Articles
by Hunter Styles | Mar 6, 2017 | Articles, Arts, Newsletter
El on Wheels Before President 45 ruined our fantasies about living the carefree life atop a skyscraper, America had Eloise, the children’s book series from the 1950s written by Kay Thompson and illustrated by Hilary Knight. For someone living the cushy life —...
by Jack Brown | Mar 6, 2017 | Articles, Arts, Cinemadope, Columns, Film, Newsletter
Over the last few months, it has become impossible to ignore the rising tides of xenophobia, racism, and other forms of bigotry and hatred that have suddenly made America a much scarier place for so many of those who call it home. Of course, these prejudices aren’t...
by Chuck Shepherd | Mar 6, 2017 | Articles, News, News of the Weird, Newsletter
Despite California’s 2015 law aimed at improving the fairness of its red-light cameras, the city of Fremont — population 214,000 — reported earning an additional $190,000 more each month last year by shortening the yellow light by two-thirds of a second at just two...
by Chance Viles; Photos of Dufree Conservatory also by Chance Viles | Mar 6, 2017 | Articles, Featured, News, Newsletter
Container gardening, for the uninitiated, is exactly what it sounds like: planting vegetables, flowers, herbs, and fruits in containers as opposed to soil in the ground. It’s also exactly as easy as it sounds.It’s also something anyone can do anywhere. No land? No...
by From Our Readers | Mar 6, 2017 | Articles, Letters from our Readers, News
Diversity in Metal?Comments on WMass Metal: The Valley’s Diverse Scene Rises Again at valleyadvocate.com.Jenna Weingarten: How are you going to write a headline that says “diverse” in it and feature a bunch of white people and men? As someone in a Western Mass punk...
by Kristin Palpini | Mar 6, 2017 | Articles, Featured, News, Newsletter
One of the first hurdles to planting a garden is the land: often hard, rocky, compact, dusty, weedy, and dry.Tilling the soil — churning up the ground to mix the dirt and soil layers and soften up the plot for easier digging and root growth — is hard work even if you...
by Kristin Palpini | Mar 6, 2017 | Articles, Between the Lines, Featured, News, Newsletter
This time, when I went to Mary Jane Makes Your Heart Sing last Friday, I didn’t have to wait in a line to get in. I also didn’t get any weed when I left.For nearly two months, Mary Jane Makes Your Heart Sing operated like a weed club. Located in a strip mall on Page...
by Yana Tallon-Hicks | Mar 6, 2017 | Articles, Columns, The V-Spot, Wellness
I’m in a happy, long-distance monogam-ish relationship with the human of my dreams. Really; things are so good. This is my first time having an open relationship, and I think we talk through things really well and effectively. He has several partners — all of which...
by Hunter Styles | Feb 27, 2017 | Articles, Arts, Featured, Music, Newsletter
Signs of Light Seattle indie folk band The Head and the Heart formed in 2009, and their third album Signs of Light, released this past fall, captures a radio-friendly pop rhythm that Rolling Stone described as “cozy and stylish at the same time.”That album was...
by Hunter Styles | Feb 27, 2017 | Articles, Arts, Featured, Newsletter, Stage
The Body Follows: Inside the mind of professional contortionist Ariana Ferber-Carter Many people would bend over backwards to avoid performing stunts in front of an audience. But Ariana Ferber-Carter — a professional contortionist and circus coach — is far more...
by Hunter Styles | Feb 27, 2017 | Articles, Arts, Featured, Newsletter
In advance of the 1984 Summer Olympics, the city of Los Angeles commissioned 200 public murals. Pasqualina Azzarello remembers that transformation vividly. On hot afternoons, at the end of a long day at elementary school, she would climb into the backseat of her...
by Jack Brown | Feb 27, 2017 | Articles, Arts, Cinemadope, Columns, Featured, Film, Newsletter
We Americans are a nostalgic bunch. Sometimes I wonder if it’s just that we are still such a young nation — there are Italian cafes that are older than our whole country — that we like to fool ourselves into thinking we have more history than we do. Or maybe, when...
