News
by Chuck Shepherd | Mar 18, 2015 | News, News of the Weird
“This will be upsetting,” cautioned Justice Robert Graesser, addressing jurors in February in the Edmonton, Alberta murder trial of Brad Barton. At issue was the cause of the victim’s having bled to death from her genitals, and the judge, ruling that jurors would...
by Kristin Palpini | Mar 10, 2015 | News, Uncategorized
Kevin Gutting Photo Some shiver; some don’t. Some stamp their feet to keep warm, while others sit on benches and hug themselves. When the wind dies down, the March sun almost feels warm. Spring is coming, supposedly, but on this Tuesday the temperature at this...
by Advocate Staff | Mar 10, 2015 | Articles, Featured, News
This year’s Blarney Blowout on March 7 attracted thousands of revelers to downtown Amherst and the UMass campus. This photo was taken during a concert at the Mullins Center where Kesha, Juicy J, and Ludacris performed. How many cell phones can you spot? Find the...
by Amanda Drane | Mar 10, 2015 | News, Uncategorized
If there was a mascot for Blarney Blowout, it’d be a green can of beer wearing a baseball cap. They’d call him Blarney, of course, and his nemesis would be Blowout because blowing out the contents of your stomach seems to be a big part of the day for a lot of people....
by Hunter Styles | Mar 10, 2015 | Between the Lines, News, Uncategorized
In early 2014, former Gov. Deval Patrick proposed the creation of an office of the state climatologist, to be housed at the Northeast Climate Science Center at UMass Amherst. By July, when Patrick signed the fiscal 2015 budget, the funding for that office stood at...
by Amanda Drane | Mar 10, 2015 | Arts, News, Uncategorized
In the thousands of years before European settlers arrived in the Valley, David Brule says, the Connecticut River basin was a place Native American tribes gathered peacefully to fish and farm. Since then, humanity’s relationship with the river has grown much more...
by From Our Readers | Mar 10, 2015 | News
Bias and fear: Marijuana, science, and the media Prohibitionists keep circulating scare stories about marijuana, and people keep believing them. Lurid tales of insanity and murder were quite effective in the 1930s. Seen now as ridiculous; yet nonetheless, modern...
by Amanda Drane, Kristin Palpini, and Hunter Styles | Mar 3, 2015 | Articles, Arts, Featured, Food + Booze, Madame Barfly, News, The Beerhunter
Everyone has a favorite dive bar; a place you can go in your old jeans and sweater, have a beer for under $3 and watch some “Wheel of Fortune” with townies looking to unwind. Dive bars — and we use the term lovingly — tend to be physically and metaphysically secluded....
by Amanda Drane | Mar 3, 2015 | News
Last year, social media platforms such as Twitter and Instagram led Blarney Blowout revelers from one epic bash to another, leaving destruction and empty beer cans in their wake. Social media has changed the way the masses gather. Real-time tweets enable wandering...
by Chuck Shepherd | Mar 3, 2015 | Articles, Featured, News, News of the Weird, Uncategorized
The Utah Court of Appeals ruled in February that Barbara Bagley has a legal right to sue herself for her own negligent driving that caused the death of her husband. Typically, in U.S. courts, a party cannot profit from its own negligence, but Bagley is the official...
by From Our Readers | Mar 3, 2015 | Letters from our Readers, News
No room for transphobic language in Advocate I’m concerned with the conversation I’ve seen the last few weeks around Mount Holyoke’s student theatre group’s decision to present The Student Body, in place of Eve Ensler’s The Vagina Monologues. On a community level, I...
by Chuck Shepherd | Feb 25, 2015 | News, News of the Weird
A Saratoga Springs, New York resort has begun accepting totally defeated husbands and wives for a relaxed weekend that includes divorce, bringing to America a concept already successful in six European cities. The Gideon Putnam Resort & Spa charges $5,000 for a...
by Pete Redington
Daily Hampshire Gazette | Mar 3, 2015 | Articles, Arts, Featured, News, Wellness
At a recent gathering in a second-story studio in downtown Northampton, Daniel Lombardo of Westhampton read a story about twin fetuses discussing life after birth. One thinks there will be life after delivery, related Lombardo, while the other isn’t so sure....
by James Heflin | Mar 3, 2015 | Articles, Between the Lines, Featured, News
I stood in the below-zero wind, my dog circling — quickly — to find the right spot. High above the blue glow of moon on snow, far Jupiter shone. It went crisply about its business of marching at barely perceptible speed, of turning its eye upon us. Someone trundled by...
by From Our Readers | Feb 25, 2015 | Letters from our Readers, News
New Deal loopholes need to be patched In 1940 FDR passed legislation that banned corporations that are under contract with the federal government from making contributions to sitting members of Congress. This was part of the New Deal intended to strengthen the middle...
