July 24, 2023: Partnerships of all platforms

Today we're making time to come together and improve things. A lot of this has to do with recent announcements about funds and systems being developed to help the many farmers who have lost some or all of their crops over the course of this year. Since FEMA funds are restricted to infrastructure, the Bay State is finding the funds to help its farmers through other means. One of them is the Massachusetts Farm Resiliency Fund, which sees its structure rooted in The United Way. Another is the very recently proposed supplementary budget through the State senate. Each seeks to address different aspects of this growing loss and devastation, and we speak with Tim Garvin of the United Way of Central Massachusetts, as well as Senator Jo Comerford, and Senate President Karen Spilka about the purpose of each endeavor as well as why it's important to handle a calamity of this nature by working in tandem from different angles. It's also in the kismet of a new library and an equally new president. It's the 100th anniversary of Calvin Coolidge's inauguration. His official presidential library, which resides within Forbes Library, is celebrating the occasion of our 30th president with an event we are fondly dubbing: Calvinmania. We speak with vice president of the Calvin Coolidge Library and Museum Standing Committee Bill Scher, and librarian and archivist Julie Bartlett Nelson about the local connections that still pervade Northampton's landscape. And it's in pop culture making the most interesting mashups. Such is the case with Barbenheimer: a colloquialization of both the fact that the Barbie and Oppenheimer movies were released on the same day, and the idealized double feature one might partake of due to this fact. We talk with Mr. Universe, Salman Hameed about the importance of both films alongside local filmmaker Bob Krzykowski.