A wren is sitting just outside the window. She’s out in the wet and so close to the clapboards we can see her feathers puffed out to keep warm.
Read articleThe Berkshires celebrates all the holidays of light in long nights — Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, the winter solstice and the new year …
First steps into the new year (December 29 newsletter)
I’m with family this week, writing this by the lights on the concolor fir tree while we’re baking Santa Lucia rolls for a friend’s birthday …
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Happy holidays! (December 22 newsletter)
This month has been full of gifts already. I walk into Chocolate Springs one afternoon just as Joshua Needleman is making chocolate peppermint bonbons, and he offers me a taste …
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Wishing you joy and Wassail (December 15 newsletter)
Imagine gathering around an apple tree at night. The trees are wet and starred with early snow. You stand around a bonfire, and people are singing under the full moon …
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Contradance and caroling share a living holiday music
On the floor, one man with a fiddle had the whole room in his hand. People danced in each other's arms, and I had walked out of the snow into the music ...
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Chestnuts are roasting — over the river and through the woods
I’ve never cracked a hard-boiled egg on my dashboard before … The whole day has been like this, zany and surprising. We’re picnicking in my car in unexpected sun, eating with our fingers, in the middle of an expedition.
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Color and light kindle in the cold (December 8 newsletter)
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.
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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.
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Winterlights 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.
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‘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 ….
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