In Banned Books Week, I remember Layli Longsoldier — I’ve heard her words at an open mic on a night as warm as this one. She describes a scene in a place near here: a censoring.
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Photo by Roman Iwasiwka
Local news reimagined
You want to know what’s happening in our communities, in Western Massachusetts, in the mountains out past the Connecticut River — forests and lakes, local food, town councils talking about jobs and housing … and the new bagel shop downtown, and a night of poems at the bookstore. You want to meet people around you.
This is local news on the ground. This is storytelling by people, for people — no GenAI, no ‘native advertising,’ no corporate interests, no big tech. We are listening. We’re asking questions, helping people put thoughts into words, understanding the shapes of the ecosystems we live in — we’re making creative spaces, where we can gather and reach out to one another.
We live in a rare place. We have minds at work out here in the country, and minds at play too. I live and write here. I’m a local journalist, so I get to walk behind the scenes and talk with people about what they love. We all want connection — we want to laugh, share ideas, dance barefoot and listen to music on a mountain at night. Come out and explore …
Photo by Kate Abbott
About Town
Want to know what’s happening in town this weekend? From North Adams to Lenox, we’re seeing a new energy in the Berkshires. Wherever we are, locals are adapting and new voices are coming in. If you’re looking for nightlife or a good cup of coffee, a vintage t-shirt or an artisan fair … take a look through our Berkshire towns.
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Photo by Roman Iwasiwka
Theater and music
We have singer-songwriters, folk and bluegrass legends, emerging composers and Yo-yo Ma … sometimes all of them together. We’re known around the world for the people who come here to play, and they can be global travelers or as local and familiar as the farmer’s market on the corner. Or both. And we can dance to the beat.
FIND ART • MUSIC • THEATERrecent stories
Apples are ripening at the equinox — #BTWNortheast
We were curving along Route 2 past Apex Orchards this week, and the signs for apple picking are out. The season is turning somehow, from husk cherries and plum tomatoes to crisp air and sweet fruit.
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Soaking in the last warm days of summer — #BTWNortheast
For all the conversations I’ve had over the years, with naturalists and conservationists, biologists and ecologists and neighbors who love wildflowers, I don’t know how it would feel to walk through an old-growth forest on the slope above my house.
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Unfiltered prints on handmade paper — Gloria Calderon-Saenz and Alicia Canary
A gourd glimmers with light and shadow. Gloria Calderon-Saenz has printed it in curves, in a red brown the color of rich earth on paper Alicia Canary has made, in a new show at Futures Lab.
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Imagining a wild garden with native plants — #BTWNortheast
The lobelia have opened in tall clusters of deep fall sky blue. The flowers have throats striped indigo and white, and the petals fan out, one lifted like an arbor and three held out like cupped hands.
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Wendell Berry taught the vital need for nurture — #BTWNortheast
Sustainability needs the fertility cycle of birth, growth, maturity, death, and decay to turn continuously in place, Wendel Berry says, and for humans, a cultural cycle must turn too.
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Late summer reveals life cycles on Pine Cobble
White pine and oak are sheltering me. The rain picks up like an incoming wave, and I move closer to the trunk of the pine tree. The leaves are shining, and close in here I’m almost dry.
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