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These Boots Are Made For Whippin’: Brattleboro’s newest theater company...
For his newest production, theater director Josh Moyse has been shopping online for costume pieces. Finally, he found what he needed. “The dog collar just came in the mail today,” he tells me by phone,...
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Never Too Late: Jim Eagan garners late-in-life musical success
Jim Eagan of Shelburne Falls may not have started songwriting until his late 60s, but the second song he ever wrote got scooped up by Jorma Kaukonen of Jefferson Airplane. That was last year, and now...
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Nightcrawler: Holyoke’s Waterfront set for a rebirth?, Sage King’s debut album
The future of Holyoke’s Waterfront Tavern seemed murky at best a few months ago. Just when it appeared the historic venue would be pulling the plug altogether, rumors of a strategic alliance began to...
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Stagestruck: Vanya in Vermont
The irony of Anton Chekhov referring to his plays as “comedies” is often remarked. Most of his characters are bored to death and/or deeply unhappy, frustrated by love or circumstance or both, and his...
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Trial by the Hour: The minimum wage just went up — but the fight for a living...
When asked to count how many minimum-wage jobs he has worked, Frank Cincotta flips open a notepad, taps his pen, and takes a deep breath. “I’ve been working a lot,” he says. It’s a long list: he has...
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‘I Want To Get Out There Before My Life is Ended’
Every weekday morning, a PVTA van picks up 83-year-old great-grandmother of four Pardelma Hall at her home on Roosevelt Street in Springfield’s North End. For the past seven years, she’s been one of...
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In the Clouds: Vape industry billows as science and regulation struggle to...
Stephen Bilia’s Gorilla Vapess is like a candy shop for adults. Vapers smoke at the bar, ordering from a list of two hundred-plus flavors displayed in multi-colored chalk. Squirt bottles full of...
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Whistleblowers: A new musical reveals the history of child factory labor in...
When you browse the faded pages of an historical account, local lives don’t always shimmer to the surface. But Hampshire College professor of History Susan Tracy noticed a few intriguing details when...
View ArticleTogether Again: Songwriters Mark Herschler and John Cruz reunite and offer...
Near the back door of Mark Herschler’s Northampton house and studio sits a group of boulders. “I think there might be Native American spirits in there,” Herschler says with a smile. “I think it’s...
View ArticleCareers and Education: Making Your Own Second Chances
Somewhere between climate change, the recession, and an ever-burgeoning Internet universe, the professional landscape changed a lot over the past decade. Naturally, we the worker bees can only scramble...
View ArticleNightcrawler: Springfield Jazz & Roots Festival; rockers support ‘Nellie’s...
She married into the first family of jazz, forever linking her to the Big Easy. In recent years, however, Kristin Neville says that she has reconnected with Basketball City U.S.A. And when community...
View ArticleAll About the Books: Readercon, the thinking fan’s sci-fi convention
When I was a budding science fiction fan, I stepped into a con — a science fiction convention — for the first time. I was into SF, you know, for the books. The convention, it soon became clear, was...
View ArticleCitizen Sanders: A day on the campaign trail with Team Bernie
After a long Sunday spent following Bernie Sanders on the campaign trial, I made a bet with my editor: 20 bucks says that man never kisses a baby on camera this election season. She took the bet, but...
View ArticleMadame Barfly: Hope and Olive in Greenfield serves drinks to your health
Jim Zaccara says his bar is an appletini-free zone. Zaccara, 45, grew up working in restaurants, and bartending was always his forte. When he began making his own style of cocktail at his first...
View ArticleThe Promise of Pot: Medical marijuana patients have the green light, but...
For cancer patient Valerie, marijuana makes the difference between walking and not walking. “I’ve totally outlived my expiration date,” she says, laughing. Valerie, 61 — a long time Western Mass...
View ArticleBong King to the Stars: Chris Hubbard’s success with blown glass pot pipes...
A singular event in Bingen, Washington marked Chris Hubbard’s transformation from glassblowing hobbyist to professional: “On Aug. 3, 2005, a SWAT team kicked in my door. They thought the studio was a...
View ArticleCloud Control: A visit to the Enthusiast Smoke and Vape Shop in Greenfield
“N o matter what you might do,” Ben Folds once sang, “there’s always someone out there cooler than you.” How true. Every week I scrap together a sense of my own hipness, and every week the world lobs...
View ArticlePop-Up Foodie Paradise: A Night With the Hush and Proper, the area’s newest...
The saloon doors swing open, and Emily Pichette steps into the small kitchen of the Foundry in Northampton. A wave of sound follows her from the dining room: murmuring, laughter, and clinking glasses....
View ArticleSlow Down and Prosper — your life and your world could depend on it
Multi-tasking kills. This isn’t an excuse of the lazy — researchers are finding more and more that over-working yourself is a fast lane pass to the grave. According to a new study of 600,000 people in...
View ArticleMadame Barfly: A Hard Shake, there’s a new bar jockey in Amherst
Sitting down at Osteria Vespa’s bar for the first time, I’m surprised to find there’s no cocktail list. Josh Draghe, the soft-spoken, knowledgeable, and impeccably polite head bartender directs my gaze...
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