By my reckoning, this leg of the stock market rally began about a week after the presidential elections. The rally overall has been going on much longer. The question everyone is asking is how long it can go on without a major correction.

If one looks back through history, the chances of the S&P 500 Index continuing to move higher without at least a 4 percent pullback is slim at best. There has been only one year in recent history, 1995, where the market continued higher throughout the year without any kind of significant pullback.

I remember that year well, and there are both similarities and difference between 1995 and today. Back then, U.S. unemployment was below 6 percent. Today

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Cases heard before Judge C. Jeffrey Kinder on Friday, May 10.

Christopher White, 25, of Pittsfield pleaded guilty to five counts of breaking and entering in the daytime, five counts of larceny from a building, and single counts of breaking and entering in the daytime placing a person  in fear, illegal possession of a firearm, larceny of a firearm, vandalize property, larceny over $250 and common and notorious thief.

He was released on personal recognizance pending sentencing on Friday, May 17. On Friday, White was sentenced to 18 months at the Berkshire County House of Correction on all charges except common and notorious. He was placed on probation on that charge.

White broke into

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HYANNIS, Mass. —  Taconic High and Pittsfield High school students joined Mount Greylock Regional students in Hyannis on Friday, May 10, to participate in the 57th annual Massachusetts Junior Classical League State Convention. 

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iBerkshires.com's FREE tag sale listing are back for the summer. Send your tag sale information — address, date, time and a brief description — info@iberkshires.com by 5 p.m. on Thursday. We'll post by Friday afternoon for the weekend listings.

You can download the map and the listings, or use it on your smart phone. Have suggestions for our tag sale listings? Let us know at info@iberkshires.com.

Not too many tag sales this week, but we're sure they'll pick up as the warm days continue.

View Berkshire County Tag Sales, May 18 &19 in a full screen map

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PITTSFIELD, Mass. — Berkshire Bank has selected 30 high school seniors to receive a total of $45,000 in scholarships through its Berkshire Bank Foundation Scholarship Awards Program. Each of the recipients will receive $1,500.

A total of 134 employee volunteers reviewed nearly 200 applications to select the winners. The winners all live in the regions served by Berkshire Bank, including communities in Massachusetts, New York, Connecticut and Vermont.

The Berkshire County recipients were all surprised with

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Friday:  Emily Danger at Marketplace Cafe!

Emily Danger is a dark cabaret rock band from Brooklyn that combines haunting melodies and lyrics with orchestral, heavy, and often dissonant arrangements. They've toured throughout the US and Canada, been featured on WFMU radio and various satellite radio programs internationally & on the West coast, and play throughout the East Coast and NYC.

Friday, May 17 | 6:30pm-9pm | The Marketplace Café | 53 North Street | 413-358-4777 | NO COVER

Friday-Sunday+: Grease at Pittsfield High

Join Danny, Sandy,

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LENOX, Mass. —  The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency was taken to task on Wednesday for not doing enough to alert residents around Pittsfield's Silver Lake to airborne PCBs.

The toxic and cancer-linked polychlorinated biphenyls were used by General Electric in capacitor production for years.

"This is really unacceptable," said Judy Herkimer, director of the Housatonic Environmental Action League. "It's another tragedy of the Consent Decree."

Herkimer blasted the EPA for not notifying the public of the spikes

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: The Defense Department on Friday afternoon confirmed that Army Spec. Mitchell Daehling and two others died May 14 "of wounds suffered when enemy forces attacked their unit with an improvised explosive device."

Daehling and Spc. William J. Gilbert, 24, of Hacienda Heights, Calif., were assigned to 3rd Battalion, 41st Infantry Regiment, 1st Brigade Combat Team, 1st Armored Division, based in Fort Bliss, Texas.

Sgt. 1st Class Jeffrey C. Baker, 29, of Hesperia, Calif., was assigned to 766th Ordnance Company, 63rd Ordnance Battalion, 52nd Ordnance Group, of Fort Stewart,

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CEO Randy Kinnas outlined the new strategic plan on Thursday in a meeting with community leaders.

PITTSFIELD, Mass. — The Y is completely revamping that way it operates.

The Pittsfield Family YMCA presented a new strategic plan Thursday that calls for dramatically changing how they handle finances, recruit and retain employees and leaders, change the perspective the community has, collaborate with other agencies and embark on a capital project on its facilities.

"The status quo is not an option," CEO Randy Kinnas said at a presentation in their auditorium.

The organization treaded water for two years following the 2008 economic recession and was in "crisis

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The housing market has been in the doldrums so long that most of us believe that when we are ready to buy a new home there will be plenty of deals out there. Think again, the rising costs of everything from land to labor are causing new home prices to climb.

As U.S. residential real estate begins to rebound from its worst downturn since the Great Depression, the pace of recovery is beginning to cause bottlenecks in all sorts of areas. Suppliers of various building materials, for example, after shutting down much of their operations over the last few years, suddenly are besieged with orders from homebuilders across the nation. Unfortunately, it will take time, money and a willingness to

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