by Amanda Drane | Feb 25, 2015 | Articles, Featured, News
When Adam Cohen contributed $500 to Michael Bardsley’s mayoral campaign in Northampton, he said he wasn’t expecting anything in return. Neither was his wife, Jendi Reiter, when she donated $500 to the campaign, he says. Cohen, a blogger and leader of the North Street...
by Hunter Styles | Feb 25, 2015 | Arts, Columns, Food + Booze, News, Scene Here
Hunter Styles photo
by Story and photos by Amanda Drane | Feb 25, 2015 | Articles, Arts, Featured, Leisure, News
Dear diary, Today white stuff started falling from the sky — again. Burying my stout, red body deep beneath the stuff, but at least it’s hiding the chipped paint LOLZ. Snow, is what the double-stems walking by call it as they roll it up in their cloth-covered spigots...
by Advocate Staff | Feb 25, 2015 | Articles, Arts, Featured, Leisure, News, Wellness
As New England natives, we’d like to humbly challenge T. S. Elliot’s assertion that “April is the cruelest month.” It’s March. The month is a tease, punishing snow and winds one minute and green leaves coaxed by a soft breath of spring emerge in the next. March...
by Kristin Palpini | Feb 25, 2015 | Articles, Between the Lines, Columns, Featured, Leisure, News, The V-Spot, Wellness
Since returning The V-Spot sex advice column to the pages of the Advocate earlier this month, I’ve gotten a lot of feedback from our readers. Most are thrilled to have a sassy sexpert closing out the paper every week. Others question why a newspaper would dedicate so...
by Hunter Styles | Feb 25, 2015 | Articles, Featured, MGM Springfield Casino coverage, News
I n the midst of plans to vacate a building recently purchased by MGM Springfield, Hampden County Sheriff Michael Ashe got some bad news: funding had fallen through for the relocation of the Western Massachusetts Correctional Alcohol Center . The 29-year-old minimum...
by Kristin Palpini | Feb 18, 2015 | Between the Lines, Columns, News, Wellness
Measles, an infectious viral disease, is far more harmful and deadly than the measles vaccine. So why have so many parents opted to skip this regular inoculation? Bad information. The so-called anti-vaxx movement advises against childhood inoculations, especially the...
by Hunter Styles | Feb 18, 2015 | Articles, Arts, Featured, Food + Booze, News
Coco & The Cellar Bar Easthampton The dish: Buttermilk Fried Chicken Simple is best Fried chicken may seem an odd fit for a gourmet menu, but Coco’s co-owners, cooks — and husband and wife — Roger Taylor and Unmi Abkin have embraced its simple pleasures....
by Chuck Shepherd | Feb 18, 2015 | News, News of the Weird
It turns out that a person having a heart attack is usually safer in an ambulance headed to a hospital than to already be a patient in a hospital, according to a study by University of North Carolina researchers. It takes longer, on average, for non-ER hospital staff...
by Amanda
Drane | Feb 18, 2015 | Articles, Featured, Food + Booze, News, Taste-Off!
The lines were drawn. On one side, #TeamChewy and on the other, #TeamCrunchy. The Advocate’s chocolate chip cookie Taste-off was about to commence. Who would have suspected the ubiquitous and beloved chocolate chip cookie would yield such feuding within our normally...
by Story and photos Amanda Drane | Feb 18, 2015 | Articles, Arts, Featured, Food + Booze, News
Owner Tully McColgan and head chef John Peter Wentworth say they’ve spent so much time together getting their business — King Street Eats — off the ground, that they’ve come to look alike. “People think we’re brothers,” Wentworth jokes. The two have turned the former...
by Amanda Drane | Feb 18, 2015 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Featured, Food + Booze, News, Scene Here, Wellness
Kevin Gutting Photo
by Hunter Styles | Feb 18, 2015 | News
On Jan. 28, following a 10-day investigation, the Northampton Police Department decided not to bring hate crime charges against two local teenagers suspected of vandalizing city and private property along Sherman Avenue with spray paint, which was used to draw, among...
by Annie Waldman, ProPublica | Feb 18, 2015 | News
Connecticut public schools are far too quick to restrain or isolate unruly children against their will, leaving hundreds with injuries and many others with unmet educational needs, a state report released earlier this month found. The report cited “significant...
by From Our Readers | Feb 18, 2015 | Letters from our Readers, News
LGBTQ left out of singles story After reading about all the female/male couples or females who wanted to meet males and vice versa, it seemed to me that the article “All Single and Nowhere to Mingle” (Feb. 5-11, 2015) should have been titled “All Straight and Single...
by Chuck Shepherd | Feb 11, 2015 | News, News of the Weird
A miles-long traffic jam on Interstate 20 near Tuscaloosa, Alabama on Jan. 25 and on into the next morning was caused by an 18-wheeler that jackknifed and overturned when the 57-year-old driver took his hands off the wheel to pull out a tooth with his fingers. Efforts...
by Hunter Styles and Amanda Drane | Feb 11, 2015 | Articles, Featured, News
Even as Northampton community leaders craft plans to invigorate downtown without the fee-charging district a judge declared “null and void” in November, resentments simmer and questions swirl about what killed the 5-year-old Business Improvement District. Amid the...
by Advocate Staff | Feb 11, 2015 | Articles, Arts, Featured, Leisure, News
You call the WWII Club “The Deuce” You have male friends who wear clogs You know why the guy at Joe’s Pizza is wearing a sombrero You miss Pleasant Street Theater You’ve taken a side in the “Hamp” v. “Noho” debate You see a man in a dress on the street and...
by Bill Federman | Feb 11, 2015 | Between the Lines, Columns, Letters from our Readers, News
Brian Williams, the NBC Nightly News anchor — at least for the time being — has come in for a lot of criticism lately for claiming, falsely,that he was aboard a U.S. military helicopter in 2003 that was hit by small-arms fire and forced down in the desert during the...
by Leticia Miranda, ProPublica | Feb 11, 2015 | News
During the State of the Union address, President Obama pledged “to protect a free and open Internet, extend its reach to every classroom, and every community, and help folks build the fastest networks.” Obama is calling on the Federal Communications Commission to...
by Jack Brown | Feb 11, 2015 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Featured, Film, News
For parents of school-age children, February break can be a trying time. Personal days at work have likely been put to use to cope with blizzards that never appeared, and the winter wind that creeps in during the middle of the month means that our energetic kids are...
by From Our Readers | Feb 11, 2015 | Letters from our Readers, News
Vagina dialogue continues One of the goals of art is to experience other points of view. We go to plays about ‘others’ to learn and empathize. How sad it would be to lose that by denying the depiction of different lives. Really, Mount Holyoke, what are you thinking?...
by Advocate Staff | Feb 11, 2015 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Featured, News, Scene Here
I have only one recurring nightmare. I find myself in prison. Charged with a crime I cannot discern, I’m locked away from family and friends by thick plastic walls. The clear walls are smeared with a thousand fingerprints obscuring my view of the sweet blue sky. Jack...
by Story and Photos by Pete Redington | Feb 11, 2015 | Articles, Arts, Featured, Leisure, News, Wellness
Stratton Mountain sits some 45 minutes north of Brattleboro. The drive up state Route 30 encapsulates much of what visitors and residents alike love about the Green Mountain state. The single lane road follows the meandering West River alongside the Green Mountain...
by From Our Readers | Feb 4, 2015 | Letters from our Readers, News
A Moving Response I loved the focus on improvisation in this week’s Advocate! I have enjoyed many a visit to Earthdance, and often meet people there who have traveled from around the globe to visit the hills of Plainfield — a testament to the important role that...
by Amanda Drane | Feb 4, 2015 | Articles, Arts, Featured, News, Scene Here
Amanda drane photo
by Kristin Palpini | Feb 4, 2015 | Between the Lines, News, Wellness
I had my first cigarette when I was 13; stole it from my dad’s pack of menthol Pall Malls and smoked it on the back porch. I had heard cigarettes were a good way to relax. I took a few puffs. The flavor was all ash and prickly mint. For a moment a rushing dizziness...
by Chuck Shepherd | Feb 4, 2015 | News, News of the Weird
The Project Theater Board at Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Massachusetts decided in January to cancel its upcoming annual presentation of the feminist classic Vagina Monologues. The all-women’s college recently declared it would admit males who lived and...
by Hunter Styles | Jan 27, 2015 | Arts, News
Four days ago, Tomás Astacio slept outside for the first time. He found a locked, empty building on Winter Street in Springfield and climbed up to the second floor, where he spent the night on a balcony. The temperature dropped below freezing that night — 22 degrees...
by Amanda Drane | Jan 28, 2015 | Articles, Featured, News
The first snowflakes begin to fall Monday night. It’s my cue to head into the gusty blizzard, geared with elbow-high gloves and the coziest scarf I could find, in search of the city’s homeless. How are they faring, outside in this storm? I walk several frosty laps...
by Kristin Palpini | Jan 28, 2015 | News
With Kinder Morgan already into the federal pre-filing process to construct a 70-mile addition to the Tennessee Gas Pipeline, protest against the project has intensified. The Tennessee Gas Pipeline is a 13,900-mile line that runs natural gas from Louisiana, Texas and...
by Hunter Styles | Jan 28, 2015 | Articles, Arts, Between the Lines, Featured, Film, News, Stage
The show must go on, as they say — until it’s gone on long enough. On Jan. 14, the student-run Project Theatre group at Mount Holyoke College canceled its annual production of Eve Ensler’s play The Vagina Monologues, opting instead to write and produce a new show of...
by Amanda Drane - Photos by Matt Burkhartt | Jan 28, 2015 | News
Gas prices haven’t been this low in nearly a decade, and many people in the Valley are downright giddy about it. At its highest point in the last decade, July 2008, regular gasoline was about $4.03 per gallon at the pump. At that price, filling an 18-gallon tank cost...
by Hunter Styles | Jan 28, 2015 | News
Chicopee resident Charles DiRosa, whose Dec. 21 Facebook post “Put Wings On Pigs” landed him in trouble with the city’s police department, attended a show-cause hearing held at Chicopee District Court on Jan. 12. The wording of the post by DiRosa, which a concerned...
by Hunter Styles | Jan 21, 2015 | Columns, Food + Booze, News, The Beerhunter
Nothing screams American mass-market beer like that big silver “Coors” bullet train. TV spots show it rocketing through a winter blizzard, smashing huge glaciers into ice rubble before steaming into town like the Polar Express for the college set. Ahh, refreshing!...
by Chuck Shepherd | Jan 28, 2015 | News, News of the Weird
Fourteen employees of a Framingham, Massachusetts pharmacy were indicted in December for defrauding the federal government by filling bogus prescriptions (despite an owner’s explicit instructions to staff that the fake customers’ names “must resemble real names,” with...
by Hunter Styles | Jan 28, 2015 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Featured, Leisure, News, Scene Here
Wind whips across the ice on the Oxbow in Northampton. Under a bright, cold sun, shadowy figures stand against a stark panorama of frozen river, snow-decked mountains, and frosted gray sky. It’s 25 degrees. Viktor Biley, 17, is rubbing his bare hands together. It’s...
by Advocate Staff | Jan 28, 2015 | Letters from our Readers, News
Instead of complaining, do something to improve Springfield I have lived in many places, and have lived in Springfield for over 30 years. I grew up in Longmeadow, lived other places for 20 years, moved back to Longmeadow, and then to Springfield. I like it here. Every...
by Jack Brown | Jan 28, 2015 | Arts, Cinemadope, Columns, Film, News
As a young and nerdish boy, I was obsessed with words. I collected them the way a lepidopterist might collect moths, catching them on the wing and pinning them down to puzzle out their origins, oddities, and family ties to other words. It all felt like a marvelously...
by Amanda Drane | Jan 21, 2015 | News, Wellness
Last year, yoga and wellness teacher Molly Kitchen was in such high demand that she was teaching 18 classes a week — a difficult feat for someone who demonstrates demanding poses throughout her classes. Massachusetts ranks in the top five states in the number of...
by Hunter Styles | Jan 21, 2015 | Articles, Featured, News
Man, that old website of ours was up for a while, and it wasn’t getting any prettier with time. It was like Anne Hathaway in The Princess Diaries before Julie Andrews showed up. You’d land on the site and be, like, meh. Thankfully our Web elves have been hard at work....
by James Heflin | Jan 21, 2015 | Articles, Arts, Featured, News
It’s the kind of story we will, inevitably, hear again. When any big development imposes a new footprint on an already-established area, people get displaced and property changes hands. Five Taylor Street, in Morgan Square, where Springfield nonprofit arts...
by Hunter Styles | Jan 21, 2015 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Featured, Food + Booze, News, Scene Here
Remember that first wash of Technicolor in The Wizard of Oz? That’s what it’s like to step off the grayscale street and into Chef Wayne’s Big Mamou in Springfield. This little New Orleans-style restaurant is stranded on a run-down industrial block of Liberty Street,...
by Kristin Palpini | Jan 21, 2015 | News
“I just think he’s taking advantage of the taxpayers, and while it is not technically illegal, I think it’s unethical.” — Linda Vacon, Holyoke Ward 5 City Councilor, on the city’s elected treasurer accepting a full-time job — and two paychecks, The Republican “The...
by James Heflin | Jan 21, 2015 | Arts, Music, News
The Gaslight Tinkers (independent) Lots of experiments in genre-crossing turn into one-trick ponies or big messes. The Valley’s Gaslight Tinkers avoid both traps. The group brings together some good players: Zoe Darrow on fiddle; Peter Siegel on guitar, mandolin, and...
