News
Between the Lines: Western Mass Needs More Rattlesnakes
No one knows how many timber rattlesnakes there are in Massachusetts — and this is a sticking point for opponents of a plan to boost the endangered species population.Does this species of venomous snakes really need saving? Over the past few years, state scientists...
‘Fat Feminist’ Lindy West, Author of Shrill, Reads in South Hadley Saturday
The word “shrill” makes some people want to instinctively cover their ears, but Lindy West decided to make it the title to her 2016 book Shrill: Notes From a Loud Woman. The self-identified fat feminist will be reading from her book Saturday, 7 p.m., at the Hooker...
Back Talk: Weighing in on Boston’s Racism; and a Dumpty Trumpty poem
You Can’t Make an Omelette …Poem and illustration by Mary L. Rice, maryl.rice@yahoo.com Is Boston Super Racist?Readers weigh in on the question posed in a Between the Lines of the same name in the March 30-April 5, 2017.Via FacebookEvan H Gregg: “Beloved...
News of the Weird: TP Goes High Tech
China’s public-park restrooms have for years suffered toilet-paper theft by local residents who raid dispensers for their own homes — a cultural habit, wrote Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post, expressing taxpayer feelings of “owning” public facilities — but the...
A Heartbeat (or Impeachment) Away from the Presidency: We went to VP Mike Pence’s hometown to learn about him
COLUMBUS, Indiana — While Vice President Pence’s gubernatorial career earned national controversy, his hometown and closest friends vouch for his character. Columbus, Indiana, fits the image he presents: practical, family-oriented, and subject to change over the...
Breaking the School to Prison Pipeline: Springfield reduces in-school arrests, but is it enough?
You’re a teenager in high school. You’ve been texting on your smartphone when you shouldn’t be or otherwise refusing to listen to your teacher. You think you’ll probably get berated, maybe detention, but never thought you’d be handcuffed and taken into police custody....
Between the Lines: Is Boston Super Racist?
Is Boston a racist city? If you’ve been watching Saturday Night Live lately, you probably caught “Weekend Update” co-host Michael Che give Boston that dubious title.Prior to the Super Bowl clash between the Atlanta Falcons and the New England Patriots, Che...
O, Cannabis! How to Taste the Nuances of Marijuana Like a Pro
Now that marijuana is legal, the perception of the drug is changing. We’re on the road of cannabis no longer being thought of as some seedy contraband in a sandwich bag tossed through a car window to potheads, but a varied, quality — and dare I say, refined —...
News of the Weird: Location, Location, Location
A highlight of the recent upmarket surge in Brooklyn, New York, as a residential and retail favorite, was the asking price for an ordinary parking space in the garage at 845 Union St. in the Park Slope neighborhood: $300,000 — also carrying a $240-a-month condominium...
The V-Spot: Our Sex Is All About Him
My boyfriend and I have been together for two years and we’re best friends. Mutual respect exists in almost every way between us. Sometimes, however, the sex feels, well, sexist. First, he enjoys watching porn together, but I really don’t. However, he always tries to...
Back Talk: Call out Anti-Semitism and Avoiding Fire Disasters
Tell it Like it IsEditor’s Note: This comment is in response to “Cinemadope: In Plain Site: Stories from overlooked worlds,” March 9-15, 2017, and the author’s statement, “Over the last few months, it has become impossible to ignore the rising tides of xenophobia,...
President of the NAACP in Amherst
President of the NAACP in AmherstPresident of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) Cornell William Brooks will be giving a talk at Amherst College Friday night. The event is free and open to the public. What exactly Brooks will...
Between the Lines: No Man is an Island; It Takes a Village to Raise a Hero
Pamela Murphy, an Agawam firefighter, was vacationing on the Cape when she jumped into the water to save a six-year-old boy from being smashed against some rocks by the ocean waves.James Chartier, a former Army staff sergeant, completed a 90-mile walk from Western...
News of the Weird: Entrepreneurial Spirit
Perhaps there are parents who, according to the Cinepolis movie chain, long to watch movies in theaters while their children, aged 3 and up, frolic in front in a jungle-gym playground inside the same auditorium. If so, the company’s two “junior” movie houses — opening...
