May 04 2022 Edition

I am watching the rain and trying to understand how to write to you today. How can I talk with you about spring gardens and baby animals when the country is debating whether I and 166 million women should have the right to live full, strong lives — should have the right to live?

We are talking about the right to privacy. We are talking about all of us having places in our lives that belong to us. We are talking about women living in our own bodies, feeling wholly ourselves — feeling alive in our own minds, confident and charged — so that we can make lives that withstand hard times and then open to the sun, and we can welcome people in, our families, friends and communities.

We are talking about women thinking and playing, loving and working, making and growing and learning how to stretch ourselves.

If we care about women, these are the lives we want women to have — and if we care about children, these are the lives we want them born into. So they have families who can care for them. So their parents have resources, and they have loving people to guide them, and teaching and health, and clean, safe places, places to grow and explore as their minds grow and feel connections all around them.

That love and safety has never felt more at risk. I’m afraid today. The rain is watering the peach saplings I’ve planted this spring, and the world we’re growing in feels as though it’s shifting underfoot. Can I begin here, this week? If we look, really look … if we talk together about dancers moving to live percussion, the feel of seeds in the earth and the sound of a ewe talking to her suckling lamb, will that help to give us, even for a breath, a place to stand? — By the Way Berkshires

Stories

Kid goats curl up together in a patch of sun at Hancock Shaker Village.

Kids and lambs meet at the Shaker Village

The barn is different on a spring night. Calves lie in the hay like deer in the undergrowth. Lambs sleep on their mother’s backs, and sometimes a chicken will join them for the warmth. ...

Williams theater seniors gather in spring 2021. Press photo courtesy of the '62 Center.

Sometimes the Rain, Sometimes the Sea

May 5 to 7 at 7:30 p.m. and May 8 at 5 p.m.

The Williams '62 Center will present a new work by Julia Izumi, an interactive play about the magic of storytelling.

Elizabeth Aspenlieder and David Gow appear in The Wavery Gallery at Shakespeare & Company in Lenox.

The Approach @ Shake&Co

Opens May 6 and 7 at 7:30 p.m. and May 8 at 3 p.m.

Shakespeare & Company opens their 2022 season, as three women (Elizabeth Aspenlieder, above, Nicole Ansari and Michelle Joyner) open their inner lives.

A book lies open in a sunny open space surrounded by trees.

Booktopia 2022

May 6 at 9 a.m. to May 7 at 9 p.m.

Northshire Books brings back Booktopia, their annual two-day literary festival where authors and readers meet to celebrate together.

Five Native communities are restoring their traditional land management practices in the face of a changing climate, in the awardwinning film Inhabitants. Press image courtesy of Images Cinema

Fresh Fest at Images Cinema

Opening May 6 at 6:30 p.m.

Images Cinema presents their annual Farm and Food Film Festival, exploring the ways farming and food culture impacts our lives.

Berkshire Botanical 45th annual Plant Sale

May 6 from 11 to 5 — May 7 from 9 to 5

BBG celebrates spring with a focus on natural gardens that are exuberant and alive and welcoming to birds, bees and butterflies.

CoDA dancers rehearse at Williams College in spring 2021. Press photo courtesy of Williams College

Kusika and CoDa spring performance

May 6 and May 7 at 7 p.m.

Kusika and CoDa, the Williams College African dance emsemble and contemporary dance company present a spring evening of dance and music.

Great Barrington Farmers Market

May 7 from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.

The market returns with fruits and greens and cheeses, locally roasted coffee and brewed cider — popsicles, mushrooms, Berkshire Mountain Bakery sourdough bread, fresh berries ...