Articles
Free Will Astrology: Adopt the social habits of John Cleese, Pisces
ARIES (March 21-April 19): When comedian John Cleese was 61, his mother died. She was 101. Cleese testifies, “Just towards the end, as she began to run out of energy, she did actually stop trying to tell me what to do most of the time.” I bet you’ll experience a...
Supporting the underserved: Spanish language dementia support group gets financial boost
Members of the Spanish-speaking group Cuidadores Unidos meet once a month to discuss the challenges of being caregivers to family members or friends with a dementia-related disease. At the Holyoke Senior Center, members of Cuidadores Unidos are able to share their...
Monte Belmonte Wines: Michael Quinlan — One Region at a Time
Northampton’s soon-to-be-sworn in Ward 1 Councilor also happens to be one of the biggest players in wine in Massachusetts, and I meet with him for lunch over wine at Northampton’s Filo’s Greek Taverna. It’s BYOB. He doesn’t let me pay. Ethics-schmethics. Michael...
Poetry: First Snow, Best Snow
First Snow, Best Snow By Connolly Ryan You remember the first time it snowed on your world? To your little body and giant eyes, the snowflakes looked like extraterrestrial Ferris-wheels and gyroscopic carousels spinning ever so slowly and quickly at the...
Bizarro Briefs Podcast: Be your own farm
Valley Advocate editor Dave Eisenstadter and Hits 94.3 host Trumpy talk about the week’s weird news in a podcast version of the Valley Advocate’s Bizarro Briefs section. Hear about being your own farm in a dystopian future, generous burglars, and the danger of...
Staff Picks: Ray Mason, Kate Lorenz & The Constellations, Livingston Taylor and Susan Warner, 2D Needle Felting
Ray Mason at Bread Euphoria // SATURDAY Kick off the New Year with one of the Valley’s best-seasoned singer-songwriters — Ray Mason — along with his iconic Silvertone guitar. Mason has been performing in the western Massachusetts music scene for decades and this...
Cinemadope: Holding a Grudge — Horror remakes, remade
Fans of the horror genre, and specifically the subset of films that have come out of Asia, will recall the mid-2000s as a heady time. With the success of the 2002 Gore Verbinski film The Ring — a remake of the 1998 Japanese film Ring, in which watching a cursed...
Editorial: Another Year, Another Women’s March
If there’s one good thing the Trump presidency has brought us, it’s the annual Women’s March. Begun as a response to Trump defeating Hillary Clinton, the first woman to earn a major party nomination in the United States, the march attracted nearly half a million...
Turning music into philanthropy: Percussionist Tony Vacca talks about his work in West Africa
When he looks back on more than two decades of forging connections with musicians in Senegal, playing with them both there and in the United States, longtime Valley percussionist Tony Vacca laughs, shakes his head in wonder, and summarizes the situation like this:...
Bizarro Briefs: Become your own chia pet … TO SURVIVE
Become your own chia pet … TO SURVIVE Climate change is a scary concept and is driving people to extreme lifestyles, but it was left to a Californian landscape architect to offer us the self-sustaining vest — essentially a wearable farm that can be watered using...
Five Last-Minute Album Reviews for 2019
Music lovers in the Pioneer Valley were blessed by a plethora of great local music this year, whether that was the hauntingly beautiful folk rock of Philip B. Price’s new solo record “Bone Almanac” or what I named as one of the best local albums of the year —...
V-Spot: How do I stop avoiding my partners’ partners?
Hi Yana! I’ve been practicing polyamory for three years. Right now I have two serious partners. Both of them have sex with other people occasionally, but not with any regularity. My jealousy isn’t nonexistent, but it’s manageable. My big problem is that once my...
Free Will Astrology: Work hard like Da Vinci, Libra
ARIES (March 21-April 19): “We are all hostages of the joy of which we deprive ourselves,’ wrote poet Odysseus Elytis. Isn’t that an astounding idea? That we refuse to allow ourselves to experience some of the bliss and pleasure we could easily have; and that we are...
Staff Picks: Moon Hooch, Enter the Haggis, and The Amidon, Murphy, & Tracy Families Concert
Moon Hooch at Hawks & Reed // FRIDAY Moon Hooch makes a big sound with just a few instruments. The band is made up of a drummer and two saxophonists, and when my friend described them to me a few years back, I thought, how much can you do with that arrangement?...
