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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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 | Arts, Featured, Film, Newsletter
Quick Flicks February is typically rather bleak, and this year – once again – even Punxsutawney Phil can’t hack it. We don’t blame him. We’d be headed back to the burrow too, if not for a concerted effort up and down the Valley this year to make the coldest...
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 Lena Wilson | Feb 6, 2017 | Arts, Featured, Film, Newsletter, Stream Queen
There are few mediums more powerful than the moving image. Movies, TV shows, and even music videos can transport viewers to another time, place, or lifetime. I love cinema but, with so few compelling female/LGBT characters (my favorite kinds) in mainstream titles, I...
by Laura Holland | Jan 30, 2017 | Arts, Featured, Newsletter
Nick Cave begins his immersive installation Until with a question: Is there racism in heaven? Instead of providing an answer, he has constructed a sequence of experiences spanning a gallery the size of a football field at MASS MoCA. With the title, Cave pivots on the...
by Jenny Bender and Amanda Herman | Jan 30, 2017 | Featured, News, Newsletter
Editor’s Note: This week, we are delighted to collaborate with Jenny Bender and Amanda Herman, two active community members (one writer, one photographer) who set out this past year to do a citizens’ oral history project on our Muslim friends and neighbors. This...
by Chris Rohmann | Jan 31, 2017 | Arts, Featured, Newsletter, Stage, Stagestruck
The two shows now playing at Hartford’s rep theaters couldn’t be more different, but they still share some core themes. They are Shakespeare’s rambunctious, large-cast Comedy of Errors, at Hartford Stage, and Dominique Morisseau’s small, intense contemporary drama...
by Jack Brown | Jan 30, 2017 | Arts, Cinemadope, Columns, Featured, Film, Newsletter
Building a Wall Over the last few years, a regular appointment in Boston meant that I was frequently traveling along Route 2 between Franklin County and the Hub. It was more convenient than driving south to hook up with the Pike, and more picturesque, even if it did...
by Hunter Styles | Jan 23, 2017 | Arts, Featured, Film, Music, Newsletter, Stage
Reflective Collective What happens when eight talented women — all of whom are involved in creative communities across Franklin, Hampshire, and Hampden counties — meet to make poetry and art together? In the case of Exploded View, they create multimedia exhibits and...
by Peter Vancini | Jan 23, 2017 | Arts, Featured, Newsletter
From Kuniyoshi to Cowabunga I have to admit that it seemed odd walking through a hall of classical Greek sculptures in the George Walter Vincent Smith Museum to visit an exhibit devoted to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comic book art. The whole thing felt suspiciously...
by Gary Carra | Jan 23, 2017 | Arts, Columns, Featured, Leisure, Music, Newsletter, Nightcrawler
After more than two decades delivering the music news in print, Nightcrawler moves online Editor’s Note: Scene stalwart Gary Carra’s Nightcrawler column has long been a fixture at the Valley Advocate — a history that goes back, as he explains here, to the bygone era...
by Hunter Styles | Jan 9, 2017 | Arts, Featured, Film, Newsletter
Fine Tooning One morning in early October, I was flipping through local events online to assemble our calendar listings. That process becomes a bit of a blur sometimes, but my eye stopped short on a striking color cartoon — part of an announcement for an animation...
by Hunter Styles | Jan 9, 2017 | Columns, Featured, Food + Booze, Newsletter, The Beerhunter
The best seasonal beers for winter months When predictions of blizzards rolled into town, our parents and grandparents ran to the package store and grabbed a 30-pack of cheap lager cans (we used to call them “dad soda”) along with bread, milk, and eggs. These days,...
by Kristin Palpini | Jan 9, 2017 | Featured, News
If you’ve never checked out Craigslist’s Missed Connections section, you really should. Like all geographic designations on the forum, the Western Mass list is full of wistful near-meets and longing. Below is a compilation of “missed connection” items from...
