Readings, Signings & Exhibits
Word Up! Taylor Mali on Word X Word Festival 2011 and the Lives of the Poets
What’s the word? Find out this week in Pittsfield at the third annual Word X Word Festival from August 13 – 20. This celebration of words written, spoken and sung—created in 2009 by Jim Benson, proprietor of Mission Bar + Tapas—kicks off with its now-legendary rooftop party, one of the hottest events in the region (tickets are nearly sold out). The week-long festival features more than 60 performances of original song, poetry, theater, fiction, and storytelling—most free—at more than 15 venues throughout the city.
Word X Word 2011 has several new elements, such as a block party this Sunday, August 14, from 3 – 8 pm; the first spoken word contest for high school students, the winner of which will perform during the Festival finale at The Colonial Theatre; and the inclusion of narrative fiction with readings by a selection of nationally recognized novelists and short story writers curated by local author Brendan Mathews, whose own work was included in The Best American Short Stories 2010. And in late-breaking news, Benson has announced that Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick has joined the roster to read excerpts from his memoir, A Reason to Believe.
What’s not new is the festival’s focus on a stunning assortment of emerging singer/songwriters and spoken-word superstars, the latter curated by four-time National Poetry Slam champion Taylor Mali, who divides his time between New York, the Berkshires, and the rest of the world, where he leads writing workshops, curates readings, and judges poetry slams. Mali is a New York City native whose family has lived there since the 1600s; his great-great-grandfather and namesake, John Taylor Johnston (in portrait above, with Mali) was the founding president of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He’s also is a former school teacher best known for his poem What Teachers Make and his advocacy for teachers. He and his wife, poet Marie-Elizabeth Mali, have had a home in the Berkshires since 2007 and have been involved with Word X Word since its inception.
Rural Intelligence cultural correspondent Bess J.M. Hochstein met with Taylor Mali at his Housatonic home to get the inside story on the Word X Word Festival and to find out more about the life of the poet.
Bess Hochstein: How and when did you get involved with the Word X Word Festival?
Taylor Mali: I’ve been involved from the beginning. Jim Benson came to one of my shows three years ago and asked me to help curate the poetry side of things. Last year Marie-Elizabeth and I both curated the poetry, and Jim says it was the poets who saved the festival. This year, I called in a lot of favors to get the people we got, particularly Rachel McKibbens, [2009 Women of the World Poetry Slam Champion, below, who performs on Friday, 8/19] and Buddy Wakefield [two-time World Poetry Slam Champion, performing on Saturday, 8/20].
BH: What do you look for in the artists you enlist for Word X Word?
TM: The ability to connect with an audience or change people’s minds about poetry, perhaps even broaden their definition of what poetry is. I have a love/hate relationship with The New Yorker magazine because the poems they choose to publish, ostensibly some of the BEST CONTEMPORARY POETRY IN THE UNITED STATES, are often only appreciated by people who already know they like poetry. Normal people read those poems and think, “I knew I didn’t like poetry, and this poem proves it.” I’ll never ask a poet like that to perform at Word X Word.
BH: Who are the must-see artists on this year’s Word X Word roster?
TM: They are all amazing. Iyeoka Okaowo [in video, below] performs with me at the opening event on Sunday, 8/14; Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz [three-time National Poetry Slam Champion] is the headline poet on Wednesday, 8/17; Omar Holmon [right] is Thursday, 8/18; Rachel McKibbens on Friday, 8/19; and Buddy Wakefield at the closing show on Saturday, 8/20. If I had to choose two it would be Rachel and Buddy.
BH: Is there a distinction between poets and spoken word artists?
TM: Depends on who you talk to. For me the term poet is a broader term; a spoken-word artist is a type of poet, one who writes poems that will be HEARD before they are read. In fact, a poem by a spoken-word artist may NEVER be read. And that knowledge changes the writing process a little. If you know that your audience will not have the luxury of rereading the poem several times if they don’t understand something, then you tend to write clearer and speak slower. And you choose words that will not obnubilate your message or be received as a vituperative assault on the probity of the reader. (See what I just did?)
BH: How often do you appear in poetry slams?
TM: I don’t actively compete anymore. I’ve won the National Poetry Slam four times so I feel like I’ve pretty much done that. To succeed in a slam, you need to write high-energy poems filled with self-righteous indignation that clock in at about 2:45, and I’m interested in writing different kinds of poems. Longer, shorter, quieter, funnier, more inward looking. That said, if the night is slow or the slam at the Bowery Poetry Club (where I help curate the resident slam series, which is called Urbana) has fewer than eight poets in it, I may well throw my name in the hat to remind the young folks how we used to do it in the old days.
BH: How and when did you become a poet?
