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By CHRIS LARABEE

The federal lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Agriculture and President Donald Trump that was filed by Red Fire Farm and other organizations over frozen government money will move forward, as a judge in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia has laid out a schedule of further proceedings.

BERNARDSTON — Folks who are interested in shaping the future of Bernardston’s forests, fields, farms and parks are invited to a public forum on Thursday, June 26, at 6 p.m. at Bernardston Elementary School, 37 School Road.

By MADISON SCHOFIELD

HAWLEY — Voters will be asked to approve transferring $76,341 to cover budget overages for Highway Department supplies and vocational school tuition during next week’s Special Town Meeting.

By CHRIS LARABEE

DEERFIELD — From education and affordable housing, to agriculture and federal funding cuts, area legislators at the Franklin County Chamber of Commerce’s annual legislative breakfast shared their priorities for this session.

By CHRIS LARABEE

SOUTH DEERFIELD — After several years of darkness, the lights behind the clock faces at the South Deerfield Congregational Church finally flicked back on recently, brighter than ever.

By CHRIS LARABEE

DEERFIELD — A Special Town Meeting is set for next week, as residents are asked to register an official notice of interest for the 1888 Building’s rehabilitation that would allow the project to move forward.

By ALLEN WOODS

The signs of summer are everywhere and hard to ignore. Birds surround the feeders, swooping and squabbling and feasting on a banquet of seeds and nuts, the grass threatens to grow up around my ears overnight, the sun lingers for hours at dusk, and the solstice brings more daylight than we’ve seen in a full year. It’s a glorious time in New England, bathed in verdant green and luscious gold, with months of heat and light ahead.

By JOHANNA NEUMANN

Today, as I was going through old Recorders, I came across two headlines that caught my eye — Nov. 28, 2024, Northfield: “AG pulls plug on energy bylaws” and Dec. 3, 2024, Shutesbury: “State overrules bylaw on battery storage.”

I want to thank the following media outlets for making local sports special in Franklin County.

By CAROLYN BROWN

Florence-based author and illustrator Grace Lin is known for books like “Where the Mountain Meets the Moon” (for which she received a Newbery Honor in 2010), “The Gate, the Girl, and the Dragon,” “The Ugly Vegetables,” and “A Big Mooncake for Little Star” (for which she received a Caldecott Honor in 2019). Now, the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art in Amherst is celebrating Lin’s work with a career retrospective.

By ERIN-LEIGH HOFFMAN

Greenfield business owner and belly dancer Elizabeth DeNeeve and South Deerfield belly dancer Emily Gaylord having been co-producing a belly dancing showcase called “Molten: An Evening of Belly Dancing at the LAVA Center” where the two aim to not only entertain, but educate audiences on the Middle Eastern style of dance. 

By ERIN-LEIGH HOFFMAN

A 48 year-old Gill native, Pillsbury was experiencing stomach pain while on vacation in April, and a trip to the doctor’s office led to a diagnosis of stage four, metastatic Cholangiocarcinoma – a rare form of cancer within the bile ducts connecting to the liver. As this cancer leaves no tracers in the blood like other cancers, discovery of the illness is often incidental, and too late.

By LISA GOODRICH

The Smiarowski family name has been a fixture in Valley farming since around 1923 when Alexander Smiarowski came from Poland, and purchased farmland in Montague for a dairy, along with cucumbers, asparagus and corn.

By EVELINE MACDOUGALL

Faced with total vision loss in the near future, many people might understandably respond with despair, fear, anger, or all three. Yet Virginia “Jinx” Hastings, 80, faces such loss in inspiring ways. After undergoing more than a dozen procedures for glaucoma, Hastings learned that she’s exhausted surgical solutions; her response was to create art, which is currently on display through July at the Dickinson Memorial Library in Northfield.

By TOBIAS BASKIN

“What do you teach?” I am asked when I say that I am a professor at UMass. I teach plant physiology. But the question misses the core of what I do: run a research lab. Few ask me: “What do you research?” or “Why is a college professor doing research?”

By JOHN BRIARE

At first glance, Robin Neipp’s recent column “Massachusetts must continue to lead on common sense gun laws” [Recorder, June 9] might sound reasonable until you realize the writer is endorsing a law she clearly hasn’t understood. Chapter 135 spans 116 pages of sweeping new gun laws and mandates that only punish the law-abiding while doing absolutely nothing to stop actual violence or criminals. Criminals will not obey a single sentence of this 116-page law.

Folks on Plain Road East must be getting pretty desperate if they are concerned about the noise from the proposed dog shelter. Hey, come my way. Now we have almost continual concerts about a mile away at the brewery and they play til 10 or 11 p.m. Good if you don’t work or like rock and roll and maybe if you don’t have little kids who need their sleep, like the neighbors.

I am profoundly disturbed by the response of the Greenfield and Turners Falls police force to a domestic violence complaint. A small army of men dressed up in tactical gear, complete with high-powered guns? According to an article in the Recorder, the woman had left the house and was out of danger. The alleged abuser was locked in a bathroom. What person in their right mind would unlock that bathroom door and step out of the house knowing that many guns would be directly aimed at his head? What was the goal of the official who decided to deploy such a force of strength? By far a better, more sane response would have been to bring in a few police officers who understood the value of and had well-developed skills in negotiation and de-escalation. Instead, it seems that those in charge employed the ugly, dark tactic of instilling fear, not only in the man cowering in the bathroom, but in the community as well.

I greatly enjoyed Dorothy Storrow’s letter sketching out for us the defining characteristics and the value of the writ of habeas corpus. I had no idea it dated back to the Magna Carta. But I do know that the man who many consider to be our greatest president, Abraham Lincoln, suspended the writ in Maryland in April of 1861. When he received a letter from Chief Justice Roger B. Taney objecting to this action, Lincoln ignored it.