Articles
by Hunter Styles | Oct 10, 2016 | Articles, Columns, Newsletter, The Beerhunter
They’re out there… and they probably don’t use blueberries When Erik Jensen took over as brewmaster at Green Flash Brewing at the beginning of this year, he knew he had some big shoes to fill. The San Diego brewery had become one of the biggest in...
by Hunter Styles | Oct 10, 2016 | Articles, News
What Matters The Meridians symposium at Smith College is all about “celebrating women of color feminist scholarship, art, and activism of the ’80s and ’90s to inspire and embolden us in precarious times.” This season’s keynote speakers are dual forces to...
by Chris Rohmann | Oct 10, 2016 | Articles, Arts, Stage, Stagestruck
In Othello in the Seraglio, Shakespeare’s Moor finds an ironic mirror. Not the proud Venetian general, but a proud eunuch in the harem of the Ottoman sultan. Subtitled “The Tragedy of Sümbül the Black Eunuch,” it’s a “coffeehouse opera” conceived by Mehmet Ali...
by Gary Carra | Oct 10, 2016 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Music, Newsletter, Nightcrawler
He has played multiple instruments, in multiple bands, for multiple decades. The sum total of all these multiples? Scene stalwart Henning Ohlenbusch has played with or supported acts of almost every genre in his prolific career. Rock, pop, surf, psychedelic… You...
by Hunter Styles | Oct 10, 2016 | Articles, Arts, Newsletter
Do I Really Look Like That? The contemporary art gallery at Historic Northampton shows an artist each month who draws on local history or artifacts for inspiration. Enter Jenni Sussman, townie abstract painter and sculptor whose series Mask riffs on the faces and...
by Kristin Palpini | Oct 10, 2016 | Articles, News, Newsletter, Wellness
Rachel Desmond had her first smoke when she was 16. For the next six years, marijuana was a big part of her life. “It was easy to get,” she says, sitting outside of the Frost Building at Holyoke Community College, where she is studying. And she says she needed it to...
by Gazette Editorial Board | Oct 10, 2016 | Articles, Between the Lines, News, Newsletter
The dream of America, for most immigrants, is the dream of a better standard of living, earned through hard work in a country where employment laws apply to all regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation — or immigration status.Equal treatment is a cherished...
by From our Readers | Oct 10, 2016 | Articles, Letters from our Readers, News, Newsletter
Vertical Grates a Danger to Cyclists The last part of my bicycle commute from Greenfield to Gill is the Gill-Montague Bridge. I had been enduring black hole potholes, asphalt that was worn down to dirt, and trucks and cars barrelling within feet of me. My vision of...
by Yana Tallon-Hicks | Oct 10, 2016 | Articles, Columns, Newsletter, The V-Spot, Wellness
Hi Yana,I’ve been on the Depo shot for two months now and I have no sex drive. No desire whatsoever. I Googled it and it’s normal for women on the shot to feel this way.Do you have any tips or sex hacks to help me and my BF out? I’m sure he’s tired of coming home to...
by Jack Brown | Oct 10, 2016 | Articles, Arts, Cinemadope, Columns, Film, Newsletter
A lifetime ago — maybe two lifetimes now — I was an art school student. I was a hard worker but probably too concerned with what others thought of my work, and even then I knew that was a problem. That feeling seemed confirmed by the work being done by a classmate of...
by Ken Maiuri | Oct 10, 2016 | Articles, Arts, Music
Pugwash plays the Iron Horse Dubliner Thomas Walsh is a real pro with a catchy tune — and also with a particular four-letter word that begins with F. His expertise in both Beatlesque pop music and colorful language was on full display when his band Pugwash played the...
by Naila Moreira | Oct 10, 2016 | Articles, Columns, Down to Earth, News, Newsletter
Our natural environment needs us now, and the stakes have never been so stark. I’ve been frustrated this election season at how little attention the environment has gotten. In the first presidential debate, moderator Lester Holt didn’t ask a single question about...
