Amherst Canvassing Director Says She Was Fired For Supporting Her Staff
The former director of the Amherst office of for-profit organization Grassroots Campaigns Inc., which raises money for progressive nonprofit organizations, says her employment was terminated earlier this month after she instituted policies she believed supported her staff through harsh working conditions as street canvassers. And the majority of those who worked for her followed her out the door, substantially reducing the size of the...
Clueless Parent: Surviving ‘It’s a Phase’
After his evening bath, my 2-year-old son entered the living room with a delighted smile on his face. My husband trailed cheerfully behind him, having successfully accessed our son’s figurative reset button. A bath is one of the few things that can put our child in an instant good mood, and when you’re the parent of a temperamental toddler, you milk this kind of cure-all for all it is worth. Suddenly, our son tore across the living...
Q&A: Murder By Death Coming to Holyoke
Louisville, Kentucky’s Murder By Death are bringing their indie Americana rock to us here in Western Mass, and I’m super stoked! Their sound is strong and hearty, dark and transformative. There are hints of Nick Cave, Johnny Cash and Modest Mouse if you needed me to paint a picture of their sound. They’re on tour in support of their 8th studio album, The Other Shore, which is a beautiful, dark tale added to their repertoire. On...
Local drug response program featured in national drug summit
At the opening plenary on the first day of the RX Drug Abuse & Heroin Summit in Atlanta, Hampshire County’s Drug Addiction Response Team program was among nine initiatives around the country spotlighted as promising community responses in the fight against opioid deaths. After J. Cherry Sullivan, coordinator for Hampshire HOPE, the countywide opioid prevention coalition housed in the Northampton Health Department, offered...
Stagestruck: Community Colleges Get in on the Act
I often write in these pages about theater at the Five Colleges, all of which have robust degree programs and busy production seasons. But I don’t pay as much attention to the Valley’s other academic theaters as they deserve, and I’m going to partially correct that right now. Earlier this month, Springfield College staged Arthur Miller’s searing modern tragedy Death of a Salesman, and Greenfield Community College presented Richard...
Local delegation hopes to learn — and teach — at nation drug abuse summit
The first time Northampton Police Officer Adam Van Buskirk participated in the RX Drug Abuse & Heroin Summit two years ago, he returned to NPD and kicked the city’s Drug Addiction and Recovery Team into high gear. Known as the DART program — and now replicated in almost all Hampshire County police departments — DART sends teams of police, harm reduction educators, and recovery coaches out to visit with people who have recently...
The V-Spot: I’m Just Not Jealous and My Partner is Pissed
Hi Yana!! I’m 19 years old and I recently ended my first really serious relationship that lasted about a year. A big reason we ended it is that I felt a little restless and wanted to explore an open relationship. I did a lot of research and we both felt comfortable with it in theory but when my partner started having intercourse with other people, my partner became angry that I wasn’t having any feelings of jealousy. I know an open...
Cinemadope: A Woman’s World
There were always a lot of women in my family. When I think back to my childhood, to family cookouts and graduations, to birthdays and funerals, it is always the aunts and grandmothers that rule my remembered roosts. They made sure everyone was fed, slipped the youngest of us extra candies, and kept the wheels turning on all of our lives. But if they were the busiest — at most of these affairs, the men could be found in armchairs,...
Free Will Astrology: Learn from ‘Cards Against Humanity,’ Aries
ARIES (March 21-April 19): In the U.S., the day after Thanksgiving typically features a spectacular shopping orgy. On “Black Friday,” stores sell their products at steep discounts and consumers spend their money extravagantly. But the creators of the game Cards Against Humanity have consistently satirized the tradition. In 2013, for example, they staged a Black Friday “anti-sale,” for which they raised their prices. The coming weeks...
Stagestruck: Angles and Aliens — Three productions take a slanted view of our world
These are precarious days, observes Peter Schumann, founder and director of Bread & Puppet Theater. The social order, the democratic contract and the earth itself are tottering from unprecedented stresses. Bread & Puppet’s Diagonal Life: Theory and Praxis, coming to Holyoke’s Gateway City Arts on Tuesday, arises from that tension: “Diagonals are created from the leaning power of hurt verticals,” says the publicity for this...
Jennifer Stuart on the Valley Advocate Sessions Stage
This week’s Valley Advocate Sessions performer is Jennifer Stuart who play talking folk music about love, life, and poetry. Interview with Jennifer...
Back Talk: Support Forestry in Massachusetts
Support Forestry in Massachusetts In response to “Hey! DCR! Leave Those Trees Alone,” published April 11-17. The extent of exaggeration and distortion by the anti-forestry protesters in Wendell is truly astounding. I have a degree in Forestry from UMass and over 30 years’ experience helping landowners protect and manage thousands of acres of forest land across Massachusetts. Wendell State Forest consists of over 8,000 acres of which...
