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by Will Meyer | May 10, 2019 | Articles, Basemental, Columns, Featured, Music
Before prisons became the inevitable institutions they are today, believe it or not, they were introduced as a reform; a humane alternative to torture or death. In 1790, English common law condemned those guilty of “petty treason” to the punishment of being burned...
by Advocate Staff | May 9, 2019 | Articles, Featured, Music, Staff Picks
Weege & The Wondertwins Album Release Show // FRIDAY, 5/10 Weege & The Wondertwins’ sophomore album “Do I Seem Weird Lately?” is a gem to your ears. It’s strong and sophisticated and one of those albums you can put on to instantly change your mood. On Friday,...
by Chris Goudreau | May 9, 2019 | Articles, Featured, Music, News
This summer at the Pines Theater at Look Memorial Park in Northampton is shaping up to an eventful one with half a dozen shows featuring big name acts such as grungey alternative rock band Dinosaur Jr. with indie folk-rocker Kurt Vile as well as jam rock acts Moe. and...
by Andy Castillo | May 8, 2019 | Articles, Featured, News
Last year, Northampton City Councilor Marianne LaBarge cared for a dear friend as she died from esophageal cancer. Near the end, LaBarge says she couldn’t breathe well, even on oxygen, and was in tremendous pain, even on pain medications. “She was begging to breathe,”...
by Dave Eisenstadter | May 8, 2019 | Articles, Between the Lines, Featured, News
With the constant hum of negative political news at the national and international level, it’s easy to miss the fact that we may be on the verge of something very positive on the local and state level with regard to food and hunger. The centerpiece has been a...
by Chris Goudreau | May 8, 2019 | Articles, Bizarro Briefs, Featured, News
The ‘Pooperintendent’ Returns Previously on Bizarro Briefs: a mysterious serial track field defecator was revealed to be a rival school’s superintendent. He was fired. But wait folks, that’s not all! Now, the former New Jersey ‘pooperintendent’ has sued a police...
by Hunter Styles | May 7, 2019 | Articles, Columns, Featured, Food + Booze, Food Booze and Beyond, The Beerhunter
Since I started this column in 2014, it hasn’t gotten any easier to keep up with the craft beer news pouring out of the Valley (not that I’m complaining). I try to go straight to the source by touring breweries, chilling in taprooms, and talking with local brewers....
by Jack Brown | May 7, 2019 | Articles, Cinemadope, Columns, Featured
When Gilda Radner was in her heyday as a cast member on Saturday Night Live, I was still too young to know her hilarity first-hand; SNL was past my bedtime. But when she passed away in May of 1989, I was in high school. That was a Saturday, and I can still recall the...
by Blaise Majkowski | May 7, 2019 | Articles, Blaise's Bad Movie Guide, Columns, Featured, Film
On its opening weekend, Avengers: Endgame took in a staggering $1.2 billion. I’ve seen it and now I am caught up in the frenzy. I even scoured the area McDonald’s and got 12 of the 24 avengers happy meal toys. The clerks there cringe when I come strolling through the...
by Chris Rohmann | May 6, 2019 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Featured, Review, Stage, Stagestruck
Two revisioned classics, a brand-new political drama, and some audience favorites are on tap in the Amherst Cinema’s series of broadcasts from the London stage via National Theatre Live. First up, this Saturday and again on the 14th, is Shakespeare’s most lyrical...
by David Daley | May 6, 2019 | Articles, Between the Lines, Featured, News
This is a story about what happens behind closed doors in Washington, how politicians quietly sell out the public interest to lobbyists and campaign donors, and how both groups then manipulate the truth to get away with it. Our main characters: The powerful tax prep...
by Rob Brezsny | May 6, 2019 | Articles, Astrology, Featured
ARIES (March 21-April 19): Time to shake things up! In the next three weeks, I invite you to try at least three of the following experiments. 1.) See unusual sights in familiar situations. 2.) Seek out new music that both calms you and excites you. 3.) Get an...
by Yana Tallon-Hicks | May 6, 2019 | Articles, Columns, Featured, The V-Spot
Content note: This column talks about substance use, sobriety, and sexual abuse. Hi there! I’m in a pickle about my sexual experience and identity. I’m curious what you know about the ways sex drive and desire may change for people in recovery and/or for people who...
by Advocate Staff | May 3, 2019 | Articles, Featured, Music, Valley Advocate Sessions
Ed Bentley performs open mic-honed folk music with a sweet crooner voice. Check out his Advocate Sessions set in the video below. Interview with Ed Bentley:
by From our Readers | May 3, 2019 | Articles, Featured, Letters from our Readers
Editor’s Note: Welcome to our letters to the editor page. Here you’ll find reader comments on Advocate articles and other news. We collect readers’ opinions from emails, letters, Facebook comments, and comments to valleyadvocate.com. Want to get in on this? Email...
by Steve Pfarrer | May 3, 2019 | Articles, Featured, Review
THE PROMISE OF ELSEWHERE By Brad Leithauser Knopf Mount Holyoke College, where he previously taught, once described Brad Leithauser as “polymathic” — for good reason. A Harvard Law School graduate who worked in law before turning to writing, Leithauser has lived in...
