News
by Maureen Turner | Jun 25, 2014 | News
It was not yet 10 o’clock on a recent morning, and Paul Kokoski was already about six hours into his work day. Kokoski oversees production at Mapleline Farm, the Hadley dairy farm run by his family. On Mondays and Thursdays, that means processing and bottling...
by Stephanie Kraft | Jun 25, 2014 | News
Jim Cutler lives in the hilltown of Ashfield, known as the “Little Switzerland” of New England for its mountain views, and runs a small solar-thermal heating company. To Cutler, the 36 acres on which he settled three years ago are the pot of gold: just the...
by Tom Vannah | Jun 25, 2014 | News
After a busy morning in his office at the Springfield chapter of the NAACP, a haircut and a quick lunch with his 19-year-old son, Rev. Talbert Swan II walks down Hampden Street in Springfield, headed for the broadcast studio of WGBY, the local PBS station. There, Swan...
by Maureen Turner | Jul 2, 2014 | News
It’s a scenario every New Englander is familiar with, either through personal experience or regional lore: the sacrosanct set of laws governing parking on Boston streets after a winter snowstorm. You shovel out a spot and it’s yours for the parking, a...
by by Advocate readers | Jul 30, 2014 | News
Casinos: A Many-Sided Issue Thank you for your coverage questioning the wisdom of casino gaming in Massachusetts. It has now been one year since Springfield’s host community vote (July 16, 2013). We are still very upset about the way it was conducted. MGM and...
by Stephanie Kraft | Jul 2, 2014 | News
‘Tis the season that proves that the appeal of tanning salons is in no way limited to winter. Now that the beaches begin to lure vacationers, those looking for a toasty skin tone find their way to the salons to get a beginning layer. But last month, just as it...
by Tom Vannah | Jul 30, 2014 | News
Debra Caldieri looked across at me with sadness in her intelligent eyes and mustered a warm smile. Appearing frail and exhausted in her wheelchair, nervously pushing at her hair to cover a noticeable bald patch, she looked almost defeated. Sitting in her modest but...
by Advocate Staff | Jul 2, 2014 | News
Swan Rebuts Underwood In response to last week’s letter to the editor from libertarian and state representative candidate Robert Underwood (“Swan Expounds Selectively,” June 26, 2014): Bob, Bob, Bob, here we go again! My record for working on local...
by Advocate readers | Aug 6, 2014 | News
Casino Won’t Bring Back Vital, Diverse City In reply to E. Anthony Mosio’s letter to the editor [July 24, 2014] about the good things MGM will do for Springfield, people forget what casinos are all about: gambling, making billions of dollars for the...
by Advocate readers | Jul 2, 2014 | News
Swan Expounds Selectively Regarding the cover story on Rev. Talbert Swan (“Real Talk,” June 19, 2014): I am not one of Swan’s anonymous critics. The harsh reality is that he will expound on cases from Springfield, which are white-on-black incidents,...
by Stephanie Kraft | Aug 6, 2014 | News
Even more than some other Western Massachusetts communities, Chicopee is a city of immigrants, a city where a large influx of Poles—who are still coming—became layered over French Canadian and Irish populations. Once a city with a strong, diverse range of...
by Stephanie Kraft | Jul 2, 2014 | News
It was the “Bring it on” law—a law that came out of the Vermont Legislature with a built-in weapon against an expected challenge. Vermont’s GMO labeling law, passed this spring, required that most foods and seeds offered for sale in the state...
by Chris Rohmann | Aug 6, 2014 | News
“We are a theater of ideas,” said Sabrina Hamilton in her curtain speech before the first show in this summer’s Ko Festival of Performance. For nearly a quarter-century now, Ko (the name comes from the I Ching hexagram for revolution through casting...
by Story and photos by James Heflin | Jul 2, 2014 | News
If you want to land your albums in the bin at Starbucks, you have to be a patient and persistent operator in the music business, please the right listeners, and have fans who fit the corporation’s target demographic. It helps—if only a little—to be a...
by Stephanie Kraft | Aug 14, 2014 | News
The Dunbar Community Center, the heart of Springfield’s Mason Square neighborhood, is under siege. The Center, through which the YMCA runs dozens of programs for local residents of all ages, is threatened with foreclosure by the current holder of its mortgage,...
