North Adams Girl Scouts Give Meaning to Thanksgiving

Girl Scouts Alyssa Smith, Jocelyn and Kailee Goodell, Kaylee Chrisman, Kimberlee DiBiase, Rebecca Vallieres, Sabriel Spencer, Tatum Ciempa (not in photo) and Tiana Carver are putting together Thanksgiving baskets for needy families.

NORTH ADAMS, Mass. — Girl Scout Troop 11805 wanted to give back something to the community.

The 7-year-olds brainstormed until they came up with an answer suitable to the season: Thanksgiving dinner.

The local troop is holding a drawing for baskets of food for needy residents. The Thanksgiving feast will include the makings for stuffing, potatoes, gravy, vegetables, cranberry sauce and a choice of turkey or ham.

The number of baskets in the drawing will depend on the amount of donations the troop receives.

"The more we can get the better," said Scout Leader Ashley Goodell.

Goodell said the idea came during a talk about how the troop could do a community service project.

"The majority vote was lets help families don't have food," said Goodell. She and co-Leader Alicia Moore did guide the girls a little in thinking about how a project could be done, she said, but "they really came up with the idea on their own."

The girls had some of their first baskets put together last week to show what they had done. They're accepting donations from  local supermarkets, businesses and individuals, and were able to get donations through a read-a-thon they've been doing.

They are hoping to read 90 minutes during the month of October. Their favorite books so far are "My Little Pony," the classic "Clifford the Big Red Dog" and "No Jumping on the Bed."

If they make it to $100 (all of which goes to the Thanksgiving dinners), they're celebrate with — not turkey! — but a pizza party. They will also each get a badge for their community service efforts.

North Adams' Route 2 Study Looks at 'Repair, Replace and Remove'

By Tammy DanielsiBerkshires Staff
06:02PM / Monday, April 07, 2025

Attendees make comments and use stickers to indicate their thoughts on the priorities for each design.

NORTH ADAMS, Mass. — Nearly 70 residents attended a presentation on Saturday morning on how to stitch back together the asphalt desert created by the Central Artery project.

 

Of the three options proposed — repair, replace or restore — the favored option was to eliminating the massive overpass, redirect traffic up West Main and recreate a semblance of 1960s North Adams.

 

"How do we right size North Adams, perhaps recapture a sense of what was lost here with urban renewal, and use that as a guide as we begin to look forward?" said Chris Reed, director of Stoss Landscape Urbanism, the project's designer.

 

"What do we want to see? Active street life and place-making. This makes for good community, a mixed-use downtown with housing, with people living here ... And a district grounded in arts and culture."

 

The concepts for dealing with the crumbling bridge and the roads and parking lots around it were built from input from community sessions last year.

 

The city partnered with Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art for the Reconnecting Communities Pilot Program and was the only city in Massachusetts selected. The project received $750,000 in grant funding to explore ways to reconnect what Reed described as disconnected "islands of activity" created by the infrastructure projects. 

 

"When urban renewal was first introduced, it dramatically reshaped North Adams, displacing entire neighborhoods, disrupting street networks and fracturing the sense of community that once connected us," said Mayor Jennifer Macksey. "This grant gives us the chance to begin to heal that disruption."