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By CHRIS LARABEE

SOUTH DEERFIELD — After a successful move to Yankee Candle last year, the 17th annual Wheeling for Healing event is back on May 19, as the fundraiser seeks to continue raising tens of thousands of dollars for cancer patients receiving treatment within...

By STEVE PFARRER

It’s been another good year for Valley writers.Twelve area authors (and author/illustrators) have had new work long-listed for the 2024 Massachusetts Book Awards, presented annually by the Massachusetts Center for the Book (MCB) in five categories:...

By STEVE PFARRER

If you build it … you can fly it, too.As Peter Elsea and Jason Lorusso have discovered in recent years, there’s a special satisfaction in building your own plane — or at least assisting in that construction — that can make the experience of flying...

By TED WATT and HELEN ANN SEPHTON

This column honors Colleen Kelley, the education director at the Hitchcock Center, who will soon be leaving her post after 40 years.In the fall of 1984, Colleen walked into the Hitchcock Center — young, bright, idealistic, and fresh off a position as...

By SCOTT MERZBACH

Carefully holding and balancing his violin, 12-year-old Heedo Noh, a Fort River School sixth grader, gets a suggestion for positioning the bow so it runs straight across the strings as he practices G.F. Handel’s “Chorus from Judas Maccabaeus.”“Good,”...

By ALEXANDER MACDOUGALL

NORTHAMPTON — After nearly a year of inactivity, the ValleyBike Share program is poised to roll again throughout the Pioneer Valley.After Mayor Gina-Louise Sciarra teased an announcement regarding ValleyBike on April 29, the city announced last...

By SCOTT MERZBACH

AMHERST — Ericilda Xiomara Herman, a superintendent of a school district in St. Croix, Virgin Islands, will be the next superintendent for the Amherst, Pelham and Amherst-Pelham Regional schools, pending successful contract negotiations.Citing...

AMHERST — A near-unanimous Town Council this week confirmed Police Capt. Gabriel Ting as Amherst’s next police chief.Six days after Town Manager Paul Bockelman said he would name Ting, a 27-year veteran and interim police chief since last May, to the...

By SCOTT MERZBACH

AMHERST — The Amherst Regional School Committee has agreed to a new budget proposal for the Amherst-Pelham Regional Schools next year that is nearly $500,000 less than a spending plan approved in March. The new budget means smaller 6% assessment...

By SCOTT MERZBACH

A new retail store carrying assorted Amherst College merchandise, as well as school supplies, tech accessories and snacks, is open at 45 South Pleasant St., as demolition of a building immediately to the south, and removal of an attached ell to the...

By JAMES PENTLAND

BELCHERTOWN — A Granby man pleaded guilty Monday in Eastern Hampshire District Court to motor vehicle homicide and reckless assault charges stemming from a motor vehicle crash that killed his longtime partner and the mother of his child last July, the...

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...

By SCOTT MERZBACH

AMHERST — A foundational skills reading program, known as Magnetic Foundations, is being piloted by eight teachers in the four Amherst and Pelham elementary schools as the focus of an elementary literacy curriculum review this school year.Mary Kiely,...

By SCOTT MERZBACH

A fire station, possibly combined with a new community center, or an affordable housing development are among the concepts unveiled for the front portion of the former Hickory Ridge Golf Course on West Pomeroy Lane, the 150-acre town-owned site where...

By SCOTT MERZBACH

HADLEY — Significant work and time for municipal staff associated with preparing for New England Public Media’s annual Asparagus Festival is prompting Hadley officials to examine whether fees should be increased and other adjustments made to how...

Cinco de Mayo greetings for all our Mexican friends and neighbors. The day marks the military victory over Napoleon III in 1862.***Reminder — take down your bird feeders.***Nancy Blair of Amherst sent me an email about an open house at Cherry Hill...

GRANBY – Granby Police are asking for the public’s help in identifying three suspects who allegedly used a dump truck to steal $100,000 from a PeoplesBank stand-alone ATM machine in January. On Tuesday, Jan. 16, at 1:26 a.m., police responded to 77...

By STEVE PFARRER

The Holyoke Civic Symphony has titled its 2023-2024 season “The Brass Menagerie,” not to be cute but to highlight a series of concerts dedicated to celebrating the family of brass instruments: the horn, the tuba, the trumpet, and the trombone.On May...

By AALIANNA MARIETTA

LEVERETT — Residents elected town officials, signed off on a $7.56 million budget for fiscal year 2025 and passed a resolution calling for a permanent cease-fire in Gaza during their Annual Town Meetinglast Saturday.After uncontested elections, the...

By ALEXA LEWIS

AMHERST — At 6 a.m. on Tuesday, representatives of the University of Massachusetts administration arrived at the pro-Palestinian encampment that went up the previous day on the school’s South Lawn and issued a warning to protesters — take down their...