Listen Locally! The Community Radio Renaissance
Call it the new Golden Age of Radio. The people have spoken, and they want to hear themselves and their neighbors instead of overpaid pontificators or market-researched playlists. In the Rural Intelligence region, there are three young not-for-profit community radio stations that provide an eclectic mix of homegrown news, talk and music: WBCR Berkshire Community Radio (97.7 FM in Great Barrington); WHDD Robin Hood Radio (91. FM in Sharon, CT, and 91.7 FM in Sheffield, MA); WGXC Hands-On Radio (90.7 in Columbia and Greene Counties, which is currently streaming on the Internet and is scheduled to start broadcasting from Hudson in the fall.) All share a common purpose—to provide a platform for authentic, local voices that reflect the diversity of their listening areas.
“We are the white board for the community,” says lawyer Paul Rapp, president of the board of WBCR, which is run entirely by volunteers and survives on donations and fundraisers such as a talk by Amy Goodman (right) of Democracy Now! (which airs weekdays at 5 p.m.) who will speak on “The Role of Independent Media in Promoting Social Justice” on Friday, July 16, at Monument Mountain Regional High School. “Our priority is to provide access to anyone who wants to have a radio program and reach under-served communities such as the local Spanish-speaking population. We have 100 programs that run between 6 a.m. and midnight, and it can seem schizophrenic. You can have a teenager playing heavy metal followed by a teacher talking about alternative healing followed by a retiree playing greatest hits from the American songbook.”
When WBCR went on the air five years ago, there was concern that it would be dominated by “middle-aged white guys like me playing rock and roll,” says Rapp, who moonlights with the 30-year-old band Blotto (whose video for “I Wanna Be a Lifeguard” was played on MTV on its debut day in 1981). Rapp is heartened to see teenage programmers arrive at the studio ready to create shows from the music on their iPods, and he enjoys introducing them to vinyl. “I had to teach some of them how to play records!” he says. “They’ve never seen a turntable and don’t know how to find the songs on an album.”
Community radio brings neighbors together and allows novices to express themselves in new ways. Carole Murko of Stockbridge, who is hoping one day to have a TV show and cookbook called Heirloom Meals, has a weekly program on WBCR. She recently interviewed Ruth Reichl, the former New York Times restaurant critic and editor-in-chief of Gourmet, who has a weekend house in Austerlitz. “WBCR has shown me that many people with varied interests in music and topics can come together and create an all-volunteer organization that self-organizes to support free speech,” she says. “As for me, it has given me the opportunity to pursue a media channel for Heirloom Meals. Each week I have to invite a guest, prepare for the interview and offer interesting content for my listeners. It has allowed me to begin to take ownership of my idea in a real live media setting. “
Robin Hood Radio (which recruited Rural Intelligence a few months ago to produce a weekly segment) has the distinction of being the smallest NPR affiliate in the United States. “We’re a community radio station that happens to have NPR programming,” says Marshall Miles, who founded the radio station with astrologer Jill Goodman. “We started online only first. We think of this as boutique radio designed specifically for our audience, which includes weekenders and people like myself who were born here.”
Only a small fraction of Robin Hood’s programming comes from NPR or Public Radio International. Most of it is locally produced and Miles—who helped start WKZE (98.1 FM) which is a commercial radio station with a not-for-profit soul—spends his weekends doing live remotes from community events. “I always start Saturday at the Wandering Moose in West Cornwall which helps generate traffic for the farmers’ market,” he explains. “Then we might cover a dog adoption day or a pancake breakfast. Last weekend, we covered the Housatonic Railroad‘s trip from Canaan to Great Barrington and the jazz concert at Music Mountain.” He relies on local experts to produce weekly programs such as antique-and-rare book dealer Darren Winston’s Book Report; Martha Stewart Living alumna Margaret Roach who gives voice to her A Way to Garden blog; and the doctors at Sand Road Animal Hospital who have a show called Pet Files: Ask the Vet.
By working with both established and new media, community radio stations fill a void left by newspapers that have disappeared or slashed their reporting staffs to the bare bones. “We are in a media ghetto between New York City and Albany,” says Tom Roe, program director of WGXC, which is devoted to serving Columbia County and its neighbor across the river, Greene County. “Citizen journalism is a key part of our mission, and we have a training program,” says Roe, who describes himself as a radio artist. “We have correspondents and a Town Recorder project that allows people to record important town meetings. We put it up as raw information. Victor Mendolia recorded the Hudson Common Council meeting the other night when they discussed the future of the waterfront.”
These radio stations have one foot in the small-town past and one in the high-tech future. “We are trying to do 1940s radio with 2010 technology,” says Roe, who sees community radio as bringing together artists, journalists and amateurs. “Orson Welles and John Cage are two of the giant figures in radio,” says Roe, who points out that five years from now most people will have Internet radio and be able to listen to anything anywhere.
Accessibility and inclusion are fundamental to community radio stations. Says WBCR’s Paul Rapp: “When I am filling out grant applications and it asks what percentage of the community we serve, I always answer 100 percent!” When WBCR become a full power station in a few years, there will be spots where all three of these stations overlap, which does not worry Robin Hood’s Miles. “The more community radio stations that exist, the better for the world,” he says.
