What I'm shooting lately in Northampton and Shelburne Falls

A little street art from downtown Buckland, MA.

A scene I shot through the window this morning where we are staying in Northampton.

Spillway at Shelburne Falls, and what we've been up to.

This is the spillway area at Shelburne Falls. Shelburne and Buckland, just over the bridge, compared to Northampton is pretty quiet and serene. Northampton is more like the bustling center of activity with a thriving downtown. Smith College takes up a major potion of Northampton, but it took us a while to walk onto campus because it's somehow seamless and unobtrusive the way that it fits into the town. Maybe the town grew around it. It's not THAT bustling, being that it's a town of only 30,000 population, but recall that Sheryl and I are fresh from middle of nowhere, AZ. We don't see cars much.

For about two weeks we stayed in a restored colonial home in Northampton, until the rental car needed to be driven back to Sharon about 100 miles (2.5 hr drive) and returned. We'll be heading back to that same colonial, I think it was built in 1884, tomorrow. I really should get some pictures of it. We have some new friends there, so it's a good arrangement, it's also an easy half mile walk to downtown. Our house stay is also the headquarters of Remineralize the Earth, and if you care about sustainable farming, you might want to check that out.

It's funny how you can get different impressions of towns all in the same vicinity. Amherst is a short distance up the road, maybe ten miles. It's all about the colleges, with 30,000 students and only 35,000 total residents. We weren't that wild about the downtown there, and the overall feel was a lot different. Northampton is more mixed and diverse, and it seems to fit about everything that we figured we wanted from a town: it's a lot about art and alternative lifestyle, including alt spirituality (that would be us). It's sort of like an East Coast Santa Cruz (CA) but not exactly. Oddly, Sheryl had had an intuitive hit about Amherst as the place to be, so we have not figured that one out yet because we more immediately took to Northampton.

We've been spending some time with other healer types, having a lot of conversations with Brett Butler and his partner Ramara. We also spent half a day way out in the woods with flower essence practitioner Kathrin Woodlyn Bateman and her partner Joseph Dicenso and their pygmy goats who were leaping about and climbing into our laps while we talked, which was very fun.

Suspension- the new word for us in Northampton.

Suspension by Paul Hood

I took the above shot at a fountain in Northampton MA, at the Smith University Campus. Yes, they let men on campus, but only if you're accompanied by a woman ( just kidding ). Still. . . Sheryl was there to protect me from harm. She was on our borrowed cell phone which surprises the heck out of us every time it rings, and she didn't even see this fine frog. I had enough time to snap only one frame and then he disappeared.

Love doing the photography around Northampton. Lots to see. Working on lining up some gigs when people figure out that they can hire me. Right now we're back in Sharon, MA because we had to return a rental car here. Otherwise we'd still be back in Northampton scouting around and applying for jobs in the Western Massachusetts area. We love Northampton. Some of the surrounding areas are very nice too-- the last place we checked out was one of Sheryl's long time favorites: Shelburne Falls. Greenfield is near there, and we'd get into that too, plus there's a couple jobs there which look really good to Sheryl. ref #4698 jpeg

Prosperity Issues with Brett Butler

That's Brett Butler on the left, he's looking so concerned because he's working with a client via the internet. No, it's not the comedian Brett Butler nor the baseball player Brett Butler. This Brett is the one we recently met whom we're so impressed with. He's in pretty much the same line of work as a healer and spiritual consultant. In the background is Sheryl and Ramara and we're hanging out in their cavernous, one-room studio for the evening. Brett and I seem to have a lot in common.

Closer snapshot of Ramara, whom I asked to hold very very still because I was shooting in the dimmest imaginable room-light. Brett and I have been talking so much that I barely know Ramara as yet.

 

Closer view of Brett. Sheryl received a session from him tonight concerning issues of prosperity. It went well I think. I just observed, really. He's still developing a website or I'd link to it here, but he's currently working with local clients here in Northampton and so are Sheryl and I. Very unusual for me to meet somebody whom I feel so sympatico with about spiritual matters.