Get Growing with Mickey Rathbun: You say tomato: A brief history of the fruit (or vegetable)

By MICKEY RATHBUN

It’s August and in my household that means one thing: local tomatoes. For much of the year, our grocery stores offer tomatoes tough enough to endure machine picking followed by days or weeks in cold storage. Even the more expensive, so-called...

Weekly Food Photo Contest: This week’s winner: Diana Stein of Amherst

Simplicity prevails. Here we have “freshly baked whole wheat bread topped with mixture of poppyseed, sesame seeds and kosher salt,” sent in by Diana Stein of Amherst.How to enter: Snap a pic of something delicious-looking and send it with your name,...

Art imitates life, in real time: Award-winning play about a mother who refuses to leave Ukraine amidst war comes to Northampton Aug. 22-25

By BOB FLAHERTY

‘I have lived my life! I’m not afraid of anything and I’ll sleep in my own bed, me and my aching bones.”So declares the 82-year-old woman from her apartment in Kyiv as Russian bombs explode in the streets all around her — the ongoing toll of Vladimir...

Curated for your viewing and listening pleasure: Amherst Cinema presents Sound & Vision series through Sept. 18

By SCOTT MERZBACH

A documentary profiling Swing-era clarinetist Artie Shaw, a musical comedy featuring 1960s-pop band The Monkees and one of African cinema’s first musicals are among this year’s selections in an annual summer celebration of music culture through film...

A town bursting with creativity: Easthampton Art Walk showcases local talent each month

By ALEXA LEWIS

Amid heavy humidity and unpredictable thunderstorms, storefronts and galleries in Easthampton draw foot traffic to their blissfully climate-controlled interiors, where community members enjoy refreshments, conversation, and original artwork by local...

Only Human with Joan Axelrod-Contrada: The power of talk and touch: We all crave human contact and conversation

By JOAN AXELROD-CONTRADA

I was happily relishing my new state of singledom when “Human Touch” by Bruce Springsteen sounded on my Amazon Alexa.The song stirred something in me. Something I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear. Something confusing (especially given my public...

Speaking of Nature: A new face in a familiar setting: Happening upon the Allegheny monkeyflower

By BILL DANIELSON

Those of you who are familiar with my writing will know of my great admiration for a 19th-century naturalist named John Burroughs. Born in 1837, Burroughs lived in a time when the steam locomotive was still a new and wondrous thing in America. The...

Something for everyone: UMass Fine Arts Center announces robust 2024-2025 season lineup

By PAIGE HANSON

Earlier this week, the University of Massachusetts Amherst Fine Arts Center announced its lineup of performances for its 2024-2025 season, which includes quite a few notable offerings, including “a one-time Grateful Dead keyboardist, two of the...

Little Feat, big revamp: Dynamic, genre-blending band leans into blues with latest release, performs at Tree House Aug. 20

By JAMES PENTLAND

Well into its second half-century as a touring and recording outfit, the “freight train comin’ atcha,” — in late guitarist Paul Barrere’s phrase — that is Little Feat will roll into Deerfield for an Aug. 20 show at Tree House Brewing Co.The band’s...

Valley Bounty: Fresh figs? In Massachusetts?: Leyden Farm unlocks new flavors and farming possibilities

By JACOB NELSON

It’s rare to try an entirely new food as an adult. Rarer still to realize it was growing under your nose the whole time.Before he started farming them in Leyden, Tom Ashley had never eaten a fig outside of a Fig Newton. Even the idea of fig trees...

Weekly Food Photo Contest: This week’s winner: Alice Swersey of Northampton

Alice Swersey of Northampton sent in this work of culinary art! It’s a pear custard tart and it’s perfection. How to enter: Snap a pic of something delicious-looking and send it with your name, town and a sentence or two to features@gazettenet.com.

The Gem from Easthampton: Gigantic bar manager’s recipe makes it across the pond to a speakeasy in Scotland

By CHRIS LARABEE

With 3,100 miles and the Atlantic Ocean between them, what could Easthampton and Dundee, a city of approximately 148,000 people in Scotland, possibly have in common?Well, if you really do some digging, you might unearth a Gem of a connection between...

The village baker writes a book: Jonathan Stevens pens ‘Hungry Ghost Bread Book’ to mark the bakery’s 20th anniversary

By TINKY WEISBLAT

Jonathan Stevens of Hungry Ghost Bread in Northampton has much to celebrate. The bakery he owns and runs with his domestic and business partner, Cheryl Maffei, marked its 20th birthday this spring. His “Hungry Ghost Bread Book” (Chelsea Green, 208...

Earth Matters: Getting to the root of a weed: Who was Joe Pye, and is Joe Pye weed a cure for typhus or any other ailment?

By DAVID SPECTOR

In summer, many New England roads are lined with clouds of magenta flowers atop the tall stems of several species of Joe Pye weed, especially where the roads are bordered by damp ditches. Who was Joe Pye? A perusal of popular botanical sources reveals...

Around and About with Richard McCarthy: The strangest life story I’ve heard: The rise and fall of an accidental movie star

By RICHARD MCCARTHY

Recently it occurred to me that in all my years of writing newspaper columns, I’ve never written one about the strangest life story I’ve ever come across, in terms of the wild twists and turns it took in a relatively short expanse of time. It is the...

Speaking of Nature: Where there’s a willet, there’s a way: The third and final installment of my First Encounter Beach trips

By BILL DANIELSON

Sometimes the photos and the ideas pile up so quickly that it can take weeks to clear the decks. Such is the case this week. I went to Cape Cod at the beginning of July and I had three wonderful visits to a magical place called First Encounter Beach....

‘Lost in art history until now’: First ever major Guillaume Lethiere exhibition on display at the Clark before heading to the Louvre

By DON STEWART

He was prominent in the court of Napoleon Bonaparte and painted the Emperor and Josephine and many of the significant figures of that time. Among his close friends were the General Thomas-Alexandre Dumas, father of the famed author, and the Marquis de...

Fighting the good fight: Emily List Fund continues its commitment to inclusion in performing arts

By KAREN LIST

Anyone attending the Sci Tech Band’s spring concert in April in the school’s gym would have seen several hundred high school musicians all dressed in black warming up to play under a huge sign that says: “Everything Matters.”They would have heard...

A trip down memory lane: Reminiscing about a visit to the Leverett Sawmill, in honor of the town’s 250th anniversary

By ALICE CARMICHAEL HARRIS

I fastened my helmet and threw my leg over the back of my boyfriend’s big BMW motorcycle. We had a perfect sunny day as we rode out of Amherst, past neat houses and farms, past acres of serene woodlands. It was July 4, 1974, and when Russ had read the...

Speaking of Nature: Heron in the mist: An otherworldly scene on my second day at First Encounter Beach

By BILL DANIELSON

My second visit to First Encounter Beach came on a Monday. The hustle and bustle of moving day was a thing of the past, but I am generally immune to routine traffic issues because of the early hours that I keep. There was no one on the road at 5:45...