by Kristin Palpini | Feb 27, 2017 | Articles, Between the Lines, Featured, News, Newsletter
Is it an acceptable level of risk for a child to live in an 80-year-old apartment building that hasn’t been renovated in as many years with a heating system from the ’60s, electrical wiring for the ’70s, and battery-powered smoke detectors that have been in place...
by Connolly Ryan | Feb 27, 2017 | Articles, Arts, Featured
And Still She Persisted (for Elizabeth Warren) They offered her a muzzle and still she persisted. This sister, this gatekeeper, this whistleblower and thistle-bearer. They told her to shut her justice-loving mouth but still she persisted: could not remain still when...
by Chuck Shepherd | Feb 27, 2017 | Articles, News, News of the Weird
Although discouraging the marriage of children in developing nations has been U.S. foreign policy for years, a data-collecting watchdog group in America disclosed in February that 27 U.S. states have no minimum marriage ages and estimates that an average of almost...
by Kristin Palpini | Feb 27, 2017 | Articles, News, Newsletter, Wellness
Emotional Freedom Technique and what it’s all about If anxiety made a baby with a hive of buzzing bees, you’d get me.Hi, I’m an extremely nervous person. My tendency to worry works out great when reporting and I just can’t let a question go, but it’s a burden...
by Warren Johnston | Feb 27, 2017 | Articles, Columns, The Pour Man
Part of the fun of writing this column is that I often need to look for largely undiscovered, good affordable wines.It’s a quest that I enjoy and that can be rewarding when I do find something that’s new and exciting in the sea of wines on the market.I recently tried...
by Will Meyer | Feb 27, 2017 | Articles, Arts, Basemental, Columns, Music, Newsletter
Pioneer Valley Underground brings new voices to DIY coverage Back in 1999, thousands descended into downtown Seattle for protests against the World Trade Organization, dubbed “The Battle of Seattle.” Not only did protesters successfully get a frank discussion about...
by Hunter Styles | Feb 27, 2017 | Articles, Arts, Stage
Home is Where the Art Is The sweet and heartfelt family story Painting Churches, winner of the John Gassner Award and Best Off-Broadway Play, is set in a Beacon Hill townhouse owned by Fanny and Gardner Church. As the play opens, the couple is packing, planning to...
by Hunter Styles | Feb 27, 2017 | Articles, Arts
Five and Ten Again This month, Sohn Fine Art Gallery in Lenox teams up with the Lichtenstein Center for the Arts in Pittsfield for another year of Berkshire County’s 10 x 10 Upstreet Arts Festival. The two galleries are each showing half of a 100-photograph show,...
by Blaise Majkowski | Feb 27, 2017 | Articles, Arts, Blaise's Bad Movie Guide, Columns, Film
Many winters ago, in 1977 to be precise, a friend and I were invited to a party. As luck would have it, we were the only males present. To top it off, the girls wanted to try the old game of spin the bottle. Chumps that my friend and I were, we decided we would rather...
by Lena Wilson | Feb 20, 2017 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Featured, Film, Newsletter, Stream Queen
As far as media genres go, animation is one that rarely gets its due. Cartoons enchant us as children, but are then left in the past, their artistry and potential forgotten. But whether on your laptop or your Saturday morning television screen, good animation can make...
by Chris Rohmann | Feb 20, 2017 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Featured, Newsletter, Stage, Stagestruck
For a 19th-century male, Henrik Ibsen was quite the feminist. His best-known play, A Doll’s House, ends with one of the theater’s most famous sound effects as his protagonist, Nora Helmer, leaves her stifling marriage with the finality of a slamming door. An equally...
by Hunter Styles | Feb 20, 2017 | Articles, Newsletter
Old Soul The iconic American historian, sociologist, writer, and activist W.E.B. Du Bois was born in Great Barrington on Feb. 23, 1868 — three years after the end of the Civil War — and died in Accra, Ghana in 1963, one year before the passing of the Civil Rights Act....
