Cue the snow globe for New Yorker writer's visit to Northampton

NORTHAMPTON — A New Yorker magazine profile of Kim Gordon, the former Sonic Youth rocker, keeps her at center stage but offers Northampton a supporting role. It is a curious cameo. The piece by Alex Halberstadt in the June 3 issue captures the way the 60-year-old Gordon’s creativity has spilled over into fashion design, acting and business. It tells of her breakup from her husband and musical partner Thurston Moore. Readers in Northampton, though, might find the story a little bruising to the civic ego. 0

The making of our ‘The Cost of Choice’ series

NORTHAMPTON — In “The Cost of Choice,” a two-day series that begins Friday, reporters Kristin Palpini and Barbara Solow go inside one of the most controversial aspects of education reform in Massachusetts: school choice and charter schools. In the two decades since passage of the 1993 Education Reform Act, public schools across Massachusetts have been forced to adjust to competition designed to improve education and give students and families more choices. About a year ago, Palpini decided it would be worthwhile for the Gazette to 0

Living off the woody fat of the land

ASHFIELD — Twenty-five years ago, I moved into a home with an old Norwegian woodstove. Outside the kitchen window, across a yard and field, stood my fuel: acres of trees of all sorts — a typical New England mix of hardwoods and firs. And so I joined the fraternity of those who heat with wood, long before hearing the word biomass. We pay property taxes on our woodlot, for sure. But when winter nears, it’s my own little Saudi Arabia of energy. For 20 years, 0

Northampton's MEF seeks to expand educational reach with 'Exploded View' website

A Northampton nonprofit hopes a new website will bring its message about media literacy, particularly the manipulation of facts by the powerful, to audiences outside classrooms.   "Exploded View, Consuming Culture" is the name and mission of the site, created by the Media Education Foundation.   In a post on the new site, exploded-view.org, MEF founder and executive director Sut Jhally explains what Exploded View is all about. He cites author Stuart Hall's view that intellectuals today must see the world objectively and then help the public 0

Glendale Falls trail-building project in Middlefield lands $38,000; work to begin in October