On this raw, rainy night, my brother and I came in from walking my parents’ dog down the dirt road. My mother was slicing Stamen apples, the kind my adopted grandmother liked for pies. We pulled out the drop-leaf table to its full length and hunted through cupboards for the […]
Read articleBTW A week of story — talks, songs and poems
It was almost 70 degrees today. One of my neighbors has a morning glory in bloom over the front door. I saw it as I walked down the the river through my quiet neighborhood, taking in the jack-o-lanterns — real carved pumpkins with quizzical grins and swirling eyes and the […]
Read articleJoyce Kilmer’s Northern Berkshire rambles bring ghosts close to home
Joyce Kilmer has just introduced me to two of my own ghosts. Earlier this month, I stumbled on a story Kilmer wrote in the New York Times in 1916 — when free verse was a dangerous new invention.
Read articleBerkshire ghosts walk in the hills
In the Berkshires, ghosts mourn lost family, and ghosts walk the dark places where they died. Some say a ghost rescued a child from the ice on Windsor Lake and brought her to shore warm and dry.
Read articleSusan Merrill makes summer last
Susan Merrill and her husband, Carl Sprague, are sitting under the grape vines on the terrace outside their old white house, with two corgis underfoot. Susan’s grandfather lived in this house; it has been in the family almost 100 years. They have spent this summer quietly here, seeing friends and […]
Read articleGuild of Berkshire Artists gathers color in West Stockbridge
The painter caught my eye, standing on the grass outside the old town hall. Straw hat and smock, pallette and easil — a plein air artist made of straw. On the easil, splashes of bright color announced that the Richmond-West Stockbridge Artists Guild has an exhibit running (August and September […]
Read articleCubist and Surrealist encounters at the Clark — BTW column
The cloth of her shirt ripples like light on water, and above her three circles of light shine like bubbles or sun on a lens. This is a self-portrait. Dora Maar was about 28 when she made it. I can imagine her in her darkroom, shaping light and shade on […]
Read articleTurn Park Art Space sculpture reflects with humor in West Stockbridge
I was sitting on a cliff edge in a rocking chair. Bees were moving in the meadow flowers, even in a light rain, and Don Quixote with rivets in his shoulders held a daisy in his fingers. He was looking at it round-eyed. The new Turn Park Art Space in West Stockbridge […]
Read articleMusic flies free at Falcon Ridge Folk Festival — BTW column
Adam Ezra calls two friends in the audience up to the stage. They are musicians from Boston, like him. Got your ax? he says, and the woman beside him tunes her fiddle. He strums the opening bars, and the musicians around him casually pick up the beat. They hand off […]
Read articleMelville and Hawthorne meet on Monument Mountain
On Monument Mountain, Herman Melville and Nathaniel Hawthorne met in a thunderstorm more than 150 years ago and began a thunderous friendship.
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