by Chuck Shepherd | Oct 10, 2016 | Articles, News, News of the Weird, Newsletter
Large kidney stones typically mean eye-watering pain and sudden urinary blockage until the stone “passes” (often requiring expensive sound-wave treatment to break up a large stone). Michigan State University urologist David Wartinger told The Atlantic in September...
by Warren Johnston | Oct 3, 2016 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Food + Booze, Newsletter, The Pour Man
Sometimes finding the right name for a child, a pet or even a wine can be difficult.Naming can take long, grueling hours of trotting out candidates only to have them dismissed by others for lacking originality or humor, or being downright dumb. The process can take...
by Advocate Staff | Oct 10, 2016 | Articles, Astrology, Wellness
ARIES (March 21-April 19): A study published in the peer-reviewed Communications Research suggests that only 28 percent of us realize when someone is flirting with us. I hope that figure won’t apply to you Aries in the coming weeks. According to my analysis of the...
by Chris Rohmann | Oct 3, 2016 | Articles, Arts, Stage, Stagestruck
In some ways, the two plays I saw last week in New York couldn’t be more different. One is a big, boisterous romantic comedy of English manners, the other a small, quiet meditation drawn from Hindu scripture. Bedlam’s Sense & Sensibility, now playing Off-Broadway...
by Hunter Styles and Kristin Palpini | Oct 3, 2016 | Articles, Arts, Film, Music, Newsletter, Stage
Olive’s Indie Sound GardenEvery time the electronic looping pedal wings back around and resets, some new element enters the songs played by Olive Tiger: maybe cello, or violin, or a hooky new techno beat. This inventive band, based in New Haven and Brooklyn, calls...
by Hunter Styles | Sep 26, 2016 | Articles, Arts, Music, News, Newsletter
Dar Williams came to the Valley in 1992 to put down roots and start a career. Between then and when she left in 2000, she became a bonafide folk rocker, touring on a wave of good gigs that carried her to a breakout moment in 1996 with Mortal City, an LP that became an...
by Hunter Styles | Oct 3, 2016 | Articles, Arts, Film, Newsletter
Spoilers ahead!In this newest installment of the Advocate’s Scary Movie Club, two staffers — horror movie buff Jennifer Levesque and total wimp Hunter Styles — made the trek back into the proverbial woods for Blair Witch, the new sequel to 1999’s The Blair Witch...
by Kristin Palpini | Sep 26, 2016 | Articles, Arts, Music, Newsletter
J’ome On! This Friday night: The whole Northampton/ Has to answer right then/ Just to tell you once again/ Who’s bad Did MJ just moonwalk into your heart? Do “the kick” right through your eardrum? Or crotch grab into your … Never mind. The point is Michael...
by Hunter Styles | Oct 3, 2016 | Articles, Arts, Music, Newsletter
Temper Anthems So many buildings are missing their 13th floors, who knows what’s knocking around inside that metaphysical space? The 13th Floor in Florence, for its part, seems committed to capitalizing on that mystery by packing multiple acts — often new bands...
by Kristin Palpini | Sep 26, 2016 | Articles, Arts, Leisure, Music, Newsletter
If anyone can lay claim to writing the neo American classic drinking songbook, it’s George Thorogood and The Destroyers. The band’s hits include “I Drink Alone,” “If You Don’t Start Drinkin’,” “Bad to the Bone” (that’s pronounced “B-b-b-b-bad to the Bone”), “Move it...
by Hunter Styles | Oct 3, 2016 | Articles, Arts, Food + Booze, Leisure, Music, Newsletter
Here’s the Beef It’s hard to believe that Greenfield’s Riverside Blues, Brews, and BBQ Festival is already in its sixth season. We’ve barely finished the heaping pile of brisket on our plate from last year. But it shouldn’t be too hard for us to get back into the...
by Advocate Staff | Sep 26, 2016 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Newsletter, Stage, Stagestruck
Walking Through Time “In Scene 13, Leontes mourning his wife, things get a little more dialog-y. That needs to be run and worked on today,” says John Bechtold, creator of the immersive production of The Winter’s Tale that performs in downtown Greenfield this weekend....
