The March is over, but there’s quite a bit of ground we covered getting through those 43 miles.

So we take a look back a a few more of our conversations that the road brought to our conversations about hunger and hear from State Senator Jo Comerford, Congressman Jim McGovern, and in a first ever appearance at the march from someone in their office: Governor Maura Healey.

All that talk about hunger and the feasting day that tomorrow is has us thinking about some of the farms we’ve visited this year that are run by chefs (both by women as well). So we reminisce of our time with the folx from Grown Up Farm in Belchertown and at The Apple Place in East Longmeadow.

The March for the Food Bank 14 nears its end, and over the course of two days, Monte and many other marchers are raising money for the Food Bank of Western Massachusetts, and awareness about hunger in our region in general.

There’s so many walks of life that join in this endeavor so once again today we’ll hear from many of the people walking alongside Monte Belmonte as he’s dressed in the counterpart to yesterday’s costume of Mojo Dojo Casa House Ken: Weird Barbie. Over the course of 26 miles, we speak with State Senator Jake Oliveira, State Representatives Dan Carey, Natalie Blais, and Lindsay Sabadosa, Northampton mayor Gina-Louise Sciarra, students from Hopkins Academy, special envoy to Northern Ireland Joe Kennedy III, Phil Korman of CISA and more.

And you can find more of our stories and information about the march at nepm.org/hunger.

Monte Belmonte is walking 43 miles to raise awareness both about The Food Bank of Western Massachusetts and hunger in our area in general. We here at NEPM have been highlighting stories on hunger over the past week as a lead up to The March for the Food Bank 14, talking with those fighting through direct services, in the way of food pantries and kitchens, and those changing policy that affects folx in need. The Food Bank of Western Massachusetts actually does both of those things, and are a great resource for the region. There are over 100 marchers joining Monte over the course of the next two days making the journey from Springfield to Greenfield to help the organization.

The march starts not far from the NEPM studios in Springfield, at Martin Luther King Jr. Family Services in Mason Square, which is *still* considered a food desert. It ends in Northampton, at the Northampton Radio Group, home of our former station, 93.9 WRSI. Inbetween we speak to congressmen Richard Neal and Jim McGovern, the latter of which has walked the full 43 miles for a number of years, State Senator Jake Olivera, State representative Shirley Arriaga , Food Bank Director Andrew Morehouse, Chicopee mayor John Vieau, the staff of Lorraine’s Kitchen, Director of Martin Luther King Jr. Services Shannon Rudder, and the man leading them all north, Monte Belmonte.

A double dose of live music Friday, 7 tubas from Tubachristmas plus Holyoke's The Basement Cats. We also celebrate a local hero of love and justice who has been serving the Northampton area since 1989, The Reverend Peter Ives. And Monte gets fitted for his Weird Barbie costume for the March For The Food Bank at Swanson's Fabrics.

The March for the Food Bank 14 begins this coming Monday, Nov 20th. One person who has been on nearly all of those marches is our weekly conduit to Capitol Hill: Rep. Jim McGovern. So this week, we’re talking frankly about hunger, how we combat it, and how that drives him to walk all 43 miles from Springfield to Greenfield to raise not just local, but national awareness to the issue of hunger.

Because the facts are that many are going hungry right beneath our noses. One of those populations is students at public colleges and universities. We speak with Grace Cippolone, a current junior at Umass working with Students for Anti-Hunger, and Laura Sylvester, Public Policy Manager for the Food Bank of Western Mass who has been helping the students in their multiple endeavors including the re-opening of the UMass campus food pantry, which was closed at the beginning of the pandemic. They explain the insideous nature of hunger on campus, some solutions they are pursuing including with their swipe program, and some initiatives they’d like to see the school take in order to address the growing problem.

And because we all need a little more music and lightness, we chat from afar with Corn Mo, who’ll take the stage at The Divine Theater on Friday, November 17th. A multi-instrumentalist who covers a plethora of genres from Hair metal, to classical, we talk to him about his musical journey, from accordion, to Tragedy, and the musicals he’s made along the way.

We’re seeing new life enter a lot of spaces currently.

One of those is locally beloved venue The Iron Horse. Recently acquired by The Parlor Room Collective over the summer, they have just announced both their renovation ideas for the space and a capital campaign to cover the costs, since one of the major points is to tear down a wall on the first floor. We speak with executive director Chris Freeman and board president Randy Kowalski about the legacy of the building, and collaborating with the community to make a better space for music to thrive.

