The stone glows like alabaster channeled by waterfalls of glass. On an afternoon bright enough to be summer, sculptor Ron Mehlman has come to Chesterwood at the opening of his solo show.
Read articleLooking for something to do on Friday night? You can sit on a blanket in a high meadow, sharing blueberries while you’re waiting for a new play to begin. You can dance to live bluegrass and African blues.
By the Way Berkshires has a free weekly newsletter with a roundup of events and new stories and places we are discovering — if you want to take a look, just scroll down. The newsletters come out by email, so you’ll see it in your inbox on Wednesday evening or on Thursday morning, before I post them here.
This is a rich place, even in deep winter. Even in a pandemic. I’ve lived here 20 years, and I find new places and people every day. Doors are open when you know where to look. Let me show you some of the ones that stand out to me.
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The Housatonic River reflects overhanging branches in the golden hour in Stockbridge.
Albert Park and Shirley Chen cross swords in Man of God by Anna Ouyang Moench. Press photo courtesy of Williamstown Theatre Festival
Rose B. Simpson's ceramic sculptures look out from the meadow below the Taconic Crest in Counterculture at Field Farm. Photo by Kate Abbott
Young welders create new forms at Salem Art Works. Press photo courtesy of SAW
Brandon St Clair as Davon appears in ABCD at Barrington Stage Company. Press photo courtesy of the theater
Tunnel City Coffee in the Mass MoCA courtyard serves local ice cream from High Lawn Farm in Lee.
the Bistro Box in Great Barrington serves homemade roadside fare under the white pine trees.
L. James and Tamara Hickey as Beatrice and Benedick clasp hands in Much Ado About Nothing at Shakespeare & Co.
Photo by Jamie Kraus
Finding BTW Newsletters
If you’d like to see some of our By the Way roundups, you can check out the latest ones below … or find them on the home page with our weekly stories, or take a look at the whole library in our newsletter archive.
newsletter archiveBy the Way — what's happening #this weekend
Let’s do the time warp again — #Berkshireweekend
The warmer days seem to have lifted the energy in the hills, and our creative places are absorbing it from the world around them — and this weekend, events are flying.
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Candidly we need to cultivate our gardens … — #Berkshireweekend
The strawberry plants are small enough to hold in a palm, but some of them have blossoms forming. I’m cupping them in my hands and pressing them gently into the earth.
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Fresh cheese and sourdough: Farmers markets and plant sales — #Berkshireweekend
And suddenly it’s May. We feel the change coming for weeks, fizzing in catkins and lapping up the lower slopes — and then the sun comes out and the maples open their leaves, and the world turns green again.
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You’re going to meet some gentle people there — #Berkshireweekend
Naumkeag’s annual spring festival is far enough along that the daffodils are wide open and just starting to give ground, and the tulips are all in full blow.
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Columbine and jazz: Warm days are coming — #berkshireweekend
The splash of red is vivid and unexpected — wild columbine. I wouldn’t have looked for them this early, or at this bend in the trail, with the white trillium growing thickly up the slope.
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Questing for poets on spring nights — #Berkshireweekend
Why is April called poetry month? Why now, in a precarious early spring? Ross Gay and Robert Hass remind me that poetry is physical. Immediate. Close as skin or rain on birchbark.
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Spring wildflowers and baby animals emerge — #Berkshireweekend
The bloodroot are back. I just went down to one of the closest places I know to look for them, out on the trail along the western bank of the Hoosic River.
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Mass MoCA and Flamenco tap into living rhythm — #Berkshireweekend
‘The Eve of the Future’ … I was walking through Mass MoCA’s new spring shows, and the name of one of Carrie Schneider’s photographs caught my eye.
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Talking face to face in the first days of spring — #Berkshireweekend
An almond croissant and coffee on a sunny morning — my first signs of spring are coming to me at Patisserie Lenox, talking with an old friend. She’s my first boss and my first editor …
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