A Look Back: Feb. 1

■The Massachusetts State Championship Snowmobile Races will be the central attraction of Northampton’s first annual winter festival the weekend of Feb. 8. Mayor Sean M. Dunphy will launch the festival on Thursday, the first day of the weekend. He will introduce King Winter at the City Hall. King Winter will preside over the entire festival.

<sbull value="sbull"><text xmlns="urn:schemas-teradp-com:gn4tera"></text></sbull>The Northampton Industrial Park, called by supporters “the key to Northampton’s economic future,” is still vacant. But city officials say it’s far too premature to call it a white elephant. The park was completed last fall at a cost of about $1.25 million.

■ Cooley Dickinson Hospital in Northampton has a new main entrance, which opens into its new $25 million wing with outpatient care rooms, new Childbirth Center, and an admitting and registration area.

<sbull value="sbull"><text xmlns="urn:schemas-teradp-com:gn4tera"></text></sbull>A 17-year-old Amherst Regional High School student has signed a book contract with a major publisher to write a response to the bestselling book “Reviving Ophelia” by psychologist Mary Pipher. Sara Shandler says her book, “Ophelia Speaks,” will not be a rebuttal, but rather a clarification of Pipher’s evaluation of the problems facing today’s adolescent girls, whom Pipher likens to Hamlet’s ill-fated Ophelia.

■State Sen. Stanley Rosenberg, D-Amherst, was promoted Thursday to the position of majority leader, the Senate’s deputy leadership post. Senate President Therese Murray, D-Plymouth, also appointed Rosenberg to serve as chairman of the Senate Committee on Ethics and Rules.

■Carl A. Erikson, elected as a trustee of the Jones Library last April, is stepping down from the board. Erikson submitted a letter of resignation to the town clerk’s office on Jan. 14, and said, “Let’s just say that I found that I could not make the contributions that I went on the board to make.”