WBCR Berkshire Community Radio (97.7 FM in Great Barrington)
WHDD Robin Hood Radio (91. FM in Sharon, CT, and 91.7 FM in Sheffield, MA)
WGXC Hands-On Radio (90.7 in Columbia and Greene Counties)
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Posted by Dan Shaw on 07/15/10 at 05:54 AM • Permalink
The First Annual Hudson Gay Pride Parade
There were rainbow flags flying in front of many shops and restaurants along Warren Street in Hudson on Sunday, June 20, as the raffish, stylish Columbia County city officially laid claim to being the gay capital of the Rural Intelligence region with the 1st Annual Hudson Gay Pride Parade. It was a true coming together of long-time Hudson residents, transplants from New York City, and weekenders along with residents of nearby Berkshire, Dutchess and Litchfield counties a celebration of openness, diversity and acceptance. And where else would you find crowds applauding a float with children from the local day care center and the high school prom king and queen (both out gay boys) and a vintage pick-up truck with a banner that read “Gay Farmers & Friends”?
Helping to redefine “rural intelligence.”
A rainbow of drag queens dressed by Lisa Durfee of Five & Diamond Vintage comprised the Five & Diamond “float.”
Charlie Ferrusi and Timmy Howard—he grand marshals and prom king and queen of Hudson High School—were driven down Warren Street by Frank Faulkner.
The parade reflected the rainbow of people who call Hudson and our region home.
A MINI makes a big statement.
For at least one day, everyone seemed to have the same politics.
The day care center’s float.
Hudson activist Trixie Starr.
A stiltwalker on Warren Street.
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Posted by Dan Shaw on 06/21/10 at 06:11 AM • Permalink
Prom Kids Galvanize Hudson for Gay Pride Weekend
That queen is no heroine; in fact, he is every bit as much a hero as the king. Charlie Ferrusi and Tim Howard, the openly gay Hudson High School seniors who ran for Prom King and Queen and won by a landslide in a vote by the student body, made history and headlines a week or so ago, and they have the gay community in Hudson bursting with pride. Well timed, too, as this Sunday, a day-long-plus celebration, Hudson Pride, kicks off with a parade, to be followed by a roster of activities, all commemorating the Stonewall riots, those spontaneous acts of civil disobedience in a Greenwich Village bar that launched the gay liberation movement in 1969.
“We had been hearing people talk about the Gay Pride Parade and were only mildly interested,” says the artist and designer Frank Faulkner of he and his partner, Philip Kesinger, a retired FBI agent. “But when this thing at Hudson High hit last week, we realized that everyone needs to get behind it. It’s as tremendous in its way as Stonewall was. So when we heard that the boys had agreed to be Grand Marshals of the parade, we immediately offered to drive them in our convertible.”
The celebration officially kicks off on Saturday across the river in Catskill, switching to Hudson that evening, June 19th, when an already sold-out sunset cruise on the Spirit of Hudson departs from Henry Hudson Riverfront Park. Then on Sunday at noon, the parade leaves 7th and Warren for a two-mile crawl down to Promenade Hill. There the Hudson Pride Festival, a rally with speakers (including the Prom Kids), vendors, music and performances, will go on all afternoon. From 5 - 9 p.m. there will a tea dance, which, ironically, the Grand Marshals of the parade are not old enough to attend. But they and their friends are welcome to attend a talk, “Stonewall, It All Started Here,” by Ed Beaty, one of the original participants in the riots
Kevin Moran, owner of (pm) Winebar in Hudson and one of the organizers of the events, says, “We’re partnering with Catskill to have a gay pride weekend, instead of just a day. Saturday will be mostly events in Catskill; Sunday is all Hudson.”
Asked if he thought the prom connection had given the event a shot of adrenalin, Moran said, “We already were doing a good job of getting the word out. In fact, Charlie and Timmy came to one of our meetings. They said they wanted to get a bunch of high school kids—gays, friends of gays, parents of gays— to march in the parade, which amazed us, because we didn’t think the school would want to have anything to do with it. So we were excited enough that they were going to be in the parade. We didn’t hear about the prom thing until after it happened. That supercharged it.”.
Hudson Pride Parade
Warren Street,
Sunday, June 20, starts at noon
Hudson Pride Festival
Promenade Hill, Sunday, June 20, 1 - 5 p.m.
“Stonewall; It All Started Here” (all ages are welcome)
A talk by Stonewall participant Ed Beaty
Space 360
Sunday, June 20, 5 - 6 p.m.
Hudson Pride Tea Dance (21 & over)
Red Dot
321 Warren Street
5 - 9 p.m.
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Posted by Marilyn Bethany on 06/14/10 at 01:45 PM • Permalink
Berkshire Film Festival’s Kelley Vickery Paints the Town Red
“Parties are not the point of BIFF,” says Kelley Vickery, the hands-on founder of the Berkshire International Film Festival. “The programming is.” Nevertheless, every year BIFF ups the glamour factor for its parties, which is why Vickery negotiated with the Town of Great Barrington to use the old firehouse on Castle Street as party central in exchange for cleaning and painting it. Whether the town knew that Vickery planned to paint the interior fire-engine red is unclear. Nevetheless, two weeks ago, Vickery (left) and a crew of volunteers were rolling bright red paint onto the old brick walls that will be the backdrop for the opening night dinner for 225 guests (catered by Dan Mathieu’s MAX Ultimate Food) before the screening at the Mahaiwe of Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work, which will be followed by a “Disco Inferno” Dance Party ($20) at the firehouse from 9 p.m. - midnight.
Parties are ephemeral, and so, alas, are many independent films. “Documentaries and shorts often don’t have a long shelf life,” says Vickery, who screened more than 500 entries this year. “One of the functions of a film festival is to show documentaries and shorts that may never have commercial runs.” This year’s documentaries include Climate Refugees, How To Hold A Flag, Sweet Crude, and Stone River.