by Jennifer Levesque | Feb 20, 2017 | Articles, Arts, Music, Newsletter
Spending Valentine’s Day with Thurston Moore and friends A distant droning noise fills the cold air as I get out of my car in a very full parking lot at the 13th Floor Music Lounge in Florence. I walk up the steps to the entrance of the club above JJ’s Tavern,...
by Hunter Styles | Feb 20, 2017 | Articles, Arts, Featured, Newsletter, Stage
Our Voices Our new president has committed to limiting access to legal abortions, and explicitly said on the campaign trail that there “has to be some form of punishment” for woman who seek them illegally. Vice President Mike Pence, who signed a bill in his home state...
by Hunter Styles | Feb 20, 2017 | Articles, Arts, Newsletter
Moving On Up The works on paper in this exhibition represent “my desire and hope for a place called ‘home,’” says Jeanette Cole, a professor in the art department at UMass. The collection, she says, is based on imagery from a West African robe given to her father by...
by Jack Brown | Feb 20, 2017 | Articles, Arts, Cinemadope, Columns, Film, Newsletter
It’s easy, when Oscars season rolls around, to feel jaded about the cult of celebrity that Hollywood engenders. It can seem that the same kinds of films, and the same kinds of stars, come away with the golden statue every year. But if we’re still waiting for the...
by Hunter Styles | Feb 20, 2017 | Articles, Arts, Music, Newsletter
The Katz and the Fiddle Click Workspace, downtown Northampton’s coworking HQ, drew a big enough crowd at a January concert to warrant a brand-new live music series. This month’s concert at Click features accomplished local stringster Zoë Darrow on fiddle and Stephen...
by Chance Viles Photos by Jason Murray | Feb 20, 2017 | Articles, Arts, Music, News, Newsletter, Uncategorized
Wesley Jillson has been a part of the local metal music scene since the ’80s. He saw Western Mass area metal rise to national prominence in the ’90s, then fade away by 2010.At the fifth annual Promoterhead show at the 13th Floor Music Lounge in Florence in early...
by Kristin Palpini | Feb 20, 2017 | Articles, Between the Lines, Featured, News, Newsletter
Online ads for an upcoming Hulu adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s 1985 book The Handmaid’s Tale got me thinking: it’s really about time I read this classic dystopian novel.The story takes place in a near-future New England. A militia of religious conservatives take over...
by Kristin Palpini | Feb 20, 2017 | Articles, Columns, Featured, News, Newsletter, O Cannabis!
Standing outside a strip mall in Springfield, I pull on the handle of the double-deadbolted door of a storefront with dark windows and a paper green arrow that says “Herbs” hanging under the company sign, but it doesn’t budge.I can hear men inside talking and...
by Chuck Shepherd | Feb 20, 2017 | Articles, News, News of the Weird, Newsletter
San Francisco’s best-paid janitor earned more than a quarter-million dollars cleaning stations for Bay Area Rapid Transit in 2015, according to a recent investigation by Oakland’s KTVU. Liang Zhao Zhang cleared almost $58,000 in base pay and $162,000 in overtime, and...
by Yana Tallon-Hicks | Feb 20, 2017 | Articles, Columns, Featured, Newsletter, The V-Spot, Wellness
I recently began “dating” my best guy friend over this winter break. He’s told me that he was raised by a super religious mom and that when he was younger he “rebelled,” and experimented with other men, which he blamed on his homophobic upbringing. He told me he’s had...
by Advocate Staff | Feb 20, 2017 | Articles, Newsletter
If you’ve never checked out Craigslist’s Missed Connections section, you really should. The Western Mass forum is full of wistful near-meets and longing. Below is a compilation of “missed connections” items from craigslist.org. Entries include post date. I miss...
by Ken Maiuri | Feb 20, 2017 | Articles, Arts, Music
The new album Malbec and Gingerale serves twists, turns, and a brainy fizz Jack Simons hasn’t just put out a new record. He’s concocted a psychedelic spritzer. Bright bubble-fizz for the brain.It’s an eight-song album called Malbec and Gingerale, twisty-turny pop...