by Advocate Staff | May 2, 2019 | Articles, Arts, Featured, Music, Staff Picks
Motherhood Out Loud at STCC // FRIDAY-SATURDAY Stagestruck columnist Chris Rohmann recently wrote about this production and described this play as 14 vignettes that “traverse the full terrain of the mom experience, from the throes of labor to the empty nest.” While...
by Chris Rohmann | May 1, 2019 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Featured, Review, Stage, Stagestruck
When the twin towers crumpled on September 11, 2001, American airspace was closed for fear of further attacks and all U.S.-bound flights were diverted to other airports. One of these was Gander International, i n Newfoundland, where 38 airliners landed, carrying...
by Chris Goudreau | May 1, 2019 | Articles, Featured, News
Dino Schnelle, a 66-year-old resident of Heath, was diagnosed with Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) in 1996. An openly gay man, he contracted HIV through unprotected sex sometime in the early- to mid-1980s. He waited about a decade before getting tested due to fear...
by Chris Goudreau | May 1, 2019 | Articles, Bizarro Briefs, Featured, News
A Dream Fake-cation To Nebraska You’re down on your luck and feeling the blues. It happens to everyone. Maybe you need a trip to Disneyland to lift your spirits … or Nebraska? You don’t have to actually go to Nebraska to go on vacation because a Nebraska-based...
by Dave Eisenstadter | May 1, 2019 | Articles, Between the Lines, Featured, News
Last week, a Facebook comment thread on a Valley Advocate parenting column about dealing with tantrums went in an unexpected direction. Despite the article having nothing to do with vaccines, a reader took the opportunity to rail against them and espouse conspiracy...
by Laurie Loisel | Apr 30, 2019 | Articles, Featured, News, Wellness
As co-founder of the Kentucky-based Voices of Hope, a nonprofit that promotes and supports lifelong recovery, Alex Elswick, a former heroin user who now says he is “recovering out loud,” knows the hard way about substance misuse, addiction, sobriety and recovery. At...
by Jennifer Levesque | Apr 30, 2019 | Articles, Columns, Featured, Music, Valley Show Girl
The last time Deer Tick had a headlining show in the Valley, it was canceled the day of because guitarist/singer John McCauley was too sick to perform. Wahhh! I was set to cover the show so I told myself the next time they had a headlining show here, I was going to...
by Monte Belmonte | Apr 30, 2019 | Articles, Columns, Featured, Monte Belmonte Wines
Everything I know about wine I learned from my mother. Not my biological mother. Her relationship to wine consists of one wine cooler a year and White Zinfandel at family gatherings. Everything I know about wine I learned from my Wine Mother. And as we approach...
by Chris Rohmann | Apr 29, 2019 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Featured, Review, Stage, Stagestruck
Jules Verne’s 1873 novel/travelogue, Around the World in 80 Days, is best remembered these days from its movie versions, including Disney’s in 2004 and the Oscar-winning three-hour blockbuster from 1956, both of them teeming with exotic multitudes and spectacular...
by Yana Tallon-Hicks | Apr 29, 2019 | Articles, Columns, Featured, Food Booze and Beyond, The V-Spot
Hi Yana, I’m a virgin and I’m in college. Being in college seems to come with a hookup culture and an expectation to be having sex which isn’t the case for everybody. I find myself either lying or being very quiet during conversations about sex with people I’m not...
by Jack Brown | Apr 29, 2019 | Articles, Cinemadope, Columns, Featured, Film
Much has been written, by better minds than mine, about the human penchant for horror. That impulse to indulge in our most deeply seated human fears and frailties is behind both traffic jams at accident scenes and modern gods-and-monsters tales about the undead (or...
by Rob Brezsny | Apr 29, 2019 | Articles, Astrology, Featured
ARIES (March 21-April 19): “How prompt we are to satisfy the hunger and thirst of our bodies,” wrote Henry David Thoreau. “How slow to satisfy the hunger and thirst of our souls!” Your first assignment in the coming days, Aries, is to devote yourself to quenching the...
by Advocate Staff | Apr 26, 2019 | Articles, Featured, Music, Valley Advocate Sessions
This week’s Advocate Sessions band is electro fever-pop, new wave and experimental pop duo Home Body. The duo just released their new record, Spiritus, and will be performing at their release show on Friday, May 3 at the Shea Theater in Turners Falls. Check out...
by Our Readers | Apr 26, 2019 | Articles, Featured
Thoughts on the Stop & Shop Robots In response to “Human Support for the Striking Shop & Stop Workers,” published April 18-24. I fully support Stop & Shop workers in their strike but I don’t understand the hate for the robot. It roams around the...
by Chris Rohmann | Apr 25, 2019 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Featured, Review, Stage, Stagestruck
Anne Undeland, the playwright and star of Lady Randy, says she wanted to find a 19th-century woman to build a one-person show around. “It soon became clear that if I wanted name recognition, I had to find a woman who was associated with a famous man. Dammit!” She...