The Halos and Horns of 2019: Advocate staff says who’s been naughty and nice this year
It’s time again for the annual Advocate tradition of giving halos to the good and horns to the bad. The year 2019 closed out the decade with some highs, with local activists going down to the border and speaking out on climate issues, residents in Longmeadow saying no...
In Memoriam: Those who died in 2019
Frances Crowe At 100 years old before she passed away this year, Frances Crowe was already a legend in activism not just in the Pioneer Valley, but the world. She’d been arrested numerous times over the decades, putting her body on the line for causes such as working...
Bizarro Briefs Podcast: A burglar’s Christmas surprise, a bald eagle vs. an octopus, and the Valley’s best public bathrooms
Valley Advocate editor Dave Eisenstadter and Hits 94.3 host Trumpy talk about the week’s weird news in a podcast version of the Valley Advocate’s Bizarro Briefs section. Hear about a burglar’s Christmas surprise, a bald eagle vs. an octopus, and the...
Bizarro Briefs: In the Socks of Fox
In the Socks of Fox If you ever watch the Fox network and think — are these guys on something? — turns out some of them likely are. A reporter for Fox Business was busted last week at a Manhattan courthouse with a crack pipe in his sock. The man was ticketed and...
Clueless Parent: My years-long struggle, and solution, to my son’s bed wetting
“He’ll eventually grow out of it, you have to give it some time,” my son’s pediatrician told his father and me at his physical when he was maybe about 5 years old. When my son transitioned from diapers to pull-ups at bedtime, it seemed that we would never transition...
Valley Show Girl: Don’t Forget to Water Your Leafies
Editor’s note: Advocate Associate Editor Chris Goudreau is a member of Leafies. The opening track to debut album Off Off Off Broadway from The Leafies You Gave Me tells a tale of a man who tends to the elephants and their dirty business at the circus. It is spoken...
The V-Spot: How To Kiss With Consent
Hi Yana, Often when speaking of sexual comfort and consent, people focus on the stages of intimacy that involve contact with the areas of our bodies we normally keep clothed. Kissing and intimate touch are viewed more often as foreplay and I seldom encounter guides to...
Cinemadope: Adam Sandler gets serious
Back in the Blockbuster era of movie consumption it was hard not to think of movies in terms of genre first: walk into one of those big box shrines to moviemaking and you couldn’t take a step without first charting a course by the signs hanging from the ceiling....
Free Will Astrology: Mix and blend like Drake, Scorpio
ARIES (March 21-April 19): Nazi Germany invaded and occupied Denmark during World War II. In 1943, Hitler ordered all Danish Jews to be arrested — a first step in his plan to send them to concentration camps. But the Danish resistance movement leapt into action and...
Brown Bones on the Valley Advocate Sessions Stage
Brown Bones performs soulful and intimate urban folk with poignant lyrics and heartfelt melodies. Check out the group’s full performance in the video below. Interview with Brown Bones:
Letters to the Editor: Put the Ha back in Hanukah
Put the Ha back in Hanukah As the holiday season rolls around we have to brace ourselves for the seasonal secular humanist assault on one of our nation’s most sacred holidays. However you spell it, I’m talking about the “war” on Hanukah. Chanukah has turned into yet...
Staff Picks: The Frost Heaves and Hales, homelessness films, Parasite at Amherst Cinema, Winter Solstice Celebration
Books, music and a birthday at Federal St. Books // SATURDAY There are few better things to celebrate than the re-opening of a bookstore, and such a celebration comes to us this weekend when Federal St. Books has its grand reopening under the ownership of Hillary...
Cinemadope: Holly Daze
You may or may not have heard, but this thing called Christmas is happening on Wednesday. Turns out it’s kind of a big deal, and while a lot of the movie-going crowd will be busy elsewhere on the 25th, local cinemas are getting in the spirit in the days leading up to...
Ranked-choice voting gaining speed in Massachusetts
Starting in 2022, Massachusetts voters might be able to vote for their second favorite, third, fourth, and last-pick choice for political office, if voters across the state approve a proposed ballot question next year to adopt ranked-choice voting. In Amherst, which...
Editorial: Advocates for human rights deserve to be heard
This week a disgusting lawsuit — that tried to censor a Palestinian human rights panel that in part dealt with how Palestinian voices are censored — was dropped. Three anonymous students at the University of Massachusetts Amherst tried to stop the May event, titled...
