The Rev. Heather Blais of the Episcopal Church of Saints James and Andrew at the corner of Church and Federal streets in Greenfield provides “ashes to go” in front of the church to Greenfield resident Jessica Sanders for Ash Wednesday. STAFF PHOTO/PAUL FRANZ

Published: 03-05-2025 6:13 PM for the Recorder

GREENFIELD — The next concert in the “Bach’s Lunch” series at the Episcopal Church of Saints James and Andrew, located at 8 Church St., will be held Wednesday, Nov. 13, at 12:15 p.m.
Pianist Chonghyo Shin is returning with a new program of music by Mozart, Schubert, Chopin, Albéniz, Granados and Debussy. She most recently performed a “Bach’s Lunch” concert in June.
Shin teaches piano at Amherst College and the Brattleboro Music Center. She is a graduate of the New England Conservatory of Music and has performed as a soloist with the Boston Pops and the Pioneer Valley Symphony Orchestra. Read more...

By ERIN-LEIGH HOFFMAN, Staff Writer

GREENFIELD — On the eve of Election Day, the Interfaith Council of Franklin County welcomed people of all faiths and political backgrounds to the Episcopal Church of Saints James and Andrew for an evening of prayers, songs and conversations about the nation’s future.
More than 25 people gathered in the church’s Whiteman Room. Leaders from multiple faiths, including the Rev. Heather Blais of the Episcopal Church, David Arfa of Temple Israel and Sister Clare Carter from the New England Peace Pagoda, provided guided prayers for attendees to participate in.
In one ritual, participants lit candles. Each person, gathered in a circle, said, “I light this flame for ...” before finishing the sentence with a single word or phrase. Hope, compassion, peace, decency, tolerance and neighborliness were just a few of the words people chose. Additionally, musician Annie Hassett performed a Pete Seeger song and Interfaith Council of Franklin County Vice President Leslie Fraser, a multi-faith chaplain, used a singing bowl.

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By TINKY WEISBLAT, for the Recorder
We live in an area with abundant local sources of food. Greenfield’s Episcopal Church of Saints James and Andrew is getting ready to celebrate this year’s harvest with a “100 Mile Dinner.”
The dinner will take place next Saturday, Oct. 26, at 5:30 p.m. at the church. Tickets must be purchased by this Friday, Oct. 18.
The “100 Mile” moniker refers to the fact that the meal is planned so that the major ingredients hail from farms located under 100 miles from the church.

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By THE REV. HEATHER J. BLAIS, for the Recorder

Recently, we took our oldest child on a tour of my alma mater, Saint Anselm College in Goffstown, New Hampshire. Our oldest has always navigated life with an insatiable curiosity and desire to know more. I was eager for them to have a taste of the kind of conversations that can unfold in a college classroom, and my most memorable conversations had unfolded in my politics courses taught by my favorite professor.
When I reached out to the professor, he welcomed us to sit in on one of his classes. We joined a group of sophomores and juniors in their class focused on living and learning liberty. The students were making their way through Alexis de Tocqueville’s “Democracy in America.” Tocqueville was a French aristocrat and political philosopher who visited America and was fascinated by how well democracy was working here, given democracy did not take root the way many had hoped during the French Revolution.
Now, I’m not sure what I had been expecting, but given our current political climate and the unprecedented events of this year’s presidential race, I suppose I was expecting to encounter some cynicism or some of the general angst that has been simmering in our communities.

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GREENFIELD — Nicole St. Hilaire recently lost her father to an opioid overdose.
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On Friday, through her role as outreach manager with CONNECT, St. Hilaire passed out free naloxone, a medicine that rapidly reverses an opioid overdose, in an effort to promote harm reduction practices. CONNECT, which stands for Community Opportunity, Network, Navigation, Exploration and Connection Team, is a regional collaboration of law enforcement, community health centers and outreach organizations created to combat the opioid epidemic in Franklin County. read more...