As the year winds to a close, we start to review all we’ve been through over the past ~50 weeks.

And in that way, our minds continuously harken back to the nigh catastrophic weather we had this year. From the frosts to the floods and the ongoing rains that have kept our end of the state sodden, it’s been a trying year for agriculture across the board. The public and private sector collaboration initiated by the Governor has just concluded it’s distribution, so we check in with Phil Korman of CISA on what lessons we can take from the Massachusetts Farm Resilliency Fund reaching the end of its current run.

We’re reminiscing on astronomical events said weather makes unwatchable for us, including one that helps us to understand more of how stars work. Mr. Universe, Hampshire College’s Salman Hameed, talks about an eclipse of the star Betelgeuse and its eventual supernova, plus how gamma rays help with that detection.

And as the holidays approach, and frankly in light of the weather disasters of this year, we consider how we can do our part to mitigate some of the environmental impacts we impart. One of the easiest and most accessible ways we can do that is through recycling. But it turns out that many of us have been doing recycling all wrong, and with a season of gift wrap and present packaging approaching, we check in with Arlene Miller and Amy Donovan of the Springfield Materials Recycling Facilities Advisory Board to learn some of the true “do”s and “don’t”s of this particular ecological practice.