News
by Hunter Styles | Jun 10, 2015 | Articles, Featured, News
Millions of augmented humans now walk among us. Their implants, tweaks, and enhancements aren’t always visible. But medical technology — which gave Americans cardiac pacemakers in the ’50s, and now artificial hearts — keeps pressing forward, and the human species...
by Chuck Shepherd | Jun 10, 2015 | News, News of the Weird
Silicon Valley code-writers and engineers work long hours — with apparently little time for “food” as we know it. Eating is “time wasted,” in the words of celebrity inventor Elon Musk, and normal meals a “marketing facade,” said another Valley bigwig. The New York...
by Hunter Styles | Jun 9, 2015 | MGM Springfield Casino coverage, News
The construction of MGM’s new $800 million casino resort in Springfield’s South End is like a 33-month-long marathon, and things are heating up. Exercise your right to stay up-to-date by joining us for a quick lap through the most recent casino news. Here are the...
by Kristin Palpini | Jun 10, 2015 | Articles, Blogs, Featured, News, The Uncanny Valley
For more than a decade, the island at the corner of Hampton Street and Route 5 in Holyoke has borne the word “Quota” — spelled out in flowers in the warm weather and black plastic edging in the cold. On my ride home from work down Route 5 south, I often wondered...
by Amanda Drane | Jun 9, 2015 | News
Long-term problems with local housing authority management — including excessive wait times for potential residents, lack of housing maintenance, and a need for greater oversight — are about to be addressed with state reforms years in the making. The reforms, included...
by Nancy Bryant | Jun 9, 2015 | Articles, Arts, Featured, Leisure, News, Wellness
My favorite walk is around my backyard. Although this may seem rather common, my yard is still new to me and very much an evolving space. Four years ago my backyard was a dense forest filled with pines, oaks, and poison ivy. The thick trees were covered with poison...
by Advocate Staff | Jun 9, 2015 | Leisure, News, Scene Here, Wellness
Alfred, Lord Tennyson, said in his poem “Locksley Hall” that in springtime a young man’s fancy turns to thoughts of love. Maybe so. I’m long past remembering almost anything about being a young man; but I do know that in this springtime, the first in my retirement...
by From Our Readers | Jun 9, 2015 | Letters from our Readers, News
It’s time for baseball in Springfield I have been following the debate surrounding the Pawtucket Red Sox (AAA affiliate of Boston Red Sox) and the efforts to build a new $85 million dollar baseball stadium in Providence. Rhode Island House Speaker Nicolas Mattiello...
by James Heflin | Jun 9, 2015 | Between the Lines, News
I’m a Texan. Sometimes this fact comes in handy — people defer to me when it comes to assigning grades to enchiladas, for instance — and sometimes it compels me to write columns in defense of the good people of the Lone Star State who aren’t a) crazy, b) rabidly...
by Amanda Drane | Jun 2, 2015 | Articles, Featured, Food + Booze, Leisure, News
As if the stationary restaurant business weren’t tumultuous enough with its high overhead costs, perishable products, and unpredictable customers, food truck owners kick it up a degree by taking it to the streets and exposing themselves — and their kitchens — to the...
by Amanda Drane | Jun 2, 2015 | Articles, Featured, News, Wellness
Those coastal dwellers don’t even know what they’re missing. Sure, they can boast miles of swimmable water, waves, seagulls — the whole summer package. But do they have rope swings? Waterfalls surrounded by sylvan beauty? How about mountain water clean enough to...
by Kristin Palpini | Jun 2, 2015 | Articles, Between the Lines, Featured, News
Earlier this year, when Georgia’s Ebony Monique Dickens posted that “all black people should rise up and shoot at every white cop in the nation starting right now,” she got arrested. When Jeremiah Perez of Colorado wrote in the comment of a YouTube video in December...
by From Our Readers | Jun 2, 2015 | Articles, Featured, Letters from our Readers, News
Right On or Way Wrong? Two takes on ‘Stay Off the Damn Grass’ Thank you, Kristin Palpini, for your article (“Stay Off the Damn Grass,” May 21-27, 2015) on the new, oppressive South Hadley law imposing rigid standards of lawn and garden care. This town has a knack for...
by Chuck Shepherd | Jun 2, 2015 | News, News of the Weird
When officials in Richmond, California, learned in 2009 that 70 percent of the city’s murders and firearms assaults were directly linked to 17 people, they decided on a bold program: to pay off those 17 to behave themselves. For a budget of about $1.2 million a year,...
by Kristin Palpini | May 27, 2015 | Letters from our Readers, News
Four-year degree in Marxism When the college administration posts a notice on campus to “report hate crimes” the idea, it would seem, is to take the focus off the college administration as being the culprit in one of the slickest crimes that slowly progressed...
