News
by Dave Eisenstadter | Apr 19, 2017 | Articles, Between the Lines, News, Newsletter
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...
by Advocate Staff | Apr 25, 2017 | Articles, News
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...
by Chris Goudreau | Apr 21, 2017 | Articles, Between the Lines, News
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...
by Chuck Shepherd | Apr 17, 2017 | Articles, News, News of the Weird, Newsletter
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:...
by Dave Eisenstadter | Apr 21, 2017 | Articles, News
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...
by Jennifer Levesque | Apr 17, 2017 | Columns, Featured, Music, News, Newsletter, Valley Show Girl
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...
by Chris Goudreau | Apr 20, 2017 | Articles, News
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...
by Kristin Palpini | Apr 19, 2017 | Articles, Music, News
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...
by Dave Eisenstadter | Apr 18, 2017 | Articles, News, Newsletter
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...
by Advocate Staff | Apr 18, 2017 | Articles, News
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...
by Chris Goudreau | Apr 18, 2017 | Articles, News, Newsletter
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...
by Dave Eisenstadter | Apr 17, 2017 | Articles, News, Newsletter
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...
by Dave Eisenstadter | Apr 17, 2017 | Articles, News, Stage
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...
by Advocate Staff | Apr 17, 2017 | Articles, Letters from our Readers, News, Newsletter
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...
by Advocate Staff | Apr 16, 2017 | Articles, News, Newsletter
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...
by Dave Eisenstadter | Apr 14, 2017 | Articles, Blogs, News, Newsletter
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...
by Chance Viles | Apr 10, 2017 | Articles, Featured, News, Newsletter
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...
by Chuck Shepherd | Apr 10, 2017 | Articles, News, News of the Weird, Newsletter
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...
by Hunter Styles | Apr 10, 2017 | Articles, Featured, News, Newsletter
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,...
by Dave Eisenstadter | Apr 10, 2017 | Articles, Between the Lines, News, Newsletter
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...
by Naila Moreira | Apr 10, 2017 | Articles, Columns, Down to Earth, News, Newsletter
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...
by Advocate Staff | Apr 10, 2017 | Articles, Letters from our Readers, News, Newsletter
Stay Home From School Better questions for the article (“Breaking the School to Prison Pipeline: Springfield reduces in-school arrests, but is it enough?”, March 30-April 5, 2017) would have been: Why were the students arrested? Did anyone do the same thing and were...
by Kristin Palpini | Apr 3, 2017 | Articles, Between the Lines, Featured, News, Newsletter
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...
by Kristin Palpini | Apr 3, 2017 | Articles, News, Newsletter
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...
by From Our Readers | Apr 3, 2017 | Articles, Featured, Letters from our Readers, News
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...
by Chuck Shepherd | Apr 3, 2017 | Articles, News, News of the Weird, Newsletter
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...
by Steven Johnson | Mar 27, 2017 | Articles, Featured, News, Newsletter
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...
by Chris Goudreau | Mar 27, 2017 | Articles, Featured, News, Newsletter
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....
by Kristin Palpini | Mar 27, 2017 | Articles, Between the Lines, Featured, News, Newsletter
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...
by Kristin Palpini | Mar 27, 2017 | Articles, Columns, Featured, Food Booze and Beyond, News, Newsletter, O Cannabis!
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 —...
by Advocate Staff | Mar 27, 2017 | Articles, News, News of the Weird, Newsletter
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...
by Yana Tallon-Hicks | Mar 27, 2017 | Articles, Columns, News, Newsletter, The V-Spot, Wellness
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...
by From Our Readers | Mar 27, 2017 | Articles, Letters from our Readers, News, Newsletter
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,...
by Kristin Palpini | Mar 20, 2017 | Articles, Featured, News, Newsletter
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...
by Kristin Palpini | Mar 20, 2017 | Articles, Between the Lines, Featured, News, Newsletter
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...
by Chuck Shepherd | Mar 20, 2017 | Articles, News, News of the Weird, Newsletter
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...
by Chance Viles | Mar 20, 2017 | Articles, Arts, Nerding Out, Newsletter
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...
by Craigslist.org | Mar 20, 2017 | Articles, News, Newsletter
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...
by From Our Readers | Mar 20, 2017 | Articles, Letters from our Readers, News, Newsletter
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...
by Hunter Styles | Mar 13, 2017 | Articles, Featured, News, Newsletter
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...
by Sam Riedel | Mar 13, 2017 | Articles, News
“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...
by From Our Readers | Mar 13, 2017 | Articles, Letters from our Readers, News, Newsletter
‘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 —...
by Chris Goudreau | Mar 13, 2017 | Articles, News
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...
by Chuck Shepherd | Mar 13, 2017 | Articles, News, News of the Weird
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...
by Amanda Drane | Mar 13, 2017 | Articles, Arts, Music, News, Newsletter
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...
by Hunter Styles | Mar 6, 2017 | Articles, Featured, News, Newsletter
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...
by Chuck Shepherd | Mar 6, 2017 | Articles, News, News of the Weird, Newsletter
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...
by Chance Viles; Photos of Dufree Conservatory also by Chance Viles | Mar 6, 2017 | Articles, Featured, News, Newsletter
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...
by From Our Readers | Mar 6, 2017 | Articles, Letters from our Readers, News
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...
by Kristin Palpini | Mar 6, 2017 | Articles, Featured, News, Newsletter
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...
by Kristin Palpini | Mar 6, 2017 | Articles, Between the Lines, Featured, News, Newsletter
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...
by Kristin Palpini | Feb 27, 2017 | Articles, Between the Lines, Featured, News, Newsletter
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...
by Chuck Shepherd | Feb 27, 2017 | Articles, News, News of the Weird
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...
by Kristin Palpini | Feb 27, 2017 | Articles, News, Newsletter, Wellness
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...
by Chance Viles Photos by Jason Murray | Feb 20, 2017 | Articles, Arts, Music, News, Newsletter, Uncategorized
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...
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 Chuck Shepherd | Feb 20, 2017 | Articles, News, News of the Weird, Newsletter
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...
by From Our Readers | Feb 20, 2017 | Articles, Letters from our Readers, News, Newsletter
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...
by Hunter Styles | Feb 13, 2017 | Articles, Between the Lines, News, Newsletter
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...
