■Two hundred forty-eight Soap Box Derby participants, parents and officials gathered in the checkered flag-bedecked Coachlight Room of the Hotel Northampton last night to wind up the week-long festivities of the Gazette-Kiwanis Soap Box Derby. The winning trophy and a $500 savings bond were presented to Frank “Skip” Kosior of Williamsburg.
■Alicia Edelberg of Northampton is touring Europe with the World Orchestra of Young Musicians. Miss Edelberg, daughter of Dr. and Mrs. Herman Edelberg of 47 Belmont Ave., is a senior at Smith College.
■The Lilly Library recently named its newly renovated reading room after the first president of the Florence Savings Bank, Alfred T. Lilly, as a recognition of the bank’s contribution to a major fundraising campaign. The bank has pledged $35,000 over a five-year period to the library for book purchasing.
■Half of the 56 teachers in the Northampton schools who got layoff notices this spring have been rehired. But that leaves 23 teachers in limbo, with about seven weeks to go until schools reopen in September. Five of the 56 have quit the system.
■Smith College professor Róisín O’Sullivan heads to her native Ireland next week to join a panel of experts assessing economic recovery efforts there. O’Sullivan, 41, of Northampton, worked in the policy department of Ireland’s Central Bank from 1992 to 1997. She earned her master’s and doctoral degrees in Ohio, and joined the Smith faculty in 2002.
■Atkins Farms Country Market, an institution in South Amherst for nearly 50 years, is exploring opening a second store in the North Amherst village center as a way of keeping up with customer demand and offering easier access to its products for more area residents.