News
Yep, Climate Change Is Real … We Checked It Ourselves
Climate change is a worldwide problem, and we often hear of how it is affecting low-lying countries in Asia and the melting polar ice caps, but local climate data shows us how things are changing right here in the Pioneer Valley. And changing they are. The National...
Missed Connections: The Lunch Counter Where I Often Showed Up In Your Bed
The Missed Connections forum on Craigslist is a wasteland of terrible poetry, dick pics, and whining, but among the detritus are some truly fascinating, funny, and occasionally sweet entries. The following are highlights from the Western Mass Missed Connections forum,...
Back Talk: Hope for Better Health Care
Hope for Better Health Care Thank you for your piece in the Advocate (“Between the Lines: With Obamacare Under Fire, Massachusetts Must Lead on Health Care — Again,” May 11-17, 2017). However, it seems from it that you may not be familiar with House Bill 2987 and...
Air Sexus Interruptus
In a staggering blow to anyone looking for a weird experience on a Monday evening, tonight’s air sex tournament (think air guitar, but with sex) has been mysteriously cancelled. The event was going to take place at 7 p.m. at the Iron Horse, but a message on the...
With Criminal Charges Dropped, Pipeline Protesters Vow to Fight On
Protesters looking to use climate change as a legal defense of their actions to try to stop a natural gas pipeline expansion project through Otis State Forest in Sandisfield won’t need to bother. Charges against them, which included trespassing and disorderly conduct,...
Cinemadope: Would You Take a Bullet for Art? Documentary on full-throttle artist Chris Burden (w/vid)
For such a rich subject, films about art and the people that make it all too often feel either forced and flat or ridiculously over the top. Better, usually, to take the documentary route, and let the art speak for itself. That’s the course taken by directors Timothy...
Kitchen Dwellers Bring ‘Galaxy Grass’ to Northampton (w/vid)
Got that Galaxy Grass A Kitchen Dwellers show is a true Montana bluegrass experience … that’s been strapped to a rocket, shot into space, and looped around Saturn a few times. Dubbed “galaxy grass,” the band’s sound is high-energy and exploratory jamming with...
Basemental: You Know Amber Wolfe Now See Her Arresting Video for ‘No Thorn’
You may know Amber Wolfe. She fronted the “speakeasy, post-apocalyptic band,” O You Villain, books shows at Amherst Coffee, and is a veteran of the Institute for Musical Arts, where she found “some of the foremothers of local music.” Despite strong roots here in the...
That’s Not an Air Guitar: Air Sex Tournament Comes to Northampton (w/vid)
That’s Not an Air Guitar The national Air Sex Tournament is coming to Northampton Monday night and for anyone who thinks they’ve got the pantomime moves to beat the competition, it’s not too late to enter the foray. A fun, and funny, sex-positive show, performers get...
Missed Connections: Let Me Take You Out, Liar
The Missed Connections forum on Craigslist is a wasteland of terrible poetry, dick pics, and whining, but among the detritus are some truly fascinating, funny, and occasionally sweet entries. The following are highlights from the Western Mass Missed Connections forum,...
UMass Student Exhibit Elevates Street Art Friday
Occupy. A joint art show by Eric Mandeville and McKenzie Stuetzel makes a powerful statement, but only for a short time — so be sure to see it. By utilizing imagery from street art in contrasting colors, their show explores the idea of living in society, but outside...
Radical Moms: Using The Power of Motherhood To Make Political Change
One of the proudest moments that Madeleine Charney has shared with her son, Eli, is when she got to hold up the front page of the newspaper on Nov. 7, 2015, and show him that construction of the Keystone XL pipeline had been struck down by President Obama. Charney,...
Northampton Activists Stage ‘Emergency’ Rally For Investigation of Trump
Local activist groups are staging an emergency rally calling for an independent investigation and for a special prosecutor to be appointed to investigate the Trump campaign’s potential collusion with Russia. The planned peaceful demonstration will take place May 10...
David Crosby of Crosby, Stills & Nash Talks Songwriting, Politics, and Fame
David Crosby — the founding member of legendary 1960s and 1970s rock groups such as the Byrds and Crosby, Stills, & Nash — is coming to Northampton’s Academy of Music Theatre on May 19 for a show with his electric backing band. The two-time Rock n’ Roll Hall of...
