■It’s that time again! Orders for the usual five different flavors of those delicious Girl Scout cookies are now being taken. Colorfully designed, the packages, almost too pretty to open, show some of the various activities of the Girl Scout troops: reading to the elderly, cooking over an open fire on the beach, and a group making all kinds of fascinating paper cutouts.
■A sum of $10,000 for possible renovation of Mayor Sean M. Dunphy’s office was added to the tentative 1971 budget last night by the Northampton Property Committee. One proposal involves making the present conference room into the mayor’s office, and placing the conference facilities in the present reception room.
■Joseph Brodsky, the exiled Russian poet whose graceful, often haunting work won him a Nobel Prize and the admiration of political dissenters world-wide, died of heart failure Sunday in New York at the age of 55. Brodsky was Andrew Mellon Professor of Literature at Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley and Five College Professor of Literature since 1981.
■Cleanup efforts are continuing today at the scene of a troublesome weekend oil spill caused when a fuel truck overturned on Glendale Road. According to police reports, the leaking oil ran off the road and into the woods, and a “large amount” traveled 100 feet across from Park Hill Road and entered a wooded area with a gully, where “it contained itself.”
■Janet Dahlberg, longtime organist and choir director at Northampton’s First Churches, is retiring from the position after 45 years of service. Dahlberg will be honored Sunday after the morning worship service.
■William Erickson, retired superintendent of the Hampshire Regional School District, has taken the interim position as superintendent of Northampton’s public schools. With his first day on the job today, Erickson says he has a clear idea of what his role is: serving as a bridge from one superintendent to another.