And speaking of music, we bring Latin Grammy Award winning children’s book author and musician Mister G. into our fold. He’s got a new album, a new book, and a free show this Saturday, Nov. 18th at John M. Greene Hall in Northampton. We talk to him about making new music, meeting new people to make music with, and getting stories on paper for young folx.

And a funny thing happened on the way to our local dictionary’s headquarters here in Springfield, but we’re not going to bring that up. Instead, our resident wordster Emily Brewster, senior editor at Merriam-Webster talks to us about food words, as food is foremost on our minds as we gear up for the March for the Food Bank 14.

It’s Hunger Awareness Week here on NEPM. All week, we and the newsroom will be centering stories about how hunger affects our region.

Although we’ve talked with many folx along the way who are more boots on the ground in terms of fighting hunger and its affects in our area, we haven’t had a chance to speak with many folx who are working on the policy end of this work. So we sit down with Franchezka Bermudez, 413cares program coordinator, Andrea Freeman, Policy Director of Public Health Institute of Western MA and Marissa Chiapperino, Clinical Nutritionist Navigator at Holyoke Medical Center to examine a few of the sea changes we’re trying to enact across the Bay State and beyond.

We then head across the mountains to a cultural center nestled in the southern Berkshires. Opened in 1905, The Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center has been through several incarnations before becoming a non-profit in 2003. We talk with executive director Janis Martinson and general manager Michael Beuth about keeping the venue beautiful and relevant, while also encouraging more diversity and equity.

And Mr. Universe, Hampshire College’s Salman Hameed, got to see Bob Dylan in Springfield this past weekend. We hear his thoughts on the septegenarian nobel laureate, as well as a continuation of our conversation about the moon, in which we see how Mars is kind of a cautionary tale.

Next week is Hunger awareness week here at NEPM, but honestly we’re very much into feeding people everywhere, and especially across the four counties of western Massachusetts everyday.

So we get a bit of a jump on the process by talking with Executive Chef/executive director of Stone Soup Cafe in Greenfield, Kirsten Levitt. She talks to us about their general mission of nourishing more than just the body, their recent foray into culinary instruction, and how the community comes together to make their daily operations happen.

There’s a lot of that community that believes strongly in what Stone Soup Cafe offers all of us, including our Live Music Friday Guests, Forest Avenue String Band, who will play a benefit show for the cafe on Nov. 12th.

We head to Hatfield to talk with the latest generation helming a 100+ year old farm that’s become synonymous with potatoes in these parts. Diane Szawlowski-Mullins comes to the studio to let us know how Swaz’s Potato Farms keep the area full of spuds all year round, even with the floods.

We hear about the many faces of hunger seen by the Amherst Survival Center with director Lev Ben Ezra. They help us to understand that it’s much more than just providing food to those in need, and that the folx in need can often be in the places you least expect.

And this week’s Wine Thunderdome at State Street Deli, Wine & Spirits offers an opportunity to not just discover the spectrum of Shiraz, but a way you can get your own wine on while simultaneously helping out the Food Bank of Western Massachusetts.

We love the opportunity to showcase what the region is really capable of.

We talk compassion in our weekly chat with congressman Jim McGovern, who’s not just concerned about the deadly action happening in Gaza and its surrounding lands, but of the fight on Bay State soil against hunger as well. The latter may be because he’s gearing up for a 43 mile challenge in about a fortnight, and we’ve got hunger at the forefront of our minds too.

NEPM’s Karen Brown takes us into the risk and growing concerns surrounding gambling in Massachusetts, as we look back on these past 5 years of legality for the activity, and the efforts state has simultaneously attempted to employ to address gambling addiction.

We discover the inaugural Indigenous Film Festival at Images Cinema in Williamstown. A collaborative effort between Williams College, the Stockbridge-Munsee community, and the movie theater, the event seeks to show a wide range of tribes, tones, and histories across a weekend of both feature films and shorts. Executive director of Images Cinema, Dan Hudson, about bringing those people and themes together to expand all of our knowledges.

And in what is perhaps the most requested story we’ve ever had here on The Fabulous 413, we talk about how one manages to procure and proceed to row a pumpkin down a river. Dave Rothstein has recently accomplished this task, floating inside the gourd over 39 miles. We hear how he’s made all of our fairytale dreams come true, while also bringing attention to the delicate resource we have in the Connecticut River.