We are certainly encouraging of new endeavors.
Even when those endeavors are well established. The North Quabbin Garlic & Arts Festival is in its 25th year, but still learning how to innovate in how to make a growing event sustainable. We chat with Deb Habib of Seeds of Solidarity (and one of the founders of the festival), and the evolving team of folx that collectively bring this celebration into being about how community remains at the core of both the artistic and agricultural sides of what they're bringing to their tiny corner of the 978 in western Massachusetts.
There's a new endeavor seeking to bring more of the Latino/e/x community to Springfield Museums. This weekend will see the first Latino Arts Festival at the Festival, and we talk with Vanessa Otero and Lydia Rivera-Early, both of the Mi Museo Committee about starting such an initiative, why there is a family friendly section, and an adults section, and how to get more folx of hispanic/latin heritage to a museum they may not have felt was particularly for them.
And there's a new endeavor in an old beloved location. It's just been announced that the Parlor Room Foundation has just taken over The Iron Horse venue in Northampton, which is great news to the local music scene. Although this is a big leap for the only recently evolved into a non-profit organization, we talk with Chris Freeman, president of The Parlor Room Foundation, about what this means for the local scene, and how they hope to use the space to sustain music in Northampton and beyond.
Plus, Merriam-Webster, our local dictionary in Springfield, has just added a whopping 690 words into its pages, which is more than the last 2 years combined. We check in with The Word Nerd, Emily Brewster, senior editor at Merriam-Webster, to get a quick glance at what got in, and which words from this list are foremost in our minds.
