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By DAVID SPECTOR

Naturalists are often asked “W” questions: What is this organism? Where is it found? When am I likely to see it? And, most interesting and most difficult to answer, why? Why-questions provoke answers that address natural processes, often multiple, complicated, and incompletely understood processes. Full answers to why-questions include acknowledgment of uncertainty.

By GRACE CHAI

Over 30 years ago, Lucimara Galo immigrated to the United States from Brazil in hopes of a better life. Now, she helps others improve the quality of theirs.

By GRACE CHAI

A new commission tasked with making recommendations on ways to address public health and safety concerns posed by the proliferation of xylazine as an additive to illicit drugs met for the first time last week at the first of five public hearings.

By AMY NEWSHORE

Why is it so hard for many couples to connect emotionally, even when they love each other? So often, the answer lies in early messages — whether clearly stated or subtly implied — that teach each gender how to “do” emotion. Men are often told to “man up.” Women are told they’re “too emotional.” These lessons, absorbed in childhood, shape how we show up in adult relationships and quietly build walls between us. The emotional divide they create runs deep, and its impact on connection is profound.

By GRACE CHAI

AMHERST — Rainbow flags flew in the air, music by queer pop artists played in the background and children giggled as they popped bubbles streaming from a bubble machine on a hot Sunday afternoon. Pride had come to Amherst for the first time.

By RICHARD MCCARTHY

It’s interesting how certain actions are made rarer, even extinct, by advancing technology, one-by-one, in an ever-longer line.

By STEVE PFARRER

Stephen Platt, who teaches 19th and 20th century Chinese history at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, made a significant name for himself with his two last books.

By BILL DANIELSON

Last Saturday was a bit of a milestone for me. It might easily have come and gone without me realizing it, but thanks to my obsessive record keeping I happened to see a notation in the pages of my 2025 field diary and avoided an embarrassing oversight. Last Saturday marked the 28th anniversary of Speaking of Nature, an event that I don’t think I could have ever imagined back in 1997 when I sent in my first column.

By MICKEY RATHBUN

In the Orchard Arboretum, a little-known public garden in South Amherst, a living work of art is making its debut this spring. “I call it a daffodil ribbon,” explained Richard Waldman, a retired landscape architect from New York City who conceived of the project two years ago and has finally brought it to fruition.

By AALIANNA MARIETTA

LEVERETT — Roughly 100 residents voted to approve Leverett’s share of the Amherst-Pelham Regional School District budget, accept a 146.3-acre property gift and appropriate funds for a series of community preservation projects during Saturday’s annual Town Meeting.

By JACOB NELSON

Spring is here, and with it are signs of new life on farms around the Valley. Leaves are beginning to bud on fruit trees, farmers are preparing soil for the coming growing season, and at Little Brook Farm in Sunderland, day-old baby lambs are bounding around the lambing barn.

By TED WATT

It was January, with two feet of cold crisp powder on the ground. The day was bright and sunny. The 5th and 6th grades at our small rural, hill-town school had been studying life sciences. Educators and students were focusing on animals and the many varied ways they are adapted, both physically and behaviorally, to living in their environment. We decided to take advantage of the perfect winter day and headed out to see what we could learn about how animals live in winter from the signs and tracks they left behind.

By JOAN AXELROD-CONTRADA

I was taking a shower, basking in the scent of my green tea shampoo when — poof! — a phrase popped into my mind like a gift from the muses. “Words, like pixie dust, falling down.”

By LISA GOODRICH

For local farmers, winter is a time for planning the next growing season, catching up on small business tasks, and maintaining structures and equipment. For the local community, winter is the time to lock in prices on produce for the growing season by signing up for Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) membership.

By MICKEY RATHBUN

I received the announcement of the Western Massachusetts Master Gardener Association (WMMGA)’s spring symposiums earlier this month, when the wind was whipping the falling snow into spiraling towers of white. In early February, it’s hard for the imagination to break through the winter doldrums. Will we ever feel the touch of soft spring breezes or enjoy the sight of green shoots pushing through the cold dark soil? The WMMGA symposiums help us to jostle our gardening passions out of hibernation and into activity, even if only mental.

By ERIC WELD

I made a mistake.

By MOLLY PARR

Some of the best things to come out of my kitchen lately have actually been second takes: leftovers taking on a new life in a totally different dish. To wit, the roasted winter roots salad with quinoa and arugula was good, but my 9-year-old would argue that it was the quinoa patties with broccoli and cheddar served the next night that were even better. And our Valentine’s Day Shabbat dinner of lemon risotto, roasted salmon, whipped ricotta topped with roasted beets and blood oranges was fancy-restaurant good. But Saturday night’s winter fish chowder, made with the leftover salmon, was the most memorable dish of the weekend.

By JACOB NELSON

Plenty of young kids tap a few maple trees, inspired by the sweet promise of maple syrup. Few become enamored with it to the point of kickstarting a family business. Cooper Deane, who helps run Bear Hill Sugar Farm, is one of them.

By LORETTA YARLOW

In 2013, the widely acclaimed artist Carrie Mae Weems — a charismatic artist, activist and educator, known for installations, videos and photographs that invite the viewer to reflect on issues of race, gender and class — was among 10 artists commissioned to participate in “Du Bois in Our Time,” an exhibition I curated when I was director of the University Museum of Contemporary Art at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

By RICHARD MCCARTHY

In 2023, working with Mathew Berube, head of Information Services at the Jones Library in Amherst, several of my old columns were fed into ChatGPT, the artificial intelligence chatbot. AI produced a lengthy analysis of my writing. Then I wrote a new column, which we did not show AI, and Mathew asked AI to write on the same subject as the new column, in my writing style.

By TOM LITWIN

During migration season this past fall, researchers at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, using Nexrad weather radar, tracked approximately 4 billion birds migrating from Canada into the U.S. and 4.7 million birds leaving the U.S. for the tropics. Clearly one strategy for dealing with New England weather is to leave it behind. But other species’ strategies have traded the benefits and perils posed by thousands of miles of travel for the benefits and perils of northern winters.