by James Heflin | May 27, 2015 | Between the Lines, News
In a pocket of my work bag, I carry a talisman of sorts. It’s a patch from the First Marine Division, aka “The Old Breed.” A man named Harris Mills gave it to me years ago. He was a family friend, and an imposing, if grandfatherly figure — tall, well-coiffed, and...
by James Heflin | May 27, 2015 | Articles, Blogs, Featured, News, The Uncanny Valley
Spring-Heeled Jack, in addition to being the best-named apparition since the Mad Gasser of Mattoon, was a frequent haunter of Victorian London and, eventually, other parts of Great Britain. He was known and feared for his habits of sudden attack via tearing with metal...
by Kristin Palpini | May 27, 2015 | Arts, Blogs, News, The Uncanny Valley
Behind the scenes at the Wistariahurst Museum in Holyoke in the 1990s, Stephen Petegorsky made a delightful discovery: “hundreds of taxidermed animal specimens — most of them really ratty — stuffed in a storage closet.” He borrowed some stuffed animals for photo...
by Kristin Palpini | May 27, 2015 | Articles, Arts, Blogs, Featured, News, Wellness
On occasion, to keep up my health, I take a walk. Nearby my home in West Springfield is a mile-long stretch of sidewalk with no hills, few cars, and even fewer people outside. The homes are densely packed, and I wonder about the people who live inside. Over time, I’ve...
by Chuck Shepherd | May 27, 2015 | News, News of the Weird
Among the requirements of “Visual Arts 104A” at the University of California, San Diego is that, for the final exam, students would make a presentation while nude, in a darkened room. Professor Ricardo Dominguez (who would also be nude for the finals) told KGTV in May...
by Hunter Styles | May 27, 2015 | MGM Springfield Casino coverage, News
Limber up! It’s time for this week’s jog over to the site of MGM’s new casino resort in Springfield’s South End. Once you start tracking an $800 million construction project, the hits just keep on coming. So put those ear buds in, and let’s catch up on casino news...
by Robert Faturechi, ProPublica; and Jonathan Stray | May 27, 2015 | News
The wealthiest Americans can fly on their own jets, live in gated compounds and watch movies in their own theaters. More of them also are walling off their political contributions from other big and small players. A growing number of political committees known as...
by Hunter Styles | May 27, 2015 | Articles, Arts, Featured, Food + Booze, News, Scene Here
Melissa Haller rattles a wheeled rack across the concrete floor. It holds 15 pans with 24 raw bagels in each. The unbaked dough shines in the fluorescent light. The air in the kitchen is thick with a warm, herby smell, cut with the savory tang of onion and garlic....
by Kristin Palpini | May 20, 2015 | Blogs, News, The Uncanny Valley
Reporter Amanda Drane recently turned me on to this weird phenomenon that’s been recorded around the world. Out of nowhere, in the day or night, in the city or in the woods people have recorded the incredibly loud sound I can only describe as a giant sky whale...
by Amanda Drane | May 20, 2015 | Articles, Featured, News
In a public housing complex specifically designed for the elderly and disabled, something as basic as a wheelchair ramp to the common community space should be part of the facility on day one. But it took the Agawam Housing Authority nearly seven years to install one...
by Chuck Shepherd | May 20, 2015 | News, News of the Weird
There’s hardly a more generic song in America than “Happy Birthday to You,” but to this day (until a judge renders a decision in a pending case), Warner/Chappel Music is still trying to make big dollars off of the 16-word ditty (15 original words plus a user-supplied...
by James Heflin | May 12, 2015 | Articles, Arts, Between the Lines, Blogs, Columns, Featured, Leisure, Music, News, Nightcrawler
Back in the final year of the 1900s, I stood, guitar in hand, on the steps of Northampton’s old courthouse at the main intersection. The occasion was the (then new) Valley Advocate Grand Band Slam. My bandmates and I had won top honors in the...
by James Heflin | May 12, 2015 | Arts, Blogs, Music, News
Usually, it’s a happy occasion that puts a band in the paper. This week, it’s tragic news. As you may have heard, The Alchemystics recently lost two of their circle. Drummer Demse Zullo and his longtime friend Brian White were killed when the van they were travelling...
by Stephanie Kraft | May 20, 2015 | News, Wellness
When Tracy M.’s 7-year-old son became hyperactive and aggressive after being placed on 21 different ADHD medications over two months in 2007, it was clear he needed help his mother and her partner couldn’t provide. The boy had become combative, Tracy recalled, and his...
by Hunter Styles | May 20, 2015 | Articles, Featured, News
T he American Dream is a fitful one these days, marked by rising income inequality and a decade of middling economic growth. But a national study published this month by the Equality of Opportunity Project at Harvard University suggests that children from poor...