TM: I wrote poems as a kid to be like my dad. He used to write rhyming toasts for special occasions: think Dr. Seuss meets Robert Frost. Everyone loved hearing them so I learned early on that poetry was a festive way to entertain people. My mom [Jane L. Mali] was an award-winning children’s book author so I was surrounded with the written word always. That said, the process of becoming a poet is long and unmarked so the more honest answer to your question is “I don’t know. Am I there yet?”
BH: Your family has a long and illustrious history in the city of New York. Any other poets or teachers in the family?
TM: Besides my father, I don’t know of any other poets. And come to think of it, I’m the only teacher in the family that I know of, too. So how “illustrious” can my family be?
BH: You seem to embrace your identity as a WASP in the sometimes gritty realm of slam poetry. How do you make that work for you?
TM: Not very well sometimes. But it’s true, I do embrace my identity as a WASP. Shouldn’t everyone embrace their identity? And it’s true, there aren’t many other WASPs in the spoken-word/poetry slam community. But that makes me a novelty, I think. And my poetry isn’t ABOUT being privileged and coming from old money. It’s informed by that, sure. How could it not be?
BH: Are you still teaching? If so, where?
TM: I haven’t had a full-time teaching job since 2000. That said, yes, I am still teaching. I just do it all over the world now, one day at a time. Sometimes I’m the visiting writer for a week. Rarely is it longer than that, however. I do about 80 gigs a year, which doesn’t quite mean I’m on the road 160 days of the year, but sometimes it feels like that.
BH: In the year 2000, you set a goal to inspire 1000 people to become teachers. How is that going?
TM: Slowly but surely. I’m almost up to 800! If you think my work has helped you decide to become a teacher, please go here to add your name to the list.
BH: So, what’s a poet make?
TM: I make people think, and laugh. I make people furious. I make people change their minds about poetry! But seriously, the travesty is that I earn considerably more as a poet than I ever did as a teacher. In fact, I probably make more than ANY high school teacher makes today, even [those] with a PhD and 40 years of experience in the richest suburb in the country.
Word X Word Festival 2011
August 13 - 20
Downtown Pittsfield, MA
Festival Highlights
Block Party Sunday, August 14 @ 3-8 p.m., Palace Park, North Street. Free
Kick-Off Show Sunday, August 14 @ 8 p.m., CompuWorks Loft, 1 Fenn Street. $30
World premiere staged reading of Mrs. Lincoln’s Séance, a new play by Mark St. Germain, Monday, August 15 @ 7 p.m., Barrington Stage Company, 30 Union Street. Free
Reading & exhibition by artist, critic, and former slam poet Carol Diehl, Thursday, August 18 @ 7 p.m., Berkshire Museum, 39 South Street. Free
Beauty in Decay DISH + DINE dinner and discussion about contemporary photography, Friday, August 19 @ 6:30 p.m., Ferrin Gallery, 433 North Street. $100
Poetry Slam Finals, Saturday, August 20 @ 6 p.m., Shawn’s Barber Shop, 442 North Street. Free
Festival Finale, Saturday, August 20 @ The Colonial Theatre, 111 South Street. $15 - $30
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Posted by Bess Hochstein on 08/08/11 at 04:56 PM • Permalink
The Millbrook Book Festival
The Millbrook Free Library
One of the defining characteristics of the small towns in the Rural Intelligence region is the pride of place that public libraries and independent bookstores have in our communities. When the independent Merritt Bookstore and the Millbrook Free Library join forces, you get a literary tour de force like the 4th annual Millbrook Book Festival that takes place on Saturday, May 14. “We work hard to have a variety of authors so there is something for everyone,” says Alexas Orcutt, one of the organizers. “Whatever you like to read—history, local interest, fiction—there will be authors you will want to meet.”
Literary locavores won’t want to miss the panel called “River of Words: Portraits of Hudson Valley Writers” (10:30 - 11:45 a.m.). Nina Shengold hosts fellow local authors to read from their work and talk about the Hudson Valley literary community. Akiko Busch (Patience), Susan Richards (Saddled), John Darnton (Almost a Family), Marilyn Johnson (This Book is Overdue), Gwendolyn Bounds (Little Chapel on the River). At noon, Millbrook resident Micahel Korda 
will discuss his latest book. Hero: The Life and Legend of Lawrence of Arabia. There should be many laughs at the panel discussion organized by Thelma Adams, the film critic and author of the novel Playdate. Called “She’s A Serious Writer Listen to Your Mother,” the panel features New York Post columnist Tina Traster (Burb Appeal), New Yorker cartoonist Liza Donnelly (When Do They Serve the Wine?), Nina Shengold (River of Words), Jenny Nelson (Georgia’s Kitchen), Daphne Uviler (Hotel No Tell) and Carole Maso (The Art Lover).