by Yana Tallon-Hicks | Jan 9, 2017 | Columns, Featured, Newsletter, The V-Spot, Wellness
Hi Yana, I’m in a relationship with someone who I really love and we’ve been together for three-ish months. Before we started dating he knew I wasn’t a huge fan of monogamy, but I agreed I would try and now I’m feeling trapped. He’s so important to me and I don’t want...
by Kristin Palpini | Jan 3, 2017 | Arts, Featured, Music, Newsletter, Stage
Blue-eyed Rock ’n’ Soul The higher the hair, the closer to God, honey. So you know Christine Ohlman, the Beehive Queen, is tight with The Man Upstairs — and you can hear it in her soulful rock. Ohlman, whom you may recognize from her years as a vocalist in the...
by Hunter Styles | Jan 3, 2017 | Arts, Featured, Newsletter
The weird and wonderful artwork of Julian Janowitz only starts to reveal itself once visitors pull onto the long driveway of his Shutesbury home. That bumpy, meandering dirt road leads through a small clearing, then along twists and turns through a tall forest of...
by Kristin Palpini | Jan 3, 2017 | Featured, Food Booze and Beyond, Missed Connections, Newsletter
If you’ve never checked out Craigslist’s Missed Connections section, you really should. Like all geographic designations on the forum, the Western Mass list is full of wistful near-meets and longing. Below is a compilation of “missed connection” items from...
by Kristin Palpini | Jan 3, 2017 | Arts, Featured, Music, Newsletter
Take the Stage Now that all the big holiday celebrations and events are in the past, it’s time to get back to regular old life. Do it in style by hitting a karaoke night somewhere in the Valley. There are plenty of bars known for their customer caterwauling:...
by Advocate Staff | Dec 27, 2016 | Featured, Newsletter
If you’ve never checked out Craigslist’s Missed Connections section, you really should. Like all geographic designations on the forum, the Western Mass list is full of wistful near-meets and longing. Below is a compilation of “missed connection” items from...
by Hunter Styles | Dec 27, 2016 | Arts, Featured, Newsletter
Zoinks! In an era before we burrowed into our choice cable channels, American kids grew up watching cartoons on one of three network TV stations. From 1958 through the 1980s, most options on Saturday mornings were products of the Hanna-Barbera company — the creator of...
by From Our Readers | Dec 19, 2016 | Articles, Featured, Letters from our Readers, News, Newsletter
Hey, Trump: Labor Secretary Should Champion Workers President-elect Trump just selected Andrew Puzder as his nominee for Secretary of Labor. Unfortunately, as the CEO of Hardee’s and Carl’s Jr., Puzder holds a record of opposing the economic agenda demanded by the...
by Kristin Palpini | Dec 19, 2016 | Articles, Featured, Food + Booze, News, Newsletter, Taste-Off!
The winter holiday season is the best time for fudge. It’s a season of indulgence and sharing and sweets and fun — that’s what fudge is all about. Stock up on some now and hand out pounds of rich, creamy, gooey goodness as presents or keep it home and eat it sliver by...
by Hunter Styles | Dec 12, 2016 | Articles, Arts, Featured, Music, Newsletter
A Songbird’s Soul Singer and songwriter Arleigh Kinchelo’s hard soul collective, Sister Sparrow and The Dirty Birds, plays guitar, bass, trumpet, saxophone, and drums — plus harmonica, thanks to her brother Jackson. They’ve released three full-length studio albums,...
by Hunter Styles | Dec 12, 2016 | Articles, Arts, Featured, Newsletter, Stage
Company Time Before her days as the head of Northampton’s School for Contemporary Dance and Thought, Jen Polins directed the Catalyst dancers at South Hadley’s Pioneer Valley Performing Arts charter school for 17 years. In September, craving a return to that rewarding...
