■About 35 students from Hawley Junior High demonstrated on the steps of City Hall yesterday against the atomic blast to be held in Amchitka today. The students on City Hall’s steps were mainly from Hawley Junior High School, according to Mary McNamara, head of the steering committee of Students Against Atomic Blasting, which sponsored the demonstration.
■John T. Joyce, chairman of the Northampton Board of Health, announced today that Mrs. Madeline Ruckman of 97 Federal St., Bay State, was appointed to the position of senior clerk and typist Nov. 1 to fill a vacancy existing because of the resignation of Mrs. Jeanette E. LaPalm.
■A standing-room-only crowd of hundreds, from elementary school children to gray-haired elders, crammed into the refurbished cafetorium of the JFK Middle School Saturday afternoon to dedicate the expanded and renovated facility. “It’s fantastic. It’s really fantastic,” said Harold E. “Hy” Myers, who served as principal of the school from its first grand opening, in 1964, until 1987.
■After three years operating under “borrowed” names, Bashir “Basha” Ahamed is once again operating a textile store under the name, “Basha’s Oriental Rugs.” The hand-carved wooden sign that once hung above his Main Street, Northampton, storefront now welcomes visitors to his current location at 15 North Pleasant St. in Amherst.
■Negotiations are under way to get the Unitarian Society of Northampton and Florence to offer Occupy Northampton protesters safe haven on its front lawn at 220 Main St. The church is extending a conditional invitation to protesters for use of its lawn for a long-term, around-the-clock encampment as part of the nationwide Occupy Wall Street movement.
■The University of Massachusetts dedicated the $5.8 million George N. Parks Minuteman Marching Band Building on Saturday. Parks, a music professor, led the Minuteman Marching Band to national prominence during his 33-year tenure at UMass.