Surrounded by the crumbling world, women begin to sing. The world as they’ve known it has ended, and yet there is movement, and growth, and the promise of new life.
Read articleHow to bring home a living Christmas tree — By the Way column
I was looking out from a field across from the Pleasant Valley Tree Farm, up above Bennington, Vt. I had decided I’d like a Christmas tree this year.
Read articleKayak around a floating island at Sadawga Lake
If you won’t have many opportunities to kayak in Southern Vermont this summer, why not choose a rare body of water? The 200-acre Sadawga Lake is said to be named for Chief Sadawga, an American Indian known to camp on its shore, and rumor has it he could swim under its […]
Read articleRoss Gay’s ‘Unabashed Gratitude’ surges with life
On a spring night in Bloomington, Indiana, Ross Gay is planting young lettuces. Winter has hung on so long, a warm evening feels new — to stand barefoot in a troweled furrow with the air smelling of earth and stems, and peels in the compost pile.
Read articleMountain Meadow on a fall morning
Berkshire naturalist Thom Smith takes a fall walk in the northern hills. With land in Pownal Vermont and Williamstown, Massachusetts, I cannot think of a lovelier autumn walk than the preserve we call Mountain Meadow. Choose an afternoon with few clouds, when walking will be even more pleasurable if skies are […]
Read articleClemens Kalischer captures half a century of change on film
At the Old Bennington Weavers textile mill, looms hold fabrics for an artist and fashion designer, Tzaims Luksus, known for his graphics on silk. In Brattleboro, artisans at the family-run Anderson Pipe Organ Company are shaping pipes by hand from sheet metal. Crafters go about their work and grey-haired men […]
Read articleNorthern Berkshire museums meet in color field abstraction and colossal collage
In 1999, the summer Mass MoCA opened, Robert Rauschenberg came several times to see his work installed in the football-field-sized gallery in building 5. The 1/4 Mile or 2 Furlong Piece gathered images from athletes and animals to umbrellas and planets. In collage or silkscreened onto fabrics, aluminum and copper, […]
Read articlePhillip B. Williams — Love and sadness in free verse
Bound, it begins. ‘Wasn’t night what lingered where sweat left / salt, where breath touch-expired?’ Bound is the title of the first poem in Phillip B. Williams ‘Thief in the Interior,’ a book that opens with confinement and insistent motion and closes with a movement outward into a changed life.
Read articleArtists gather at the Marble House
Lara Palmquist usually works in a cabin without electricity, but on this sweltering afternoon she has set up a standing desk and a balance board in a quiet, spare studio room.
Read articleDael Orlandersmith reveals pain and endurance in ‘Forever’
It’s close July dusk in Paris. Dael Orlandersmith strikes a light and invites us on a walk. We are at the Père Lachaise Cemetery, looking for the names and resting places of Richard Wright, Colette, Balzac, Oscar Wilde.
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