News
LightHouse Holyoke to buy Gateway City Arts, expand offerings and enrollment at alternative school
By JAMES PENTLAND
HOLYOKE — After months of work on securing a new home elsewhere, LightHouse school plans to buy Gateway City Arts in a move that will allow the burgeoning alternative secondary school to meet its growing demand and expand its offerings.LightHouse...
Photos: Hangers for history
South Hadley residents will pay more for trash, wastewater rates next fiscal year
By EMILEE KLEIN
SOUTH HADLEY — Property owners can expect to pay more starting July 1 for trash removal and wastewater service following the Select Board’s recent decision to increase rates for both services.At its April 16 meeting, the board adopted a new automated...
Area briefs: Transhealth to celebrate 3 year; Holyoke to plant tree at museum; Documentary film about reparations focus of Unitarian talk
Documentary film about reparations focus of Unitarian Society talkNORTHAMPTON — A public showing of the new documentary film “The Cost of Inheritance,” about the issue of reparations owed to African Americans for historic and current racialized harms...
Leverett Town Meeting voters will decide cease-fire call, budgets, town elections
By SCOTT MERZBACH
LEVERETT — Money for continued restoration of the North Leverett Sawmill, a citizen petition calling for a permanent cease-fire in Gaza, and a $7.56 million budget for fiscal year 2025, which adds a fourth police officer to the Police Department, are...
A Look Back: April 23
By JIM BRIDGMAN
50 Years Ago■More than half of the physicians at Northampton State Hospital may leave the hospital in July because of recent changes in state regulations requiring that foreign graduate physicians take a special licensing exam. Nine of the hospital’s...
Beacon Hill Roll Call, April 8-12
By BOB KATZEN
THE HOUSE AND SENATE: Beacon Hill Roll Call records local senators’ votes on a roll call from the week of April 8-12. There were no roll calls in the House last week.$375 MILLION FOR ROADS AND BRIDGES (H 4529)Senate 39-0. approved a bill that includes...
Photos: Springing forth
UMass set to inaugurate Javier Reyes as chancellor on Friday
By SCOTT MERZBACH
AMHERST — Javier Reyes, whose leadership of University of Massachusetts flagship campus began July 1, will be formally inaugurated as the university’s 31st chancellor on Friday morning.The inauguration ceremony, being held at the Mullins Center and...
A Look Back: April 22
50 Years Ago■Admitting that the state “very obviously” mishandled the Russell Daniels case, Gov. Francis Sargent said Saturday that the developmentally disabled 29-year-old has, in effect, been given a pardon. Sargent said that after Daniels is...
Regional farming alliance strengthens educational, networking opportunities for apprentices
By CHRIS LARABEE
In 1994, a new movement began to grow out of the Pioneer Valley, Berkshires and Hudson Valley, as a group of organic farmers banded together to form a cooperative educational program for farm apprentices.That year marked the birth of the Collaborative...
Smith College exhibit explores Sylvia Plath’s botanical inspiration
By ALEXANDER MACDOUGALL
NORTHAMPTON — A new exhibition at Smith College shows how one of the school’s most famous and acclaimed alumnae may have drawn much of her creative inspiration from a freshman botany course.Sylvia Plath, whose 1963 novel “The Bell Jar” proved to be a...
Amherst seeks public input on opioid settlement money
By GRACE FIORI
In 2023, Hampshire County received almost $1 million from the settlement payments of pharmaceutical companies and drug distributors involved in the opioid crisis. While Amherst received upward of $162,000 in fiscal year 2023, the town has yet to spend...
Deerfield residents petitioning to fix ‘dangerous’ intersection
By CHRIS LARABEE
DEERFIELD — With 12 collisions between 2021 and 2023 and likely an even greater number of close calls at the intersection of Routes 5 and 10, North Main Street and Mill Village Road, two residents have launched a petition asking the state Department...
Amherst officials examine Quincy shelter for ideas to develop former VFW property
By SCOTT MERZBACH
AMHERST — A Quincy-based temporary shelter that includes transitional housing, along with a resource center for people to find jobs, medical care and permanent homes, is being eyed as a model for how Amherst might redevelop the former VFW site at 457...
Deerfield voters to decide 8 capital projects at Town Meeting
By CHRIS LARABEE
SOUTH DEERFIELD — As residents prepare for Town Meeting on April 29, the Selectboard and the Capital Improvements and Finance committees have laid out their approved capital projects for the upcoming year.Voters will be asked to consider directly...
A Look Back: April 20
By JIM BRIDGMAN
200 Years AgoMiss B. Fisher offers for sale, at the house of Mr. Alexander Wright on the plain, straw bonnets of all kinds — the latest patterns from Charleston, S.C., Baltimore, and New York. Straws and Leghorns cleansed and repaired, and custom...
New HCC president reflects on journey: Timmons sees his own struggles and arc in students’ paths
By ALEXANDER MACDOUGALL
HOLYOKE — George Timmons knows just how much a difference a college president can make in a student’s life.As a senior at Norfolk State University, a historically black university in Virginia, Timmons faced the possibility of not being able to...
South Hadley man fatally shot in attempted robbery
By SCOTT MERZBACH
CHICOPEE — A South Hadley man is dead following a shooting during an attempted robbery of a smoke shop and convenience store in Chicopee Thursday night, according to the Hampden district attorney’s office.Robert Papalardo, 53, died after being taken...
Historic murals restored at Victory Theatre in Holyoke
By SCOTT MERZBACH
HOLYOKE — A $400,000 restoration of two 23-foot-tall murals at the Broadway-style Victory Theatre, created by Italian immigrant Vincent Maragliotti in 1942, is complete, another step in the process toward reopening the 1920 building that has been...
