A Look Back, April 14

50 Years Ago

• The Massachusetts Public Interest Research Group (Mass-PIRG) has criticized the Northampton Small Claims Court for failing to hold Saturday sessions. The lack of Saturday sessions restricts the use of the court to well-financed corporations “to the exclusion of consumers and small-business people for whom small claims courts were designed,” a spokesman for the group said.
• The “Follies of 1976,” presented this past week in the Northampton High School auditorium, was in all ways a resounding success. The enormous cast moved individually and in groups with ease and assurance, with a snappy pace and fine timing, and above all, contagiously enjoying every bit of it.

25 Years Ago

• Northampton today was named one of a “Dozen Distinctive Destinations” by the National Trust for Historic Presentation, which says Northampton reflects the best of modern urban life, “the flip side of cluttered tourism and sprawl.”
• Saying she disagrees with the direction the Northampton School Committee is heading, particularly its hiring of a new school superintendent, at-large School Committee member Karen Bercovici resigned Thursday night. “I am resigning because I believe that with the appointment of Mr. Cosgriff the School Committee is going in the wrong direction, and that my continued membership will be unproductive,” Bercovici wrote.

10 Years Ago

• Leaders of a Chinese-language charter school in Hadley want to build a new high school and more than double the size of the student body. The school currently enrolls 430 students from roughly 25 western Massachusetts communities, in grades kindergarten through 11.
• Composer Kate Soper, an assistant professor of music at Smith College, has received the $40,000 Virgil Thompson Award for her vocal work. Soper, 34, is being recognized for her musical adaptations of literary texts, including the works of Aristotle, Franz Kafka, Lydia Davis and Jorie Graham.