The flame streams sideways in the wind. The bowl of the torch is gleaming copper — it’s an oil lamp, essentially the same as the lamps that burned in Constantinople 2000 years ago, or in the temple of the Macabees …
Read articleThe Berkshires celebrates all the holidays of light in long nights — Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, the winter solstice and the new year …
Emily Isaacson leads a Classical Uprising
Emily Isaacson remembers attending classical concerts as a teenager, feeling the music viscerally, connecting with the sound. The music was exciting, passionate — it made her want to move …
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Thankful for handmade improvisation (November 24 newsletter)
I was at WallaSauce in the Beaver Mill, in a room full of bright cloth, and then at the Bennington Museum in a show inspired by snow …
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We have liftoff into the Northern Lights (Nov 17 newsletter)
The berries make a vivid streak along the road, and there’s something buoyant about that wash of color now against a grey sky.
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Multimedia and film explore the changing Arctic
Allison Maria Rodriguez was floating in salt water that can have ice floes at this time of year, but she was there in the six weeks of summer, in the brief thaw …
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Japanese prints probe a contemporary world
Saitō Kiyoshi’s Autumn in Nanzen-Ji (1971) is not a classical inkbrush painting, and it’s not a Kandinsky — but Oliver Ruhl thinks it may be kin to both.
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Japanese artists warm up the weekend (November 10 newsletter)
Kiyoshi Saito is walking through a street lined with machiya, tall, lean wooden houses. Afternoon light slants down an alley-way, and he can see someone in silhouette walking from the shadow into the sun …
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New local shops spring up in North Adams
I keep hearing about new places in North Adams lately — offering everything from baked goods to books to begonias — so I’m taking a walk through town.
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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.
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Clear skies ahead (December 30 newsletter)
A few weeks ago I was walking with a friend at night, wandering into back corners of town I’d never seen before, and she asked me what holiday rituals look like for me.
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