■A sudden fire swept rapidly through Gray’s Market at 52 Maple St. in Florence yesterday, destroyed the two-and-one-half-story frame structure before it could be extinguished by firefighters. “It went up like a flash,” Deputy Chief Jeremiah Driscoll said.
■About 500 Northampton schoolchildren are making preparations for the first Festival of Arts day to be held at Look Park this Saturday, May 16. The all-day presentation will include performances by each of the city’s elementary school choruses as well as the secondary school choruses and bands.
■If Michael K. Hooker heads south to become a chancellor at the University of North Carolina, Rep. Carmen H. Buell says she’ll follow. The five-term Democratic lawmaker from Greenfield said yesterday a variety of factors would have to be weighed, but if her husband decides to become the next head of UNC’s Chapel Hill campus, she’ll leave her current job.
■Barnes & Noble, the largest bookstore chain in North America, will open a 35,000-square-foot superstore at the Holyoke Crossing retail mall being built by O’Connell Engineering & Financial Group Inc., according to a press release from O’Connell.
■Wilma Ortiz, an English language education teacher at the Amherst Regional Middle School, is one of five finalists for Massachusetts Teacher of the Year. Ortiz, who has been with the school district for 17 years, was nominated by Bruce Penniman, a former ARHS teacher who won the award 15 years ago.
■Benjamin Gelb, a student at Hatfield Elementary School, has been accepted into the People to People World Leadership Forum. He will join a group of students in Washington, D.C. in July to study leadership and explore some of the country’s most prominent monuments and institutions.