The free one-day festival includes two book sales—a tent on the library lawn featuring books by every author participating in the festival and the Friends of Millbrook Library used book, CD and DVD sale where every item is pay what you want. “We’re also closing down a side street as book alley,” says Orcutt. “It’s supposed to be a day of fun that promotes literacy. It doesn’t matter what you read—as long as you do read.”
Millbrook Book Festival
Millbrook, NY
Saturday, May 14; 10 a.m. - 5 p.m.
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Posted by Dan Shaw on 05/11/11 at 05:46 PM • Permalink
A Happening Reading Relaunches the Basilica
A reading of renowned novelist and screenwriter, Rudolph Wurlitzer’s 1984 novel Slow Fade by singer-songwriter, folk-music legend Will Oldham (below), who has played with the band Palace Brothers as Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy. The evening celebrates the release of Slow Fade, the first in a new line of alternative audio books by Chicago’s seminal independent record label, Drag City. Oldham’s voice is on the audio book, but on Thursday night both Wurlitzer and Oldham will participate, accompanied by guitar player Ben Chasny (Six Organs of Admittance) and with photographic projections by acclaimed photographer Lynn Davis. Connecticut-based artist Elisa Ambrogio, of noise rock band Magik Markers, will open the evening with her own reading.
The evening also marks the reopening of the Basilica, the 19th-century-factory-building-turned-performance-and-events-space across from the railway station in Hudson whose former owner, Patrick Doyle, had dubbed it Basilica Industria. Rechristened Basilica Hudson, it’s new owners, the filmmaker Tony Stone and his wife, the singer/songwriter/bassist Melissa Auf der Maur, hope to someday turn the building into a green production facility for film, photo, and music. Meanwhile, they are hosting events, such as Thursday night’s reading, and, on Saturday, Hudson’s First Annual Ramp Festival.
Slow Fade is a portrait of Wesley Hardin, a film director whose life has been devoted to the manipulation of images—on screen and at the conference table, with actors and technicians, even (and especially) with those closest to him. In his 71st year, he tries to divest himself of illusions, to make peace with his demons and his past. Slow Fade is by turns spare and eloquent, dryly humorous and darkly savage, a deeply informed novel about the unshakably transient worlds of the movies and rock-and-roll, as well as a rowdy account of the cultural and generational pas de deux that occurred throughout the 1970s—a dance that inevitably recurs to some degree as each subsequent generation has passed the torch to the next.
Rudolph Wurlitzer is the author of five novels, Nog, Flats, Quake, Slow Fade, and most recently The Drop Edge of Yonder. He is also a screenwriter, responsible for the groundbreaking scripts for Two-Lane Blacktop, as well as Glen and Randa, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, Walker, and Candy Mountain. In 1991, he published the travel diary/memoir, Hard Travel to Sacred Places. He lives in Hudson with his wife, the photographer Lynn Davis.
Basilica Hudson
Across from the railway station.
Thursday, April 28; 6 p.m. - midnight
Suggested donation/$5
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Posted by Marilyn Bethany on 04/21/11 at 04:05 PM • Permalink
Video Intelligence: The RI Interview with “Hero” Author Michael Korda
Michael Korda at home on his farm in Dutchess County.
Apple-cheeked and clutching a steaming cup of Dunkin’ Donuts coffee, the best-selling author Michael Korda doesn’t look tired when he strides from the stables at his Stone Gate Farm in Pleasant Valley, NY, on a recent Sunday morning to greet a video crew from Rural Intelligence. “It is already so cold!” he exclaims, fresh from his morning ride, a ritual he has followed most every day of his life whether in New York’s Central Park or here in the heart of the Hudson Valley. “Let’s get inside so we can talk.”
Korda is eager to discuss his new book, Hero: The Life and Legend of Lawrence of Arabia, and he lead us to his office in the historic white farmhouse that he and his wife have owned for over three decades,. The antique colonial farmhouse, built in 1765, is thought to be the oldest home in the town of Pleasant Valley, and was a central character in Korda’s Country Matters: The Pleasures and Tribulations of Moving from a Big City to an Old Country Farmhouse. (Harper Collins, 2001). The house was initially a weekend retreat and is now their full-time home.
The editor-in-chief emeritus of Simon & Schuster in New York City, Korda has set aside time to talk with Rural Intelligence about Hero: The Life and Legend of Lawrence of Arabia , his new biography of T.E. Lawrence, the British military legend. With this latest book launch in full swing, Korda has been hustling to media interviews and book readings throughout New York City and across the Hudson Valley with recent appearances at Merritt Books in Millbrook , Vassar College, and Marist College. He will reading at Rhinebeck’s Oblong Books on Saturday, Dec. 11 at 7:30 p.m. RI wanted to ask Korda about the book, and naturally, about his life in Pleasant Valley on the eve of the 10th anniversary of the publication of Country Matters. The interview follows in three acts.