by Kristin Palpini | Oct 3, 2016 | Articles, News
Marijuana legalization is up for a binding vote on Nov. 8, and people still have a lot of questions about what legal weed would mean for Massachusetts’ residents, economy, and law enforcement. On Thursday, 7 p.m., Oct. 6 at Greenfield Community College, the Valley...
by Kyle Olsen | Sep 26, 2016 | Articles, Arts, News, Newsletter
Jeff Kelley, a Northampton post officer and owner of the Instagram account @postaljeff, scrolls through months of his posts, reaching a series featuring a red phone. He stops at a post with the phone dangling off a tree by the cord, it was photoshopped by another...
by Kyle Olsen | Oct 5, 2016 | Articles, Arts, Music
Monster Arts Project II Opening Gala • Saturday Do you like monsters? Do you like art? Do you like the era of the 1920s? Well this may be the place to spend a nice fall evening. Professor S.N. Tomlinson is back at it for another year of bringing you an array of...
by Gary Carra | Sep 26, 2016 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Leisure, Music, Newsletter, Nightcrawler
Any calendar will tell you Sept. 22, is the official date of the fall equinox — which is fine, for those astronomically-correct types. But this year, I prefer to think of the solstice as happening on Oct. 2 when the Big E in West Springfield hosts an EDM concert...
by Hunter Styles | Oct 3, 2016 | Articles, Arts, Newsletter, Stage
T’were Well it Were Done Quickly Any back-row slackers in the house? Remember wishing your high school humanities professor would just get on with it and fast-forward to Act V of whichever godforsaken Shakespeare text you were all reading out loud, line by line? It’s...
by Kristin Palpini | Sep 26, 2016 | Articles, Arts, Music, Newsletter, Stage
It sounds like the beginning of a joke: So, Johnny Cash, Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins, and Jerry Lee Lewis walk into a recording studio …. But in December of 1956, this foursome just happened to all be in the same recording studio — Sam Phillips’ Sun Records in...
by Chris Rohmann | Oct 4, 2016 | Articles, Arts, Stage, Stagestruck
“If this be magic,” says Shakespeare’s King Leontes, “let it be an art lawful as eating.” On the Valley menu this week are two events that brought that quote to mind. At the Broadside Bookshop tomorrow (Wednesday), the multitalented Andrea Hairston unveils Will Do...
by Jack Brown | Sep 26, 2016 | Articles, Arts, Cinemadope, Columns, Film, Newsletter
When the world lost Gene Wilder a month ago, it was a bit of a surprise to many — he hadn’t appeared onscreen in quite a few years, preferring to devote himself to the books he wrote later in life. But if it was a surprise, it also stung. For myself, and I suspect for...
by Hunter Styles | Oct 3, 2016 | Articles, Arts, Newsletter
Full Scream Ahead “If you want to be scared half to death, Rails to the Darkside is for you,” boast the organizers at the Connecticut Trolley Museum. And they’re not kidding around — this event, geared toward adults, is not recommended for young children. We can see...
by Advocate Staff | Sep 28, 2016 | Articles, Film, Get Out With Staff Picks, Music
DementedFX Haunted House • Starts Saturday, It’s that time of year when all the Halloween-infused happenings pop up. If you’re into getting scared and are going to hit up a haunted house this season, this is the one to go to. In it’s third...
by Will Meyer | Oct 3, 2016 | Articles, Arts, Basemental, Columns, Music, Newsletter
20-Something Vision It’s an amazing feeling to bear witness to art you feel moved by — especially when that art is ephemeral. And it’s no less amazing to see a side of someone that you didn’t even realize existed. This is what happened when I first heard Pussy, a self...
by Peter Vancini | Oct 3, 2016 | Articles, News
Massachusetts is among the top five states where bicycle ridership is growing, but it lags in developing the infrastructure to keep riders safe.The lack of bike lanes and trails is a nationwide problem. Massachusetts ranks 15th in the nation for the most bike...