by Hunter Styles | May 12, 2015 | MGM Springfield Casino coverage, News
Grab your Walkman and your shiniest pair of dice — it’s time for our weekly jog over to the site of Springfield’s $800 million gamble: a brand spankin’ new MGM casino resort in the South End. Many are already singing the corporation’s praises. And since the complex...
by Words and pictures
by Hunter Styles | May 6, 2015 | Articles, Arts, Featured, Leisure, News
Liz Stewart leans forward to point out a series of bracelets made from metal nuts, washers, and wires. “It’s mostly new and repurposed hardware,” she says. “The idea is to take ordinary items and put them into situations you wouldn’t expect to see them. People look at...
by Amanda Drane | May 12, 2015 | Articles, Featured, News
For Alex Morse, 26 — Holyoke’s first openly gay mayor — Saturday, April 18 started out like many other Saturdays before it. He and his boyfriend, Edwin Cruz-Vargas, 25, went for a morning hike up Mount Tom. Once they reached the top, they paused for several minutes to...
by From Our Readers | May 20, 2015 | Letters from our Readers, News
Think of the elephants The Advocate should be ashamed of its mindless puff piece on the Melha Shrine Circus. you missed the real news story and instead published an article that ignores the endless suffering of the elephants and tigers and the growing public outrage...
by Amanda Drane | May 6, 2015 | Between the Lines, News
Yet another young black man is dead at the hands of America’s law enforcement. We may not yet know all of the details, but video footage shows that Freddie Gray was breathing and screaming when he went into a Baltimore Police van. He was unconscious and had a severed...
by Kristin Palpini | May 6, 2015 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Featured, Leisure, Music, News, Scene Here, Stage
It’s the final performance of the 2015 Springfield Symphony Orchestra season and the 71-year-old group has put together a timely show, The Rite of Spring with Spencer Myer on piano. Buses for retired living communities line the street outside. Inside Symphony Hall,...
by Amanda Drane | May 20, 2015 | Articles, Arts, Featured, News, Scene Here
Hampshire College’s commencement ceremony is a social justice rally. About 350 people pack the graduation tent on the campus commons. As president Jonathan Lash begins his speech, more guests arrive. They spill out into the lawn outside the tent. Few of the students...
by Hunter Styles | May 18, 2015 | News, Wellness
∎ If you are in immediate danger or seriously injured, call 911. ∎ Even if you have not decided whether to report the crime, it is best to preserve anything that might contain the offender’s DNA. If at all possible, this means avoiding the following: • Using the...
by Kristin Palpini | May 20, 2015 | Between the Lines, News
Not to sound like too much of a curmudgeon, but South Hadley should stay off the damn grass. The town recently joined Springfield in being the only communities in the area that impose fines when grass on a private lawn grows to a pearl-clutching height of six inches....
by Amanda Drane | May 12, 2015 | Articles, Arts, Featured, Music, News
Max Shea had been a part of UMass Amherst radio station WMUA 91.1 starting in 1993 — when he was an undergraduate student at UMass — until April 21, when he was escorted from campus by UMass police, banned from returning, and his beloved show, Martian Gardens, was...
by Kristin Palpini | May 7, 2015 | Articles, Arts, Featured, Food + Booze, Leisure, News
On Cinco de Mayo the Advocate threw a party at the Log Cabin in Holyoke for the first place winners of the 2015 Best Of the Valley Readers Poll competition. There was a photo booth there … things got silly, here’s the proof.
by Hunter Styles | May 18, 2015 | Articles, Featured, News, Wellness
There’s something strange happening on college campuses here and across the nation. Reports of rape and sexual assault are skyrocketing. In 2013 the University of Massachusetts Amherst — a campus of 28,635 students this year — reported 22 forcible sex offenses,...
by Hunter Styles | May 12, 2015 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Featured, News, Scene Here
A cool breeze floods the mountainside, rustling the leaves and pine needles in the branches high above me. But as I walk up the path, I barely hear it. My brain is making too much noise of its own. My eyes are down, watching my sneakers crunching along the dirt trail,...
by Hutner Styles | May 6, 2015 | MGM Springfield Casino coverage, News
At the site of the future MGM casino in Springfield’s South End, groundbreaking has come and gone. That event symbolized the beginning of a new chapter for Springfield. This thing is really happening. And between now and July 2017, construction on this massive project...
by Amanda Drane | May 12, 2015 | Articles, Blogs, Featured, News, The Uncanny Valley
On the evening of March 17, a driver in South Hadley reported seeing a strange triangular craft in the sky with lights on each of its three visible points. After following the craft for a couple of miles, the driver pulled into the Village Commons parking lot and...