Enough With the Hearts: What Mom REALLY Wants on Mother’s Day
Just a list of stuff any mother could love: An opportunity to finish a book … in less than six months. A box of tissues for those inevitable moments of disappointment in you (plus it’s allergy season). Michelle Obama merch (“When they go low, we go high” tote...
With Obamacare Under Fire, Massachusetts Must Lead on Health Care — Again
The Republicans did it. They cobbled together an Obamacare replacement bill so bad that they got the most conservative members of the House to vote for it — people like Alabama Congressman Mo Brooks, who implied the majority of people with pre-existing conditions have...
Total of 24 ‘Sugar Shack’ Protesters Arrested in One Week at Otis Park
LATEST UPDATE: Twenty-four protesters affiliated with The Sugar Shack Alliance, a Northeast coalition that aims to disrupt the fossil fuel industry, have been arrested thus far at Otis State Forest in Sandisfield. Charges stem from allegations that protesters blocked...
Investigation: Yes, There Is Lead In Pioneer Valley Schools’ Drinking Water
The very schools we depend on to educate our children could be making them less smart. Drinking water in schools across Massachusetts, including here in the Pioneer Valley, has been found to contain lead significantly exceeding safety standards. Lead exposure,...
News of the Weird: A Russian Monument to Flossing
Russian artist Mariana Shumkova is certainly doing her part for oral hygiene, publicly unveiling her St. Petersburg statuette of a frightening, malformed head displaying actual extracted human teeth, misaligned and populating holes in the face that represent the mouth...
Back Talk: Stop Sending Weapons to Syria for an Endless War
Stop Sending Weapons to Syria At a presentation given by the Northampton Committee to Stop Wars, I asked two Syrian speakers whether Syrians predominantly support President Assad or the rebels. They both said that the country is extremely divided and that their...
And To Think That I Saw It At Northampton Pride – Photos and 360 Video
The rain made way for the rainbows, as it always does. Not half-an-hour after the thousands of rainbow shirts, flags, balloons, and all manner of rainbow apparel hit the streets to begin the Northampton Pride Parade on Saturday, the morning’s rain was a memory...
What Are Those Flowering Trees/Bushes I Drive By Every Day?
The bloom is on the branch and spring has sprung. And even in my short commute to work, I pass about a dozen varieties of flowering trees and bushes. It occurred to me that I haven’t the slightest idea what most of them are called. So I took out my phone and...
Your Guide to Northampton Pride 2017
In the last several years, Northampton Pride has been a blowout celebration of all people, places, and things LGBTQI, but this year the event is leaning more toward its political roots. They’re putting the march back into the parade, so to speak. Northampton Pride...
Missed Connections: Nice Gnome, Baby
The Missed Connections forum on Craigslist is a wasteland of terrible poetry, dick pics, and whining, but among the detritus are some truly fascinating, funny, and occasionally sweet entries. The following are highlights from the Western Mass Missed Connections forum,...
Vigilante ‘Apostrophizer’ Corrects Signs in Bristol, England
Mother of Invention Robotic models of living organisms are useful to scientists, who can study the effects of stimuli without risk to actual people. Northwestern University researchers announced in March that its laboratory model of the “female reproductive system”...
Fracked Gas Protesters Names Released
Eighteen protesters were detained at Berkshire County Jail on May 2 after blocking access roads to the Tennessee Gas Pipeline Company’s easement where construction of a $93 million 3.8-mile Connecticut expansion gas pipeline project at Otis State Forest in Sandisfield...
Back Talk: Naom Chomsky a Bummer But Speaks Truth
Splitting Radiation Hairs Radiation exposure at 10 mrem? 15? 25? Small fractions of what everyone gets from natural background? These being hypothetical exposures (outlined in “Nuclear Activists Raise Concern Over Vermont Yankee Quick Fix,” April 27-May 3,...
Stream Queen: LGBT Movies That Aren’t Super Depressing
It’s nearly time to kick off Pride season with Noho Pride (see the Advocate’s Guide to Pride), where LGBT Valley citizens will be able to celebrate our identities and our history as we process down Main Street in a sea of rainbow. The parade, which will take...
5 Philippine Leaders Who Actually Deserve An Invitation To The White House
I can’t say I was surprised when I read over the weekend that President Donald Trump had invited Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte – who has advocated extrajudicial killings of drug users in his home country – to the White House. But I was deeply disturbed....