by Peter Vancini | Sep 26, 2016 | Articles, News
The debate over immigration reform isn’t new, but it’s taken center stage in the 2016 presidential campaign. Republican candidate Donald Trump has made it a central part of his campaign and recently made headlines when he vowed to cut funding to so-called “sanctuary...
by Hunter Styles | Oct 3, 2016 | Articles, Arts
Families Lost Eileen Claveloux’s new UMass exhibit features a captivating array of faces, all connected through trauma and loss. Each of Claveloux’s subjects is descended from a family with one or more ancestors among the 1.5 million who perished in the Armenian...
by Peter Vancini | Sep 26, 2016 | Articles, News, Newsletter, Scene Here
Several dozen protesters gathered this past Friday at Mason Square in Springfield, chanting What Do We Want? Affordable Housing! When Do We Want It? Now! and carrying signs down State Street — through one of the city’s most blighted neighborhoods — to Court Square in...
by Fran Ryan | Oct 3, 2016 | Articles, Wellness
Kerrie Bodendorf, a 47 year-old mother of three from Westfield, had all but given up hope of finding relief for her debilitating chronic back pain, which often confined her to her couch for weeks at a time. But in 2010, she accidentally stumbled onto a self-treatment...
by Dave Eisenstadter | Sep 26, 2016 | Articles, Between the Lines, News, Newsletter
I’m soon going to have to decide if a pull towards convenience outweighs my fear of a total robot takeover of the world as we know it. I may get an E-ZPass transponder. The decision should be made simpler by the fact that the state of Massachusetts isn’t...
by Kristin Palpini | Oct 3, 2016 | Articles, Between the Lines, News
A few weeks ago I was at a campground when I heard something going on in the adjacent tent: a woman’s voice softly saying “ow” and “you hit me,” and every now and then a muffled grunt from a man. I was alone and I froze, hoping things wouldn’t escalate. They didn’t. I...
by Yana Tallon-Hicks | Sep 26, 2016 | Articles, Columns, Newsletter, The V-Spot, Wellness
I’m a 38 yo male currently involved with three women. One is a long distance relationship. We met at a concert and had one night together and stayed in touch. We speak regularly on various chat and texts. Two is a nonsexual relationship. She spends the night and...
by Peter Vancini | Oct 3, 2016 | Articles, Arts, Film, News, Scene Here
More than 100 people stake out a plot of land at Pulaski Park in Northampton on this crisp Wednesday night for an outdoor screening of Star Wars: The Force Awakens. At the event kicking off this year’s Northampton Film Festival, people dress as Luke, Leia, Han, Chewy,...
by From Our Readers | Sep 26, 2016 | Articles, Letters from our Readers, News, Newsletter
Celebrate Immigration I think the people of Northampton and the whole Pioneer Valley should take the lead and turn the arrival of refugees to our area into a celebration. Our country’s founding principles are based on no discrimination. Instead of fearing these...
by Advocate Staff | Oct 3, 2016 | Articles, Arts, Cinemadope, Columns, Film, Newsletter
Fall in Love Now that I spend a good five minutes a day sweeping dry leaves out of our back entry, I think it’s safe to finally say it: autumn is upon us. And I’ll take it, dry leaves and all. Nestled between the smothering humidity of our summer and the desiccating...
by Chuck Shepherd | Sep 26, 2016 | Articles, News, News of the Weird, Newsletter
Police and prosecutors in Dallas, appropriately sensitive at having been the site of the 1963 killing of President Kennedy, have apparently taken out their shame on assassination buff Robert Groden. As the Dallas Observer reported in September, Groden has been...
by Amanda Drane | Oct 3, 2016 | Articles, Third Eye Roaming, Wellness
Whether he’s working with homeless veterans, prison inmates or queer and trans people in his yoga classes and buddhist teachings, Jacoby Ballard emphasizes the struggle is “part of the journey.” “There’s actually beauty that you have to offer because of that path,” he...