To build a bigger audience, Vickery moved the festival from mid May to early June. “As silly as it sounds, we used to have BIFF at the same time as the Cannes Film Festival, which was a problem—it prevented us from getting certain films and talent,” she says. “We also seemed to be conflicting with college graduations and many second homeowners don’t start coming regularly until after Memorial Day, and we wanted them to be able to attend.” And why did she decide to screen films not only in Great Barrington but also in Pittsfield at the Beacon Cinema and the Berkshire Museum’s Little Cinema? “Why not?” says Vickery, who’s proud that BIFF banners now hang on lamp posts in both Great Barrington and Pittsfield. “We wanted to see if we expand and appeal to more filmgoers in north county.”
Vickery’s expansion plan seems to be working. One of the festival’s marquee events—Friday’s Tribute Night Achievement Award that is going to Patricia Clarkson this year—sold out last week. “She’s the quintessential indie actress,” says Vickery. “We’re screening her new film, Cairo Time , which doesn’t open until August, and she’ll be honored by directors Peter Hedges and Rubba Nadda and actors Lauren Ambrose and Chris Noth, who was at Yale with her.” BIFF has also sold out of all of its $150 and $250 all-inclusive Great Barrington passes, though all-inclusive passes for Pittsfield at $125 are still available and single tickets at $10 each are still available for many films.
5th Annual Berkshire International Film Festival
June 3 - 6
Great Barrington & Pittsfield, MA
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Posted by Dan Shaw on 06/02/10 at 09:03 AM • Permalink
Our Neighbor Joan Rivers: The RI Interview
Joan Rivers is one of us. When the hardest working woman in show business takes off the rare weekend, she heads to her house in Litchfield County, which was recently featured in The New York Times. Instead of slowing down at age 76, she is busy performing, working on her new TV show and selling her jewelry on QVC. With her local connections, it seems quite fitting that the new documentary, Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work is the opening night film at the Mahaiwe for the fifth annual Berkshire International Film Festival, which runs June 3 - 6 in Great Barrington and Pittsfield. (It is also scheduled to play at the Bantam Cinema in Litchfield County over the July 4th weekend.) One of Rivers’ best friends is Salisbury resident Pete Hathaway (whose Enterprise New Life halfway house was featured in Rural Intelligence in February), and he interviewed Rivers exclusively for RI last week.
Pete Hathaway [right with Rivers in the 1990s]: We first met in 1984 when you bought a very important piece of Louis XV furniture from the collection of Mr. and Mrs Charles Wrightsman at Sotheby’s. How did you become such a connoisseur of 18th Century European decorative arts?
Joan Rivers: I have always loved that period, and have read up on the subject as much as I could. European decorative arts hit their height in the 18th Century. For the world, they were the tops . . . they did such beautiful things.
PH: Your apartment in New York City is incredible. You have said that you asked your decorator for “Marie Antoinette meets Jean Harlow.” What did you instruct the decorator for your Connecticut country house?
JR: I told him to look at every M.G.M movie that had a country house, like Christmas in Connecticut. Then I told him I want absolutely everything—but crisscross curtains! I wanted a place where my dogs would feel comfortable on the furniture. For God’s sake…it’s THE COUNTRY.
PH: We have been friends for well over 20 years, and people would never believe what a devoted friend you are even though you are a workaholic. How do you make time for everything and everybody?
JR: I don’t make much time for them. My friends are very limited. Some people think my dinner parties are very boring—I see the same old faces over and over again, but I love my friends and we have a lot of fun.
PH: In 1988 you took over the role of Kate in Neil Simon’s Broadway Bound. Wasn’t that terrifying?
JR: NO! The one place I feel very comfortable is on stage with other actors around me. Alone on the stage, if you’re bombing, you’re alone! With other actors there for support, you can turn up-stage and cross your eyes at each other, and think It’s not my fault they don’t like the play . . . it’s him or her . . . or the writer.
PH: Do you have city friends and country friends?
JR: Yes and it’s very silly. After all, we’re all up here from the city, and yet there are people that I enjoy in the country that I never see in the city. Most of my city friends are idiots and go to the Hamptons.
PH: Your one woman show played to rave reviews not only in Los Angeles but in London and Edinburgh as well. How do explain your tremendous success in the UK?
JR: Everyone forgets that my husband, Edgar, was English. He was educated at Rugby and Cambridge . . . and he found me funny. I have a great allegiance to the British.
PH: I know that The Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall are good friends of yours. How do you feel being little Joan Molinsky from Larchmont hanging out with the future King of England?
JR: Every minute that I’m with them I stop and pinch myself. They’re an incredible couple and both have amazing senses of humor.
PH: Did you chat up The Queen at their wedding?
JR: I had the pleasure—and I mean PLEASURE—to have the chance to talk with her. She has the same humor as Charles—plus she’s tiny like me!
PH: Why did you allow a documentary Joan Rivers; a Piece of Work to be made about you?
JR: I thought that it would be terrific to see a year in the life of a comedian. However, I did expect it to focus more on the work we comedians do . . . and less on me.
PH: Did anything surprise you about yourself from seeing the film?
JR: Yes, that I’m right handed. Who knew?!
PH: Does your tremendous work ethic come from your rather financially tenuous upbringing?
JR: Not at all. It comes because I LOVE my work. It’s not my job—it’s my life! Why would I retire? What would I do? Be funny while antiquing in Sheffield?
PH: If you could meet with and speak to any dead person, who would it be?
JR: Teddy Roosevelt. Oh absolutely! He was elegant, a gentleman, a free thinker, from a good family and went against principles, an adventurer. He could rough-ride into my bedroom anytime! His daughter Alice would have been a problem, but Teddy would have given me free reign and an open check book to redecorate his hideous house on Long Island, Sagamore Hill.
PH: You really broke the glass ceiling for women comedians; do you think of yourself as a feminist?