by Hunter Styles | Dec 12, 2016 | Articles, Arts, Featured, Newsletter
In “The Chemical Wedding,” local talent melds 400-year-old text with modern illustrations If the long book title, inked in faux-medieval Blackletter, didn’t give it away — let alone the robotic sheep on the back cover — The Chemical Wedding is one of the...
by Gary Carra | Dec 5, 2016 | Articles, Arts, Featured, Newsletter, Nightcrawler
Longtime radio personality Mike “Haze” DeJesus’s tale of his first meeting with Springfield-area rockers Hypnotic Kick smacks of a tacky joke set up. “Eighteen years ago, three Puerto Rican gents and an Irish lad walked into the radio station,” he recalled. “I was a...
by Hunter Styles | Dec 5, 2016 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Featured, Food + Booze, Newsletter, The Beerhunter
Filling a glass where Connecticut meets Mass Most night owls are easy when it comes to shifts in ambience, but I can’t say that many of us thrive under fluorescent light. That might have been why, on Wednesday afternoon, my editor found me sighing heavily at my desk....
by Advocate Staff | Nov 28, 2016 | Articles, Arts, Featured, Film, Food + Booze, Leisure, Music, Newsletter, Stage
A Spirited DebateOne of two things will happen to you when confronted with the bold and brassy acts of clairvoyance that Rebecca Anne LoCicero whips up onstage. One will be a sense of reluctant amazement. The other will be a deep, head-shaking skepticism. LoCicero has...
by Laura Holland | Nov 28, 2016 | Articles, Arts, Featured, Newsletter
They form an army you might meet in a nightmare. Nearly one thousand glazed white figurines dressed in symbols of hatred — such as swastikas or the hooded robes of the infamous Ku Klux Klan — mass together and press close. With the installation of “The Hate Project”...
by Hunter Styles | Nov 28, 2016 | Articles, Arts, Featured, Music, Newsletter
After kids, cancer, and commercial success, the band strips their tour down to two The Weepies: Completely Acoustic and Alone Thursday, Dec. 8 at 8 p.m. Calvin Theatre, Northampton $25-$35 Do you know the feeling of coming in from the cold, kicking off your snow-caked...
by Will Meyer | Nov 28, 2016 | Articles, Arts, Basemental, Columns, Featured, Music, Newsletter
We must harness the power of DIY to resist Influential music writer Jessica Hopper penned a piece earlier this month on MTV.com that sought to dispel “the silver-lining myth” that a Trump presidency would produce great art, specifically music.She argued that great...
by Gary Carra | Nov 21, 2016 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Featured, Music, Newsletter, Nightcrawler
Thanksgiving Eve is roundly considered one of the busiest bar days of the year. True to form, this Wednesday, Nov. 23, finds the Valley circuit smattered with live entertainment offerings.Country rockers Trailer Trash will be holding court at Chicopee’s Maximum...
by Chris Rohmann | Nov 21, 2016 | Articles, Arts, Featured, Stage, Stagestruck
Every year I take note of the plays I’ve seen that are written and/or directed by women, and those that revolve around a woman (or women). For me, these are key indicators of progress in achieving gender equality in theater. To be sure, there are plenty of women...
by Hunter Styles | Nov 21, 2016 | Articles, Arts, Featured, Music, Newsletter
Power to the Panther Hartford-born emcee and musician Afropanther is, in her words, “a Space Jungle Club DJ, producer, and lyrical assassin.” She’s been building communities in New York, Montreal, and Boston, soaking up influences (Fast Eddie, Masters at Work, MK,...
by Jack Brown | Nov 21, 2016 | Articles, Cinemadope, Columns, Featured, Newsletter
With Black Friday upon us this week, the maelstrom of the holiday shopping season has officially begun. Weekends will find increasingly desperate hordes descending on anything that looks like it might hold toys or electronics, toddlers will go into full meltdown mode...