Act I: Why Lawrence of Arabia?
Act II: On Lawrence as Media Celebrity
Act III: On Country Life in Dutchess County
Related links:
NPR: Lawrence of Arabia, ‘Hero’ In The Middle East
The New York Times Book Review: “Lawrence: Fresh Look at Warrior of Desert”
DailyBeast: “The Last Hero”
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Posted by Dan Shaw on 12/08/10 at 05:30 PM • Permalink
Michael Korda on His T.E. Lawrence Bio
December 3, @ 5 p.m.; December 4 @ 5 p.m.
According to Michael Korda’s new biography of the British soldier and adventurer T.E. Lawrence (aka Lawrence of Arabia; 1888 – 1935), George Bernard Shaw once scolded his friend, who had just published a biography, Seven Pillars of Wisdom, “Confound you and the book: you are no more to be trusted with a pen than a child with a torpedo.” Nonetheless, Shaw used Lawrence as his model for Saint Joan.
A former editor-in-chief of Simon & Schuster and the author of many books, Michael Korda, who lives in Pleasant Valley (Dutchess County), will read from and discuss his latest, Hero: The Life and Legend of Lawrence of Arabia, as part of the Vassar College Bookstore Author Series on Friday. He will do likewise at Merritt Books on Saturday and at Oblong Books & Music in Rhinebeck on December 11 (for details on this last and a video interview with Korda see Rural Intelligence next week).
Vassar College Bookstore
Main Building
Poughkeepsie, NY; Friday, 5 p.m.
Merritt Bookstore
Millbrook, NY; Saturday, 5 p.m.
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Posted by Marilyn Bethany on 12/02/10 at 08:05 PM • Permalink
Molly O’Neill of “One Big Table” at Oblong
December 4 @ 4 - 6 p.m.
To celebrate the spirit of the season, Oblong Books is hosting a community cookie swap with Molly O’Neill, author of the delectable new cookbook, One Big Table. Oblong has invited local home cooks and professional bakers to rustle up a batch and bring them along with a copy of the recipe to a book-signing/cookie-swap. The most original recipes will appear on O’Neill’s website, One Big Table.com and become part of the One Big Table archive, a treasure trove of American cooking.
Ever since she left The New York Times, where she had been a food columnist for the Sunday magazine, O’Neill has been working on the One Big Table concept, both on-line and on the road through a series of events that “celebrate American home cooking, support local agriculture, and prove that community begins when people gather around a table to eat, drink, talk, laugh, and dream.” Her premise: to investigate the disturbing allegation that Americans no longer cook. What she discovered: Since they really don’t have to, many do not. “Those who choose to cook are throwbacks,” O’Neill says, “who refuse to eat like everybody else.” Among those throwbacks: Andy Rooney, 60 Minutes’ resident curmudgeon, who bakes bread.
Now O’Neill has turned a dozen years of research into one big book—1,000 pages, 600 recipes gathered from home cooks, farmers, fishermen,pit masters, and chefs, illustrated with 800 photographs by Rebecca Busselle, who lives in our region.
Oblong Books & Music
Millerton, NY
RSVP requested: .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address):
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Posted by Marilyn Bethany on 11/30/10 at 12:39 PM • Permalink
Simon Winchester on “Atlantic” at the Cary
Thursday, December 2 @ 7 p.m.
Acclaimed author (and Sandisfield resident) Simon Winchester (The Professor and the Madman) will discuss his new book, Atlantic, which he bills as a “biography of the Atlantic Ocean.” His research took him to weird and wonderful parts of the globe, and he has the pictures to prove it, which he will also share.
Cary Institute
Route 44
Millbrook, NY
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Posted by Marilyn Bethany on 11/27/10 at 11:01 AM • Permalink
Mann and Davis’ “Sacred Landscapes”
Saturday, November 27 @ 6 - 8 p.m.
Generally, the bigger the book, the slighter its content, but this rule of thumb is turned on its head by A.T. Mann and Lynn Davis’s Sacred Landscapes: The Threshold Between Worlds (Sterling Publishers, $35). Yes, it is a big, lushly illustrated “coffee table book,” but it is the rare one that is about something profound—the constructs of man and the accidents of nature that transcend the bounds of earth and reach toward the divine.
Mann argues that magnificent landscapes and the myths they inspired in our forebears permitted them a more profound connection with the physical world. Davis’ haunting images from fifty-seven sacred sites in thirty countries are a powerful reminder of all that is at stake in a world beset by climate change and economic upheaval, where the spokesmen for religion and science strive to invalidate each other. The author suggests that, to restore reason, we must first reawaken our ancient connection to these sacred landscapes, as they are perhaps the only eternal verités we have.
