■Committees of the Northampton Teachers Association planning “Ride-a-Bike-for-the-Retarded” are getting ready for the ride, set for Sunday. Bicycle enthusiasts from the community at large, students, teachers, principals, and city officials will meet at Northampton High School at 10 a.m. before pedaling the 25-mile course. They will ride out to Riverside Drive, by Pro Brush, up to Spring Street and along the back way to Leeds.
■A major spring offensive will be launched this weekend and continued throughout the season as ecology-minded persons go full-force ahead in beautifying Northampton and surrounding towns. The wide-sweeping campaign comes at a prime time in Northampton as it marks the opening this Saturday of the first regional recycling center in the history of the city.
■The search of an Easthampton Road storage shed by New Jersey and Northampton Police earlier this month turned up a surprising discovery, local police say. Instead of the stolen computer hardware they thought might be there, they found two 50-year-old human fetuses in jars of formaldehyde.
■The Hairston House for recovering alcoholics and drug addicts celebrated the fourth anniversary of its reopening last night with a dinner at the Cooley Dickinson Hospital attended by house residents and staff, hospital officials, and members of the community. In 1993, the house had been closed for a year, after Multi-Service Health Inc., the halfway house’s parent agency, folded.
■Hampshire County is one of six Massachusetts counties to receive an “F” for ozone pollution in a report released Wednesday by the American Lung Association. Jeffrey Seyler, president of the American Lung Association in the Northeast, said, “If you look at the report card, it’s certainly not one that you’d want your child to bring home.”
■Saying the stakes are too high and the cuts too deep, the Northampton City Council and School Committee reached general consensus Thursday to seek a property tax override to boost a school budget that has been repeatedly slashed over the last decade. If the council moves ahead with the idea, it would be the third time in the last four years that voters have been asked to raise their property taxes.