by Hunter Styles | Nov 21, 2016 | Articles, Arts, Featured
Nature, From Scratch Joe Smith has a common name but a not-too-common job: forester, slash artist. By day, he’s working out in the woods, putting in hours of hard labor off the beaten track. But wherever he goes, he carries his sketchbook with him. “I find a sense of...
by Hunter Styles | Nov 21, 2016 | Articles, Between the Lines, Featured, News, Newsletter
Every morning at Buckingham Palace, Queen Elizabeth II’s first order of business is to meet with her hairdresser. She drinks from bone china, eats breakfast served by footmen in tailcoats, wanders the grounds, and reads fan mail. Throughout the day, people bow. People...
by Kristin Palpini | Nov 21, 2016 | Articles, Columns, Featured, Leisure, News, Newsletter, O Cannabis!
If you get up real close to the New England Treatment Access medical marijuana dispensary in Northampton, you can smell the earthy aroma of cannabis through the brick walls. Established in 2015, NETA’s Conz Street dispensary is, so far, the only medical Mary Jane shop...
by Chuck Shepherd | Nov 21, 2016 | Articles, Featured, News, News of the Weird, Newsletter
While “democracy” in most of America means electing representatives to run government, on Nov. 8 in San Francisco it also expected voters to decide 43 often vague, densely worded “issues” that, according to critics, could better be handled by the professionals who...
by Peter Vancini | Nov 21, 2016 | Articles, Featured, News
Decades later and General Electric still hasn’t remedied its contamination of the Housatonic. Woods Pond in Lenox is the picture of quaint backwoods New England: the kind of place leaf-peepers flock annually to the Berkshires to behold. The golden yellows and...
by Chris Rohmann | Nov 16, 2016 | Articles, Arts, Featured, Newsletter, Stage, Stagestruck
In this time of national division and upheaval, we can be forgiven for craving a little feelgood. And what feels better than a good musical? As if on cue, two good’uns are coming to this area, both of them stage versions of beloved movies. This week through Sunday, An...
by Hunter Styles | Nov 14, 2016 | Articles, Featured, Food + Booze, Newsletter, The Beerhunter
When I think back to last fall, and the dozen taste tests I did of pumpkin-flavored beers, my tongue conjures flashbacks of bad and bewildering brews. What can I say? I’m a glutton for punishment. Or maybe I’m an optimist, holding onto a hope that there are pumpkin...
by Hunter Styles | Nov 14, 2016 | Articles, Arts, Featured, Newsletter
A Piece of Resistance When things fall apart, civility snaps, and a huffing, puffing bully blows our brick houses down, we have to do what our children know to do: wipe our tears, gather it all up block by block, and come to the table to rebuild. That’s the art of...
by Hunter Styles | Nov 14, 2016 | Articles, Arts, Featured, Music, Newsletter
Alt-Indie’s Pole Star We probably shouldn’t bandy around phrases like “one of America’s greatest living songwriters,” given the prolific grassroots music scene these days. But Stephin Merritt pretty much ran away with the title when he penned the three-volume concept...
by Tom Relihan | Nov 14, 2016 | Articles, Featured, News, Newsletter
The deadly synthetic opioid fentanyl has largely outstripped heroin as the leading cause of opioid-related deaths in Massachusetts, according to state data. Experts say the powerful drug, considered to be up to 50 times as potent as regular heroin, has been has been...
by Kristin Palpini | Nov 9, 2016 | Articles, Between the Lines, Featured, News, Newsletter
Editor’s Note: As an American woman who believes that words matter, I feel like I matter a little less today. Below is the editorial I was planning to run to applaud the first female president of the U.S., Hillary Clinton. It seems poignant to publish it, still. To...
by Hunter Styles | Nov 7, 2016 | Articles, Arts, Featured, Newsletter
Tahirah Amatul-Wadud This story is part of a new project by writer Jenny Bender and artist Amanda Herman, who have teamed up to interview and photograph Muslims in the Valley. The full exhibition, which features 10-15 photographs and interviews, opens Nov. 11 at...
