BTW Berkshires 
On a spring night in Bloomington, Indiana, Ross Gay is planting young lettuces. Winter has hung on so long, a warm evening feels new — to stand barefoot in a troweled furrow with the air smelling of earth and stems, and peels in the compost pile. As he walks in his garden, planning onions and…
As a community they have come from many parts of the world. They come in to work late at night, in the small hours and the early morning, and in a week they may cook more than 15,000 meals. And this winter they danced. In February, Forklift Danceworks, the ’62 Center and Williams College Dining…
Ever wish that you were first name friends with the wildflowers that begin coming up in April and fill the woods with color in May? May is a season of its own. In these short weeks while the spring sun warms the soil, and light reaches the ground before the trees unroll their leaves to…
A man lies awake — gets up to walk. He remembers sharing a room with his bother when they were boys, his brother reading by nightlight and the sound of his breathing. He remembers excursions with their aunt, taking a boat upriver, watching a city float by in the dark. The small hours come in…
The Germans called them the Night Witches. In World War II they flew planes made mostly of wood and canvas at night, without parachutes or radios. They were a Russian regiment, a few hundred women as young as 17. In 1941, the Soviet air force became the first in the world to allow women to…
She looks calmly and directly at the person looking back at her. With brown hair drawn up to the top of her head, brown eyes splashed with face-paint like a masquerade, bare shoulders, she cups her chin in her hand and considers what she sees. She is a self-portrait by Paige Greeley, an artist and…
The sounds come from North Florida. A choir is singing a spiritual, a woman is speaking, crickets are droning in a cedar swamp. They are indicators of things that are changing, says New York artist Allison Janae Hamilton — insects, the migratory patterns of birds, people living with the land. She grew up in Florida…