■Santa Claus came to town late Friday afternoon and Northampton lighted up for him. He arrived in front of the Courthouse on a huge fire engine that flashed bright red lights to let the hundreds of waiting Northampton residents know that Santa was on his way.
■Things are happening at St. Michael’s High School. The Rev. Roy H. Duquette and Sister Mary Magdalen are “behind the scenes” of the action. Father Duquette is the new diocesan director of the high school and Sister Mary Magdalen is the new principal.
■The massive Arthur D. Budd House at Notchview Reservation in Windsor was destroyed by a blaze Saturday — but for once the mission of 80 firefighters summoned from numerous Hilltowns was to let it burn. Saturday’s drill was designed to help small departments practice those strategies needed should a fire consume a large area, or a building the size of the Budd mansion.
■Someday, in perhaps the not-too-distant future, the friendly face of your local bank may be no more than an icon on your home computer screen. “On-line banking is coming” said Ralph Ritchie, assistant vice president for Bank of Western Massachusetts, based at the bank’s operations center in Holyoke. “Its time is now.”
■The federal Drug Enforcement Agency will instruct local police and firefighters on the ins and outs of methamphetamine production at a conference Monday, after an alleged “meth lab” was discovered in Northampton last month. The five-hour “clandestine laboratory awareness training” is not open to the public or press.
■Researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst say they’ve developed a way to turn inexpensive biofuels into a wide range of chemicals currently derived from petroleum, which could potentially reconfigure the petrochemical industry and produce industrial chemicals worth an estimated $400 billion annually.