Half a mile from the trailhead, the boardwalk heads into ferns almost as tall as I am, and I’ve only seen a place like this once or twice before. It’s been eight years since I came to Hawley Bog.
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Celestials from China change North Adams in 1870
The Celestials, a group of young men, came from China to North Adams in 1870 to work in a shoe factory, and Mass MoCA recalls their story. Imagine them looking out the train windows here for the first time.
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Parable of the Sower — science fiction feels current
Octavia Butler wrote The Parable of the Sower as a novel set in a world on the edge of collapse, in 2024, and Toshi Reagon has written an opera based on the book. I remember the nnight her music came here.
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MCLA and Berkshire museums bring energy in hard times
This spring, museums in the Berkshires are moving online. Cultural and creative places have faced abrupt disruption, and they are cutting back, but at the same time they are reaching out.
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Berkshire creative places are adapting to a virtual world
I’ve been talking with Berkshire creative places as they try to navigate in the physically distanced world coronavirus has created and reconnect online.
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Mass MoCA cuts back to weather the pandemic
The coronavirus pandemic is putting a strain on many artists and museums and creative spaces. Last week Mass MoCA laid off 120 of their 160 staff. It shakes me as a writer in the Berkshires, and I’ve been thinking about why.
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The Berkshires navigates concerns over the corona virus (BTW column)
This rambling website is all about getting out and finding people. And now, with the concern over illness spreading daily, the prevailing wisdom is to stay home, sit quietly, wash your hands. What is responsible, when all of this is new to us?
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Thom Smith looks for giants — old growth trees
Old growth woods have never been harvested. As much as 70 percent of the Berkshires’ woods were cut down between the arrival of the first European colonists and the Civil War — but in pockets, often in hard-to-reach places, giant trees still grow.
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Nikole Hannah-Jones reflects on the 1619 Project and 400 years of history
Nikole Hannah-Jones has launched the 1619 Project in the New York Times Magazine to look clearly at slavery and the many ways black Americans have fundamentally shaped this country.
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Berkshire birders join in the global Great Backyard Bird Count
On February 14 to 17, some 32 million people around the world will join the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and the National Audubon Society in the annual Great Backyard Bird Count, and Berkshire birders will share the quest.
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