Artist Trinh Mai and poet Shann Ray have created a book of words and paintings probing a world where the beauty of high canyons and loving relationships can exist at the same time as fission and division.
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Ocean Vuong holds calm in chaos with contemporary poetry rooted in Viet Nam
In honor of National Poetry Month we honor and thank a poet who recently came to visit. Five years ago he was giving readings in Brooklyn — Zachary Finch heard of them through a friend in the city and listened, awe-struck, to poems like Aubade with Burning City. Ocean Vuong […]
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Mothering takes grit and soul — By the Way column
May and Mother’s Day — and women are coming to town this week, dancing and playing music and telling stories, and drawing energy like trees in the rain. As I look through this week’s calendar, I read about Portuguese jazz, and I think of my mother singing to Ray Charles and […]
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Internationally acclaimed poet Nikki Giovanni celebrates life and liberty in the Berkshires
Internationally acclaimed poet and writer, professor and activist Nikki Giovanni took the mike and talked about “life, liberty and — what I most love — ‘the pursuit of happiness.’”
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Art in her hands at International Women’s Day — By the Way column
Women known around the world in art and music have come to the Berkshires, and we remember them as Women’s History Month honors International Women’s Day.
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MCLA women take on Shakespeare’s Henry V with an all-women cast
An all-women cast performs Shakespeare’s Henry V and relishes the freedom it brings them at the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts in North Adams.
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Standing together: Thoughts before the electoral vote — By the Way column
Since the election, I have been trying to think. Like many people I love, I am afraid for the country I live in, and I’m afraid for people I love.
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Puppet theater remembers the woman who saved the Louvre in World War II
Paris. August 28, 1939. The Mona Lisa is carried out of the Musée du Louvre in a stretcher and taken away in an ambulance. Six days later, Germany has declared war on France, and the museum has sent more than 3,600 paintings and sculptures into hiding. Many hands helped. “Café […]
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A Berkshire Orpheus faces gods and monsters at Williamstown Theatre Festival
Orpheus, the Greek singer who walked into the underworld, is walking into an old mill town on a summer night. But she is a new Orpheus. She is a woman with a strong alto voice and a fall of braids down her back. When she and her mother and grandmother […]
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Tunisian and New York musician Emel Mathlouthi sings freedom and peace at MCLA
Tunisian composer, singer and songwriter Emel Mathlouthi has performed at the ceremony for the Nobel Peace Prize — and at MCLA in North Adams.
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