Western MA is one of those weird pockets of the country that you never hear about unless you grew up there. It's always been in the shadow of the greater Boston area, both in notoriety and in funding; this post demonstrates that well. It's probably OK if you want to visit touristy stuff in Amherst/Northampton/Deerfield, but other than that it's just another textbook example of the Rust Belt and with a very uncertain future.