Hadley town administrator: Capital planning needs more consistency, funding to maintain services

Honoring a grandmother's legacy: A $50M anonymous donation funds 'Betty's Kitchen' at Amherst College

AMHERST — An anonymous $50 million gift to Amherst College will name the main dining area inside the new Ford Student Center on campus as Betty’s Kitchen. A few months after the college received a separate $50 million donation from William “Bill” Ford, a member of the Class of 1983, his wife, Molly Ford, and […]

Gombo Nola Kitchen & Oyster Bar in Northampton to reopen Wednesday after minor fire

NORTHAMPTON — A Friday afternoon grill fire forced Gombo Nola Kitchen & Oyster Bar to close through the weekend, costing the restaurant about $15,000 in lost revenue before its planned Wednesday reopening. Co-owner Cassidy Bowman said that the restaurant lost merchandise in the fire and was forced to shut off its gas service and close […]

Poll shows Massachusetts voters behind most ballot questions

A recent UMass/WCVB poll indicates that Massachusetts voters favor expanding public records access but oppose repealing recreational marijuana legalization ahead of the November ballot.

Two harvests, one field: Hadley farm shows off agrivoltaics as other growers take interest

HADLEY — Freshly picked ears of sweet corn, taken off corn stalks growing below solar panels in a North Hadley field, are placed in a container and ready to be boiled, with the water heated by power produced by the same photovoltaic arrays. At Joe Czajowski Farm, the corn yields from the field below the […]

Guest columnist Sarena Neyman: How riding the subway as a kid changed how I see the world

It was 1974. The Bronx was burning. Abandoned cars littered the streets, and New York City teetered on the brink of bankruptcy. I’m still surprised my overprotective Holocaust-survivor parents let their preteen daughter ride the subway to school every day, but somehow they did. For five years — from eighth grade through high school — […]