■Ralph Frink of Easthampton and Ramon Sears of Ashfield were honored at a recent holiday party hosted by Edward H. Cotton of Cotton Tree Service. Frink has been an employee for many years as a groundsman; Sears as a supervisor.
■Volunteer typists are needed to complete a new and revised membership record keeping system at the Hampshire Regional YMCA, Benjamin S. Mysorski, membership director, announced today. “There are now more than 1,500 members and the number is growing each day,” he said.
■A new rooming house with tenants as its managers will open in February in the former Cottage Kitchen building in Florence. The newly renovated 17 North Maple St. building, which will be known as the Florence Inn, will become home to 14 people who are either homeless or on the verge of becoming homeless.
■Two longtime volunteers at the Cooley Dickinson Hospital have received 19,000-hour service pins: Estelle Jekanowski of Northampton, manager of the coffee shop; and M. Sanford “Sandy” Weil Jr. of Northampton, who works in the medical library and other areas.
■Volunteers are hard at work painting the inside of 4 Garfield Ave., a new home on track to be occupied by the spring. The 1,150-square-foot dwelling is half of a duplex, and one of five homes planned by Pioneer Valley Habitat for Humanity on the site near Florence center.
■Grow Food Northampton this week put its money where its dreams are, plunking down a 20 percent deposit toward the purchase of 120 acres of the former Bean and Allard farms in Florence. The nonprofit has raised more than 90 percent of the $670,000 needed to buy some of the best farmland in the city.