© 2025 New England Public Media

FCC public inspection files:
WGBYWFCRWNNZWNNUWNNZ-FMWNNI

For assistance accessing our public files, please contact hello@nepm.org or call 413-781-2801.
PBS, NPR and local perspective for western Mass.
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

March 14, 2025: Redefined

Capitol Hill has been awfully aggressive with a constant barrage of cuts to many federally funded programs and departments. Today, we show you how some of those cuts are directly impacting kids in western Massachusetts and beyond.

School lunch programs are just one of the many slashes in the USDA, and we hear from Melanie Wilk, Brianna Jackson and Abby Getman Skillicorn about the Massachusetts Farm to School Program, its specific impact in Chicopee and what lays ahead without federal support.

Which might incline one to imbibe. We find ourselves comfortably in Women’s History Month and, lucky for us, there are two awesome women behind Tip Top Wine Shop who bring us two Oregon wines from women-led vineyards for the latest Thunderdome.

And, Live Music Friday brings world champion Cory Pesaturo to the studio before you can catch him and his accordion at the next Watermelon Wednesday. We also talk with Paul Newlin, one of the originators of the Watermelon Wednesday series, which often does not occur on that central day of the week.

Farm to School
Wine Thunderdome at Tip Top
Cory Pesaturo live on the accordion

Christopher “Monte'' Belmonte is host and executive producer of NEPM's The Fabulous 413. He was born and raised in Massachusetts and has been a radio host in western Massachusetts for the last 20 years — the last 17 of them as host of Mornings with Monte on The River 93.9/WRSI.
Kaliis Smith is a radio host and producer for NEPM's The Fabulous 413. She was most recently host and producer at The River 93.9/WRSI where she appeared on Mornings with Monte for the Nerdwatch segment and hosted weekday evenings.