JR: ABSOLUTELY NOT! I was brought up by very intelligent parents who raised me to believe that I could do anything that I wanted to do—except be an actress or a comedian! If I had ever stopped to think that as a woman I couldn’t succeed . . . it would have stopped me dead in my tracks.
PH: Do you feel that you have helped pave the way for women like Ellen Degeneres and Joy Behar, who have become much more than stand up comedians?
JR: [Laughing] Who cares?!
PH: Do they owe you?
JR: YES! And keep those checks coming, girls. I need a new well in the country.
PH: Did anyone pave the way for you?
JR: Maybe Lenny Bruce. He was incredible . . . he just talked He was so unusual as he didn’t do the same old Bob Hope schtick of dumb jokes. Bruce made us laugh about subjects that were relevant. He was talking about Jackie Kennedy for God’s sake. Nobody dared do that!
PH: Many credit you and your daughter Melissa and your “Red Carpet” interviews with improving Hollywood’s style and dress sense. Do you take credit for this?
JR: TOTALLY . . . TOTALLY! The stylists union should be sending us a commission. Although I miss the days of Kim Bassinger wearing that self-designed one armed number . . . Mira Sorvino looking like Tinker Bell and Demi Moore in the bicycle shorts. Ah, the good old days of Hollywood—what were they thinking?!
PH: You won on Donald Trump’s Celebrity Apprentice. Do you think that age and treachery trumps youth?
JR: Treachery and smarts. That, and of course they were scared if I lost that I would drop dead on camera.
PH: On your new reality TV show, How’d You Get So Rich?, you interview all sorts of people who have made a hell of a lot of money. Have you found any potential candidates/dateable men for you?
JR: [Laughing] It’s on WEDNESDAY’S, 10:00 PM ON TV-LAND!!! One man last season really liked me…we met a couple of times but it didn’t pan out. This season there is a man with an amazing house. I’d love to be his ex-wife, to have gotten the property in my divorce settlement.
PH: Diamonds, emeralds, rubies or sapphires?
JR: Diamonds, they go with everything. Then in descending order; sapphires, emeralds, and lastly….rubies, and although they don’t look well on blondes….I’ll take ‘em.
PH: In your 2008 book on plastic surgery Men Are Stupid . . . And They Like Big Boobs: A Woman’s Guide to Beauty Through Plastic Surgery. Were you uncomfortable going into the discussion about nips and tucks on women’s ‘nether-regions’?
JR: No I wasn’t at all comfortable. But it’s a fact of life and as my book is a serious book about plastic surgery, we had to discuss every aspect of the business.
PH: What advice would you like to give to your grandson Copper?
JR: Go for EVERYTHING in life! Turn NOTHING down! Be an adventurer. I have no regrets in life . . . only the things that I didn’t do.
PH: If you could say anything to your parent’s right now, what would it be?
JR: I miss you desperately.
PH: Thank you very much, Joan.
Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work at the Berkshire International Film Festival
Thursday, June 3 at 7:30 p.m.
Opening night tickets: $20
The Mahaiwe
Great Barrington, MA
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Posted by Dan Shaw on 05/26/10 at 02:29 PM • Permalink
Berkshire Playwrights Lab: Consider It a Cultural CSA
You could think of buying a ticket to the Berkshire Playwrights Lab benefit on Friday, May 21, as akin to buying a membership in a CSA: you’re paying in advance for a full summer share of free-to-all Wednesday night play readings at the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center in Great Barrington. For the third summer in a row, BPL will present staged readings of new work by up-and-coming and established playwrights such as Gina Barnett, Joe Cacaci, Dean Imperial, Kelly Masterson, Tom Minter, Carol Schneider and Anna Zeigler. The actors appearing at Friday’s gala (tickets: $35 - $100) include Elizabeth Franz, Dan Lauria, Jay Thomas, Treat Williams as well as two actresses that you often see grocery shopping in Great Barrington: Lauren Ambrose (Six Feet Under), who studied at Shakespeare & Company and sings with the Berkshire band The Leisure Class, and Emmy Award-winner Kristen Johnston (3rd Rock from the Sun), who owns a house in northwestern Connecticut. RI chatted with Johnston (photographed by Michael Murphree) on her cellphone while she ran errands the other day.
How did you get involved with Berkshire Playwrights Lab?
I’ve known Jim Frangione for a long time through the Atlantic Theater Company—that’s my theater company. He’s known everyone for years and worked with Mamet and all that. He asked me to participate and—God help me—I said yes.
Have you done theater in the Berkshires before?
I have. I did a play called Smell of the Kill at the Berkshire Theater Festival. It was amazing and it actually went on to Broadway. [She also performed at Williamstown Theatre Festival in 2008 in Theresa Rebeck’s The Understudy.]
How great for you.
But not with me, darling. I passed on it. I didn’t think it was a very Broadway show, though it was really great. These three women who all plot in the kitchen to kill their husbands in the next room. It’s really funny.
So what are you performing at the BPL gala?
This amazing play by Dean Imperial called The Woman From 43. It’s about this man and a woman on an elevator, and she’s just this fantastic character with a faux European accent who is an ice cold bitch and is really funny. I am doing it with this cute actor Chris Stack.
How did you choose to buy a country house in northwestern Connecticut?
I was dear, dear friends with Natasha Richardson who lived in Millbrook and a very close friend of hers, the actor John Benjamin Hickey—he’s one of my best friends in the whole world—was up in Lakeville. I had been going to the Hamptons for years, and I was miserable and hated it. I didn’t really know that this was an option. Of course I had been to Stockbridge to do the play, and I loved it up there, but it was just too far from the city. I got to know Natasha. The whole area just blew my mind. There is this part when you are driving on Route 44 if you are coming from the Taconic and you have this amazing vista of church steeples, lakes and mountains—it’s the most beautiful thing in the world and the minute I saw it I felt like I was home. I thought I have to live here. I had felt like that only once before when I was in Ireland.