by Advocate Staff | Feb 20, 2017 | Articles, Astrology, Wellness
ARIES (March 21-April 19): My astrological radar suggests there’s a space-time anomaly looming just ahead of you. Is it a fun and exotic limbo where the rules are flexible and everything’s an experiment? That might be cool. Or is it more like an alien labyrinth where...
by From Our Readers | Feb 20, 2017 | Articles, Letters from our Readers, News, Newsletter
Facebook Love Response to “Love Trumps Hate: Transgender women find romance in an insane world,” Feb. 9-15, 2017.Melissa Robinson Ferris: I’ve known Bri since our sons were in grade school together 10 years ago! It’s wonderful to see her looking so well and sounding...
by Chris Rohmann | Feb 17, 2017 | Articles, Arts, Stage, Stagestruck
Years ago, when I was living in England, one day the doorbell rang and there stood two painfully clean-cut young men in white dress shirts, narrow ties and pearly smiles. “Hello!” one of them grinned, holding up a serious-looking volume. “My name is Elder Smith, this...
by Hunter Styles | Feb 13, 2017 | Articles, Arts, Featured, Film, Newsletter
The Fire This Time The writer and social critic James Baldwin died 30 years ago, but his powerful critiques of authority, ignorance, and racial injustice in America are still cited by poets, parents, protestors, and many others who feel, now more than ever, the need...
by Jack Brown | Feb 13, 2017 | Articles, Arts, Featured, Film, Newsletter
All Ages Show For years now, the Academy of Music in Northampton has played host to the annual KidsBestFest film festival. It’s a free week-long event (donations are welcome) that mixes great kid-centric movies from around the world with a local event known as...
by Will Meyer | Feb 13, 2017 | Articles, Arts, Basemental, Columns, Featured, Music, Newsletter
December brought with it not one, not two, but three releases from Florence psych punks Thee Arcadians — Ian St. George on guitar, Nico Lapinski on bass, and Elliot Hartmann-Russell on drums. Sure, it sounds like maybe they just put up a mic in band practice, but...
by Advocate Staff | Feb 13, 2017 | Articles, Featured, Newsletter
If you’ve never checked out Craigslist’s Missed Connections section, you really should. The Western Mass forum is full of wistful near-meEts and longing. Below is a compilation of “missed connection” items from craigslist.org. Entries include post date. Fireman...
by Richie Davis | Feb 13, 2017 | Articles, Arts, Newsletter
Seeking the Sacred on the Farm at the UMass Fine Arts Center Seeds of Solidarity Farm is known by anyone who’s been there not only for vegetables and herbs, but for embracing art and being enveloped by a spiritual sense. Rows of vegetables, surrounding trees,...
by Hunter Styles | Feb 13, 2017 | Articles, Between the Lines, News, Newsletter
At the bottom of the stairwell behind my apartment building, a baby stroller sat for weeks. Every time I carried a laundry basket down the back steps, I had an opportunity to read the cardboard sign strapped to the side of the stroller. In rigid capital letters...
by Chuck Shepherd | Feb 13, 2017 | Articles, News, News of the Weird, Newsletter
On Jan. 31, doctors at Stanley Medical College and Hospital in Chennai, India, removed a live, full-grown cockroach from the nasal cavity of a 42-year-old woman whose nose had been “itchy” earlier in the day. Two hospitals were unable to help her, but at Stanley, Dr....
by Chris Goudreau | Feb 13, 2017 | Articles, Featured, News, Newsletter
Juan is a 40-year-old Springfield resident who is married with two children under age seven. He works construction jobs when he finds them across the state and had just arrived back in the city after working a job in Marlborough when he spoke with the Valley Advocate....
by Kimya Hedayatzadeh | Feb 13, 2017 | Articles, News, Newsletter
Not many people would characterize the town of Amherst as poor. The downtown is interspersed with homey coffee shops, ethnic cuisine, fine dining, boutiques, and independent cinema. But behind the hip shops and $4 coffees is a growing homeless population. Though firm...