Both A.T. Mann and Lynn Davis are longtime Hudson residents. Davis, whose work is in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum, the Guggenheim Museum, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, among others, will be signing books at a reception at Rural Residence on Saturday evening. A silver gelatin print of one of her photographs, Iceberg 1, Disko Bay, Greenland, 1988, will also be on sale.
Rural Residence
316 Warren Street, Hudson
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Posted by Marilyn Bethany on 11/23/10 at 05:23 PM • Permalink
Paul DeAngelis’ Dear Mrs. Kennedy
By Kathryn Matthews
Saying “I’m sorry for your loss…” is never easy. Especially to the grieving widow of President John F. Kennedy.
On a recent Saturday evening at Oblong Books and Music in Rhinebeck, author Paul De Angelis swallowed hard after reading a letter sent by a Navy chaplain to the newly widowed Jacqueline Kennedy, one of many such condolence letters compiled and annotated by De Angelis in his just-published Dear Mrs. Kennedy (St. Martin’s Press, $19.99). He took a moment. With misty eyes, he looked up at the gathered crowd and said: “That letter gets me every time.”
DeAngelis, who lives in West Cornwall, Connecticut, is the co-publisher and editorial director of About Town, a quarterly community guide covering northern Dutchess and southern Columbia Counties, which he founded with Gail Jaffe-Benneck in 1997. Dear Mrs. Kennedy, is the first byline-authored book for DeAngelis, a veteran writer and editorial director at such publishing companies as St. Martin’s Press, E.P. Dutton and Kodansha America. Until this, he had declined the author spotlight, choosing instead to ghostwrite books.
Two subjects DeAngelis frequently writes about—American culture and politics—converge in Dear Mrs. Kennedy, illuminating a period of history that he remembers well.
DeAngelis was a ninth grader at Leland Jr. High School in Chevy Chase, Maryland on November 22, 1963, when the school made a shocking announcement: the President had been shot. More news: he was seriously wounded. Then, abruptly: President John F. Kennedy was dead.
“The school dismissed us. We walked home, and all the mothers in my neighborhood were waiting in their yards for their kids. We were just shocked and heartbroken,” he recalled.
In the dark days that followed, Americans—the famous, the infamous and ordinary citizens—channeled their collective grief into condolence letters to the President’s widow. They expressed their deep sympathy for her loss and admiration for her deportment, while sharing their own emotions about the tragedy.
Who wrote to Mrs. Kennedy? Everyone. Winston Churchill. Lauren Bacall. Noel Coward. Martin Luther King, Jr. Chiang Kai-shek. Nikita Khruschev. Josephine Baker. Children. Priests. Soldiers. Prison inmates.
All told, well over a million condolence letters from the U.S. and around the world poured into the White House. Nancy Tuckerman, Jackie’s social secretary, undertook the mammoth task of sorting through the mail—with the help of 300 volunteers, many of them women in the First Lady’s social circle. A gracious Jackie pledged that these letters would be displayed at the future John F. Kennedy Library for all to see.
She meant every word in the moment.
A month before he was assassinated, Kennedy had picked out the site for the JFK Library in Boston. Fifteen years passed. By the time the Kennedy Library finally opened in 1979, part of the collection had suffered water damage while in storage. In 1983, the archival staff applied “scientific sampling” (e.g., keeping every seventh letter) to further cull the remaining (undamaged) correspondence. The final collection—some 204,000 letters—continued to reside at the Library in relative obscurity.
Enter Jay Mulvaney. He had become familiar with this collection of condolence mail while writing several books about the Kennedy family. Mulvaney proposed another Kennedy-themed book—based on the letters—to St. Martin’s Press, who green-lighted the project. In 2007, several months later—after copying nearly a thousand letters—Mulvaney abruptly died of a heart attack.
The project found its way to DeAngelis, whose suburban Washington D.C. upbringing and enduring interest in American politics and culture seemingly came full-circle.
DeAngelis (above) grew up in Chevy Chase, Maryland, spending some of his childhood abroad—in Greece (where he was born) and in Bologna, Italy (where he went to fourth and fifth grades)—before attending prep school in Andover, Massachusetts, then college at Harvard. After graduating, DeAngelis spent over two decades in Manhattan, where he worked in book publishing before moving full-time to Tivoli in Dutchess County, then, to West Cornwall in Litchfield County with his wife Elisabeth Kaestner and their daughter Addie.
DeAngelis described his parents as “FDR Liberals who were pro-JFK.” During the Kennedy administration, his father, who had worked for the Bureau of the Budget in Washington, then USAID, had run into the President on several occasions. In their Chevy Chase neighborhood, Roger Hilsman, the assistant secretary of state for Far Eastern Affairs, and his family lived on one side of the DeAngelis’; on the other side, two doors down, was Betty Smith, Caroline Kennedy’s dance teacher.