Where are you from originally?
Wisconsin. I like that there is no pretension here. The less people who know about it the better. I love the mellowness of it, the privacy of it. There are no Chanel stores to be found.
How do you spend your time?
I’m a freak for antiques. I’m obsessed. I love refinishing and refurbishing, taking something that looks like junk and making it look like it’s a piece from Jonathan Adler. I love all that. And I have a pool. I call it The Pool that 3rd Rock Built. And that’s it. I have friends up. I love to entertain. I love to cook. I am actually a really good cook, although when people say that it usually means they stink. I really am.
Where do you shop for antiques?
Along Route 7. There’s this place—I guess you would call it a junk shop—that has the greatest things in the world. It’s just past the Kmart in Great Barrington. It’s called North Main Antiques, and my friend Tommy just moved there from Sheffield. I also love that French store Metropolitain and that French place across the street for sandwiches and food—Bizalion’s. They are the greatest people and have the best stuff. I usually go there and grab a sandwich, go to Guido’s and get some arugula—they have the best arugula in the world—and I’m good.
Any other favorite spots?
I also shop at Hunter Bee like crazy. When I walked in there, I was like, this is my house. I have given them things to sell. They still have these French patio chairs of mine and I don’t know why no one has bought them. Last year, I decided to clean house and not be a hoarder and got rid of a lot stuff that I wore to awards shows like Michael Kors dresses. That back room has some definite secrets. People should look hard. You might find an amazing Ralph Lauren sundress that was worn to the Tonys.
What’s your next acting project after Berkshire Playwrights Lab?
I am doing a sitcom for NBC with Matthew Broderick. I hope they pick it up. We will find out in a couple of days. Paul Simms wrote it—he’s the guy who wrote News Radio—and it takes place out in the Hamptons. It’s about a Hamptons newspaper. It’s being produced by all the people who did 30 Rock so I am basically the Alec Baldwin part—the villainess, bitchy funny one.
Would this be shot on the East Coast?
Yes, I would be so ecstatic. I could make money and get to live here, which would be a miracle because that never happens.
Berkshire Playwrights Lab Gala
May 21 at 8 p.m.
Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center
Great Barrington, MA
Orchestra tickets + post-performance reception: $100
Orchestra seats: $50
Balcony seats: $35
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Posted by Dan Shaw on 05/18/10 at 07:32 PM • Permalink
POST-INTERNET-AGE? Welcome, The Sandisfield Times
PRINT BOOM IN WOODSY, MYSTERIOUS CORNER OF THE BERKSHIRES
A local arsonist who got out of prison and hangs out at everyone’s favorite bar. The raging, no-one-didn’t-believe-it rumor that Brad and Angelina were building a house, and a helipad, on a deserted road here. A police raid on the state’s largest-ever marijuana-growing hothouse. A suicide in a skinny-dippers’ lake. For a town that even frequent Berkshires visitors have never heard of, Sandisfield, Massachusetts—geographically ginornous (53 square miles) yet almost pointilismically underpopulated (786 fulltime residents), and uniquely diverse (celebrity fashion designers live two doors down from survivalists; old Civil Rights Era warriors near tea-party types)—has harbored scintillating news, and gossip, in recent years: all whispered word of mouth. Which is fitting, since Sandisfield has always been where people have come to hide. (In the McCarthy 1950s, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were tucked away in a home in its woods before they were dragged out and executed.) But: Sandisfield is hiding no more! Websites schwebsites (present company excluded), the town is publishing an actual newspaper, The Sandisfield Times, that is making its residents into citizen-journalists (albeit of milder newsfare than the above). What’s more, it’s successful—the inaugural, April, issue was 8 pages; the May issue’s shot to 16—and on a donations-only shoestring, so far without advertising.
The Sandisfield Times‘s editor Simon Winchester (author of The Professor and the Madman, Krakatoa and next fall’s Atlantic: The Biography of an Ocean), photo editor Setsuko Winchester (a former NPR producer) and designer Tina Sotis (a gifted painter) sat down at the Winchesters’ Colonial /Federal farmhouse on a recent damp spring Sunday to talk to part-time Sandisfield neighbor Sheila Weller, author of Girls Like Us, who, along with her husband John Kelly, author of The Great Mortality, will also be writing for the paper.
SHEILA: So: When and where was The Sandisfield Times born?
SIMON: At a smallish dinner party at Liana’s house back in December. [Liana Toscanini—development director of the Great Barrington-based nonprofit Community Access to the Arts (CATA); former owner of the Great Barrington linen store LT HOME; and great-granddaughter of Arturo Toscanini—is widely considered Sandisfield’s social and civic connector. When she moved here from New York City in the mid-‘90s, by dint of her enthusiasm and hard work, the town started gelling as a real community.] We were talking about: wouldn’t it be nice to start a paper? (Setsuko and I had—just coincidentally—taken letter-press printing classes, and we had a small press. We very naively I thought it would be nice to do this on the letter press. That idea that went out the door about 36 hours later.) We were bemoaning the fact that there is no sense of community in this little town—it’s not like New Marlborough [with its town center].
SETSUKO: Or Monterey, with its general store with the post office on one side and the library on the other.
TINA: We basically wanted to do a newspaper that was a written version of a village green.
SHEILA: But there is SARC [the Sandisfield Arts Center, a 19th century Baptist church turned early 20th century Jewish synagogue, which has been completely refurbished by community volunteers as a site for musical performance, talks, and films.]