All Weed, Scant Politics: Extravaganja With Legal Pot
At one point gathering in crowds and smoking weed was a radical thing. Extravaganja participants would congregate in groups to sit and watch bands play in the unforgiving sun, dust kicked up by the constant flow of excited stoners ready to revel in their forbidden...
5 Things To Know About Postpartum Health
Each week on Thursday afternoons is a Beyond Birth group in the little yellow house by Cooley-Dickinson Hospital. While my wife and I were on leave following the birth of our son, we tried to attend this group as often as we could. The group welcomes parents of babies...
UMass Data Students Rub Elbows With Industry Leaders
Aditya Shastry of India had two years of statistics experience in the finance field, the start of what would have seemed a lucrative career. But he found his work limiting; he wanted to work on his own project. He applied to the University of Massachusetts Amherst...
Suffocating in Silence: Winner of Valley Advocate Juniper Writing Scholarship puts displacement in its place
For writer Elinam Agbo, words are like air.“If I go too long without expressing my thoughts in one way or another, I begin to feel suffocated and distant from my memories as well as my lived moments,” said Agbo, this year’s winner of the Valley Advocate’s Juniper...
The Resistance is Just Getting Started: Today Science, Tomorrow (May Day) Workers’ Rights
On a hill of gravelly mud in Kendrick Park — that little strip of grass in downtown Amherst flanked by Triangle and Pleasant streets — a family of protesters are passing around plastic instruments and bird masks in preparation for the March for Science.“Everyone got...
Nuclear Activists Raise Concerns Over Vermont Yankee Quick Fix
Over the last few months, a proposal to sell the now-closed Vermont Yankee Nuclear Plant to a company called NorthStar has gotten some attention. Vermont Yankee shut down in 2014 and is in Vernon, a town at the southeastern corner of Vermont. Most of Franklin County...
Earth First and Last, a poem by Connolly Ryan
Earth First & LastLike children in summertime, our planet thrives on vivid evidence that there is always something to be. Unlike fools who amass acres by way of massacres, nature plants herself in one area and creates worlds around her. Earth itself...
News of the Weird: SWAT Called on Homeless Intruder
A June 2016 police raid on David Jessen’s Fresno County (California) farmhouse caused a $150,000 mess when sheriff’s deputies and Clovis Police Department officers “rescued” it from a trespassing homeless man — with the massive destruction leading to Jessen’s lawsuit...
Eight Western Mass Towns Considering Fees for Carbon Emissions
This spring, voters in eight towns in Western Massachusetts may pass resolutions requiring fossil fuel companies to pay fees to its citizens. The resolutions are non-binding, so the votes will be more about sending a message than actually leveraging the fees,...
Between the Lines: What Georgia’s Special Election Results Mean for 2018
Democrat and political newcomer Jon Ossoff failed to capture Georgia’s Sixth Congressional District in the first round. But Tuesday’s special election results may give Democrats across the country hopes of recapturing the House in 2018 and thwarting the...
Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman speaks today at Mount Holyoke
Amy Goodman, host of radio program Democracy Now!, will speak at Mount Holyoke College at 7:30 p.m. on Tuesday, April 25. Goodman will speak at the Gamble Auditorium at the Mount Holyoke College Art Museum about increased threats to freedom of the press and the...
Between the Lines: Baker gets a ‘C’ in environmental protection
Gov. Charlie Baker’s administration has been deemed mediocre – receiving a “C” for the second year in a row for its environmental policies and leadership, according to a report card from seven leading environmental organizations. “Unfortunately, once again we...
News of the Weird: Swedish ‘Museum of Failures’ might succeed
If at first you don’t succeed… Samuel West announced in April that his Museum of Failure will open in Helsingborg, Sweden, in June, to commemorate innovation missteps that might serve as inspiration for future successes. Among the initial exhibits:...
UMass student tries to combine online anonymity and positivity
The Internet has a problem, and that problem is that many of the people who use it are bullies and cowardly naysayers who hide behind their anonymity. On the other hand, Peter Tao, a junior and biochemistry major at UMass Amherst, is upbeat and positive to a fault. I...
Valley Show Girl: Gimme, Gimme Noise Pollution, experimental night at The Root Cellar in Greenfield
After a full day of sitting inside a dankly weed-scented office — we did a photo shoot of some nuggets for this 4/20 issue — my first thought walking into The Root Cellar in Greenfield for an experimental show is “damn this place smells good” … and familiar. I’m...