Valley Advocate Staff Picks: Christa Joy & Rosie Porter, Weege & the Wondertwins/ The Screaming Hearts, and Shakespeare’s Birthday Bash
Christa Joy & the Honeybees / Rosie Porter & the Neon Moons at the Ashfield Lake House // SATURDAY, 4/20 Two great local country-folk singers will be performing at the Ashfield Lake House this Saturday from 8 to 11 p.m. Both Christa Joy and Rosie Porter are set to play songs from their upcoming album alongside with their respective bands. You’ll likely hear country heartbreak tunes that’ll make you mist up (I know I would) as...
The Human Tragedy of ‘Lost Girls’
The artwork of Zitong (Ann) Xu blends myth, magic, and the fantastical together to tell human stories about sorrow for “Lost Girls” at the Barnes Gallery at Leverett Crafts & Arts through the month of April. With lifelike haunting faces of women combined with imagery out of an ancient Greek poem or the dark fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm, Xu, a senior at Northfield Mount Hermon preparatory school in Gill, presents a series of...
Stagestruck: Shakespearean Trifecta
It’s the Bard’s birthday next week, and three shows on area stages are celebrating it. (Shakespeare’s actual birthdate is unknown, but it was sometime around April 23, 1564, and since he died on April 23, 1616, that symmetry has become traditional.) This weekend and next, Smith College’s theater department mounts an all-female As You Like It. A new troupe called the rig stages an abbreviated Pericles in Easthampton and the Berkshires....
An Old Stoner’s Guide to Modern Cannabis
I’m not sure I’m ready for modern cannabis. Don’t get me wrong. I’m all for legal weed — for medical purposes and for grown-ass adult consumption (stay in school, kids, and just say no). As a young adult in my 20s and 30s, I indulged regularly. I inhaled frequently. Alright, alright — I was a pothead. Fast-forward and I’m now a decade into the AARP years. My consumption rate has dropped considerably to maybe a few times a year, mainly...
Editorial: Human Support for Striking Stop & Shop Workers
Since Thursday, April 11, Stop & Shop workers have been on strike, picketing what their union says is an unfair contract deal with owners of the grocery store chain. Hanging in the background of this dispute is one of the great demons of employment today — robots. Tyrone C. Housey, president of the Springfield-based United Food & Commercial Workers Local 1459, which represents local Stop & Shop workers, named automated...
Bizarro Briefs: Turtle Power!
A man from Florida (yes, it’s one of those Bizarro Briefs) who calls himself “the saint” threatened to unleash the potent power of his turtle army to destroy people in the town of Indialantic, according to the town’s police department. The 61-year-old Florida man was also accused of yelling obscenities and causing disturbances at businesses along North Miramar Avenue, including Starbucks and Sassy Granny’s Smoothies. The man was...
O Cannabis: How To Grow Your Own Weed Outside
The legalization of adult-use cannabis in Massachusetts has ushered in a brave new world for adult past times, including a first for many of us — the opportunity to legally grow cannabis outdoors. Massachusetts state law allows for adults to cultivate up to six plants per adult at home (no more than 12 plants per household). Plants must be grown on private property, guarded by either lock or security device, and not visible from a...
Valley Show Girl: The Valley’s Own Supergroup
A little bit country, a little bit psychedelic rock and a lot of heart and soul. Valley supergroup Opal Canyon debut their album Beauty and Loss this month. Valley veteran musicians Debra DeMuth, Dave Houghton, Ray Mason, Bob Hennessy, and Jason Smith joined forces to produce this new musical project. “Beauty and Loss” by Opal Canyon I was lucky enough to catch up with DeMuth for an interview. She talked about Opal Canyon,...
Monte Belmonte Wines: An Unscientific Blind Taste Test
“Why we can’t tell good wine from bad,” The Atlantic, published October 28, 2011 “Does all wine taste the same?” The New Yorker, published June 13, 2012 “Wine tasting: it’s junk science” The Guardian, published June 22, 2013 “The legendary study that embarrassed wine experts across the globe” Real Clear Science, August, 2014 I could post at least one headline like this from a respectable publications from every year going back to at...
Extravaganja Organizers Seeking New 2020 Venue Due to Age Restriction
After a forced move from the Amherst Common to Northampton in 2016, this could be the last year that political rally/festival Extravaganja will be held at the Three County Fairgrounds. The reason: the student-led University of Massachusetts Amherst Cannabis Reform Coalition (CRC), which organizes the event, is upset by restrictions imposed by the city of Northampton, including barring attendants under the age of 21 — with Five College...
V-Spot: How Do I Help My Partner Without Being His Healer?
Dear Yana, My new reciprocated crush is terrified of and obsessed with sex. He hasn’t had many good experiences, and I’m excited to potentially be a part of his new, positive experiences. But I’m also nervous and feel a lot of pressure to navigate his sexual trauma. I’m a slut and love sex and am not afraid of it. It’s difficult for me to understand the nervousness, no matter how much I care about him. I want to always heal and work...
