Monte Belmonte Wines: Not quite wine country: Tasting notes from a trip to Córdoba, Spain
By Monte Belmonte For the Valley Advocate As a self-proclaimed wine snob, I admit that it is shameful that I have never been to any “wine country,” in any country, anywhere. Since grapes can grow in virtually every country, meaning wine could be made in virtually...
What’s 420 all about? (Sponsored Content)
Celebrate the cannabis holiday with Pleasantrees
Stagestruck: Movie/Theater Face-Off
In “The Flick,” at the Academy of Music this weekend, the usual roles are reversed. The audience is on the stage and the play is in the seats. Which makes sense: it’s set in an empty movie theater.
Keeping Tabs on Pot Purity
The machines inside Analytics Labs seem like futuristic, esoteric devices. Workers in lab coats move around instruments with names like Agilent High-Performance Liquid Chromatography System, performing what seems like complicated science experiments. But the work that...
Connecting creatives: The ArtsHub seeks to serve as a central online location for the creative community
The call went out for actors who were good at Shakespeare. It was quickly answered by a white-haired man in a black overcoat and low-brimmed hat: “Hath not a Jew eyes?” pleads Joe Vincent in a roiling voice. “If you prick us, shall we not bleed? If you tickle us,...
Monte Belmonte Wines: Something wicked this way comes
The witches in “The Scottish Play” warned of a monster of their own making. But this witch may become the best damned spot to go out. Something wicked AWESOME this way comes! Chef Michaelangelo Wescott is opening a new restaurant on Main Street in Northampton, in the...
The V-Spot: Help a New Top Hit Their Kinky Stride
Dear Yana, I’m a former power bottom now freshly-turned Dom in a new dynamic. I’ve been finding that when my sub and I are apart, I’ve got a lot of great ideas of new things to do with her. Though I always vow to myself to try out those things when I’m with her next,...
Taking it to the streets: UMass exhibit celebrates the work of documentary photographer Jill Freedman
When documentary photographer Jill Freedman died in 2019, she left behind a huge body of work focused on people living on the margins in urban American, on protestors against poverty and war, and on cops and firefighters doing their intense work day after day. “I...
Passing the Torch
Two women leaders of Valley theaters – – Priscilla Kane Hellweg of Enchanted Circle Theater and Lucinda Kidder of Silverthorne Theater Company – have retired from the troupes they’ve nurtured from seedlings into models of socially engaged theater. Recently I chatted with them about the highs and lows, triumphs and tribulations of their respective tenures, from first inklings through Covid.
Stagestruck: High Wireless Act
“We hope that this is the most enjoyable piece of bad news audience members have ever experienced.” So says Jonathan Mirin of Piti Theatre Company, whose latest show, “Canary in a Gold Mine,” looks into the opposing forces of corporate profit vs. public safety.
Monte Belmonte Wines: The end of sparkling isolation?
I’m pretty sure it was the author/physician/scientist Vikram Paralkar who said it first, but it became a popular meme in the early days of the pandemic: “It’s only Quarantine if it’s in the Quarantine province of France. Otherwise, it’s sparkling isolation.” In March...
Sessions
Check out our most recent performances in the playlist below, or click here to dig into interviews and related material!No Results Found
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Sessions Podcast: Jake Klar
Folk and blues music with a poetic sensibility.
The V-Spot: Our Sex Is All About Him
“I’ve tried to tell him that X feels good and Y doesn’t, but he gets kind of insulted and self conscious, so I don’t do that anymore. He does what turns him on in bed, and thinks that, because it turns him on, it must turn me on.”
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Stagestruck: The Shrew Problem
The Taming of the Shrew is Shakespeare’s trickiest play to perform these days – a thoroughly misogynistic tale in which daughters are auctioned to the highest bidder and the “shrew” of the title is “tamed” by a cunning fortune hunter. He (of course, he) is Petruchio,...