SIMON: The Arts Center does its best to foster a sense of community, but succeeds only up to a point. It tries, but it doesn’t really succeed in reaching out to a large portion of the population. But the newspaper—in theory—everyone will get it. Our first issue was mailed to every person on the town’s tax and voting rolls.
This is not an engaged and committed village, and we started the newspaper so it would become one. We make a point, in the lead story of the May issue [“ELECTION! And the Nominees Are…”] about the local elections, of saying that only 190 Sandisfield residents voted in the last [May 2009] local election. The article opened: “Fifty-four percent of Americans voted in the last election. A healthy turnout, by any standard. But here in Sandisfield the figure for our last town election was just a measly 33 percent.”
Still, the paper doesn’t scold. In fact, it’s almost Oprah-ly uplifting. That same front page features a profile—“Dolores, Our Human Tornado” by Rita Kasky—calling town clerk Dolores Harasyko “ seemingly indispensable and indestructible.” (And, man, is she ever that. Three years ago, when a mystery investor threatened to open a dirt-bike-racing track in town—across from our house, in fact – and everyone was panicked and outraged, Dolores was the voice of calm authority. The deal was speedily aborted.)
TINA: People are just so grateful to see a paper in the town again. The Sandisfield Newsletter did a very good service, but it folded several years ago.
SETSUKO: As picture editor, I’m trying to get people to take pictures of things in town that interest them. We’re trying to get people who aren’t writers to write about what interests them. Susie Crofut [longtime Sandisfield resident and widow of renowned folksinger Bill Crofut] loves to garden, so she wrote “Black Flies? No Like-Um.”
SIMON: Adam Manacher, who has a house across the road from us, is a chef in Boston, I said, “Why can’t we conceive a piece where you come up with a recipe based on things only from Sandisfield sources. So we’re calling his section “Edible Sandisfield.” Then there’s Mick Burns.
TINA: Mick is my neighbor in the woods. He’s a Renaissance Man. A cabinetmaker, he makes his own beer, he knits, he makes maple syrup, he’s building a house, some parts are recycled material from an old barn.
SETSUKO: He makes his own pizza from scratch using a giant sandstone wood stove that goes from cellar to roof that has two ovens that he built himself.
TINA: He always wanted to be a writer, and he has the most extraordinary stories of adventures with wildlife. So he wrote this wonderful story [for a forthcoming issue] about how he started beekeeping but all his bees died over the winter. It made me cry!
SIMON: Then there are two women, Albanian refugees, who have a diner, Villa Mia, on Route 8. So we’re thinking of a future article “From the Balkans to the Berkshires.”
TINA: Simon is a great headline writer. “Dolores Our Human Tornado” was his idea. And the section on births, marriages, and deaths will be called…
SIMON: “Hatched, Matched, and Dispatched.”
Everyone laughs.
SHEILA: Well, that does say it.
SIMON: We’re looking for someone to be the Agony Aunt—the lovelorn columnist. Sheila…?
SHEILA: Hmm. While I’m never shy about giving it, I’ll have to ask some of the people who’ve actually taken my advice to see if you’d be safe with me. We don’t want any lawsuits. Anyway, how is this endeavor—Pinch Sulzberger, watch your back—being bankrolled?
SETSUKO: From donations.
[LIANA TOSCANANI, by e-mail: We raised over $1,000 before it was published and nearly another $1,000 these past few weeks.]
SIMON: I went on the BBC talking about it, and we got subscription requests from Ireland and Australia.
TINA: We got a $750 grant from the Sandisfield Cultural Council. We print it at Kwik-Print. It costs $575 to print 1,000 copies.
[LIANA, by e-mail: Advertising will be our backup plan to funding an increasingly larger and/or more popular paper requiring more pages and larger print quantity than the 1000 copies we currently produce.]
SHEILA: What are the other reasons for the no-ads policy you have for now?
TINA: Well, ads add to the number of pages. And they require people committed to soliciting for ads. Also, there are [longstanding] newsletters of adjacent town—The Otis Gazette, The Monterey News—that have loyal advertisers, and how far can a business stretch its advertising dollar? Finally, I would probably have to spend a lot of time designing ads as well as the paper.
SETSUKO: And Tina donates all her time as it is. We don’t want to overload her.
The talk turns to all the great Sandisfield lore: the Brad-and-Angelina “certainty” (heck, I was all set to try to rent our house out to People magazine). The ex-con arsonist. The man who resided in the town dump. The chatty, charming young Nashville couple who lived down John’s and my road and who vanished almost overnight (incinerating the furniture they couldn’t fit in their U-Haul), whom everyone suspected were in the Witness Protection Program. And there was not just that one marijuana hot-house bust, but, more recently, a second secret weed factory whose grow lights caught fire one night, burning the whole house down. (Where is Mary Louise Parker when you need her?)
TINA: Almost every day I hear something new about people in this town that I’ve never heard before. Oh, God, I love this town!
The truth is, we all do, albeit, for more sober-sided reasons. Read the paper.
—Sheila Weller
The Times Team: (back row, left to right) Val Coleman, Rita Kasky, Jean Atwater-Williams, Jerry Herman, Ron Bernard, Simon Winchester; (front row, left to right) Patricia Hubbard, Tina Sotis, Dassy Herman, Liana Toscanini, Courtney Maum, Setsuko Winchester
For subscriptions and more information: The Sandisfield Times
Note: Because its annual revenue is less than $5,000, The Sandisfield Times is not a 501-3-C nonprofit. Therefore, donations are currently not tax-deductible.