Cinemadope: The Biggest Little Farm at Amherst Cinema
Spring in the Pioneer Valley always brings with it the sweet reminder of how lucky we are to be surrounded by so many working farms. Drive down just about any road that leads into or out of one of our bigger towns, and you’re sure to coast by a few coolers with “Fresh Eggs” signs leaning against them, and horses, cows, pigs, and more are as common here as protest signs (another nice thing about living in the Valley, I think). Our...
Free Will Astrology: You’ll Soon Transcend Jane Austen, Sagittarius
ARIES (March 21-April 19): French writer Simone de Beauvoir sent a letter to her lover, Aries author Nelson Algren. She wrote, “I like so much the way you are so greedy about life and yet so quiet, your eager greediness and your patience, and your way of not asking much of life and yet taking much because you are so human and alive that you find much in everything.” I’d love to see you embody that state in the coming weeks, Aries. In...
Dave Dersham on the Valley Advocate Sessions Stage
Dave Dersham is a wordsmith who performs ambient folk and Americana songs. Check out his music on this week’s Advocate Sessions video. Interview with Dave...
Poetry: Gentleness on the Heartening Prowl
Some moss and meltwater flashing in the placid gulch. The delicate theatrics of any flower’s mouth. All the tranquil angles quilted into a female face. The hand that was made to touch the saddest parts of trees. Where does gentleness go when softness shuts down? How does kindness survive the numb rage of global heartbreak? How can one be expected to opt for heroic tenderness when brutality is the bride of success? ...
Basemental: The Flywheel is an Idea Worth Celebrating
The Flywheel celebrates its 20th birthday this month. In 1999, the Flywheel launched in a former cabinet shop in Easthampton — hosting shows and rousing rabble. The thought that the all-volunteer collective show space would enter a second decade, let alone a third, wasn’t a thought that likely computed, as few DIY spaces last this long. But the fact that such a space has survived is a testament to the community that makes it happen —...
Staff Picks: Kalliope Jones & Moving Day, Zines and Punk at Flywheel, Revolutionary re-enactors in Deerfield
Kalliope Jones & Moving Day at the Stone Church // FRIDAY, April 12 Two great local bands and past Advocate Sessions groups will be performing at the Stone Church in Brattleboro this Friday. Kalliope Jones is a teenage post-rock group with rich vocal harmonies and catchy original indie rock hooks. The band is one of the best in the Valley. If you haven’t heard them live, I implore you to do so. Your eardrums will be happy....
Bizarro Briefs: Don’t rob cars in jail parking lots
Don’t rob cars in jail parking lots After spending time in jail on grand theft charges, a Florida man found himself again in lockup only 15 minutes after being released. The 37-year-old man was seen “acting suspicious and checking vehicle doors” in the parking lot of the jail facility. An officer confronted him and retrieved an iPhone 7, four packs of cigarettes, a lighter, a debit card, a Florida driver’s license and $547 in cash...
Letters to the Editor: Peace through music
A message best received through music “The Okee Dokee Brothers” wrote and perform the song: Somos Amigos (we’re friends). The video accompanying the tune showcases the duo joined by four other Mexican musicians standing on a bridge in which one might assume that perhaps it is the Rio Grande flowing beneath. One may also interpret the meaning, in such a setting, as actually dissolving of a border crossing and the bonding of two...
Stagestruck: ‘Death of a Salesman’ and ‘The Tattooed Man Tells All’
Two plays coming to area campuses this week and next have starkly different, but equally pessimistic takes on life and death. Death of a Salesman, at Springfield College, finds tragedy in an ordinary life, while The Tattooed Man Tells All, at Smith College, draws tragic lessons from viciously extraordinary conditions. Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman is perhaps the classic American tragedy. Winner of the 1949 Pulitzer Prize and...
Hey! DCR! Leave Those Trees Alone!
The road into Wendell State Forest was frozen solid with six-inch ruts formed the week before by vehicles navigating what must have been a muddy slog caused by yet another change in the weather. It’s said if you don’t like the weather in New England just wait a minute, something never more true than now as the Climate Crisis makes itself known to those who have been following the science. The frozen surface would be ideal for loggers...
Editorial: Half-baked Plan Not Good Enough for Hampshire
Although the future of Hampshire College still remains uncertain, there’s a lot to be said for the strong level of support for the experimental 1960s-established college among Valley residents, alumni, students, faculty, and staff in advocating for an independent Hampshire College. That idea is the opposite of what college administrators set out to do — remedy financial woes by seeking out a partner. Amid the several leadership...
Woman accuses Hadley Police of discrimination, mishandling her case
The first time Carmen Allison’s things were taken from a storage unit at Stuff-It Storage in Hadley was in the summer of 2015. She had recently lost her job as a caretaker in Amherst and was away for a few months to look for work in New Jersey. She reported the items missing to the office and the manager gave her a new lock. But a short time later, her unit was robbed again. When she went to the police to report the crime, however,...