Nerding Out: Building a Passion, 120 hours drawing an historic court house
Andrew Quient is celebrated for his geometrical-style pottery. Quient, 66, of Florence, even has some of his pieces in the national White House archives. But if you run into him working in Northampton, it’s unlikely he’ll be at a potter’s wheel. You’re probably going...
MISSED CONNECTIONS: Longing, lust, and WTF?
If you’ve never checked out Craigslist’s Missed Connection forum, you really should. The site is filled with longing, lust, and miscellaneous statements of the heart. The following is a sample from the Western Mass forum. Post dates have been added. Miss P. — m4w a...
Back Talk: Music venues, a hero, and weed
Our Hero! Thanks for the Facebook comments left in response to “Don’t Be Afraid to Get Arrested: Longtime Activist Paki Wieland Says Today’s Protesters Aren’t Disturbing Enough People” Jim Sorter: Now we have a new hero who will inspire our lives. Thank you for...
Wednesday and Thursday: A Visit From Community Activist Iris Morales
Street Smarts Hampshire College, Holyoke Community College, and Smith College host visits this week from community activist Iris Morales, who rose to prominence in the Vietnam era. As a teenage activist in New York City, Morales joined the paramilitary Young Lords...
Don’t Be Afraid to Get Arrested: Longtime Activist Paki Wieland Says Today’s Protesters Aren’t Disturbing Enough People
“Right now you must be thinking ‘Jesus, is she on drugs?’” says the sly, weathered-yet-energetic voice on the other end of the phone. “I’m not. I have a caffeinated beverage.”That voice belongs to Patricia “Paki” Wieland, the (in)famous...
Back Talk: West Mess, readers respond to ‘West Mass’ tourism video
‘West Mass’ Responses on Facebook… We had some questions about the ‘West Mass’ video, an effort by the Greater Springfield Convention & Visitors Bureau and the Economic Development Council of Western Massachusetts to re-brand the area and attract tourists —...
How to Get Arrested at a Protest Without Getting a Face Full of Pepper Spray
So, you’ve decided you want to get arrested at a protest. You want your arrest to make a political statement, but would also like to face as little physical harm as possible during the course of your arrest. Bill Newman, director of the Western Regional Office of the...
News of the Weird: Exploiting Villains
In February, two teams of South Korean researchers announced cancer-fighting breakthroughs by taking lessons from how two of medicine’s most vexing, destructive organisms — diarrhea-causing salmonella bacteria and the rabies virus — can access often-unconquerable...
Cold Fingers at the Iron Horse: Vanessa Carlton Calls for Boycott of Northampton Venue
Vanessa Carlton may be best known for playing piano on the back of a truck while singing her hit song “A Thousand Miles,” but that doesn’t mean she’ll play just anywhere. The artist has standards — and they’re apparently higher than at least what one Northampton venue...
We Have Questions About That ’West Mass’ Video
Early last month, the Greater Springfield Convention & Visitors Bureau and the Economic Development Council of Western Massachusetts announced a new brand identity: West Mass. The groups spent $80,000 on the campaign, hiring Oklahoma-based agency Cubic Creative...
News of the Weird: Suspicions Confirmed
Despite California’s 2015 law aimed at improving the fairness of its red-light cameras, the city of Fremont — population 214,000 — reported earning an additional $190,000 more each month last year by shortening the yellow light by two-thirds of a second at just two...
No Land? No Problem: Gardening Everywhere With Containers
Container gardening, for the uninitiated, is exactly what it sounds like: planting vegetables, flowers, herbs, and fruits in containers as opposed to soil in the ground. It’s also exactly as easy as it sounds.It’s also something anyone can do anywhere. No land? No...
Back Talk: Diversity in Metal? Circus Without Cliche
Diversity in Metal?Comments on WMass Metal: The Valley’s Diverse Scene Rises Again at valleyadvocate.com.Jenna Weingarten: How are you going to write a headline that says “diverse” in it and feature a bunch of white people and men? As someone in a Western Mass punk...