by Laurie Loisel | Apr 25, 2019 | Articles, Featured, News
In months to come, this may become a point of dispute in the history of the national RX & Heroin Drug Summit: The 2016 appearance by President Barack Obama drew a larger audience than did President Trump’s keynote in 2019. And Sean Spicer won’t be there to settle...
by Advocate Staff | Apr 25, 2019 | Articles, Arts, Featured, Music, Staff Picks
Opal Canyon album release @ The Parlor Room // FRIDAY, 4/26 A little bit country, a little bit psychedelic rock and a lot of heart and soul. Valley supergroup Opal Canyon are releasing their debut album, “Beauty and Loss,” this Friday at The Parlor Room. The group is...
by Will Meyer | Apr 25, 2019 | Articles, Basemental, Columns, Featured, Music
Recently, on a Saturday morning, I was lying in bed trying to muster the will to get up when a man dressed in all black, who seemed vaguely familiar, started poking around — letting himself into my room unannounced — and generally scoping out my personal dwelling...
by Advocate Staff | Apr 25, 2019 | Articles, Featured
The Valley Advocate would like to thank everyone that took time to vote in the 2019 Valley Advocate Best of the Valley Readers’ Poll. Thank you again for voting and please let the businesses know that you saw them on our website as you congratulate them. Click Here to...
by Maureen O'Reilly | Apr 24, 2019 | Articles, Featured, News
A stream runs adjacent to a package store in Agawam. John Coughlin isn’t sure it’s legal for us to be there, but he wants to show me something. “Look at the nip bottles. Look at them. They’re everywhere,” Coughlin says. Small, smashed plastic bottles are mixed into...
by David Daley | Apr 24, 2019 | Articles, Between the Lines, Featured, News
Three weeks after U.S. Rep. Richard Neal, D-Springfield, won his 16th term in Congress last November, he threw himself a giant weekend celebration. You probably didn’t get an invitation. Instead, according to the narrative that emerges from Neal’s Federal Election...
by Laurie Loisel | Apr 24, 2019 | Articles, Featured, News
Bumped to the early hour of 7 a.m. because of scheduling rearrangements forced by President Trump’s mid-day keynote at the RX Drug & Heroin Summit, Hampshire HOPE’s Michele Farry’s presentation nevertheless drew a crowd of 75 people eager to hear about the...
by Dave Eisenstadter | Apr 23, 2019 | Articles, Featured, News
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...
by Chris Goudreau | Apr 24, 2019 | Articles, Bizarro Briefs, Featured, News
Police in Dunedin, Florida, are looking for a man who stole $250 from a Little League concession stand who was wearing nothing but a ballcap and gloves when he was captured on video. The Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office says the naked burglar also caused more than...
by Katie Gartner | Apr 23, 2019 | Articles, Clueless Parent, Columns, Featured
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...
by Jennifer Levesque | Apr 23, 2019 | Articles, Featured, Music
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...
by Laurie Loisel | Apr 23, 2019 | Articles, Featured, News
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...
by Chris Rohmann | Apr 22, 2019 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Featured, Review, Stage, Stagestruck
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...
by Laurie Loisel | Apr 22, 2019 | Articles, Featured, News
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...
by Yana Tallon-Hicks | Apr 22, 2019 | Articles, Columns, Featured, The V-Spot
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...
by Jack Brown | Apr 22, 2019 | Articles, Cinemadope, Columns, Featured
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...
by Rob Brezsny | Apr 22, 2019 | Articles, Astrology, Featured
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...
by Chris Rohmann | Apr 21, 2019 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Featured, Review, Stage, Stagestruck
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,...
by Advocate Staff | Apr 19, 2019 | Articles, Featured, Music, Valley Advocate Sessions
This week’s Valley Advocate Sessions performer is Jennifer Stuart who play talking folk music about love, life, and poetry. Interview with Jennifer Stuart:
by Our Readers | Apr 19, 2019 | Articles, Featured, Letters from our Readers
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...
by Advocate Staff | Apr 18, 2019 | Articles, Featured, Staff Picks
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...
by Chris Goudreau | Apr 18, 2019 | Articles, Arts, Featured, Review
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...
by Chris Rohmann | Apr 17, 2019 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Featured, Review, Stage, Stagestruck
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...
by Lauren Simonds | Apr 17, 2019 | Articles, Featured, Food Booze and Beyond, News
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....
by Dave Eisenstadter | Apr 17, 2019 | Articles, Between the Lines, Featured, News
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....
by Chris Goudreau | Apr 17, 2019 | Articles, Bizarro Briefs, Featured, News
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...
by Karima Rizk | Apr 16, 2019 | Articles, Columns, Featured, Food Booze and Beyond, O Cannabis!
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...
by Jennifer Levesque | Apr 16, 2019 | Articles, Columns, Featured, Music, Valley Show Girl
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...
by Monte Belmonte | Apr 16, 2019 | Articles, Featured
“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...
