The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force now recommends that most Americans be screened for colorectal cancer at age 45 — five years earlier than previously recommended — and continue with colonoscopy screenings periodically until age 75.

Richard C. Cox made a meteoric rise from a $90-a-month draftsman on Pittsfield’s 14 million-gallon Farnham Reservoir dam — an undertaking in the town of Washington that cost the city of Pittsfield $386,206 in 1911, $180,838 in 1912 and more before construction was completed.

I don’t think all these people — many of whom performed quite well before in crises and amid uncertainty — are, or suddenly became, idiots. Here’s a more generous interpretation: Change makes fools of us all, and we are living through an era of change. Three changes, in particular, are worth thinking about right now.

A recently introduced bill that would let student representatives vote on Massachusetts school committees has drummed up expected support from students but opposition from their elders. Critics of this bill need only look at the state's public college and university system to see how such a dynamic could work.

Thinking about soil, hoes and seeds makes the mountains of snow around the driveway more acceptable.