Arts

Sounds Local: Thriving on a riff: Percussionist Tony Vacca brings Fusion Nomads to Hawks & Reed this Friday for ‘a magic carpet ride’

03-27-2024 2:04 PM

By SHERYL HUNTER

‘From the first time a musician went beyond his or her home village, or region, or nation,” percussionist Tony Vacca says, “music has been an ever-expanding, multi-culti hybrid of instruments and ways to play them.” According to Vacca, that is the...


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‘No bunnies in the Bible’: Unpacking the myths and history of hot cross buns at Easter

03-26-2024 3:55 PM

By TINKY WEISBLAT

When I was a child, I loved embracing spring at this time of year by eating a hot cross bun. I still do.Hot cross buns are sweet, yeasty rolls traditionally served toward the end of Lent, specifically on Good Friday. The cross of icing that tops them...


Sowing the seeds of recovery: Greenfield-based Recover Project supports sobriety through community gardening program, Garden Path

03-25-2024 3:00 PM

By EVELINE MACDOUGALL

The benefits of gardening are widely known, but there’s one aspect readers may not have considered: gardening can offer a path to sobriety, especially when undertaken with friends. Some members of the Greenfield-based Recover Project are spending time...


Speaking of Nature: Is this Grackle really common? Behold the bird’s colorful iridescence on a sunny day

03-25-2024 6:01 AM

By BILL DANIELSON

After a while, one learns what to expect with each month and each season. July is going to be hot and humid, October will be colorful and somewhat melancholy, January will be cold and sleepy, and then there is March. March is the month for which the...


A tale of murderous indifference: ‘The Zone of Interest’ offers a view of the Holocaust as chilling as its architects

03-22-2024 10:09 AM

By STEVE PFARRER

Hannah Arendt famously coined the term “the banality of evil” in her book on Adolph Eichmann’s trial in Israel in 1963, where the former Nazi official, a key organizer of the Holocaust, presented himself as a bureaucrat who was “just doing his job” in...


Faith Matters: Recommended for ages birth to resurrection: God’s love in inclusive of all

03-22-2024 10:06 AM

By STEVE DAMON

‘I’d like to invite the young and the young-at-heart to come on up,” I bellow as I skip, jog, crawl, roll, saunter, or … whatever … up to the United Church of Bernardston alter, every Sunday morning at approximately 10:50 in the morning, 9:50 during...


Valley Bounty: Fermentation meets cooperation: Real Pickles in Greenfield supports and supplies the regional food system

03-22-2024 10:03 AM

By JACOB NELSON

A knock on the door interrupts the conversation. Someone is here to trade cheese for Real Pickles’ fermented veggies.Kate Hunter, a marketing coordinator, assistant sales manager, and worker-owner at Real Pickles, gets up to confirm the terms. Out the...


Franklin Medical Reserve Corps podcast bolsters emergency preparedness

03-22-2024 10:00 AM

By GRACE LEE

Franklin Medical Reserve Corps volunteers Denise Schwartz and Carmela Lanza-Weil have the answers to all your in-case-of-emergency questions and more in “Prep School: A Readiness Podcast.”With the first episode having been released on Nov. 29, 2023,...


Focus on Your Health: Pulmonary health is attainable: If you struggle with shortness of breath, pulmonary rehab can help

03-22-2024 10:00 AM

By ANITA FRITZ

National Pulmonary Rehabilitation Week happens in March, so it’s a good time to think about your pulmonary health.If you or someone you know has shortness of breath because of lung problems, pulmonary rehabilitation can help.Whether you want to manage...


Confidence and vibrant colors on display: Longtime art educator exhibits her work at Wendell Free Library through April

03-20-2024 4:18 PM

By DOMENIC POLI

It turns out that those who teach can also do.Longtime art educator Karie Neal is “fairly new” at creating her own work and has her first full exhibit on display in the Wendell Free Library through April.“It’s small, but it’s a good start,” she said...


All maple syrups are not created equal: A brief history of the sweet stuff we make from sap

03-19-2024 1:26 PM

By TINKY WEISBLAT

March is Massachusetts Maple Month. Farmers in our area are working around the clock to turn the sap that flows from maple trees into the sweet elixir that New Englanders prize year round.It’s not just full-time farmers who make maple syrup. My friend...


Cultivating curiosity in the great outdoors: Grower of native plants creates curriculum for school children

03-18-2024 3:57 PM

By EVELINE MACDOUGALL

We celebrate today’s Spring Equinox with Colrain resident Jocelyn Demuth, who designs curricula to encourage Massachusetts children to improve environmental health.Through her “Five hundred Yard Field Trip” website, Demuth provides teachers with free...


Speaking of Nature: One lucky duck: Stumbling upon an entire flotilla of Common Mergansers

03-18-2024 5:01 AM

By BILL DANIELSON

It was a rainy Sunday morning at the beginning of March and I was suffering from cabin fever. It hasn’t been a particularly cold winter, but I had been cooped up nonetheless. Saturday had gone by without incident, like so many Saturday’s since the new...


‘All the world’s a stage’: Inaugural Montague Shakespeare Festival takes over Shea Theater with performances and workshops, March 18 to April 7

03-15-2024 3:28 PM

By JULIAN MENDOZA

In terms of timeless relevance and impact, it’s tough to argue that any writer has had more of a lasting legacy than William Shakespeare. For this reason, veteran thespian Kenny Butler argues there is never a bad time to delve into his world of words...


Facing history: Wendell Historical Society grapples with some challenging facts of their building’s history

03-15-2024 3:27 PM

By BELLA LEVAVI

With the first anniversary of the Wendell Historical Society approaching on April 1, the Society's President, Edward Hines, went searching for the history of the building that the society calls its home.Last July, the society purchased the former...


Lamenting language loss: Where would national identity be today if Irish was still spoken in Ireland?

03-15-2024 3:25 PM

By ROSEMARY CAINE

The 2019 Green River Festival had Rhiannon Giddens as the headliner on the last Sunday afternoon.I was intrigued by her background: a banjo player, violinist and singer, an ethnomusicologist trained in opera at Oberlin College, a charming beauty and...


Faith Matters: Supporting life after jail: St. John’s Episcopal Church in Ashfield hosts ‘Moving Forward: From Incarceration to Community’ April 13

03-15-2024 3:24 PM

By HETTY STARTUP

There are many citations about prison fellowship and ministry in the Bible, including the Psalms, the Book of Isaiah and perhaps most well-known, chapter 25 of Matthew’s gospel.At St. John’s Episcopal Church this spring, the teachings are being taken...


Sounds Local: Don your St. Patrick’s Day green: Where to celebrate the holiday this weekend in Franklin County

03-13-2024 4:35 PM

By SHERYL HUNTER

St. Patrick’s Day is the day when we love to celebrate everything Irish. We eat corned beef, raise a pint of Guinness, and get all decked out in our best green outfits. Of course, there is music involved in these celebrations, be it traditional Celtic...


A bread that unites us all: For St. Patrick’s Day, a savory soda bread with cheese and chives

03-12-2024 4:06 PM

By TINKY WEISBLAT

I think of my mother and her grandmother whenever I get ready for St. Patrick’s Day. I forage in the basement for my light-up shamrock (which a neighbor whom I shall not name says makes the house look like a low-rent tavern). I affix it to a window,...


Nature Photo Contest

03-11-2024 5:01 PM



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