happy Days Are Here Again.” It aired on Garland’s variety show two days later. Either of these women singing either of these songs would qualify as a great reason to smile, but taken together it is a home run. At the time, Garland was an established star helming a popular song and dance show on CBS, and Streisand was a 21-year-old up-and-comer who just released her first album. The unusual mashup concept for the songs was Garland’s. She then had well known singer Mel Tormé write the full musical arrangement, which allowed each woman’s distinctive voice to shine. “Get Happy” was written in 1930 for a stage musical, but it didn’t become popular until 1950, when ...

  Sunday Pages: “Am I Afraid?” An essay by Anna Politkovskaya Greg Olear Oct 11 Dear Reader, On October 7, 2006—twenty years ago this week—the Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya was murdered in the elevator of her Moscow apartment. She was shot four times: twice in the chest, once in the shoulder, and once in the head, at point-blank range. We still don’t know for certain who ordered her assassination. But given her tenacious reporting on the rank corruption of the puny little psychopath who’d formally succeeded Boris Yeltsin as president of Russia in the spring of 2000, it is safe to assume that Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin was ultimately responsible for her death. That Politkovskaya was gunned down on his birthday is, to me, more proof than coincidence. What I didn’t realize is that Politkovskaya was born in New York. Her parents, both ethnic Ukrainians, were Soviet delegates to the United Nations. The family moved to Moscow in 1962, when Anna was four years old, and that’s w...

                     SHARED FOR INFORMATION AND EDUCATION ABOUT A LITTLE                     KNOWN CANDIDATE.... I want to tell you a story — one with me saying thank you. Years ago, my son’s elementary school was marked for closure. They blamed budget cuts. I wasn’t a politician. I was a mom who didn’t want her kid’s school to disappear. So I rallied the other parents, ran for a seat on the Austin School Board, and won . We didn’t just save my son’s school — we kept every school in our district open . I think about that fight a lot these days. Because every single time I’ve been told something is impossible, it turned out that “impossible” just meant nobody had tried hard enough yet. People have been telling me from the moment we launched this campaign that a Democrat couldn’t possibly win statewide in Texas. Look at us now. Election forecasters are shifting this rac...

  ADVERTISEMENT National Grid is strengthening its systems and preparing crews for winter weather to help deliver safe, reliable energy communities depend on. Sponsored by The Boston Foundation The Best of CommonWealth Beacon OPINION Massachusetts needs to rethink how it improves schools. Here is a bluerprint for doing it.   October 11, 2026 By Chad d’Entremont Massachusetts has done this before. It's time to do it again. In 1993, when the Commonwealth confronted an economy reshaped by globalization and information technology, it did something remarkably ambitious. It did not respond with another program or grant. It redesigned public education. The Education Reform Act established new standards, new ways to measure learning, and a new commitment to educational opportunity. Massachusetts became a national leader in student achievement. Success, however, has a way of obscuring its own expiration date. Today, artificial intelligence is reshaping how we work and learn, while the ski...