Milestones: We’re Celebrating Our Second Anniversary
During our exhilarating second year of publishing Rural Intelligence, we helped celebrate many local milestones such as the 10th birthday of MASS MoCA, the 15th anniversary of Barrington Stage Company, the 40th anniversary of the Norman Rockwell Museum, the 75th birthday of the Berkshire Botanical Garden, and Marge Champion´s 90th birthday at Jacob´s Pillow. But it was also a year of new beginnings. There were important restaurant openings (Nudel in Lenox, No. 9 in Millerton, the Old Chatham Country Store started serving dinner), store openings (Germain in Great Barrington; Chris Lehrecke in Hudson; The Market in Pittsfield) and art-world happenings in unlikely locations (The Wassaic Project, Goliath Gallery in Hillsdale, and Made in the USA at Pete´s Motors.) And it was a year when we heard about people from Rhinebeck discovering North Adams, residents of Litchfield County going to see movies in Pittsfield, and residents of Berkshire, Columbia, Duthcess, and Litchfield counties gathering at the Mahaiwe in Great Barrington to witness the inauguration of Barack Obama and hear James Taylor sing for the people of Haiti. It was a year when we felt more proud of and intimately connected to our unique rural region. We hope we´ve helped you to feel more connected, too.—Dan Shaw & Marilyn Bethany
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Posted by Dan Shaw on 02/27/10 at 06:37 AM • Permalink
A ‘Step-Down’ House in Salisbury That’s A Cut Above
The journey from alcoholism to altruism has brought Pete Hathaway back to the scene of the crime. In 2004, when he moved from New York City to a 19th century Greek Revival mansion that he renovated on Main Street in Salisbury, CT, he had a grand, perhaps grandiose, vision. He would operate a “house gallery” and live surrounded by fine antiques and artwork—the type of things he knew all about as a twenty-year veteran of Sotheby’s—and every picture, chair and mirror would be for sale. “It was not a rational idea,” he says today of Ragamont House Antiques. “It was a classic example of alcoholic behavior. It was impulsive. I never really considered whether Salisbury was the right spot for such a high end antiques business.” He pauses for a beat. “It wasn’t.”
Now, after a long sojourn getting sober in Southern California, Hathaway has repurposed his gracious six-bedroom house. He has turned it into a “step-down” facility for recovering addicts like himself, who need a transitional place to live after 28 days of detox and rehab before they return to their trigger-rigged former lives. Called Enterprise New Life (ENL), Hathaway’s halfway house is for men only (primarily over 35) who are serious about sobriety and can afford to stay in a facility that has the amenities of a luxury inn such as exquisite meals (prepared by chef Bruce Young who used to be the executive chef at the exclusive Mashomack Preserve Club in Pine Plains) as well as daily maid service. “Making your own bed is not integral to staying sober,” says Hathaway. “But making sobriety your priority is—especially during the first 120 days.”
Hathaway learned this the hard way. Although he was a hard-drinking bon vivant for more than two decades in Manhattan, his substance abuse did not become a problem until he moved to the country, which, apparently, was a shock to his system. He started having panic attacks for the first time in his life, so he went to see a well-regarded psychiatrist. “I described how I was feeling and she said, ‘Here, take this pill. Chew it so it goes straight to your bloodstream.’ In fifteen minutes, I felt completely calm. That was the beginning of the end.”
The doctor had given him Klonopin—a powerful anti-anxiety medication that can be addictive when mixed with alcohol. “She never even asked me if I drank,” Hathaway recalls. “I don’t want to blame my addiction on her, but I think that doctors over prescribe medication. She called herself a psychiatrist but she acted like a pharmacist. She never tried to get to the root of my panic attacks.”
While Klonopin and alcohol made him calm, they also caused him to behave uncharacteristically. “I would cancel dinner plans at the last minute,” says the gregarious Hathaway. “I became more of a recluse. I would isolate and hibernate which is typical of addicts.” When cousins came to stay for a weekend while visiting their son at Berkshire School (where Hathaway boarded in the 1970s), they were shocked by their host’s behavior. “Apparently, I was slurring my words, taking three-hour naps in the afternoon, and moving furniture around in the middle of the night,” he says. The cousins called Hathaway’s younger sister who immediately drove up from Long Island. “It was a mini intervention,” he says. Within days, Hathaway was on a plane to Arizona, where he checked into Sierra Tucson for 30 days. He returned to Salisbury and managed to stay sober for five months. “I relapsed on alcohol, not pills,” he says. “I now know I can not have a single drop.”