Lasagna Gardening: The Easy Way to Start a Garden Right Now
One of the first hurdles to planting a garden is the land: often hard, rocky, compact, dusty, weedy, and dry.Tilling the soil — churning up the ground to mix the dirt and soil layers and soften up the plot for easier digging and root growth — is hard work even if you...
Between the Lines: Thought We Already Legalized It, What’s the hold up with weed?
This time, when I went to Mary Jane Makes Your Heart Sing last Friday, I didn’t have to wait in a line to get in. I also didn’t get any weed when I left.For nearly two months, Mary Jane Makes Your Heart Sing operated like a weed club. Located in a strip mall on Page...
Between the Lines: Low-Income Families at Higher Risk for Fire Injury
Is it an acceptable level of risk for a child to live in an 80-year-old apartment building that hasn’t been renovated in as many years with a heating system from the ’60s, electrical wiring for the ’70s, and battery-powered smoke detectors that have been in place...
News of the Weird: U-S-A! U-S-A!
Although discouraging the marriage of children in developing nations has been U.S. foreign policy for years, a data-collecting watchdog group in America disclosed in February that 27 U.S. states have no minimum marriage ages and estimates that an average of almost...
Wellness: Tapping Away the Stress
Emotional Freedom Technique and what it’s all about If anxiety made a baby with a hive of buzzing bees, you’d get me.Hi, I’m an extremely nervous person. My tendency to worry works out great when reporting and I just can’t let a question go, but it’s a burden...
WMass Metal: The Valley’s Diverse Scene Rises AGAIN
Wesley Jillson has been a part of the local metal music scene since the ’80s. He saw Western Mass area metal rise to national prominence in the ’90s, then fade away by 2010.At the fifth annual Promoterhead show at the 13th Floor Music Lounge in Florence in early...
Between the Lines: Losing Our Rights, So Write
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...
O, Cannabis! Get Weed Now — No Medical Card Required, if you know where to go
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...
News of the Weird: The Man With the Golden Mop
San Francisco’s best-paid janitor earned more than a quarter-million dollars cleaning stations for Bay Area Rapid Transit in 2015, according to a recent investigation by Oakland’s KTVU. Liang Zhao Zhang cleared almost $58,000 in base pay and $162,000 in overtime, and...
Back Talk: Love Trumps Hate
Facebook Love Response to “Love Trumps Hate: Transgender women find romance in an insane world,” Feb. 9-15, 2017.Melissa Robinson Ferris: I’ve known Bri since our sons were in grade school together 10 years ago! It’s wonderful to see her looking so well and sounding...
Between the Lines: Love in the Time of Climate Change
At the bottom of the stairwell behind my apartment building, a baby stroller sat for weeks. Every time I carried a laundry basket down the back steps, I had an opportunity to read the cardboard sign strapped to the side of the stroller. In rigid capital letters...
News of the Weird: EWWWWW!
On Jan. 31, doctors at Stanley Medical College and Hospital in Chennai, India, removed a live, full-grown cockroach from the nasal cavity of a 42-year-old woman whose nose had been “itchy” earlier in the day. Two hospitals were unable to help her, but at Stanley, Dr....
‘It’s my own country’ In Springfield, an undocumented immigrant talks about fear and why he’s here
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....
Permanently Homeless or Permanently Housed in Amherst
Not many people would characterize the town of Amherst as poor. The downtown is interspersed with homey coffee shops, ethnic cuisine, fine dining, boutiques, and independent cinema. But behind the hip shops and $4 coffees is a growing homeless population. Though firm...
Five Things We Love About February
It’s cold and the icy, black slush is up to your knees. The wind rips across the thick white fields of snow, stabbing tiny icicles through your coat. Breath in and the hairs in your nose freeze. This is February and it’s lovely.Bye, Bye ResolutionsBy the time February...
Back Talk: What is Trump Doing in Holyoke?
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...
The V-Spot: How to Have a Discussion about Self Lovin’
I’m a 19-year-old male college student. I just started to masturbate, but I don’t know how other people will react if I get into a relationship with them and tell them about this. I would like to know how to be fully comfortable with pleasuring myself as well as see...