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Posted by Marilyn Bethany on 04/26/10 at 04:08 PM • Permalink
The Real Housewives of Berkshire County Sing Out
Technically, Lisa Kantor, Pam Rich, Laurie Schiff and Debbie Zecher are not housewives. “We’re all wives and mothers with jobs,” says Zecher, the senior rabbi at Hevreh of Southern Berkshire in Great Barrington, where she has worked since 1992. But Dangerous Women: An Evening of Song & Sass at the Elayne P. Bernstein Theatre at Shakespeare & Company in Lenox could be a high-brow reality TV show: the story of four women (photographed left by John Dolan) who spent six months rehearsing with a professional director for two cabaret shows to raise funds for scholarships at the Berkshire Country Day School, where one-third of the students gets financial aid.
Clearly, this is not your run-of-the-mill PTA fundrasier. The show’s artistic director is Joseph Rich (Pam’s brother-in-law), a scion of the Pittsfield furniture family and former Broadway dancer 
who famously performed with Grace Jones at Studio 54 on New Year’s Eve in 1978. (He’s the one closest to Jones in the photo in the recent Vanity Fair story on the history of disco.) “Joseph has been astonishing,” says Zecher. “He’s both a wise man and a magician.” Rich has been working with the women since last fall, helping them choose songs that fit the theme as well as their personalities. “Each one of them can belt out a song and then surprise you with a ballad,” says Rich. “There are a couple of songs that get me choked up every time I hear them. These women are very strong individuals, but they have blended as an ensemble.”
What makes them “dangerous” women? “For me, the dangerous part is about going onstage in front of my community,” says Kantor, who’s a pyschologist with a budding cabaret career. “People will see all of us in a new light,” she says, noting that songs such as “What You Don’t Know About Women” from City of Angels provide the show with a narrative thread.
Rabbi Zecher doesn’t expect her performance will shock her neighbors or congregants who are familiar with her schtick: she’s also Hevreh’s cantor and she’s done a show called Broadway Bible. However, she says that the chemistry among the four women and their director and musical director, Joe Rose, has turned what might have been merely a concert into a full-fledged show or a “caba-revu-sical” in the words of Joseph Rich. “Sparks fly when four like-minded women get together,” says the rabbi, whose numbers include “When Do You Start?” by Alan and Marilyn Bergman. “I think the show will be pushing the envelope for some people emotionally. That’s as dangerous as it gets.” The women hope the show will prove that you can simultaneously do good and have a good time. Says Kantor: “We’re very lucky women who can express their passion for music and at the same time raise money for education.”
Dangerous Women fundraiser for Berkshire Country Day School Scholarships
Shakespeare & Company
Lenox, MA
April 24 @ 8 p.m. $75, includes a cocktail reception
April 25 @ 2 p.m. $40 adults; $20 students
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Posted by Dan Shaw on 04/20/10 at 09:35 PM • Permalink
Portrait of the Pittsfield Artist as a Young Man
Michael Boroniec calls himself an Art Soldier, which is fitting since he’s on the front lines of Pittsfield’s cultural revolution. A ceramic artist and painter who graduated from Taconic High School and went to the prestigious Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) on full scholarship, he returned to his hometown after graduating from RISD in 2006 to teach ceramics at his alma mater. “It was an offer that was too good to be true,” he says. “When you leave college, you lose your studio, your wheel and your kiln, and my teaching job provides me with that. My being a working artist is very inspirational for my students.” Boroniec gives lie to the old notion that those who can’t do teach. He is part of a two-person exhibition, The Things They Left Behind, with Gerit Grimm, which opens on Saturday, April 10, at Pittsfield’s Ferrin Gallery, which is one of the leading dealers in contemporary ceramics in the United States. The exhibition is timed to coordinate with Pittsfield’s Big Read Project in which the entire city is encouraged to read Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried, a collection of short stories about the Vietnam War, and participate in events that address the war (including an exhibition of photographs of contemporary Vietnam by Joe Wheaton in the Berkshire Museum and staged readings of the book directed by Julianne Boyd at Barrington Stage Company on April 16 & 17.)
“One of my best friends from high school, Sam Russo, went to West Point and then off to Afghanistan,” says Boroniec, who has the shaggy good looks and demeanor of a peace-loving hippie. “We obviously took different paths, but he is still one of my best friends, and before he deployed to Afghanistan I borrowed his boots to make a sculpture.” He paired the ceramic boots with doves covered in newspaper headlines about the war as a peace statement, and it got a lot of attention as part of an exhibit, The Perfect Fit—Shoes Tell Stories at the Fuller Craft Museum in Brockton, MA. “Now, I’ve done other interpretations,” he says, showing Russo’s hat and canteen that he hand built in clay as part of a residency at Leslie Ferrin’s Project Art studio in Cummington, MA. “It’s all really serendipity,” says Ferrin. “We had studio space available, and Michael was doing work that dovetailed perfectly with Pittsfield’s Big Read. The timing was perfect.”
Boroniec has a knack for being in the right place at the right time. After all, he returned home to Pittsfield about the time Leslie Ferrin moved her gallery from Lenox to Pittsfield. “Leslie and her partner, Donald Clark, have really been my mentors,” he says. “She works with and shows Sergei Isupov. We studied his work at RISD.” A couple of years ago, Boroniec was in his classroom at Taconic High School when the octogenarian artist John Stritch walked in looking for “the cool young teacher,” recalls Boroniec. Stritch, a doctor-turned-sculptor-turned-printmaker who made the annual Tanglewood poster for decades, had thousands of pieces of work that had never been catalogued, and Boroniec volunteered to help him organize his archive. “I’ve learned so much about being an artist from him.” What’s more, Boroniec told Ferrin about Stritch’s stockpile of serigraphs (see below) which are now being exhibited at the gallery. “These posters are a cultural history of the Berkshires,” says Ferrin.