by by Advocate readers | Jul 9, 2014 | News
Sleazy Pols Push Casinos Thanks for the article on Steve Abdow and casinos (“Casino Thrills and Chills,” June 26, 2014). I hope voters in Massachusetts will see through the millions of dollars of glossy ads bought by the casino industry and send it...
by Advocate Staff | Aug 14, 2014 | News
Speaking Up for Caldieri Having multiple sclerosis myself, I feel outraged by the treatment Debra Caldieri has received (“Bad Times for a Good Teacher,” July 31, 2014). Furthermore, her compassion and mindfulness about Phoebe Prince’s suicide should...
by Stephanie Kraft | Jul 9, 2014 | News
The Valley is accustomed to seeing Springfield social services kingpin Heriberto Flores carry out his plans—including plans to buy Springfield’s Paramount Theater and the building that houses the legendary Student Prince/Fort Restaurant, extraordinary...
by Tom Vannah | Aug 14, 2014 | News
Windsor Mallett leads the way to the highest point of the former Belchertown State School campus. As he steps carefully to avoid the abundant poison ivy in his path, he describes his vision: an inclusive community filled with artisans and entrepreneurs and...
by Tom Vannah | Jul 9, 2014 | News
Most evenings in the summer, I spend the last half hour or so before dark in my vegetable garden. I wouldn’t call what I do work, exactly, but by my getting out there for a little while every night, stuff gets done. Weeds get pulled, plants get watered and fed....
by Tom Vannah | Aug 21, 2014 | News
At my house, the Division of Capital Asset Management and Maintenance has some very tough decisions to make this fall, the most vexing of which involves the two old maple trees in the front yard. It may have been an apocryphal tale, but the home inspector we hired to...
by Tom Vannah | Jul 9, 2014 | News
On my first day at the Valley Advocate— June 12, 1995—the erstwhile managing editor Tom Mudd gave me a parting tip. “Dunno if you’re into such things,” he said, suspiciously eying my slender frame, gaunt cheeks and 1993 World Track and...
by by Advocate readers | Aug 21, 2014 | News
Casino Opposition “Selfish” Charlotte Burns’ and other anti-casino writers’ tirades are an attack on the voice of the people of Springfield, who voted in favor of a casino in their city. These writers are not residents of Springfield. While I...
by Michael P. Carney | Jul 16, 2014 | News
As this year’s Pride parade season comes to a close, we have much to celebrate. The biggest cause for celebration may be the Windsor decision handed down by the Supreme Court on June 26, 2013. Because of that decision, judges across the nation have ruled that...
by Stephanie Kraft | Aug 21, 2014 | News
Another piece of heavy artillery was moved into place in the legal fight between the state of Massachusetts and Evan Dobelle, the former president of Westfield State University, when state Attorney General Martha Coakley filed suit against Dobelle on August 7....
by Stephanie Kraft | Jul 16, 2014 | News
A mass of broken glass and rubble covered whole blocks between Worthington and Chestnut streets in Springfield on Black Friday in 2012—the worst disaster since a tornado had leveled parts of the city in the spring of 2011. The Scores strip club was totally...
by Stephanie Kraft | Aug 21, 2014 | News
It’s a driver’s dream: a car you don’t have to own, insure, park every night, fill with gas at your own expense, or even clean. That’s the Zipcar, a car you can drive on an as-needed basis if you pay the fee, usually $6 a month but discounts...
by by Advocate readers | Jul 16, 2014 | News
Agent Orange Déjà Vu Vietnam veterans fought an uphill battle to win “presumed exposure” to Agent Orange; and not until 1991 did they gain disability, medical and survivor benefits that the Veterans Administration had denied them for 20...
by Tom Vannah | Aug 21, 2014 | News
If you don’t know who Charlie Baker is, you probably don’t follow politics. I can’t say I blame you; I often get the impulse to tune it out myself. But before you turn your attention to something more appetizing, please indulge this wee prediction:...
by Maureen Turner | Jul 16, 2014 | News
When Melvin Edwards was a student at Springfield’s Cathedral Grammar School, he recalls, the institutions near the school—the Central Library, the Quadrangle, the Springfield Armory—“were essentially my playground.” He and his friends...
