In a weekend of holiday walks, I was wandering around in the flow of the North Adams farmers market, and I found Full Well Farm for the first time.
Read articleThe Berkshires celebrates all the holidays of light in long nights — Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, the winter solstice and the new year …
Wallasauce creates fashion for the future
On the top floor of the Beaver Mill, Sarah DeFusco and Andrew Casteel are working in a room full of cloth. They are becoming known for their colorful crazy-quilt clothing — together they’re Wallasauce.
Read articleWinterlights dance in the dark at Naumkeag
It’s full moon, and I’m walking up the old road across the fields, so I can see the hill above me ... glowing red and gold. Naumkeag in Winterlights is bright as penny candy.
Read article‘Snowflake Bentley’ inspires contemporary makers
Ice crystals form like stars in fractal patterns. They take shape too small for human eyes to see… and here in a museum gallery on a winter night they catch echoes in quartz and silver, abstraction and calligraphy ….
Read articleGifts of time and touch can hold warmth
This holiday, I’m looking for gifts like a warm sip of home-made cordial on a cold night — something that takes time and some quiet thinking. And touch.
Read articleWinter holidays return to the Berkshires
A sip tastes like caramel, but deeper and not overpoweringly sweet, and it’s warm in the back of the throat. It’s color is lighter than amber and darker than gold, almost the color of late oak leaves … Holidays are returning in the Berkshires — even in an uncertain year we can find music and storytelling, light in the dark and energy in local places.
Read articleFirelight and music transform NightWood at the Mount
The flame streams sideways in the wind. The bowl of the torch is gleaming copper — it’s an oil lamp, essentially the same as the lamps that burned in Constantinople 2000 years ago, or in the temple of the Macabees ...
Read articleEmily Isaacson leads a Classical Uprising
Emily Isaacson remembers attending classical concerts as a teenager, feeling the music viscerally, connecting with the sound. The music was exciting, passionate — it made her want to move …
Read articleThankful for handmade improvisation (November 24 newsletter)
I was at WallaSauce in the Beaver Mill, in a room full of bright cloth, and then at the Bennington Museum in a show inspired by snow …
Read articleWe have liftoff into the Northern Lights (Nov 17 newsletter)
The berries make a vivid streak along the road, and there’s something buoyant about that wash of color now against a grey sky.
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