Women’s March Organizer Linda Sarsour to speak at UMass
In the age of President Trump, many people are stepping up to organize and counter the rising tide nationalism, xenophobia, racism and hate fueled far-right flirtations with Nazism. Linda Sarsour, a Palestinian-American Muslim civil rights and racial justice activist...
Garage Pop Band Hammydown to be Featured on Sessions this Friday
Who is Hammydown? To see more come back Friday afternoon when we’ll post the full 20 minute concert and interview with Hammydown. Want more Sessions? Check out past performances from bands that include Mammal Dap, The Suitcase Junket, Mikey Sweet, Ray Mason, The...
In wake of deadly fire, Holyoke expands alarm incentive program
It was a terrible way to start the New Year. Three people died and nearly 50 were displaced as a fire consumed the five-story building at 106 North East Street on January 1, 2017. Looking for a quick way to respond, the City of Holyoke has expanded its federally...
UMass Amherst starts new School of Earth and Sustainability
UMass Amherst is getting a School of Earth and Sustainability and it will launch Wednesday, April 19. The keynote speaker at Wednesday’s event, which will take place from 10:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m., will be Yale law and psychology professor Dan Kahan. Other...
Is Recreational Weed Coming to a Town Near You?
From the outside, 5 Appleton St. in Holyoke looks like any number of towering, brick artifacts from a time when Holyoke earned its unofficial title “The Paper City.” But looks can be deceiving. New life is being breathed into the 200,000 square-foot facility and...
Is this World War III? Not yet
A chemical weapons attack in Syria, a missile strike from the United States and worsening relations with Russia have made this month a serious pivot point in the protracted Syrian conflict. Is this the moment future historians will identify as the start to a new Cold...
Piecing together a new Northampton performance space
Shortly after 9 a.m. Monday, April 17, Owen Wormser changed out of his flip-flops and donned work boots. Fitting pieces of stone together in the lot in front of Ghost Bread and across the street from the former Serio’s market, Wormser is polishing off a...
From our Readers: hot haikus and science marches
Hot Haikus In response to our call on our Facebook page “It is in the 80s today. Someone write a haiku about the weather in the comments”, here’s a few entries from the community: Massachusetts spring No rhyme or reason to it Roller coaster ride — Frank Giuliano Hot...
Jill Stein will speak at Smith Wednesday
Dr. Jill Stein, activist and third party presidential candidate extraordinaire, will speak at Smith College on Wednesday, April 19. The talk will take place from 7 to 9 at the Weinstein Auditorium and is free and open to the public. Stein was the Green-Rainbow Party...
That time Noam Chomsky scared the bejesus out of me
I had never read Noam Chomsky before or seen him speak, but I’d definitely heard about him over the years. Most recently when watching the movie “Captain Fantastic,” when the main characters — a super smart, back-to-the-land family — all celebrate “Chomsky...
Machakos Kyalo: Amherst rapper sending music, trees and hope back home
Machakos is a city and county in Kenya. It’s a beautiful place. The large palms, and safari grass are strong and bright, the blue sky dominates the flat and open landscape. But the beauty of Machakos can be deceiving: poverty is a struggle many people face. Because...
News of the Weird: The Jetsons in Dubai
Recently, in Dubai — the largest city in the United Arab Emirates — Dubai Civil Defense started using water jetpacks that lift firefighters off the ground to hover in advantageous positions as they work the hoses. Also, using jet skis, rescuers can avoid traffic...
April 13: Noam Chomsky at UMass Amherst
Close to Noam Leftist hero Noam Chomsky, now 88, has been around the block a few times, picking up new fields of expertise like normal people pick up groceries. He’s a world-renowned linguist, philosopher, author, cognitive scientist, historian, social critic,...
BTL: How Democrats can get their Supreme Court Revenge
Thanks to Republican dirty tricks, Trump-nominee Neil Gorsuch has been confirmed as a Supreme Court Justice. But a little-known political maneuver from the 1930s might be the Democrat’s ticket to wresting back Court control. Gorsuch will be seated on the court with 54...
Down to Earth: Trump’s cuts to science are a knife to my heart
We tell stories to know who we are. Speaking our own stories, we rediscover ourselves. And by hearing and identifying with one another’s journeys, we discover and reach each other, too. My world — my story — is one of science. I birdwatch. I teach students how to...E-Edition
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