Skip to main content

About



I'm Adam Sweet, a retired musician, teacher, and researcher living on eight organic acres in western Massachusetts. My wife works at UMass Amherst, our oldest son works in the Governor's office, and our youngest is in high school.

I studied Musicology and Music Therapy at Hampshire College (BA, 1985). For decades after that I did two things at once. I learned business by sourcing specialty wines and cheeses for Bread & Circus, working at Dr. Hauschka Cosmetics, helping a Montana herbal company rework its training, labels, and marketing ahead of its sale, and later running my own sales and marketing consultancy.

I also taught. Fiddle and mandolin lessons at the Fretted Instrument Workshop and Downtown Sounds led to the Northampton Community Music Center (1995-2007), then KCMC in Keene, NH, and finally Sweet Music Studio in South Hadley. Along the way came the South Hadley Mandolin Orchestra, Woodkerne, The Americana Project, Celticado, and Sweet Songs Records.

These days I aim that same curiosity at research: local history, genealogy, archives, OSINT, music history, land ownership, and the odd questions other people gave up on. Sometimes the answer is in an old newspaper. Sometimes it's in someone's memory. I use AI to search and organize, but judgment and real evidence come first.

It's an independent pursuit, driven by curiosity and the fun of solving a puzzle.

Comments

  1. BobOctober 6, 2026 at 2:08 PM

    I've known you since High School and you've always been curious, so it doesn't surprise me that you've had this experience!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Bonesetter Sweets: A Family Story in Song

By Adam Sweet, Granby Buy & Download for $1.50: https://adamsweet.bandcamp.com/track/from-the-welsh-hills Listen on YouTube: https://youtu.be/5C_FghN1egM Long before there were orthopedic surgeons, there were the Sweets. In southern New England, if you broke a bone or threw a hip out of joint, you sent for "Doc Sweet." He had no medical degree. Most days he was a farmer, a carpenter or a blacksmith. But he could set a bone, and so could his father, and so could his grandfather. The family came from Wales. John Sweet was in Salem by about 1630 and moved on to Rhode Island with Roger Williams' people. His son James settled at Ridge Hill, now Shermantown, in North Kingstown, and the bonesetting line runs through him. The skill was passed father to son, along with liniments made from roots and bark. Our family archives say some of that knowledge came from the Narragansett. Some of the stories are hard to beat. During the Revolution, Job Sweet set the bones of French offic...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Smith College Center for Early Childhood Education at Fort Hill Closing in 2027

I wrote a song about it called "Lyman Road".  Buy & Download for $1.50: https://adamsweet.bandcamp.com/track/lyman-road Listen on YouTube: https://youtu.be/p7IsHfBJx-Y It began in 1926 when Smith College President William Allan Neilson established the Smith College Nursery School (alongside a Day School). It opened with about 15 students, many of them children of Smith faculty. Organized as a cooperative school by the Institute for the Coordination of Women’s Interests, it offered educational opportunities for Smith graduate students and became part of the education department in 1928. For years it operated as part of the broader Smith College Campus School (with the preschool program at Fort Hill on Lyman Road and kindergarten–sixth grade at Gill Hall). Full-day options expanded in 1992 with infant/toddler and extended-day programs primarily for Smith faculty and staff. In 2003 these elements were reorganized into the distinct Center for Early Childhood Education. The pr...
Post a Comment
Read more

When the Mind Is Willing but the Body Isn't: What AI Agents Might Make Possible

  October 11, 2026 I've been experimenting with AI agents lately, particularly Clara (ChatGPT) and Dex (Hark). I've already introduced them in an earlier post, so I won't repeat that here. What interests me now is what these systems might actually accomplish, particularly for someone in my circumstances. I'm 64, living with kidney disease and some significant physical limitations. I currently am immobile, and I don't have a car available. Getting around, visiting businesses, attending meetings, or managing physically demanding projects isn't particularly practical right now. But there's nothing wrong with my mind. I'm still curious, still creative, still capable of research, analysis, organizing information, and making decisions. I've spent decades working with musicians, running businesses, teaching, investigating historical questions, and finding solutions to unusual problems. What I need isn't an AI that thinks for me. I need an AI that can do...
Post a Comment
Read more