■Les Brinkley of Easthampton shot a 165-pound black bear with a 30.08 rifle while on a seven-man hunting trip recently in Patten, Maine. Accompanying Brinkley on the trip were Gary Craig and Roy Merrill of Easthampton, Larry Catlin and Bob Hutchings of Hadley, Roger Green of Shrewsbury and Al Kreischer of Boca Raton, Fla.
■Patricia B. Keating of Florence, one of the co-founders of the Circle Players community theatre group, will direct two of the four plays assembled under the title of “You Know I Can’t Hear You When the Water’s Running,” which will be presented by the Circle Players in November at the People’s Institute.
■Marcus Camby, indisputable star of the University of Massachusetts basketball team, is scoring major points with South Hadley students this fall as a tutor in a middle school special education class. Camby, an education major at UMass, is currently taking a course titled Introduction to Special Education. As part of the course, Camby and nine other students have chosen to work as tutors in special education.
■A record number of volunteers collected money in Northampton, Amherst, Easthampton and Pelham yesterday for the homeless and hungry. Organizers of Shelter Sunday — the annual door-to-door canvassing event — say they hope nearly $40,000 will be raised from the event when leaflets left at some homes are read and donations are mailed in.
■Gov. Deval Patrick and Republican challenger Charlie Baker traded jabs on taxes, jobs and health care Wednesday as the race for governor heads into its final frantic last days. At an event at Fenway Park, Baker blamed Patrick for the loss of more than 20,000 jobs in September and also claimed Patrick had a plan to raise the state’s income tax rate from 5.3 percent to 7 percent.
■The Fletcher Farm on Gunn Road in Southampton has been named the best in New England by a Boston-based cable news network. The 100-acre farm earned the title from New England Cable News, or NECN, a Comcast channel that sponsors a weekly online contest, called “Baby, You’re the Best” to determine the best places in New England.