■Known to many Florence residents solely as a telephone acquaintance, Mrs. Walter E. Corbin, twenty year Gazette Florence correspondent and 60-year resident of 16 North Maple St., Florence, is moving to Florida tomorrow, due to a bronchial condition.
■A new program to aid in the development of the city and surrounding area, including a move toward merging the chambers of commerce of Northampton, Amherst, and Easthampton, was approved unanimously at a meeting of the Greater Northampton Chamber of Commerce Tuesday. Implementation of the new program, “Forward Northampton,” involves all members of the community.
■Four busloads of black men will pull out from the University of Massachusetts tomorrow night, and countless others will make their way via car caravans and airplane flights, for what one participant called a pilgrimage to the Million Man March in Washington, D.C. Monday. Nicholas McBride, professor of journalism at UMass, said, “We are under assault. We are public enemy number one.”
■The Northampton Film Festival will include a discussion by the director of the acclaimed “Hoop Dreams,” as well as an appearance by local documentary film-maker Ken Burns. Organizers this week announced the schedule of events for the November festival. In all, 26 independent films will be shown at different venues.
■George Parks, the iconic director of the University of Massachusetts Minuteman Marching Band who died unexpectedly last month, will be honored Saturday in a ceremony that will include a performance by the band and testimonies from UMass officials, faculty, former band members and others.
■Ambitious plans for a vastly upgraded rail system in New England and the northeast could collide with severe money problems, transportation planners were told Friday. U.S. Rep. John Olver, D-Mass, warned that the Interstate highway system built beginning in the 1950s relied in part on the gasoline tax for funding. That’s no longer possible, he said.