by Advocate Staff | Feb 13, 2017 | Articles, News, Newsletter
It’s cold and the icy, black slush is up to your knees. The wind rips across the thick white fields of snow, stabbing tiny icicles through your coat. Breath in and the hairs in your nose freeze. This is February and it’s lovely.Bye, Bye ResolutionsBy the time February...
by Warren Johnston | Feb 13, 2017 | Articles, Columns, Food Booze and Beyond, Newsletter, The Pour Man
Legendary winemaker Agustin Huneeus started Estancia Estates at the old Paul Masson winery near Soledad, California, in 1986 with the idea of producing top quality wines at reasonable prices.And since Huneeus is a pretty smart guy with a sophisticated palate and a...
by Rob Brezsny | Feb 13, 2017 | Articles, Astrology, Newsletter, Wellness
ARIES (March 21-April 19): By my estimates, 72 percent of you Aries are in unusually good moods. The world seems friendlier, more cooperative. Fifty-six percent of you feel more in love with life than you have in a long time. You may even imagine that the birds and...
by From Our Readers | Feb 13, 2017 | Articles, Featured, Letters from our Readers, News, Newsletter
What is Trump Doing in Holyoke?As a teacher at Holyoke High School, I applaud your positive news piece about the students at Holyoke High School working to bring about more awareness to stop violence in our school community (“Between the Lines: What Do You Expect From...
by Yana Tallon-Hicks | Feb 13, 2017 | Articles, Columns, News, Newsletter, The V-Spot, Wellness
I’m a 19-year-old male college student. I just started to masturbate, but I don’t know how other people will react if I get into a relationship with them and tell them about this. I would like to know how to be fully comfortable with pleasuring myself as well as see...
by Lena Wilson | Feb 6, 2017 | Articles, Arts, Featured, Film, Newsletter, Stream Queen
Recommendations for a romantic night in Whether or not you’re settling down with a significant other on Valentine’s Day, you’ll probably end up watching something. That’s due less to our media-ridden culture and more to the fact that this year’s holiday happens on the...
by Hunter Styles | Feb 6, 2017 | Articles, Columns, Featured, Food + Booze, Newsletter, The Beerhunter
Local brewers share their predictions and plans Last year, the Beerhunter offered some “brew year’s resolutions” to serve as a checklist for craft beer enthusiasts on a year-long quest to try new things. This year, it seemed prudent to put the question to the brewers...
by Hunter Styles | Feb 6, 2017 | Articles, Arts, Film, Newsletter
Horror auteur M. Night Shyamalan returns to what he does best Spoilers ahead! A pumpkin won the presidency, the Power Rangers are returning to theaters, and the Pats came back from 19 points behind in the fourth quarter to win the Super Bowl. To this list of bizarre...
by Chance Viles | Feb 6, 2017 | Articles, Arts, Music, Newsletter
Heartstrings James Hill and Anne Janelle are set to bless Vermont with their folk music this week. Winners of the Canadian Folk Music Award for traditional album of the year, Hill and Janelle focus on traditional folk with an interesting twist. The low sounds of...
by Chance Viles | Feb 6, 2017 | Articles, Arts, Newsletter
Meditating with Marius Artist Marius Sznajderman will be hosting his third solo art show at the Jewish Community of Amherst through April 30. Sznajderman focuses on art highlighting “judaicas,” or artwork that reflects and comments on Jewish life and culture....
by Jack Brown | Feb 6, 2017 | Articles, Arts, Cinemadope, Columns, Film, Newsletter
Every year at Oscar time we get a speech about the power of visual effects and their ability to “capture the magic in our mind” or some such thing, followed by a green-screen montage of dragons, space aliens, and transforming cars that are also space aliens. Don’t get...
by Kristin Palpini | Feb 6, 2017 | Articles, News, Newsletter
In a warm cottage at the end of a dirt road in Jacksonville, Vermont, Brianna Harris and Amy McNeil discuss the “creepy” side of their relationship.The couple, a ski resort grounds keeper and an engineer who have been together for seven years, exchange knowing...