by Tom Vannah | Aug 27, 2014 | News
I wish I’d said something like, “You can have my hundred bucks when you take it from my cold, dead hands.” I know I’d have gotten a laugh. Instead, I asked the police officer if he’d take a check. I was sitting in the police station in...
by Chris Rohmann | Jul 16, 2014 | News
It’s not for want of a “proper” venue that Old Deerfield Productions’ re-exploration of Frankenstein is being performed in an abandoned building. The reason is twofold, the most important being that the skeletal, echoing marble-and-iron...
by Advocate readers | Aug 27, 2014 | News
Baker: More of the Same Regarding Tom Vannah’s recent column about Charlie Baker (“A Republican to the Rescue,” Aug. 14): how about Don Berwick to the rescue? Why do media outlets act as if Democratic candidate Don Berwick doesn’t exist?...
by by Advocate readers | Jul 23, 2014 | News
Help Blue Water Navy Vets To amplify points made by Pat Hynes in her letter last week (“Agent Orange Deja Vu,” July 17, 2014): Exposure to Agent Orange has been linked to numerous health problems, including non-Hodgkins lymphoma, prostate cancer, type 2...
by John O?Neil | Aug 27, 2014 | News
Jason Burns, a history teacher at Hopkins Academy in Hadley for nine years, says it’s becoming more difficult to get students interested in the workings of the American government, but there is hope. Seven years ago, Burns said in a recent interview, Hopkins...
by Stephanie Kraft | Jul 23, 2014 | News
While representatives of Kinder Morgan are pitching a 129-mile gas pipeline through northern Massachusetts, opponents of the pipeline are on the march. The so-called “Rolling March/Statewide Pipeline Resistance Relay Walk” started July 6 near...
by Terry Allen | Sep 3, 2014 | News
Well, maybe the trip is more phlegmatic Fred Thompson than gonzo Hunter S. And maybe we scarf grilled veggies and espresso instead of cocaine and booze (although rum will enter the picture), but we do cop drugs. The adventure began with a rant: “The last time I...
by Tom Vannah | Jul 23, 2014 | News
It was still too dark outside to see very well, but I heard the rain on the gutters. On the way through shed, I grabbed the first rain coat I could find and called the dog. As we stepped outside, I threw the coat over my head. That’s when I realized it was my...
by Advocate readers | Sep 3, 2014 | News
Gun Control Compromise I want to hunt. I attended my state-mandated hunter education course on April 16, over four months ago, and still haven’t received my license to purchase a firearm. Depending on when it finally arrives, I might miss goose hunting...
by John O?Neil | Jul 30, 2014 | News
WARE — Early on a sunny Tuesday morning at the Stanley Koziol Elementary School, kids file out of school vans and line up at the cafeteria doors with their teachers, waiting to go inside and enjoy breakfast. This morning’s meal of cereal and fruit is not...
by Mikhail Lyubansky | Sep 3, 2014 | News
Robin Williams, who took his own life on Aug. 10, was so multi-talented and so brilliantly funny that it is hard for most of us to imagine him sad, much less depressed. Part of it, of course, is that he was a movie star, far removed from our “normal”...
by Tom Vannah | Jul 30, 2014 | News
Thankfully, Chicopee—the second most populated city in Western Mass.—is one of the easiest places in the Valley to find parking. Sure enough, I found several open spaces across from City Hall. And no meters! I walked into the mayor’s office right on...
by Ted Rall | Sep 3, 2014 | News
Forty years ago this month, President Richard M. Nixon resigned his office. At the time, aside from a tiny minority of dead-enders and a few desultory Congressional Republicans, an exhausted nation had arrived at a consensus that Nixon had to go. Politics...
by Eric Goldscheider | Sep 10, 2014 | News
Robert MacWright brings an enthusiasm for the nexus between gee whiz technology, legal logic, and the history of American entrepreneurship to his job as director of commercial ventures and intellectual property at UMass-Amherst. Yes, his office works hard to make...
by Tom Vannah | Sep 10, 2014 | News
If anyone has the stomach for covering a major news story in a place where not even journalists are safe, it’s Joe Gannon. Gannon worked as a freelance journalist in Nicaragua and El Salvador from 1984 until 1990. He wrote for the Christian Science Monitor and...
