Words from the Wise

Rural Intelligence Reality Check It’s the season of seriousness, and there are several seriously smart people giving talks and conducting panel discussions in our region this weekend.
Is there such a thing as “The Perfect President”? That is the topic that will be addressed on Friday night in a dialogue between Professor Akhil Reed Amar of Yale Law School, who’s an expert on constitutional law, and Todd Brewster of ABC News, who was the co-author with the late Peter Jennings of In Search of America.

Salisbury Forum
October 24; 7:30 PM
Housatonic Valley Regional High School; Warren Turnpike, Falls Village, CT
Admission: Free

Rural Intelligence Reality Check If ever there were an organization ahead of its time it’s the E.F. Schumacher Society. The Great Barrington not-for-profit, which was established in 1980, is named after the author of Small Is Beautiful: Economics As If People Mattered. Its goal is to demonstrate that both social and environmental sustainability can be achieved by applying the values of human-scale communities and respect for the natural environment to economic issues. In this spirit, the society will host the 28th Annual E. F. Schumacher Lectures on October 25 at the First Congregational Church of Stockbridge.

The three speakers are Sally Fallon Merrell, president of a non-profit nutrition-education foundation, an advocate of grass-based animal products, and the founder of A Campaign for Real Milk; Anna Lappé, the co-author of Hope’s Edge: The Next Diet for A Small Planet and co-founder (with her mother) of the Small Planet Fund; Dan Barber, the chef at Blue Hill at Stone Barns, the Westchester County restaurant, farm and study center, where the kitchen expresses “the humanity and the fervor of the educators, preservationists, farmers, cooks, and servers.”

Twenty-Eighth Annual E. F. Schumacher Lecture
October 25; 10 AM 5 PM
First Congregational Church
4 Main Street, Stockbridge, MA
Tickets $25 ($15 for E. F. Schumacher Society members, students, and seniors)
Pre-registration recommended.

Sunday afternoon at the Spencertown Academy three noted presidential historians and a distinguished journalist bring some welcome perspective to this campaign season as they take the long view and reflect on presidential character, presidential reputations, and the difference between campaign promises and presidential performance. “The Presidency:
What Kind of Leader Works Best?” panelists include Spencertown resident Lance Morrow, who spent three decades as an essayist for Time Magazine and is the author of several books including The Best Year of their Lives: Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon in 1948. He will be joined by Bruce Miroff, a professor of political science at the University at Albany and author of several books on American politics including The Liberals’ Moment: The McGovern Insurgency and the Identity Crisis of the Democratic Party, Rex Smith, editor and vice president of the Albany Times Union and host of a nationally syndicated weekly program, “The Media Project,” on Northeast Public Radio, and historian Will Swift, Ph.D., author of The Roosevelts and the Royals and The Kennedys Amidst a Gathering Storm. Swift is currently at work on a new book about Lyndon and Lady Bird Johnson.