Leverett News

Firefighters pour water into the second floor of 313 Amherst Road in Sunderland.

Among 60 participants from 25 countries are gathered for the Conflict Transformation Across Cultures program are, furthest left, Abraham Wang, the first from the People's Republic of China to take part in the 17th session, and Algerian dentist Lamia Lehrech, fifth from left.

As unlikely as it might be to find it in a Victorian house on Highland Avenue, the wooden-accented first-floor space adds to what can only be called the enchantment of shelves of glass canisters lined up containing an array of dried herbs: prickly ash, blessed thistle, oat tops, comfrey root and on and on.

AMHERST -- Developers, programmers, designers, entrepreneurs, journalists and others will congregate at UMass, Amherst this weekend for an event called Hack for Western Mass , a "civic hackathon" aimed at using technology to solve community problems.

The Leverett Library will celebrate its 10th anniversary this weekend with a two-day celebration that includes a puppet show, a picnic and the opportunity to be the namesake for a character in an Archer Mayor book through the library's silent auction.

In late April, the Leverett Town Meeting voted to abolish the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and to demand that Entergy expand the emergency evacuation zone from 10 to 50 miles from the troubled Vermont Yankee nuclear plant.

"Now I speak all the time publicly," Wong said. Today, the first Asian American mayor in Massachusetts speaks with confidence and poise: making eye contact, holding her chin up and smiling warmly.