Valley Bounty: Plant medicine for the people: Local herbal company grows their own ingredients

By JACOB NELSON

Sometimes, medicine comes from a pill bottle. Other times, it grows right in your backyard, if only you knew how to access it.Blending modern chemistry with traditional wisdom, Blue Crow Botanicals puts locally grown herbal medicine right at people’s...

Only Human with Joan Axelrod-Contrada: Ear candy better than real candy: Exploring ways to divert sugar cravings

By JOAN AXELROD-CONTRADA

My sweet tooth has a sensory cousin: ear candy.And nothing tickles my ears when they’re screaming for delicious choruses and yummy hooks like the song “Sugar, Sugar” by The Archies, Billboard’s top hit of 1969. This feel-good alternative to songs of...

Get Growing with Mickey Rathbun: Appreciating the aster: The cheerful, abundant flowers will persist until hard frosts set in

By MICKEY RATHBUN

Many gardens go drab this time of year after summer flowers have faded away. But in fields and along roadsides, swaths of native asters add explosions of color to the transitioning landscape, with their golden centered, star-shaped flowers ranging...

Weekly Food Photo Contest: This week’s winner: Alison and Bruce Kriviskey of Easthampton

Alison and Bruce Kriviskey of Easthampton picked up this bounty from specialty shops and farm stands in and around the Valley “on one beautiful autumn Saturday.”How to enter: Snap a pic of something delicious-looking and send it with your name, town...

Illustrating a classic: Smith professor’s artworks featured in an exhibition honoring the centennial of Herman Melville’s ‘Billy Budd’

By CAROLYN BROWN

Barry Moser, an illustrator and professor of art at Smith College, has works featured in a New York City exhibition honoring the centennial of Herman Melville’s novel “Billy Budd.” Moser’s work will be shown as part of the “Melville’s Billy Budd at...

‘One sentence can change the course of a relationship’: Valley Players stage first full production, ‘Constellations,’ this weekend and next

By CAROLYN BROWN

Valley Players, a local volunteer theater group formed earlier this year, will perform their first full production in Amherst this weekend and next.The show, “Constellations,” by playwright Nick Payne, will be at Munson Memorial Library in Amherst...

Arts Briefs: Poetry reading, pickleball, Mount Holyoke’s first musical in five years, and more

Perugia Press Prize winnerPerugia Press, a Florence-based feminist poetry micro press, recently announced that the book “Daughter of Three Gone Kingdoms” by Joan Kwon Glass is the winner of their Perugia Press Prize, which honors poetry books written...

Speaking of Nature: A record-breaking month of bird-watching: One good thing to come from catching COVID was extra time at the Thinking Chair

By BILL DANIELSON

The month of September was one of the most beautiful stretches of solid gorgeous weather that I can remember. There was very little rain last month and whatever rain there was seemed to fall on weekdays. As a result, there was ample time to get out...

Turning chaos into art: New documentary tracing life of acclaimed painter Gregory Gillespie previews at Academy of Music

By CAROLYN BROWN

A New England filmmaker will make his directorial debut later this month with a film about a local painter known for his unique style.Evan Goodchild, a Connecticut-based director originally from Springfield, will hold a sneak preview of “The Painted...

Arts Briefs: Arts fest, toy fest and classical music on the horizon

Live classical musicOn Sunday, Oct. 20, members of the Israeli Chamber Project (pianist Assaff Weisman, violinist Carmen Zori, and cellist Raman Ramakrishnan) will perform three works: “Duos for Violin and Cello” by Jörg Widdman, “Violin Sonata in D...

Northampton writer Cleo Rohn wins 2024 Beals Prize for Poetry

By CAROLYN BROWN

Northampton writer Cleo Rohn won the 2024 Beals Prize for Poetry last week for her poem, “Not Every Poem Has to Be About God.”Rohn won the award, which included a cash prize, at Winchendon’s Beals Memorial Library. The award and the library were both...

Speaking of Nature: Still going strong after summer: Common chicory a hot spot for pollen and nectar-seekers

By BILL DANIELSON

One of the hazards of working in a school is the annual reunion of large numbers of people in small, confined spaces. The students get antsy and the adults get antsy, but this is just a temporary annoyance. The bigger problem is the confinement of...

The long march to minority rule: David Daley’s new book, ‘Antidemocratic,’ says the Republican Party has fundamentally undermined free elections in the US

By STEVE PFARRER

In 2016, David Daley published his first book, “Ratf**ked,” an eye-opening account of how numerous Republican-dominated states, beginning in 2010, had dramatically redrawn their voting districts to lock in control of state legislatures and U.S. House...

Six Valley authors receive awards: Massachusetts Book Awards announces 2024 winners and honorees

By CAROLYN BROWN

Earlier this month, the Massachusetts Center for the Book, the state branch of the Center for the Book in the Library of Congress, announced the winners of its 24th annual Massachusetts Book Awards — and six authors from the Pioneer Valley were on the...

Weekly Food Photo Contest: This week’s winner: Anne Burton of Amherst

Anne Burton of Amherst beautifully arranged pears from Clarkdale Fruit Farms in Deerfield in her ceramic goblets.How to enter: Snap a pic of something delicious-looking and send it with your name, town and a sentence or two to features@gazettenet.com.

Nash returns with ‘Now’: Two-time Rock Hall of Fame inductee Graham Nash to perform in Northampton Oct. 4

By JAMES PENTLAND

Touring extensively behind “Now,” his first album of new material in seven years, Graham Nash returns to Northampton for an Oct. 4 show at the Academy of Music.Nash has been looking back as well as to the present on this year’s touring dates, some of...

Binky battles: Annual Belchertown baby contest the cutest competition in town

By EMILEE KLEIN

As the last notes of the 165th Belchertown Fair’s annual parade drifts off into the autumn air — quickly replaced by the joyous screams of children on carnival rides and the soft coos of barn animals — babies from around western Massachusetts take...

Arts Briefs: Vinyl and theater in Northampton, art contests in Ware and Belchertown, and more

A matter of record(s)NORTHAMPTON — If you like shopping for vinyl records, this news will be music to your ears: the Downtown Market Vinyl & Vintage Fair will have thousands of records (and other vintage goods from local and regional sellers, of...

Celebrate queer joy and community: QueerCore Fest (Sept. 28), Queer Kids Fest (Oct. 5) and Queer Curiosities Outdoor Market (Oct. 12) welcome all ages

By CAROLYN BROWN

Three upcoming local all-ages events will celebrate queer joy and community, albeit in very different ways.QueerCore Fest, an all-ages punk and hardcore festival that centers “BIPOC, queer, trans, gender-diverse, and femme artists,” will debut at...