‘A Unified Celebration’: Local artists, organizers get ready for annual First Night in Northampton
Northampton’s annual First Night will ring in the new decade with 12 hours of performances from local musicians and bands, theater ensembles, comedy troupes, alongside salsa dancing, yo-yo tricks, and fireworks on New Year’s Eve the downtown portion of the city. The...
Podcast: Former Ninja Turtles artist Eric Talbot on becoming a tattoo artist
Eric Talbot, of Easthampton, was an artist drawing the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles for more than 30 years. Now he works at Oxbow Tattoo as a tattoo artist. He (along with his tattoo mentor, Tyler Chaney) speaks with editor Dave Eisenstadter about the transition and...
Monte Belmonte Wines: Sparkling wines for New Year’s Eve … and normal drinking days in 2020
We are entering into the year 2020. That year sounds fake. Like a future I never imagined myself seeing. Where is my jetpack? Where is my visiphone? Oh, I have that? Nice! 2020 is, of course, an election year. If you are anything like me, you will be doing a lot of...
Bizarro Briefs: Someone on the Naughty List
Someone on the Naughty List It’s unfortunately a scene that is not completely uncommon. On a train heading from Manhattan to Long Island this past Saturday, two men began arguing until it culminated into a physical altercation. One man, allegedly drunk, shouted...
Stagestruck: The Equity Equation
Every year in this column I make an equity survey of area theaters – not Equity the actors’ union, but the representation of women and people of color. And every year the outlook, once deeply depressing, gets a little better. Of the 45 full productions I saw this year...
V-Spot: I’m Tiptoeing Around His Erectile Dysfunction
Dear Yana, I’ve been dating my current partner for almost two years now and our relationship has been great with the exception of our dwindling to now nonexistent sex life. It was amazing for the first six months until he starting having some health problems. His sex...
Free Will Astrology: You’ll be more grounded in 2020 than Igor Stravinsky, Libra
ARIES (March 21-April 19): The English word “hubris” means prideful, exaggerated self-assurance. In the HBO TV series Rome, the ancient Roman politician and general Mark Antony says to his boss Julius Caesar, “I’m glad you’re so confident. Some would call it hubris.”...
Stagestruck: History Lessons – Recalling the past to inform the present
The past, as they say, is prologue. We look back to ground our present and see ahead more clearly. And in these murky times, that’s more necessary than ever. At least, that’s the impression I drew from the sheer number of shows I saw this year that have their roots in...
Bizarro Briefs Podcast: What is art, anyway?
A performance artist eats a $120,000 banana, and then another performance artist writes “Epstien (sic) didn’t kill himself” in lipstick on the wall where the banana used to be. Those stories are among this week’s weird news stories discussed by...
Opal Canyon on the Valley Advocate Sessions Stage
Opal Canyon plays modern country and folk with a dash of psychedelic rock. Check out the band’s performance in the video below. Interview with Opal Canyon:
Letters to the Editor: Come together over hunger
Come together over hunger As a Kansan, I’m proud that Rep. Roger Marshall (R-Great Bend, Kansas) introduced H. Res. 189 alongside Massachusetts Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Worcester) to work towards bettering global nutrition with U.S. aid. It’s been introduced to recognize...
Staff Picks: Reanimate the Bay State, Hatchery dance, Matilda, and Le Cirque de Noel
Lush Honey, Spinelli, and Honeycomb at the Sierra Grille // THURSDAY The Buzz, A Honey Pot Production along with Reanimate the Bay State will be hosting a show at the Sierra Grille in Northampton this Thursday featuring soul and funk quartet Lush Honey, guitar,...
Jazz for the holidays: FlavaEvolution to play their take on some holiday classics at Gateway City Arts
David Picchi, who conducts arrangements for jazz quartet FlavaEvolution, labels the group’s sound as “fresh new jazz music for your mind and soul.” “We’re trying to bring something that you haven’t heard or things that you have heard and put them into new contexts to...
From scales to skin: Former Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles artist Eric Talbot talks about his move to tattoos
Eric Talbot got his first tattoo at around 19 years old living in Portland, Maine, during the early 1980s. When the veteran tattoo artist who inked Talbot’s first tattoo — a skull and crossbones on his left forearm — saw Talbot’s artwork, he was impressed and told...
Editorial: Don’t Let Big Money Win the Argument Over Medicare for All
Every year around this time, I take a look at my pay stubs and look at the accrued total I’ve paid in health insurance premiums. This year, it will be almost exactly $5,000, which doesn’t include the additional copayments as well as the hundreds spent on dental...