by Chuck Shepherd | May 12, 2015 | News, News of the Weird
Already, healthy people can donate blood, sperm, and eggs, but now the nonprofit OpenBiome offers donors $40 for bowel movements — to supply “fecal transplants” for patients with nasty C. difficile bacterial infections. (“Healthy” contents are transplanted into the...
by Chuck Shepherd | May 6, 2015 | News, News of the Weird
Saudi Arabia’s very first sex accessory shop (in the holy city of Mecca) should be opening soon, according to news reports — operated by a Moroccan Muslim, backed by the German adult mega-retailer Beate Uhse, and supposedly fully compliant with Islamic law. Owner...
by Amanda
Drane | Apr 28, 2015 | Articles, Featured, Free Sport, News
Summer is just around the bend and the Connecticut River — the region’s longest body of running water — remains largely unswimmable due to high levels of fecal bacteria in the water. The river has come a long way since its days nicknamed “America’s most beautiful...
by Kristin Palpini | Apr 28, 2015 | Between the Lines, News
The education system is failing American students — hard. Public education is a dedication to helping young people get ahead in life and imparting knowledge that will lead to future success for the betterment of the national economy and society as a whole — but this...
by From Our Readers | Apr 28, 2015 | Letters from our Readers, News
News of the Not So Weird The News of the Weird’s piece on the first gay wedding behind bars in Britain (“Number Crunching,” April 23-29, 2015) although groundbreaking for its prison first, is maybe not so weird after all. The two men, reportedly both serving time for...
by Chuck Shepherd | Apr 28, 2015 | News, News of the Weird
It seemed like a good idea when the town of Celoron, New York agreed in 2009 to pay for a bronze statue honoring the village’s only celebrity. Lucille Ball had spent her childhood years there, and even today, everyone “Loves Lucy.” The result was apparently a...
by Hunter Styles | Apr 28, 2015 | Articles, Columns, Featured, News, The Uncanny Valley
“Curiouser and curiouser!” exclaimed Alice as she took her first steps into Wonderland. If she were making a trek through the Valley instead, we think she would say the same thing. Our little corner of the globe is chock full of odd people, secret places, and...
by Kristin Palpini | Apr 28, 2015 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Featured, News, Scene Here
Lively organ music floated through the air, and I followed it in from the parking lot. Why, exactly, had I opted to spend Friday night at the circus? I wasn??t sure, other than the fact that I was drawn here to the Eastern States Expo in West Springfield by faint,...
by Hunter Styles | Apr 28, 2015 | Articles, Featured, MGM Springfield Casino coverage, News
On March 24, cannons shot confetti over the heads of shovel-wielding politicians and corporate executives in a vacant lot in Springfield’s South End. Around them, hundreds had gathered to celebrate the official groundbreaking of the MGM Springfield casino, which is...
by Amanda Drane | Apr 21, 2015 | Arts, Leisure, News, Scene Here
Two or three lonely shopping carts litter the entrance to the Northampton-to-Leeds section of the bikepath. I’m sitting on a stone marking the entrance to the path taking notes when a 50-something man named Peter meanders my way. “Does your name start with an ‘A’?” he...
by Hunter Styles | Apr 21, 2015 | Articles, Arts, Featured, News
Kamil Peters steps away from his metal shop to lead me on a walk through 17,000 square feet of new working space. He saunters from room to room in a cavernous old industrial mill building along the canal in Holyoke, pointing out the work spaces for artists: an oil...
by Amanda Drane | Apr 21, 2015 | Articles, Arts, Featured, Leisure, News
In a Northampton park where Kira Coe and her friends spend a spring day in 2015, young men and their families met in 1775 before marching off to fight the British during the Revolutionary War. During much of the 1800s, the Main Street space held a livery office — a...
by Hunter Styles | Apr 21, 2015 | MGM Springfield Casino coverage, News
Last September, the city of Holyoke threw a sweet deal on the table as part of an urban renewal plan that has been gestating for several years now: 13 new liquor licenses, procured from the state, intended to help revitalize four downtown neighborhoods along the...
by James Heflin | Apr 21, 2015 | Articles, Between the Lines, Featured, News
It’s easy to see why the story made international news. It doesn’t get crazier than this cavalcade of questionable decisions, though the victim (expected to recover) probably disagrees. Recently, in Georgia, a man decided that a) he should shoot an armadillo which was...
by Kristin Palpini | Apr 21, 2015 | Leisure, News, Wellness
Western Mass is home to more than a dozen bike paths making up more than 80 miles of riding trails from Connecticut to Vermont. Next time you’re in the mood for a long ride in the woods, check out one of these paths:
