News
by Mark Roessler | Nov 5, 2009 | News
After his 1907 expedition to the Andes to photograph Mars, Amherst College astronomer David Peck Todd became obsessed with the planet and the Martians whose canals he was convinced he saw there. In 1909, he planned a trip in a balloon to an altitude sufficient to...
by Alan Bisbort | Nov 5, 2009 | News
They say history is written by the winners, but it's written by myth-makers, too—if that's not a redundancy. In recent weeks, while researching a publishing project on the myths of American history, I have combed through an unending supply of stories...
by Mark Roessler | Nov 5, 2009 | News
Clear or cloudy, each night at eleven Steve Sauter walks his dog to the end of his long driveway in Ashfield and looks skyward. The home he and his wife built is positioned so that on the solstice, the sun shines directly through the center of it. Every month of the...
by Stephanie Kraft | Nov 5, 2009 | News
What with economic collapse and galloping climate change, old indicators of economic wellbeing are rushing into obsolescence. New "sustainability" indexes have not yet replaced them in mainstream institutions or the media, but they're being...
by Our Readers | Nov 5, 2009 | News
HigginsIn September, 2007, I heard Senator Obama give a primary campaign speech in Peterborough, N.H. I concluded he was "world-class" and I worked on his campaigns. Although he hasn't yet solved the economic crisis, health care, the environment, two...
by Tom Vannah | Nov 10, 2009 | News
My daughter looked up and smiled weakly. I put my hand to her forehead: she was warm, flush with fever."Daddy, H1N1 is the same thing as swine flu, right?" she said. I nodded, wondering where our eight-year-old had picked up that bit of information. Did she...
by Tom Vannah | Nov 10, 2009 | News
In the wake of Clare Higgins' successful re-election bid in Northampton, the South Hadley firm that created the mayor's campaign advertising wasn't too shy to take a little credit, bringing into view the way in which marketing influences...
by Maureen Turner | Nov 10, 2009 | News
It hasn't always been easy to understand the decisions made by the Springfield electorate. This is the city that elected Mike Albano to multiple terms, defeating impressive candidates such as Charlie Ryan (in 1995) and Paul Caron (in 2001); the city that almost...
by Amy Littlefield | Nov 12, 2009 | News
While the nation remains fixated on Obama's health care policy, two federal agencies have addressed perennial health issues: the effects of air pollution and of dosing livestock with antibiotics. The agencies' health-promoting measures have gotten lost in the...
by Tom Vannah | Nov 12, 2009 | News
In an interview after he'd just lost his mayoral bid in Northampton by a mere 344 votes, Michael Bardsley didn't exactly sound defeated."I'm feeling very good about things," Bardsley told the Advocate. "It was a very successful campaign in...
by Alan Bisbort | Nov 12, 2009 | News
It was an accident, this missing of a familiar highway exit in my wife's childhood home in Massachusetts. And yet it wasn't an accident at all. We had arranged, on this return visit, to stay at a hotel in the area for the weekend of her brother's wedding....
by Stephanie Kraft | Nov 12, 2009 | News
As swine flu spreads, affecting nearly 6 million Americans by now, spreading fever and discomfort and creating long lines of people waiting for vaccine that's in short supply, reports say that scrutiny of large hog farming operations has slowed down, not speeded...
by Mark Roessler | Nov 12, 2009 | News
On September 2, 2009, a memo was released by John Auerbach, Massachusetts Commissioner of Public Health. Its subject: "False Rumors Regarding Mandatory Vaccination for H1N1 Influenza." The opening paragraph reads:"Many of you may have heard rumors that...
by Tom Vannah | Nov 17, 2009 | News
There it was, two weeks or so after the first meal, sitting on the windowsill: dry, brittle.I presented it to my daughter without comment. She inspected both sides carefully, looking for the weakness. Satisfied, she grabbed one end of the wishbone and nodded....
by Stephanie Kraft | Nov 12, 2009 | News
Though researchers acknowledge that workers on small as well as large pig farms may contract and spread the swine flu virus, the large farms are special objects of concern because of the much higher numbers of animals, the confined conditions (some pigs never see the...
by Maureen Turner | Nov 18, 2009 | News
About three months after it started, a national boycott against Whole Foods seems to be petering out—but local activists are determined to keep the pressure on the company and specifically its CEO, John Mackey.Calls for the boycott were sparked by an op-ed piece...
by Tom Sturm | Nov 12, 2009 | News
While many in the Upper Valley wrung their hands over what would turn out to be a relatively narrow margin of victory in neighboring Northampton, Easthampton's voters proved considerably more decisive in last Tuesday's mayoral election. Despite a broad field...
by Our Readers | Nov 19, 2009 | News
Nuke Reduction UnsafePresident Obama naively suggests the world can be free of nuclear weapons if the U.S. and Russia commit to arms reduction. Obama is negotiating a new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) with Russia in December which could reduce the U.S. and...
by Our Readers | Nov 12, 2009 | News
Whither Northampton?I'm writing to express my heartfelt sympathy to Northampton for the election results, and for the ongoing erosion of the town I knew and loved. Your leader doesn't understand or care about your beauty, history, and character: you are in a...
by Stephanie Kraft | Nov 19, 2009 | News
The U.S. is expanding its military presence in Colombia, which prompts a look at our ever-growing overseas troop presence and what it is costing us—not just in money.The Institute for Policy Studies finds that we have at least 865 bases outside the United...
by Maureen Turner | Nov 19, 2009 | News
In 2007, disgraced former Springfield City Councilor Frankie Keough was sentenced to three years in federal prison for stealing from Friends of the Homeless, the city shelter he ran. In an apology offered before the court, Keough “expressed a mix of anguish and...
by Stephanie Kraft | Nov 19, 2009 | News
The firestorm surrounding a scheduled speech by radical Ray Luc Levasseur at UMass last week just kept getting bigger and bigger. It was a storm of voices: the voice of Levasseur, a mill worker and Vietnam vet from Maine, who in response to what he saw as killings of...
by Stephanie Kraft | Nov 19, 2009 | News
Ray Luc Levasseur, in a statement at the U.S. District Courthouse in Springfield in 1989: “I was born into a particular class of workers that was severely exploited and subjected to certain kinds of conditions. And that left an imprint on my mind that I was...
by Maureen Turner | Nov 26, 2009 | News
As legislation goes, the bill is remarkably concise, just 31 words added to an existing law: "The director [of the Mass. Division of Fisheries and Wildlife] shall not impose any project review or permit requirement upon any land unless such land is located within...
by Stephanie Kraft | Nov 26, 2009 | News
U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont has just filed a two-page bill.The filing of a two-page bill in Congress should be news no matter what its contents, but in this case the size of the problem the bill addresses is as awe-inspiring as its brevity. Sanders'...
by Maureen Turner | Nov 26, 2009 | News
When Bill Pepin had problems with the Natural Heritage and Endangered Species Program, he approached his local legislators—state Rep. Cheryl Coakley-Rivera and state Sen. Stephen Buoniconti—who filed bills that would dramatically reduce the agency's...
by Tom Vannah | Nov 26, 2009 | News
Melinda Blau and I are consequential strangers.At least, I suspect that would be Blau's term for our relationship. We have a friendly connection—a professional symbiosis from which I've gotten some interesting stories and Blau has gotten some publicity...
by Maureen Turner | Nov 26, 2009 | News
The 16 legislators sponsoring House Bill 4167, which would dramatically reduce the powers of the Natural Heritage and Endangered Species Program, are:- Cheryl Coakley-Rivera, 10th Hampden district- John Scibak, 2nd Hampshire – Rosemary Sandlin, 3rd Hampden...
by Tom Vannah | Nov 26, 2009 | News
My wife and I lived in Somerville when we first got married, in an old house near the top of Winter Hill. It was the early '90s. We rented a two-bedroom for $750—at least a third less than we'd have paid in Boston. At the time, Somerville had a young new...
by Our Readers | Dec 1, 2009 | News
Bisbort: Fans Say FarewellAs a career journalist I closely follow the transformative developments in the media business, in particular a newspaper's attempt to stay afloat by adopting the "need to go local" mantra—echoed in your November 19 issue...
by Mark Roessler | Dec 3, 2009 | News
Declaring it a "marriage made in hell," on November 13, the Florence-based media reform advocacy organization Free Press launched a national campaign urging the federal government to block Comcast's possible purchase of a controlling interest in...
by Maureen Turner | Dec 3, 2009 | News
It's impossible to dissociate the race for Massachusetts' vacant Senate seat with the man who previously occupied it. In the 46 years he held the seat, Ted Kennedy became a Democratic icon whose legacy includes just about every key issue on the progressive...
by Stephanie Kraft | Dec 3, 2009 | News
Many years ago I was chatting with local American Civil Liberties Union attorney Bill Newman about the meaning of freedom of speech. The concept of free speech, he said, "has a lot of corners. It includes the right to hear."That had never occurred to me. But...
by Mark Roessler | Dec 3, 2009 | News
As the area's first and most eminent geologist, Professor Edward Hitchcock felt it his duty to name features in the landscape, and throughout the Pioneer Valley he has left his mark. Some places he named while composing scientific reports of the area's mineral...
by Mark Roessler | Dec 3, 2009 | News
In 2006, after Amherst College's Natural History Museum had been housed for nearly 70 years in the stately Pratt Gymnasium, the College invested $10 million to build it a new home. It is the fifth location for the college's ever-expanding scientific...
by Our Readers | Dec 3, 2009 | News
Forestry: Dollars and SenseAs a landowner and tree farmer for 55 years, I offer a brief commentary on biomass' actual potential impact on Massachusetts forests. Will biomass encourage clear-cutting or mass destruction of our forests? The answer is a resounding No....
by Steve Sauter | Dec 3, 2009 | News
As a the Coordinator of Education at the Amherst College Natural History museum, Steve Sauter has made it his business to be a scholar of Edward Hitchcock and his collection of dinosaur footprints. Recently, he gave the Valley Advocate a tour of some of his and the...
by James Heflin | Dec 3, 2009 | News
Museums10, a collaborative marketing effort of museums all over the Valley, might sound at first blush like just another of the many departments orbiting the Five College consortium, a vague if probably good campaign to promote things academic. But when it comes to...
by Our Readers | Dec 10, 2009 | News
More on Levasseur Thanks to Stephanie Kraft for the op/ed on Ray Levasseur I wish I had written ("The Right to Hear," Dec. 3, 2009). As a UMass student who attended the sedition trial talk, I didn't appreciate a police officer taking numerous photos of...
by Maureen Turner | Dec 10, 2009 | News
On a Friday morning in mid-November, more than 130 Springfield property owners were summoned to Housing Court to answer for violations of the city's housing code: trash-strewn yards, wildly overgrown lawns, unregistered cars. "Neglected properties are...
by Stephanie Kraft | Dec 10, 2009 | News
So far the war in Afghanistan has cost the U.S. more than $233 billion, according to the Northampton-based National Priorities Project, which analyzes federal financial data. NPP notes that the number of troops in Afghanistan, slated to grow by another 30,000 within...
by Maureen Turner | Jan 7, 2010 | News
Last week, parishioners at Springfield's Our Lady of Hope church marked a sad moment: the final mass in their Armory Street church, which was built 85 years ago by the Irish immigrants who settled in the Hungry Hill neighborhood, and from whom many of the current...
by Stephanie Kraft | Dec 10, 2009 | News
Thanksgiving, surely the most traditionally food-themed holiday of the year, found us facing a bizarre paradox: both obesity and hunger are on the rise. In a survey of teachers across the country by Share Our Strength, 63 percent of respondents said they regularly...
by Tom Vannah | Jan 7, 2010 | News
Traffic crawled along the Mohawk Trail, past the turnoff at Route 2A to downtown Shelburne Falls and up into Charlemont. By traffic, I mean my daughter and me in my truck, the occupants of the car in front of us, and the plow truck leading our procession westward at...
by Tom Vannah | Dec 15, 2009 | News
From the highway, Springfield looked OK. The highway construction that seems a permanent condition on this stretch of Interstate 91 notwithstanding, the city seemed to doing its best to put a good foot forward: the Basketball Hall of Fame gleamed bright against the...
by Sarah Gibbons | Jan 7, 2010 | News
Editor's note: On Monday, Jan. 4, as the Advocate was going to press, police arrested Anthony P. Baye in connection with the Dec. 27 fire at 17 Fair St. that claimed the lives of Paul W. Yeskie, Sr. and his son Paul W. Yeskie, Jr. Baye, 25, a longtime resident of...
by Tom Sturm | Dec 15, 2009 | News
Hampshire County residents may have noticed some louder passersby overhead in the past year; and, no, it's not the Blue Angels. What you're actually hearing is the 104th Fighter Wing out of Westfield's Barnes Air National Guard Base, now equipped with 18...
by Mark Roessler and Tom Vannah | Jan 7, 2010 | News
For Massachusetts residents who oppose the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan specifically or who oppose war generally, the news coming from the Donahue Institute at UMass may not be as cheery as one statewide business association makes it sound. “The success of the...
by Our Readers | Dec 17, 2009 | News
Don't Change Endangered Species LawsI am writing concerning "Fighting for Habitat?" [Nov. 26, 2009]. Open land is important to have, especially in a place like Western Massachusetts, which thrives on its natural beauty. Bill Pepin's push to pass the...
by Maureen Turner | Jan 7, 2010 | News
I’ll admit, I was expecting this week’s organizational meeting of the Springfield City Council to be a pretty dry affair. As the Council’s first gathering of the new year, the meeting—scheduled for Monday morning, after the Advocate’s...
by Tom Vannah | Dec 17, 2009 | News
In 1990, when first he ran for District Attorney of Hampden County, William M. Bennett promised to serve just two terms.At the time, Bennett's promise came in the context of an ugly scandal that had enveloped the DA's office during the tenure of Bennett's...
by Tom Vannah | Dec 17, 2009 | News
Springfield-based activist Michealann Bewsee called me last week to talk about her strong opposition to the proposed proliferation of biomass plants in Western Mass.In addition to her concerns about specific potential problems with burning wood, or, in the case of a...
by Stephanie Kraft | Jan 7, 2010 | News
The times are notable for two conflicting impulses. One is the impulse to save the environment; the other is the universal impulse, or craze, even, for the most advanced forms of communications technology. Even those most passionate about saving the environment are...
by Our Readers | Jan 7, 2010 | News
Don’t Dis President’s Book The writer who went to the trouble to include Barack Obama’s book Of Thee I Sing in the section “In the Remainder Pile” (“Halos and Horns,” December 30, 2010) with the misleading and snarky comment,...
by Mark Roessler | Dec 17, 2009 | News
A month or so ago, while waiting for my enchiladas at Veracuzana in Amherst, I committed a revolutionary act. I checked my email for free. I don't do that at home, and I don't do that at work, but I did it there, sipping a cerveza.Check it out: while my friend...
by Stephanie Kraft | Jan 7, 2010 | News
Yes, the Copenhagen climate summit, possibly the most important global conference in decades, was disappointing. No binding treaty to enforce international greenhouse emissions standards emerged. No standards were agreed on that would likely save Tuvalu and other...
by Mark Roessler | Dec 17, 2009 | News
On January 2, members of the Safe and Green citizens group are planning to begin a 122-mile, 10-day march from Brattleboro to Montpelier, hoping to convince Vermont state legislators to vote against extending the life of the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant. The group has...
by Our Readers | Jan 12, 2010 | News
"Marching for Gaza" (Dec. 24, 2009) gives a one-sided context for the march, one that places blame primarily on Israel. The article does not provide any reference to the events that forced Israel to defend itself. Hamas and its leadership have perpetuated a...
by Our Readers | Dec 24, 2009 | News
Ichnology and FaithI read with interest Mark Roessler's article on the Hitchcock ichnology collection in the Amherst Museum of Natural History ["Dinoscripture: The Older Testament," Dec. 3, 2009], looking for evidence that challenges "at least some...
by Tom Sturm | Jan 12, 2010 | News
According to a letter sent to the tenants of Easthampton's Eastworks building, a "small amount of mercury was discovered in an enclosed area of the basement not open to the public." The mercury, purported to be at least a pound in total, was discovered...
