■A bill to authorize 60 additional days of harness racing in “certain counties in western Mass.” — the first choice reported to be at Northampton’s Three County fairgrounds — will be kept on ice for the time being to let promoters determine the best location.
■The country is coming to Northampton. A new shop called Country Comfort, at 21 Center St., just behind the police station, has opened. Country Comfort is just that, with coffee pot and tea kettle perking and owner William Trager offering “old-fashioned quality at old-fashioned prices” as his aim.
■The message on Saturday was: You can rally on the Town Common in favor of marijuana, but you can’t bring it with you. Police arrested nine people among an estimated 1,500 attending the seventh annual “Extravaganja” and charged them with possession of a class D substance, marijuana.
■Southampton Town Meeting voters will be asked to weigh in on whether a small mountain within its borders should continue to be named for the Pomeroys, a family that was among the town’s first settlers. Henry Geryk is trying to have the 50-acre peak he owns renamed as Geryk Peak, but he has run into opposition by town historians, who sponsored the Town Meeting article backing the name as it stands.
■Long-envisioned plans to extend a rail trail in Leeds a short distance north to Williamsburg are being rekindled this spring, several years after funding issues stopped construction of the controversial trail at Grove Avenue. In addition to extending the trail, the project calls for restoration and rehabilitation of an historic arch bridge along the trail that spans Beaver Brook.
■A section of Masonic Street was briefly shut down and several buildings were temporarily evacuated amid a report of a suspicious backpack Thursday morning. A bomb squad responded to the call for the suspicious pack spotted outside the Verizon building. The backpack turned out to contain clothes, batteries and several empty vodka bottles.