“If we were not exactly rubbing shoulders with Camelot, we felt that we were rubbing shoulders with those who were,” said DeAngelis with a chuckle.
For the few hundred letters featured in the book, DeAngelis sifted through 10,000-15,000 pieces of condolence mail. Most striking, he noted, was how people reacted to the tragedy in so many different ways. Some voiced their suspicion about conspiracies. Others reacted religiously, asking Jackie to “trust in God”. Some shared their dreams in which the President had appeared to them. Still others re-dedicated themselves to living up to JFK’s ideals. A few who expressed sympathy also had personal agendas, like the mother of a Texas country music singer who asked the First Lady to help arrange a recording for a song that her son had written about the President’s assassination.
“This is a very sociologically and anthropologically significant collection,” said DeAngelis, whose deftly written and eloquent narrative lends historic context, illuminating the national mood and mindset of the time
His biggest challenge was locating the original authors for permissions to include their letters in the book. Luckily, DeAngelis had help, including his wife Elisabeth Kaestner and two colleagues. There were also some regrets. The Kennedy estate did not consent to having Jackie’s letters published. And tracking down government officials outside the US sometimes proved a Kafka-esque exercise in futility. “I had really wanted to include Indira Ghandi’s letter, but never received official permission to do so,” he said.
Tuckerman had supervised the sorting of some 1.25 million pieces of condolence mail, separating those that came from personal friends and VIPs and those from citizens and organizations. The process took over a year.
Old school to the core, Jackie felt compelled to respond. On St. Patrick’s Day, 1964, Tuckerman and her crew obliged her request, sending out nearly 750,000 acknowledgement cards from Mrs. Kennedy. “These notes are now highly prized objects,” said DeAngelis.
A close friend and classmate of Jackie Kennedy at Miss Porter’s School in Farmington, CT, Tuckerman was chosen by the First Lady to be her social secretary. She now lives near DeAngelis in Salisbury, Connecticut. And, in neighborly fashion, she participated in DeAngelis’ October 30th reading of Dear Mrs. Kennedy at Cornwall Library. (Her niece, Phyllis Palmer, attended the Oblong-Rhinebeck reading.)
Forty-seven years have passed since JFK’s assassination. Camelot was not as it had appeared. Nor is Kennedy’s reputation, which as DeAngelis delicately pointed out, “has gone through many evolutions”.
The letters, however, remain vivid, offering an authentic window to the past. For young people, such as his 23-year-old daughter, the takeaway of the book, said DeAngelis, is a vital sense of an event that forever shaped their parents’ lives.
Paul DeAngelis will be reading at the Hunt Library, Falls Village, CT; December 4, 4 p.m.
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Posted by Marilyn Bethany on 11/03/10 at 07:47 AM • Permalink
The Frankies’ Spuntino Kitchen Companion
November 6 @ 3 – 6 p.m.
Let’s start by parsing the title. The Frankies are two chefs, both named Frank, who knew each other as kids, then went on to do a lot of swell chef-ing here and abroad before deciding (long before it became a trend—2004) that they’d had enough of the big time and just wanted to open a nice little restaurant that served the kind of food they both loved—let’s call it (since they do) Grandma’s Italian. That’s the story of Spuntino, Brooklyn, which was such a hit, the Frankies soon followed it with another Spuntino in Manhattan, then a third place, Prime Meats, on the Lower East Side, then a catering company, and, after that, a couple of cafes. So much for keeping it simple.
Recently, the Frankies Industry expanded again, into publishing. Their cookbook is rife with shortcuts and insider tricks gleaned from years of working in topnotch kitchens, tutorials on everything from making fresh pasta 
to tying braciola, even an amusing discourse on Brooklyn-style Sunday “sauce” (ragu). But the big pay-off: Frank Castronovo (near right) and Frank Falcinelli share every single recipe—from small bites such as Cremini Mushroom and Truffle Oil Crostini, to hearty main dishes, including homemade Cavatelli with Hot Sausage & Browned Butter— that made Spuntino, in the words of The New York Times’ Frank Bruni, “completely satisfying”, adapted here for the home cook. (They got help with the book from former Timesman, the food writer Peter Meehan.) This Saturday, both Franks will be in Rhinebeck to talk about and sign copies of their book.
bluecashew Kitchen Pharmacy
Rhinebeck
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Posted by Marilyn Bethany on 10/27/10 at 03:01 PM • Permalink
Deborah Tannen at Bard College
November 4 @ 7 p.m.
