Emily Dickinson is more than I knew. The metaphysical recluse in white is a hurt, outspoken, ardent woman in a smock the wind can blow through.
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Emily Dickinson opens her garden gate
Emily Dickinson rounds the corner from the orchard to rest from apple picking — and runs straight into us.
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Where the wild nights are: Emily Dickinson at home
She an eager college student begging her family for books, a religious rebel in Calvinist New England, an amateur botanist and the center of love triangles and family controversy years after she died …
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ArtWeek Berkshires is here in full colors
Murals and wood-fired ceramics, Japanese Shiburi tie-dyed cloth, graphic novels and living walls — the county is filling up this week with events and shows and painters out in the open, in ArtWeek Berkshires.
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Olsen Farm feeds the community
Kristen Tool and her husband, Chris Wheeler, keep six hives near a massive apple tree that has lived here, like his family, for a hundred years. They are building contemporary ways to support their family farm — and food systems and food security in the Berkshires at the same time.
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Gloria Calderon Saenz carves current and color
A palm tree leans outward by a pool where the water ripples in concentric circles, as though a fish has just jumped and gone under … Gloria Calderon Saenz has come to the Berkshires to find space and time for her art, paintings and drawings, and most of all, woodcuts and woodblock prints.
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We’re feeling for balance as the year turns (September 8 newsletter)
Broad Brook is running high for September. We’re up here at the top of White Oak Road, just on the line between one state and another, and we’re taking time on a weekday morning, because this is a holiday for you.
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Writers warm up with festivals in early fall
“Despite a strong midday sun, the road was all green shadow thanks to trees thick and tall as a god’s fingers. My old block trees were like zoo elephants — one or two specimens stunted by a cement habitat. But this chaos of greenery had my heart calling dibs.” Quiara […]
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‘Hello, Bookstore’ film appears at BIFF
This week the Berkshire International Film Festival will screen Adam Zax’ new feature film about Matt Tannenbaum and his family, and the community that has carried the Bookstore through the pandemic.
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L’Shanah tovah — happy new year
Rosh Hashanah begins this evening at dusk, and friends of mine will welcome these days with honey and apples and family. I’m thinking of you all warmly tonight.
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Wild Soul River brings healing into Williamstown
On the corner of Cole Ave and Hall Street in Williamstown, the old general store is now a gathering space and an ‘abolitionist herbal shop.’
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Women (artists) about town …
I walked through WCMA on Monday afternoon, with the work of women artists around me, and wondered where else have I seen work by women in the Berkshires this summer … And I’m finding the answer more challenging than I expected.
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Kameelah Janan Rasheed weaves a room of all possible stories
I’m standing in a round room at the top of the Williams College Museum of Art and seeing it transformed through Kameelah Janan Rasheed’s eyes.
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She can turn a library into a labyrinth (Sept 1 newsletter)
WCMA has reopened, after more than a year closed in the pandemic, and I am transfixed by Amalia Mesa-Bains’ Library of Sor Juana Inez de la Cruz.
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