Boroniec hopes to follow in Stritch’s footsteps, and he is making, collecting or thinking about art all the time. His four-room apartment in a brick house on Pittsfield’s west side is jam packed with art by himself and others as well as an assortment of instruments including a sitar, which he plays remarkably well. It’s only a few days before the Ferrin opening and he is still trying to decide what work he wants to include. He’d like to create a vignette that pairs Russo’s canteen and boots with a painting he made using motor oil that’s called Shroud of America, which depicts a barely discernible American flag (shades of Jasper Johns) that’s apparently engulfed by a desert storm.
“People really respond to my paintings,” say Boroniec, who also considers himself a performance artist. “Michael confuses people,” says Ferrin. “He is so energetic, young and filled with ideas.” He shows a visitor three dishes that are among his most favorite creations. “I called this the Daily Reminder series,” he explains. “I went to Walmart and bought their Mainstays™ white dishes made in China. I made decals of two starving children and put them on the plates and bowls and refired them so they would be dishwasher and microwave safe. I took the plates back to Walmart and put them on the display rack. I watched people’s reactions. And then they threw me out of the store. I haven’t been able to get anyone to exhibit them yet.”
Why didn’t Boroniec follow his friends from RISD—“where the caliber is really intense and everyone is 100 percent dedicated to art”—and move to New York City to pursue his career? “I love the Berkshires,” he says. “I love hiking and fishing and my family. There’s nothing better than being able to go down the road and go for a hike.” He does not like what he knows about being a young artist in New York. “Everyone is at each other’s throats,” he says. “I have been surprised by how many serious artists work in the Berkshires. I feel part of that community now, and I feel that I have respect and impact.”
The Things They Left Behind
Ferrin Gallery
North Street, Pittsfield;
Opening: April 10, 5 - 7 p.m.
Gallery Talk: Michael Boroniec & John Stritch in Conversation
April 21, 6:30 p.m.
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Posted by Dan Shaw on 04/06/10 at 09:25 PM • Permalink
Community: Bank Locally, It’s a Wonderful Life
When it comes to financial matters, I am no go-getter. Generally, I open an account at the bank nearest home and sit by mutely while my husband, who actually seems to understand credit default swaps, handles the investments, which he does through a large firm whose letterhead changes with every fresh Wall Street disgrace. (Solomon Smith Barney to Citigroup Smith Barney to Morgan Stanley Smith Barney. Stay tuned.) I’m sure my husband has discussed our financial goals with the investment counselor there, and I’m certain that they do not include losing a hefty percentage of our savings every few years, which nonetheless we do. To hedge against these losses, I’ve suggested that our next financial goal should be to become the company’s stationer.
But back to banking, my domain. When Fleet, our mid-size Boston-based bank, was taken over a few years ago by the very behemoth we’d banked with when we lived in L.A., I wasn’t thrilled but, like I say, I’m no go-getter. Besides, we had a close relationship with the assistant manager at the Chatham branch, a wonderful woman named Donna Casey, who took care of us whenever we were out of the country for long stretches at a time.
During one of those stretches, after repeatedly e-mailing Donna at the bank, without response, I finally called and was asked by the person who answered her phone, “Can I help you?” Strange, I thought, so I e-mailed Donna at home. She replied but was not forthcoming. I pressed. She hedged. Finally, she admitted that she’d been let go by the behemoth with the explanation, “You are not Bank of America material.”
What were they thinking? While poor Donna dealt with the shame and misery such a cruel rebuke would inflict on anyone, the local banks rallied and started making offers. When she finally accepted a position with the National Union Bank of Kinderhook (it has since shortened its name to Kinderhook Bank), they brought the point home by featuring her on a billboard advertising Home Equity Loans under the tagline, “Local People Making Local Decisions.” With that, half the town, including me, moved our accounts there.
Though my husband agreed it was the right thing to do, at the time he questioned if such a small bank could match the services of the behemoth. Hah! When I was setting up our on-line bill paying, which was news to me, I had a total sweetheart available by phone whenever necessary to walk me through the ins and outs. Once, when I’d failed to move enough money from savings to cover all the checks I’d written, instead of bouncing the check and collecting a fee, someone from the bank called and let me cover it without charge—just like Jimmy Stewart would have done at his bank in It’s a Wonderful Life.
Recently Kinderhook Bank instituted a new deal: in exchange for agreeing to get our monthly statement via e-mail, we get 2.5% interest on our already free checking account for balances up to $20,000. Plus, they reimburse all of those annoying $2 and $3 ATM fees. There are a couple of stipulations: we have to get at least one check per month direct deposited, and we have to use our debit cards a minimum of ten times a month, both of which we’d already been doing.
Some political pundits have made a lot of noise lately about moving their own money to small, local banks, encouraging others to do the same. For once in my life, I’m ahead of the financial news. Local banks—Salisbury Bank, National Iron Bank, Bank of Millbrook, Berkshire Bank, Legacy Bank—unlike the big banks that received federal stimulus money, lend it, and locally. They are not out to gouge their customers. We’re their neighbors; we are likely to bump into each other on the street for years to come. This is a partnership. Our good fortune is their good fortune and vice versa. And while I don’t have any personal experience with those other banks, I’m confident it’s not just the Kinderhook Bank that behaves this way, though I do have a special affection for them for a number of non-banking reasons, not the least being Donna, of course. Though their branches are few, a couple of them occupy important historic buildings that the bank has gone to considerable expense to save. Ours is in the old Chatham railway station. Their headquarters in the town of Kinderhook occupies a fine old brick structure (top photo) that dates from the era when bank buildings were designed to inspire confidence in a public that had the gumption to be wary of banks.
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Posted by Marilyn Bethany on 03/23/10 at 07:12 PM • Permalink