Deborah Tannen, whose You Just Don’t Understand: Women and Men in Conversation was on the New York Times Best Seller List for nearly four years, will give a free talk as part of Bard’s Distinguished Scientist Lecture Series and Women and Science Project. A professor of linguistics at Georgetown University and author of many books and articles about how the language of everyday conversation affects relationships, her most recent book, You Were Always Mom’s Favorite! Sisters in Conversation Throughout Their Lives, is now out in paperback. Her talk will be followed by a book signing.
F.W. Olin Auditorium at Bard College
Annandale-on-Hudson, NY
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Posted by Dan Shaw on 10/27/10 at 10:19 AM • Permalink
Roseanne Cash Tells All to Joe Donohue
Sunday, October 10 @ 2 p.m.
We all know Joe Donohue, WAMC’s peerless interviewer, and many of us feel as if we know singer-songwriter Roseanne Cash, daughter of Johnny, stepdaughter of June Carter Cash, author of essays and fiction. After all, for decades we’ve listened to lyrics (hers and theirs) and seen the documentary and feature film about them. But when Joe interviews Rosanne about her new book, Composed: A Memoir, we suspect we’ll find out that, until that moment, we really didn’t know her at all. This is a ticketed event, hosted by Oblong Books & Music, but in anticipation of a big turnout, it is being held at a church down the street from their Rhinebeck store.
Parish Hall at the Church of the Messiah
6436 Montgomery Street (one block north of the bookstore)
Rhinebeck
Tickets/$5; cost will be deducted from the purchase of books or CDs at the event
Reservations recommended.
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Posted by Marilyn Bethany on 10/05/10 at 09:24 AM • Permalink
Award-Winning Authors at Music & More
Saturday, October 2 @ 4:30 p.m.
The “more” part concludes Music & More’s 2010 season with a roundtable conversation among three regionally based, nationally prominent authors— non-ficiton writer Marion Roach Smith; novelist Scott Spencer; and Wall Street Journal drama critic and arts columnist Terry Teachout— hosted by Mitchel Levitas, a 45-year veteran of The New York Times. Not surprisingly, new books play a role in the selection of authors. Roach Smith has drawn on the lessons of her perennially sold-out class for Writing What You Know: Realia; Spencer’s latest novel, Man in the Woods, was recently published by Ecco; and Teachout’s most recent book is the biography Pops: A Life of Louis Armstrong. Attendees can enjoy a 10% discount on dinner at the neighboring Old Inn on the Green following the discussion; RSVP required.
Music & More at the Meeting House
New Marlborough, MA
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Posted by Bess Hochstein on 09/26/10 at 04:44 PM • Permalink
William Kennedy to Read at Bard
Monday, October 4 @ 6:30 p.m.
“What James Joyce did for Dublin and Saul Bellow did for Chicago, William Kennedy has done for Albany, New York,” wrote critic James Atlas in Vogue. Kennedy is the author of eight novels, including Legs and Ironweed, which won the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction; three books of nonfiction; two screenplays; stage plays; essays; and two children’s books. He is a professor of English at SUNY Albany and founder and executive director of the New York State Writers Institute. Kennedy will be introduced by novelist and Bard literature professor Bradford Morrow. Kennedy’s reading, part of Morrow’s Innovative Contemporary Fiction course, is open to the public and free. It will be followed by an 8 p.m. screening of the film Ironweed, based on Kennedy’s Pulitzer Prize–winning novel and starring Jack Nicholson and Meryl Streep.
Weis Cinema in the Bertelsmann Campus Center
Bard College
Annandale-on-Hudson
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Posted by Marilyn Bethany on 09/26/10 at 09:56 AM • Permalink
“Woodland Style” Book Launch and Exhibit
Saturday, September 25 @ 5 - 7 pm
While some of us shop for artful objects to add depth and dimension to our rooms, others more imaginative are beating the bushes for them instead. In Woodland Style, just released by Storey Publishing, author Marlene Marshall selects desirable objets de virtue fashioned from pine cones, acorns, moss, bark, leaves, twigs, tree branches, and river rocks, and shares their makers’ secrets for fashioning them. To launch the book, which was photographed by Sabine Vollmer von Falken, the Berkshire Museum is hosting an exhibition of these extraordinary craft pieces and a book-signing fete, as well.
Berkshire Museum
Pittsfield
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Posted by Marilyn Bethany on 09/19/10 at 03:45 PM • Permalink
Lane Smith Defends Print
Saturday, September 18 @ noon
Best-selling children’s book author Lane Smith (Madam President and John, Paul, George & Ben) will read from and sign his latest, It’s a Book, a defense of print in the digital age targeted at little ones. Smith, who lives in Litchfield County, relays his message in his usual lighthearted-yet-subversive manner, a style that makes his books big hits with both children and those who read aloud to them.
