The tulips are glowing around the greenhouse at the foot of the hill, crimson red and flame orange and lemon. … I’ve caught an hour of sunlight on the morning I slipped down to Stockbridge for the daffodil festival, and it feels like pure radiant luck.
Read article
Baby animals return to the Shaker farm
Bill Mangiardi holds a lamb a few days old. She has a twin brother, and their mother has not been feeding them equally, so Mangiardi offers her a bottle of warm milk from a generous nanny goat. …
Read article
Kang Seung Lee honors kin in spirit (April 7 newsletter)
An artist is kneeling with his hands in the earth. Kang Seung Lee has come to Namsan Park in Seoul, and somewhere along the mountain paths and Joseon gardens and 14th-century houses, he is remembering a writer and a filmmaker together.
Read article
Pesach: Going out into a changed world (March 24 newsletter)
On a spring morning a few days before Passover, I remembered sharing seders with old friends. Pesach celebrates a time when everything changes, they told me. Everything is new, and you can’t see ahead.
Read article
Passover brings renewal and a call to action
He remembers the smell of lemon-scented furniture polish. It was the day in spring when his family would open all the windows and rub down the wood. Family was coming for the holiday.
Read article
Farms offer maple syrup in sap houses — and online
Syrup and sugared nuts and fudge-like cream … the sap is boiling, and maple growers are expanding in the Berkshires with web shops. You can stop in for a quart or order one from home.
Read article
Weaver and fiber artist grows and teaches her art
Sculptor, weaver and fiber artist Andrea Myklebust has come a long way from urban centers and metro lines to a farmyard where she cares for the goats and sheep who grow the wool she will weave by hand.
Read article
Shops and co-ops link knitters and locally grown wool
It’s a quiet movement, sliding the yarn over the needle, pulling the loop through and repeating. The the feel of wool can be warm and earthy in your hands.
Read article
Carrie Mae Weems holds her eye on the pandemic
Carrie Mae Weems is internationally known for her work in audio, digital images, video, and above all in photography. She has created Resist Covid: Take 6, a new public work, with messages for surviving in this hard time.
Read article
W.E.B. DuBois strengthens the soul of a community (February 17 newsletter)
This morning I remembered a day in July in a garden along the Housatonic River. A woman was singing in a strong, rich alto, leading a spiritual in the W.E.B. Dubois memorial garden, and we were thinking about how he felt about the town where he was born.
Read article