Hilltown Families 
Sarah's final "Mash Notes to Paradise" tips the hat to Hilltown Famiies. ❥ Thank you Sarah for being a part of our wonderful team of contributing writers, sharing 30 Mash Notes...
Kids ages 13yo and older interested in culinary arts and local food are invited to bake their favorite fruit pie using local ingredients to submit to the Tuesday Market annual Pie...
What's your "Only in Northampton" notable? This month in Mash Notes, Sarah shares her 10yo sons most recent notable, "Only in Northampton do you give directions out for the weaving conference."...
Note 27, Tasty Top in Easthampton While I have never made an exhaustive search nor done a scientific study, I am pretty confident that the following statement holds true: Tasty Top...
Note 26, Sugarloaf Mountain Athletic Club I got an inkling that running in some organized fashion could be fun for kids when my third grader decided it would be cool to...
Note 25, The Hootenanny I am not one of those “organized activity” parents. I am also not one to push my kids toward music lessons. Well, that’s because 1) I’m not...
The Mountain Goat and Main Street I am not the only person to be sad about Northampton’s Mountain Goat closing. Like so many parents in the Valley, I can’t count the...
Note 23, History For an upcoming issue of Preview Massachusetts Magazine, I was in Northampton interviewing a chef and a restaurant owner this week. It’s a space he relatively recently took...
Note 22, Snow Days I am writing this just before the snow is about to do what it does. A few flakes have begun to drift down crookedly, almost as if...
Mash Note No. 21: On Great Halls and Great Spaces The day after Christmas, my daughter Saskia and I took the grandparents to the Eric Carle Museum. For the most part,...
Note 20, Valley Gives Day I love this about the little Valley I call home: people care about the larger world and they care about this community. I think volunteerism is...
To Buy Local is to Buy Well and Eat Well, Too By the time this goes to press, the weekend of open studios in Florence’s gigantic Arts and Industries building will...
Note 18, Community Recently, a friend of my third boy had a medical emergency. This is a lifelong buddy, who lives a hop, skip, one street crossed and a jump away...
Note 17, All Those Classes Everywhere Sometimes, when you hear friends from big cities discuss the options for classes available—chess clubs for preschoolers or some such, ballet barre workouts for adults,...
Note 16, Flowers It hit me yesterday at the Tuesday Market how much the flowers around here mean to me. I’m not a big bouquet person (although, as you read on,...
Note 15, Pick-Your-Own Spots I wrote a little post for Momfilter, (fun site—I especially adore the pretty pictures!) about the joys of pick-your-own. For people who live in a city, I...
Note 14, There Aren’t Many Signs The other night at a potluck for the preschool class, a few people discussed the overwhelming number of billboards in Houston, Texas. One said, “There...
Note 13, Civil Rights in Lesbianville The other day I was at our co-op and listening in at the checkout on a conversation between friends about exercise classes. The two women...
Note 12, There’s No Place Like Home The twelfth Mash Note to Paradise! Really? Over this past year in these notes I’ve loved our bike paths and our college town-y-ness, our...
Note 11, Openness About Gender, Family & Love Although Northampton Pride is a ways away, there’s an admirable flexibility about how we think of families and love and gender and identity...
Note 10, Our Famous People are Cool (& Give Back) There’s little question that Rachel Maddow’s rise is something many Valley folk feel a kind of personal cheerlead-y excitement over. I...
Note 9, There Are No Office Buildings ❥ At some point during his early elementary years, Lucien, my second boy, wanted to visit an office. You know, a real office, the...
Note 8, Friends Who Also Love Paradise Amongst the nifty things about living in a nifty place is this one: you are not alone in your love of the place and...
Note 7, Buying Local, Fairs, Markets, Stores ❥ By the time this goes up, the fall’s Twist Fair will have taken place. Don’t worry, though, you can still buy local crafts....
Note 6, Living in a College Town In the mornings, I drop my kids off and walk a loop around the Smith College Campus, passing Paradise Pond and continuing up the...
Note 5, Weather ❥ I wrote myself a note about the next Mash Note a few weeks ago. I put down one word: weather. My thought process went I should write...
Note 4, Local Radio When I go back to Philadelphia, my hometown, there are only a few things that make me the least bit wistful for the place (besides some people,...
Note 3: Summer Camps ‘Round the Valley I can most certainly argue that one of the best things summer has to offer both kids and adults is time to do nothing...
Note 2, Bike Paths ❥ Relatively early in my pregnancy with my second child, I began to get just the littlest bit hooked on riding my bicycle on what we called...
Note 1, Tuesday Market Here’s my one-time awkward greeting: I’m a local writer (and blogger) and community-minded do-gooder besotted by so many things about this place I call home. For Hilltown...