Oblong Books & Music
Millerton
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Posted by Marilyn Bethany on 09/13/10 at 03:10 PM • Permalink
Spencertown Academy Festival of Books
Friday, September 3 - Monday, September 6
This weekend bookworms and bibliophiles by the thousands will descend upon the tiny hamlet of Spencertown, NY for the Spencertown Academy’s Fifth Annual Festival of Books, three days of free programs featuring more than twenty nationally and internationally-known authors, a sale of gently broken-in books, a gallery of book-themed photographs, children’s book-related activities, and, of course, parties. On Friday night, a cocktail reception at the Academy for members and friends will feature “A Few Words about Food,” readings selected by Wesley Brown, professor emeritus at Rutgers University, and read by, among others, Ralph Jannetti, proprietor of Ralph’s Pretty Good Cafe in Chatham, who will recite “Coffee,” a poem by Ogden Nash. On Sunday night, the action shifts to the grounds of the Austerlitz Historical Society, scene of this year’s Books & Blues Barbecue.
The Festival theme this year, Books That Changed My Life, emerged some months ago when the writer Susan Orlean, posting on Twitter, posed the question, “What book changed your life?” and received tens of thousands of replies citing everything from math textbooks to the Bible, classics to contemporary fiction. Orlean, who lives in Gallatin, will be keynote speaker at the festival, one of twenty distinguished authors, including Ann Hood, Madhur Jaffrey, Sally Helgesen, and Emily Arnold McCully who will conduct presentations, readings and/or book signings. Orlean, a staff writer at The New Yorker and author of, among other books, The Orchid Thief, will be interviewed at noon on Saturday by the author Sheila Weller. The topic: the tweet that turned into a phenomenon.
Star-power aside, the heart of this Festival is and always has been the giant book sale, featuring over 10,000 titles, nearly all priced between $1 and $3 (the only exceptions: a special selection of attractively-priced first editions and rare books). Carefully sorted and organized by dozens of volunteers who have worked throughout the summer, the quality of the books donated this year is outstanding, according to Book Sale chair Allan Davidson. “There are literally thousands of great books, particularly in literary fiction, history, biography, and memoir. Shoppers will not be disappointed.”
Spencertown Academy Festival of Books
790 Route 203,
Spencertown, NY
First early buying opportunity and cocktail party/$25, Friday 6 p.m.
Second early-buying opportunity/$20, Saturday, 8 a.m. - 10:00 a.m.
Book sale: Saturday & Sunday 10 a.m. - 5 p.m.; Monday 10 a.m. to 3 p.m./free
Special programs for adults, Saturday noon - 6 p.m.
Special Programs for Children
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Posted by Marilyn Bethany on 08/30/10 at 01:58 PM • Permalink
“The Lonely Phone Booth” Author Reads
Saturday, August 21 @ 11 a.m.
Peter Ackerman celebrates a humble phone booth, still standing at 100th Street and West End Avenue, in his first children’s book. It all began one day when he and his sons, 6 and 3, were walking past it, and the 3-year-old asked, “Why is that phone in a box?” Ackerman learned that it was one of only 4 proper phone booths left in Manhattan, which got him wondering what it must feel like to be one of those phone booths, once so crucial to people’s well being, now on the verge of extinction. So Ackerman, the screenwriter of the Ice Age movies, wrote a book about a phone booth that saves the Upper West Side—and vice versa.
Merritt Bookstore
Red Hook, NY
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Posted by Marilyn Bethany on 08/19/10 at 09:41 AM • Permalink
Thomas O’Brien, Author of “American Modern” at Hudson Home
August 14 @ 5 - 7 p.m.
If there had never been an Aero, Thomas O’Brien’s seminal home design store in Soho, there never would have been a—well, just look around. The hip-yet-accessible, clean-lined-yet-un-rigid, look of today’s dominant interior-design style is the result, in significant measure, of the influence exerted by O’Brien through his interior design work and the things he has sold for the past fifteen years in his store. Now he has written a lushly-illustrated book, “American Modern,” that sheds further light on his thinking, and he will be in Hudson this Saturday to meet and greet his admirers.
Hudson Home
356 Warren Street
Hudson; 518.822.8120
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Posted by Marilyn Bethany on 08/09/10 at 08:05 PM • Permalink
Millbrook Author Reads from Debut Novel
Saturday, August 7 @ 11 a.m & 5 p.m.
Jenny Nelson, who lives in Millbrook, will read from and sign her debut novel, Georgia’s Kitchen, the story of Georgia Gray, the head chef at a trendy New York restaurant who travels to Tuscany to open a trattoria.
Merritt Books
Red Hook, 11 a.m. and Millbrook, 5 p.m.
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Posted by Marilyn Bethany on 08/04/10 at 11:13 AM • Permalink
