News

The December 13th deadline for a bipartisan federal budget deal to avoid another partial government shutdown in January is a week away.  Negotiators, headed by House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan—a Republican and Senate Budget Committee Chair Patty Murray—a Democrat, appear to be making progress.   WAMC”s Pioneer Valley Bureau Chief Paul Tuthill spoke with Jo Comerford, Executive Director of the National Priorities Project—a Northampton-based research center.

Opponents of the Lowell Mountain Wind project took their case to the Vermont Supreme Court on Thursday, where lawyers argued whether the state improperly permitted the project’s stormwater permits.

Newschannel 13 meteorologist Paul Caiano casts an eye toward the weekend, in his Midday Weather Summary for Friday, December 6, 2013. 

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and General Electric provided stakeholders updates on the ongoing Hudson River Superfund cleanup project and a recap of the concluded 2013 dredging season on Thursday.

At a meeting of the Hudson River PCB Superfund site’s Community Advisory Group, General Electric presented to stakeholders an update on the massive habitat restoration and dredging project, saying that between April 29th and November 6th,  612,000 cubic yards of sediment containing PCBs were removed from the river bottom.

Falling Upward: How we took to the Air, tells the story of the enigmatic group of men and women who first risked their lives to take to the air- and so discovered a new dimension of human experience.

Why they did it, whether contemporaries thought of them, and how their flights revealed the secrets of our planet and holy unexpected ways is it unique subject. Richard Holmes joins us.

    Everett Bradley will bring his holiday fund phenomenon Holidelic: ‘Twas the Night Before the Funk to Helsinki Hudson this Sunday, December 8th.

Everett plays percussion and sings backing vocals for Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band - he has also recorded and toured with Joey Ramone, Jon Bon Jovi, Hall & Oates, Carly Simon, and David Bowie among others and he currently appears in After Midnight on Broadway.

Holidelic was first performed in 2002 and every year since, Everett has put together this part dance party, part funk concert, part comedy show - the holiday-funk spectacular features original holiday songs as well as loose, funk-infused adaptations of Tchaikovsky, "Frosty the Snowman," "Little Drummer Boy" and more!

A major retailer is expanding its distribution center in New York, including in a county in the Hudson Valley.

Specialty retailer Gap Inc. is expanding its distribution center in Fishkill, in Dutchess County, as well as the Gap Global Creative Center in Manhattan. The expansion will add more than 90 full-time jobs in Fishkill and more than 80 professional jobs in New York City. State and local elected officials from Dutchess County welcomed the news of jobs and the potential boost to the regional economy, Fishkill Republican Assemblyman Kieran Lalor among them.

It seems like everyday there's a new op-ed about the "crisis in the humanities." But most of this talk concerns enrollment on college campuses and job prospects for PhD students. Is there a crisis in the public humanities? And if so, why aren't we talking about it?

For our Ideas Matter series, Mary Rizzo, Public Historian in Residence at the Mid-Atlantic Regional Center for the Humanities at Rutgers University-Camden join us to talk about it.