Love Trumps Hate: Transgender women find romance in an insane world
In a warm cottage at the end of a dirt road in Jacksonville, Vermont, Brianna Harris and Amy McNeil discuss the “creepy” side of their relationship.The couple, a ski resort grounds keeper and an engineer who have been together for seven years, exchange knowing...
Love is in the Ear: The Alternative Bangin’ Sex Playlist
Feel like makin’ love? You could bang along to the radio Top 40, Advocate reader, but that’s probably not your style. If you’re not into Selena Gomez, Ed Sheerhan, or Calvin Harris — ugh — we’ve got you covered with alternative love songs. Because metal heads, rude...
News of the Weird: Work of a Researcher
Field work is always challenging, explained Courtney Marneweck of South Africa’s University of KwaZulu-Natal in a recent journal article, but studying the sociology of a white rhino’s dung meant developing a “pattern-recognition algorithm” to figure out “smell...
Between the Lines: Is Science Under Attack?
The Trump administration’s order that all presentations and publications by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency be vetted by political appointees before their release to the public sent a shot of pain down my neck.Doug Ericksen, the EPA’s communications director...
Must Love Dogs: Dating Apps for Everyone
If you have a cellphone and the ability to access the internet,no one has to celebrate a Valentine’s day alone anymore. Now there is a separate outlet for specific needs to accommodate the growing culture of online dating. Want to find a date that definitely is into...
Down to Earth: The Power of Nurture, the Antidote to Fear
Nurturing. It’s so often a feminine term, bringing thoughts of mothers, sisters, daughters; of Gaia, the Mother Earth. For a synonym, my thesaurus gives me “motherly.” It’s a term linked, too, with gentleness and tenderness, which in turn are associated with...
Back Talk: Heroin coverage doesn’t go far enough; Super Bowl ‘joke’
Heroin Coverage Doesn’t Go Far EnoughThe reality is no one knows “how to get off heroin,” if that is defined as the final product of a treatment that has proven, predictable efficacy in creating long-term remission from opioid use disorders (“How to Get Off Heroin: An...
Stories of Muslim Life in the Valley
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...
Missed Connections: ‘So gentlemanly of you that it turned me on’
Wash and Dry (Easthampton) Wanted to comment on the man I saw at the laundromat in Easthampton on Tuesday afternoon. you have beautiful blue eyes. We were folding our clothes at the same time. Hopefully you will read this, I would love to hear from you. Jan. 24, 2017...
Between the Lines: What Do You Expect From Holyoke?
The first time I watched “Holyoke High Fight! Stop Violence,” I expected to see a video of a couple kids beating on each other or a message from a parent-teacher association pleading for peace.“Couple high school kids from Holyoke,” said an email from a colleague who...
Third Eye-Roaming: Self-help and Farts, Local yogi and author writes ‘108 Prompts’ to improve your practice
Brian Leaf wants you to pass gas, audibly, in yoga class at least once.Why, you might ask? He says the practice reacquaints you with your humanity.The barrier-breaking suggestion is one of many in a new book written by local author Leaf, The Teacher Appears: 108...
Back Talk: Cowabungled! and Are we great enough yet?
One Week. Still Alive.My liberal friends are freaking over the prospect of the 45th president. But to be fair and balanced, I’ve decided to give the new president a chance. If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em. I think I’m going to enjoy the “post-reality era”...
News of the Weird: Suspicions Confirmed
Schools’ standardized tests are often criticized as harmfully rigid, and in the latest version of the Texas Education Agency’s STAAR test, poet Sara Holbrook said she flubbed the “correct” answer for author motivation — in two of her own poems that were on the test....
The Pour Man: Get Into a Dry Cab for Winter
Broadside Paso Robles Cabernet Sauvignon; $12.99 Although it might be hard to tell from our contradictory weather these days, we’re in the dead of winter, a season that cries out for deep, rich red wines full of dark berry and plum flavors. Cabernet Sauvignon is one...
#WMW: Photos from the Women’s March in Washington, D.C.
My impression of the Women’s March in D.C. was one of amazement, relief, and hope. At first, the prospect of joining the march was intimidating. I was unsure of my safety, of how the opposition would react toward the protest. We arrived at the rally site...E-Edition
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