■Autumn days in Childs Park are joyful times for mothers and children, as happy broods romp across the peaceful grounds, their clarion laughter echoing in the golden afternoon. Family outings will soon change in nature, with walking shoes replaced by boots, football helmets by skates and picnics by cozy afternoons at the hearth.
■Northampton State Hospital may have to close down entirely after July 1, 1972, if its 19 foreign doctors fail to pass a language test required under a new ruling by the State Board of Registration in Medicine. Doctors will be tested on their ability to speak English as well as on their knowledge of basic sciences.
■With remembrances of its railroading past and a feast provided by its present tenant, hundreds gathered at the Depot restaurant last night to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the former train depot. “This place has incredible history,” owner Chuck Bowles said. “And still now you can come and enjoy it on a personal level as a restaurant.”
■Four months after opening, Cityside BBQ roasted its last pig Saturday night and closed for good, ending jobs for about 20 people and an attempted expansion by owners of the City Café bar. The restaurant had allowed Timothy Driscoll and Joseph Kocot, owners of the bar at 1 Pearl St., to serve food again. The bar discontinued its own kitchen with the advent of the city smoking ban in 1994.
■Pioneer Valley residents were a common sight during the weekend in New York’s Zuccotti Park, the center of the national anti-corporate movement Occupy Wall Street. There, among the mountains of sleeping bags and air mattresses, the mounds of donated food and eating utensils and an ever-thumping drumbeat, they could be found washing dishes, holding signs or just meandering among the masses.
■Robert L. Caret, president of the University of Massachusetts, began a cross-state bus tour Monday that will take him to Amherst this week. Caret, who took his post July 1 and will officially be installed in office later this fall, plans 24 stops on what he’s calling the On the Road Together tour.