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.
Read articleIndependent bookstores have a loyal following in and around the Berkshires, and they grow in an ecosystem of independent presses and local writers, writing residencies and creative centers like the Mount, Edith Wharton’s historic home in Lenox. W.E.B. DuBois, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville and Robert Frost, and Edna St. Vincent Millay and Shirley Jackson have all lived here …
Gifts 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.
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Asking who Emily Dickinson loved
Emily Dickinson is more than I knew. The metaphysical recluse in white is a hurt, outspoken, ardent woman in a smock the wind can blow through.
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Writers warm up with festivals in early fall
“Despite a strong midday sun, the road was all green shadow thanks to trees thick and tall as a god’s fingers. My old block trees were like zoo elephants — one or two specimens stunted by a cement habitat. But this chaos of greenery had my heart calling dibs.” Quiara […]
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‘Hello, Bookstore’ film appears at BIFF
This week the Berkshire International Film Festival will screen Adam Zax’ new feature film about Matt Tannenbaum and his family, and the community that has carried the Bookstore through the pandemic.
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Russell Banks excavates a bare and rugged New England
Russell Banks came to talk about how to put a book together, how to make a character human, how to make us admit that any character, no matter how broken, is like us — how to drop the defenses and put aside the scrims.
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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.
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The Berkshires Farm Table Cookbook savors local stories
On a warm and quiet day, Elisa Spungen Bildner was sitting with Kim Wells, the farmer at East Mountain Farm in Williamstown. They had walked up into the woods where his pigs forage in summer …
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Safiya Sinclair forges a contemporary, supple Carribean voice
In the days after the 2016 election, Safiya Sinclair sat in a quiet study and wrote new poems. She was walking around scared and depressed, she said. The feeling is strong, and it is also familiar.
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