Arts & Life
Dreams take flight (some assembly required): Local pilots build and help build their own aircraft
By STEVE PFARRER
If you build it … you can fly it, too.As Peter Elsea and Jason Lorusso have discovered in recent years, there’s a special satisfaction in building your own plane — or at least assisting in that construction — that can make the experience of flying...
Connected through art: Rocky Hill Cohousing community participates in art exchange with group from Australia
By JAMES PENTLAND
Residents of the Rocky Hill Cohousing community are no strangers to working on art projects together.But, for the Global Art Project for Peace, they’re taking another step — exchanging artwork with a group in another country.“We’ve done other art...
Valley Bounty: Fibers for farmers: Western Massachusetts Fibershed turns local ‘throw away’ wool into fertilizer pellets
By JACOB NELSON
Local wool for your wardrobe … and for your garden?That’s the idea behind a new project from Western Massachusetts Fibershed, an organization working to strengthen our local fiber economy, right alongside our local food economy.Peggy Hart is a core...
Weekly Food Photo Contest: This week’s winner: Betsy Johnson of Shutesbury
Betsy Johnson of Shutesbury must have some very happy neighbors — she made these “apricot pistachio sweet buns with orangey cardamom glaze” to share with them. How to enter: Snap a pic of something delicious-looking and send it with your name, town...
Get Growing with Mickey Rathbun: Venture beyond your garden walls: Plant sales and noteworthy gardens to visit this season
By MICKEY RATHBUN
After long weeks of yearning for gardening weather, we’re suddenly inundated by spring. Endless outdoor chores beg for our attention — composting, mulching, edging, scrubbing birdbaths and, at least in my garden beds, pulling out multitudes of maple...
Overlooked no more: Leverett artist’s woodcut prints celebrate remarkable women of the past
By STEVE PFARRER
It started in early 2018 with a special New York Times series of articles, “Overlooked,” obituaries about notable people whose deaths had gone unreported in the newspaper, which first began publishing obits in 1851.Leverett printmaker and collage...
An artist with a green thumb: The creative vision and resilience of Kathleen Chapman, designer of Tuesday Market poster
By PAT JAMES
Kathleen Chapman (“KC”) and I met under a clothesline near her patchwork garden behind McDonald House in downtown Northampton. I wanted to learn more about her artwork, what brought her to Northampton, and how she connected with Grow Food Northampton...
Arts Briefs: Dance festival and a one-woman play in Northampton, summer music fests in Easthampton, and more
Dance festival, encoreNORTHAMPTON — A week after 33 Hawley hosted an extensive dance festival, the city’s community arts center is set to stage another one.On May 10-11, Friday and Saturday, the School for Contemporary Dance & Thought (SCDT) is...
Only Human with Joan Axelrod-Contrada: Dating across the aisle: Can we see past politics in our relationships?
By JOAN AXELROD-CONTRADA
Every time I hear “One Tribe” by the Black Eyed Peas my idealistic and dance-happy sides unite in sonic bliss.I picture everyone coming together in some magic club beaming the feel-good vibes of the boundary-busting band, washing away all our...
Speaking of Nature: Capturing my Bermuda nemesis: The Great Kiskadee nearly evaded me, until I followed its song
By BILL DANIELSON
We’ve reached that point in the school year when it is actually painful (I mean physically painful) for me to leave my yard in the morning. May is the true month of the reawakening and blooming of Nature’s splendor and last week she was in full...
Easthampton author Emily Nagoski has done the research: It’s OK to love your body
By MELISSA KAREN SANCES
‘Emily’s mission in life is to teach women to live with confidence and joy inside their bodies.”This sentence mesmerized me.It’s an assured statement about a complicated topic: body image and sexuality, and it is the crux of sex educator Emily...
Earth Matters: Honoring a local hero: After 40 years, Hitchcock Center bids farewell to educator and creative leader, Colleen Kelley
By TED WATT and HELEN ANN SEPHTON
This column honors Colleen Kelley, the education director at the Hitchcock Center, who will soon be leaving her post after 40 years.In the fall of 1984, Colleen walked into the Hitchcock Center — young, bright, idealistic, and fresh off a position as...
Valley Bounty: Delivering local food onto students’ plates: Marty’s Local connects farms to businesses
By LISA GOODRICH
Nick Martinelli, CEO of Marty’s Local, began his career with a stint at the Farm School in Athol, hoping to learn how he might participate in the local agricultural economy. While conducting market research in 2015, he recognized there was a lot of...
Let’s Talk Relationships: Breaking up is hard to do: These tools can help it feel easier
By AMY NEWSHORE
All of us have probably decided to end a relationship at some point in our lives, as well as having been in a relationship where we were broken up with.A breakup, separation, or divorce is a pivotal and tender time in one’s life. I’d like to shed some...
Weekly Food Photo Contest: This week's winner: Tara Winters of Williamsburg
Tara Winters’ husband, Chris, makes “fantastic Buddha bowls” – this one features “basmati rice layered with sautéed baby spinach with garlic, homemade peanut sauce, and marinated, air fried tofu steaks.” How to enter: Snap a pic of something...
The Beat Goes On: A trombone celebration in Holyoke, Lord Russ shifts gears, and the Hampshire Young People’s Chorus turns 25
By STEVE PFARRER
The Holyoke Civic Symphony has titled its 2023-2024 season “The Brass Menagerie,” not to be cute but to highlight a series of concerts dedicated to celebrating the family of brass instruments: the horn, the tuba, the trumpet, and the trombone.On May...
The long shadow of the Mill River flood: Multiple events on tap in May to mark 150th anniversary of the 1874 disaster
By STEVE PFARRER
On the morning of May 16, 1874, the dam on the Williamsburg Reservoir, up in the hills along the East Branch of the Mill River, suddenly collapsed, sending 600 million gallons of water roaring downhill.The flood, which soon became a 30-foot-high brown...
Fantasy favorite revisited: Amherst authors’ popular ‘Spiderwick Chronicles’ gets a new streaming adaptation
By STEVE PFARRER
Call it an encore performance.“The Spiderwick Chronicles,” the bestselling series of fantasy books by Amherst writers Tony DiTerlizzi and Holly Black, has just been turned into a streaming series on The Roku Channel.That comes 16 years after a feature...
Around and About with Richard McCarthy: Coffee at the pearly gates: The importance of a moment of connection, even with a stranger
By RICHARD MCCARTHY
About a mile from where I live, there is a convenience store and a doughnut shop. For a period of a few years, a woman of perhaps 60 years of age could be found standing outside one of these establishments on most days. She would be shuffling her...
Speaking of Nature: Bird of my dreams, it’s you: Spotting a White-tailed Tropicbird on our cruise in Bermuda
By BILL DANIELSON
It was the morning of April 16 and I was up early. It seems to be impossible for me to sleep late at this time of year because I am so excited about seeing the first birds of the season, but this particular morning was a little different. It was the...