Valley Show Girl: Alice Loves Alien
Life and music partners Gina Andia and Brendan Clark aren’t new to the Valley music scene, but their latest project Alice Loves Alien is fresh to our ears. I don’t mean to judge a book (or album) by its cover but when I received an early copy of the self titled debut...
Bizarro Briefs: Eating a $120,000 Banana
A man walked into the Art Basel gallery in Miami Beach, Florida, and ate a work of art that had recently sold to an art collector for $120,000. The piece of art consisted of a banana duct-taped to a wall and was created by Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan and titled...
The Beerhunter: Kismet Brewing Company Prepares to Open in Westfield
After 10 years together, Rich and Liz DeSousa are trying to find a way to spend more time in the same room. That’s the kind of marriage you’re supposed to study for pointers — or maybe for the reveal of some secret ingredient. In my most recent visit with the couple:...
Cinemadope: The Age of Activism
When well-known activist Frances Crowe died this August at her home in Northampton, the loss rippled through the town in a way few passings do. One hundred years old at the time of her death, Crowe had touched generations of Valley residents — changing some minds,...
Podcast: Steve Pfarrer discusses historical fiction writers of the Valley
Valley Advocate writer Steve Pfarrer discusses his recent story about historical fiction writers in the Valley with editor Dave Eisenstadter. Writers Pfarrer talked to include David Gillham, Susanne Dunlap, Serena Burdick, and Gita Trelease. Listen here: You can hear...
V-Spot: I Can’t Stop Masturbating to My Toxic Ex
Hello, I’m nervous to write in and feel like I’m the only person who has this problem: I’ve been on-and-off dating someone for about three years. We fight nonstop and basically it’s just not a good relationship for either of us. Recently, I’ve been trying to move on...
Free Will Astrology: Free yourself like Conan O’Brien, Aries
ARIES (March 21-April 19): “Nobody knows really what they’re doing,” says Aries comedian Conan O’Brien. “And there are two ways to go with that information,” he continues. “One is to be afraid, and the other is to be liberated, and I choose to be liberated by it.” I...
Letters to the Editor: ‘We all know how that goes’
‘We all know how that goes’ In response to “Between the Lines: Automation without oversight has deadly consequences,” published Nov. 28 – Dec. 4, 2019. Self-driving cars is a stupid technology. It assumes computers will always function well. We all know how that...
Snowhaus on the Valley Advocate Sessions Stage
Snowhaus plays party punk and shredding emo pop. Check out the band’s Advocate Sessions performance in the video below. Interview with Snowhaus:
Bizarro Briefs Podcast: A hellish marriage proposal, a belligerent pig on live TV, and an epic use of a narwhal tusk
Valley Advocate editor Dave Eisenstadter and Hits 94.3 host Trumpy talk about the week’s weird news in a podcast version of the Valley Advocate’s Bizarro Briefs section. Hear about a hellish marriage proposal, a belligerent pig on live TV, and an epic use of a narwhal...
Staff Picks: Mad Habits, Rosie Porter, Crooked Still, and a Short Film Festival
Mad Habits, Ananda Luna, and The Hanged Man at Majestic Saloon // SUNDAY This Sunday at Majestic Saloon in Northampton will feature the musical stylings of progressive folk quartet Mad Habits, experimental and world fusion artist Ananda Luna as well as Bella’s Bartok...
Monte Belmonte Wines: My Christmas Wine Wish List For Santa
Dear Santa, It has been one year since my last confession. I have been a fair to moderately good boy. There has only been the occasional quid pro quo. And even when wine companies have shipped me free wine, I have been unafraid to damn them with faint praise in this...
An imaginative trip through history: Valley historical novelists talk about their craft
Time travel has been a perennial theme for fiction writers for over 200 years, as well as a theme from ancient myths, dating back far longer, from countries all over the world. It’s also an idea — or at least the notion of moving into the future is — that’s been...
Editorial: Support for those seeking sanctuary
It was as recently as October when I used this space to observe the two-year anniversary of Lucio Perez taking sanctuary in the First Congregational Church in Amherst. A resident of the Valley for nearly 20 years, Perez is married and has three children who are U.S....
A champion of the heart: Local woman joins organization to provide heart disease information and support to women
When Lynette Bloise would tell her husband, “It’s happening,” he knew exactly what that meant: a trip to the emergency room. Before May 2018, Bloise would have cardiac episodes stemming from conditions that caused her heart to suddenly beat erratically, alternating...E-Edition
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