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?
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Writing behind the scenes — Why talking matters
I remember a conversation at Shakespeare & Company 20 years ago. They were two stage veterans talking with a cub journalist from the local weekly … and they got off script. They let the talk move between us into their own lives.
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The center can hold (January 6 newsletter)
Tonight while a mob is attacking government buildings, while I am sitting safe by the fire at the foot of a mountain in a town where I know college students have been threatened a mile away and somehow stood tall and gone on, I am reading Danusha Lameris’ poems for the first time.
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Berkshire conversations begin to probe the future (November 4 newsletter)
We’re on pause tonight. The country is waiting for a decision that can re-shape our lives, and we’re hunkered down. Daylight Savings is past, and the nights are getting longer and darker. It can be easy to feel cut off on a night like this.
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Opening a conversation takes courage
How are you? That seems like such a small question in these hard days. It should be a simple thing to turn to someone with warmth and respect. And right now it feels vital.
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John Steinbeck calls attention to fall color on the back roads
If I could be anywhere in the world today, I’d be here. I might be here in 1960, when John Steinbeck drove through with Charley (his dog) in the cab of his truck.
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How do we respond as Massachusetts starts to reopen?
The governor’s announcement this week allows some local places to begin to reopen, and it raises questions for all of us as. And as I talk with you about the community, it raises questions for me.
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Art in her hands at International Women’s Day — By the Way column
Women known around the world in art and music have come to the Berkshires, and we remember them as Women’s History Month honors International Women’s Day.
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I believe: A manifesto for Martin Luther King Jr. Day
A friend of mine created a workshop where people could build manifestos. A manifesto is a public declaration of intention — in other words: I have a dream.
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Marchers fill the street at the Four Freedoms Rally (By the Way column)
We are standing in a crowd outside the First Church of Christ in Park Square. I have never seen so many people in downtown Pittsfield outside of a street festival … On a Saturday afternoon in January 2017, some 2,000 people marched up North Street in a rally with the Four Freedoms Coalition.
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