by Rob Brezsny | Sep 26, 2016 | Articles, Astrology, Leisure, Living By The Stars, Wellness
ARIES (March 21-April 19): What’s the difference between a love warrior and a love worrier? Love warriors work diligently to keep enhancing their empathy, compassion, and emotional intelligence. Love worriers fret so much about not getting the love they want...
by Advocate Staff | Oct 3, 2016 | Articles, Astrology, Wellness
ARIES (March 21-April 19): At a recent party, a guy I hardly know questioned my authenticity. “You seem to have had an easy life,” he jabbed. “I bet you haven’t suffered enough to be a truly passionate person.” I didn’t choose to engage him, but mused to...
by Kristin Palpini | Sep 26, 2016 | Articles, Arts, Leisure, Newsletter
Lyle Kleinhans focuses his work on abstract representations of people that highlight the conflicts, questions, and confidences behind their exteriors. Jagged and strict lines are offset by wildly brooding color that sucks the viewer in and haunts them long after....
by Yana Tallon-Hicks | Oct 3, 2016 | Articles, Columns, News, Newsletter, The V-Spot, Wellness
Yana, I need your expertise!I’m a 19-year-old guy in a hetero relationship. I was pleasuring my partner last night and I realized I stopped being present and could not become present again. She picked up on it and, well, I really wanted to be present for it but I...
by Kristin Palpini | Sep 26, 2016 | Articles, Leisure
This weekend UMass is celebrating Homecoming with a bunch of events: our top pick is the Homecoming Parade leading up to the clash between UMass and Tulane at McGuirk Stadium in Amherst Saturday at 3:30 p.m. The parade starts at 10:30 p.m. and will feature...
by From Our Readers | Oct 3, 2016 | Articles, News, Newsletter
In Defense of Robert MosesLena Groeger says that Robert Moses designed public work projects to exclude and isolate specific groups of people [“Discrimination by Design: From health care to toilets to Snapchat; life is designed to benefit certain people,” Sept. 22-28,...
by Advocate Staff | Sep 26, 2016 | Articles, Arts, Leisure, Newsletter
The Wobblies in Their Heyday: The Rise and Destruction of the Indistrial Workers of the World During the WWI Era, by Eric Thomas ChesterLevellers Press, levellerspress.comIn the early 20th century, when unions in the United States were fighting pitched battles with...
by Chris Rohmann | Jun 11, 2017 | Articles, Arts, Stage, Stagestruck
As it happens, two different productions of the same show open on area stages on the same day this week. On Wednesday, Million Dollar Quartet premieres in the Berkshire Theatre Group’s Unicorn Theatre in Stockbridge, and the Majestic Theater in West Springield...
by Chris Rohmann | Sep 21, 2016 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Featured, Newsletter, Stage, Stagestruck
I was intrigued by the description of The Water Project in the press release I received: “Live theater joins forces with the Pioneer Valley’s thriving independent music scene in this original immersive production. … Immerse yourself in the currents of time in this...
by Kristin Palpini | Sep 19, 2016 | Articles, Arts, Featured, Film, News, Newsletter
Northampton Film FestivalSept. 28 – Oct. 2For four days, at locations across Northampton, the modern film festival will be redefined with free public screenings of films, virtual reality experiences, games, and participatory film projects.Tickets are $10 for a...
by Hunter Styles | Sep 19, 2016 | Articles, Featured, News
When she was 37, Edie Daly came out as a lesbian. It was 1974, in the suburbs of New York City. Firmly ensconced in a 17-year marriage to a man, Daly had three children. The woman she fell in love with — a co-worker at a local school — also had a husband and four...
by Peter Vancini and Kyle Olsen | Sep 19, 2016 | Articles, Featured, Food + Booze, Leisure, Newsletter
September marks the end of the summer and evenings are starting to bring with them a subtle autumn chill. Chase it away with this month’s cocktail, a cranberry-cinnamon whiskey sour that’s sure to warm you up, brought to you by Josh Draghe, head bartender at Osteria...