by John O?Neil | Sep 10, 2014 | News
Last month, the University of Massachusetts put out a press release touting an anonymous donation of $10.3 million to the school’s College of Social and Behavioral Sciences. “This transformative gift is among the largest in UMass history,” said...
by Tom Vannah | Sep 10, 2014 | News
In the moonlight, the pond shimmered. A soft breeze showed on the surface, fleeting patterns of disturbance appearing and disappearing like the passing shadows of cumulus clouds on a windy day. I stood in the deep shade of the hardwoods that line the pond’s...
by Rob Weir | Sep 17, 2014 | News
It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s a spybot! The cops! A package from Amazon! Or one of a growing number of uses for nonmilitary drones, those small, remote-controlled flying machines increasingly hovering overhead. How do you feel about eyes in...
by Amanda Drane | Sep 17, 2014 | News
The day after the primary, progressives are licking their wounds. One recurring word rolls again and again off the tongues of Berwick supporters: they were “struck” by him. From support of single-payer healthcare systems to ardent objection to casino and...
by Tom Vannah | Sep 17, 2014 | News
I felt sorry for Martha Coakley last Tuesday night. Her speech after winning the Democratic primary for governor was one of the most painful political performances I’ve seen this year. It left me feeling uncomfortable. But her acceptance speech also left me...
by Advocate readers | Sep 17, 2014 | News
Gun License Mathematics V alley Advocate editor Tom Vannah complains about having to pay $16.67 a year for a gun license that he needs to renew once in 6 years (“A Gun Owner’s Resentment,” Aug. 28). Here’s why that’s cheap: Guns...
by Tom Vannah | Sep 24, 2014 | News
I have a recurring dream that’s haunted my sleep since I graduated high school: I show up to math class wholly unprepared for the day’s exam. Apparently, I’ve managed to go an entire semester without cracking a book; I haven’t attended class,...
by Advocate readers | Sep 24, 2014 | News
Coakley Malaise? Regarding Amanda Drane’s story “Berwick-Stricken (Sept. 18): Yes, I was also “struck” by Berwick. His authentic, passionate speech at the Democratic Convention was thrilling to experience. I want to be struck by our...
by Pete Redington | Sep 24, 2014 | News
This Saturday, Sept. 27, the UMass football team returns to play a home game at McGuirk Stadium for the first time in three years, since making the jump to upper-division college football—a move that necessitated an upgrade to its on-campus facilities. All home...
by Amanda Drane | Sep 24, 2014 | News
Early afternoon on Saturday, Sept. 20, the scene at the Amherst Town Houses was foreboding. Music blasted into the streets as a crowd of UMass students gathered and Amherst Police cruisers pulled in and out of the neighboring parking lots. By 2 p.m., there was a fresh...
by James Heflin | Sep 24, 2014 | News
Japanese scholar and performer Yuko Eguchi visits the Valley this week to illustrate the arts of the geisha, the traditional entertainers of Japan. She performs kouta, short songs delivered with accompaniment by shamisen (a stringed instrument), and koutaburi, a dance...
by Advocate readers | Sep 24, 2014 | News
Casinos Need Problem Gamblers The casino industry says 1 percent of the population are problem gamblers. Many scholars have criticized the 1 percent figure as being misleading, as it is based on a survey of the adult population, most of whom don’t gamble....
by Advocate readers | Oct 1, 2014 | News
Take a Number Thanks for Tom Vannah’s article about how tough it was to understand a math textbook statement about the relationship between an independent change and a dependent variable change (“A Textbook Case of Math Disability,” Sept. 25)....
by James Heflin | Oct 1, 2014 | News
The place was jammed to capacity. The Iron Horse crowd was restless, energetic. I looked over toward the stairs coming from the basement, and a slight, messy-haired guy came up, turned the corner, and slipped through the crowd toward the stage. Beck had booked a...
by John O?Neil | Oct 1, 2014 | News
On a humid, rainy Sunday morning, eight buses ringed the Haigis Mall on the UMass-Amherst campus, idling before the sun rose. This wasn’t the PVTA. Instead, these charter buses had arrived to carry more than 1,000 Valley residents to New York City for the...
