■Goshen, which has three lakes, will buy bottled drinking water for the children at the Center School because Route 9 road salt apparently has raised the chloride level in some water supplies. The high chloride content in water at the school and Town Hall has prompted the state Department of Public Health to urge abandonment of the well supplying these public buildings.
■Santa Claus will arrive in Northampton this Friday, earlier than usual, the Downtown Merchants Association has decided. Santa, who annually rides into town on a fire truck prior to the Christmas lighting ceremony on the Courthouse lawn, will arrived at 2 p.m. The lighting ceremony will follow several hours later at dusk.
■Northampton’s landmarks became pieces in a puzzle Saturday, as amateur sleuths helped raise money to create a meetinghouse for the city’s Quakers. Teams were given a list of clues to locations where they would find a word, a phrase, a number, something to sketch or a person to interact with.
■Four of seven architects who submitted bids to design a major renovation and small expansion of the Northampton High School are now finalists. The prize for the winning architect is a $950,000 commission, which includes all documents and a detailed technology plan for the renovated school.
■Sherry Rehman, a Smith College alumna and high-profile politician under threat for her call to reform Pakistan’s blasphemy law, was named Pakistan’s new ambassador to Washington on Wednesday. Rehman, 50, is a feminist and has been a liberal force in Pakistani politics, refusing to give up her push for progressive reform despite death threats and political pressure.
■Donna Crabtree is leaving her post as executive director of the Amherst Housing Authority at the end of the year. “I’m going to miss the people, the tenants and the staff,” she said, adding, “I decided it’s better to leave before I get too old and jaded.”