For his second rehab, he went to Hazelden in Minnesota, and after 30 days there he went to a step-down program called Sober Living By the Sea in Newport Beach, CA. He “immersed” himself in recovery. He rode his bike to AA meetings and volunteered at a soup kitchen. He stayed in Newport Beach for a year, because he could not find anyplace in the northeast that could offer him the support he needed to transition back to his own life, which is why he created ENL. “California might as well be another country,” he says. “I missed New England and New York City.” (He missed his house and garden, above, too.)
Since his house had been an inn before he bought it, there would be no zoning issues involved in his turning it into the therapeutic facility he envisioned. ENL is a synthesis of Pete Hathaway’s past and present lives. (“Isn’t it just like Pete to hire a chef before he hires anyone else?” says a friend who marvels at the cooking of Bruce Young, left, who moonlights as caterer.) After refurnishing the house (“While I was in rehab, my sisters sold everything except for the curtains, family heirlooms and my artwork,” he says), Hathaway began devising a treatment program and hiring a behavioral therapist, Tom Plunkett, a counselor, Nick Collin, and psychotherapist, Eileen Lawlor, to work with residents, who have daily group therapy by the fireplace in the sumptuous living room. ENL’s residents are encouraged to leave the house during the day to hike, ski or go to the gym. “Everyone who stays here has to go to at least one outside 12-step meeting a day,” says Hathaway, who usually starts his day at 7 a.m. with an AA meeting in Lakeville. “But they can’t stay out at night. We have a curfew.”
How does Hathaway feel about sharing what was once his luxurious private domain with strangers? “We help each other,” he says with equanimity. “I am a good example to other men of getting your life together again, and they are a reminder to me of all that I have gone through and the importance of my sobriety. Together, we create a healing community.”
Enterprise New Life
Salisbury, CT; 860.596.0555
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Posted by Dan Shaw on 02/16/10 at 09:06 PM • Permalink
Twenty Questions for “Devotion” Author Dani Shapiro
In the dozen years since Dani Shapiro published her best-selling memoir, Slow Motion (Random House), she has become a full-time country resident and written several well-received novels like 2007’s Black & White. Now, with her just-published memoir, Devotion (Harper, $24.99), which chronicles her interdenominational search for faith, it looks like Shapiro (who lives in Bethlehem, CT, with her husband and son) will be back on the best-seller list. “She’s neither showboating nor seeking pat answers, but using honest self-reflection to provoke herself and her readers into taking stock of their own spiritual inventory,” says Publishers Weekly. “Absorbing, intimate, direct and profound, Shapiro’s memoir is a satisfying journey that will touch fans and win her plenty of new ones.” Last week on The Huffington Post, the redoubtable Jesse Kornbluth, who edits Head Butler.com, wrote that Devotion is “the one book that anyone over, say, 35,
needs to read right now . . . this is a writer’s book, artfully constructed. Shapiro doesn’t hit the reader over the head with the fact that her son was born with a condition that kills 85% of its victims. Or that her mother was an unhappy, competitive bitch who basically hated her. Or how her post 9/11 move from Brooklyn to rural Connecticut has brought some calm, but at a high price: the recognition of ‘a deep well of loneliness’.”
Yet it’s clear from her answers to our Twenty Questions that Shapiro indeed finds joy living in the Rural Intelligence region and you’ll probably run into her one day at a concert or a store. But if you’d like to meet her this month and purchase an autographed copy of her book, she’ll be speaking at Kripalu in Lenox, MA, on Saturday, February 6, at 7:30 p.m., and at the Hickory Stick Bookshop in Washington Depot, CT, on Saturday, February 13, at 2 p.m.
1. Where do you go when you need serenity?
This may sound strange to say, but I love to drive the back roads of Litchfield County. I have a ten-year-old son, and I’m constantly taking him to tennis or piano lessons, and those hours of driving in the car feels like a sanctuary to me. 
I never get tired of looking at the beauty all around us—the landscape, the vistas, the beautiful homes.
2. Where do you when you crave buzz? There are different kinds of buzz. As a formerly urban creature, I still crave the city’s pace and rhythms, and my husband and I will occasionally go in for a great night at the Crosby Street Hotel and drinks and dinner at one of Danny Meyer’s restaurants like Gramercy Tavern, or his new one, Maialino. Up here in the country, we love RSVP in Cornwall for dinner, and a wonderful new restaurant in Lenox, Nudel.
3. What’s your favorite library or bookstore?
The Hickory Stick in Washington Depot is our neighborhood bookstore, and I’m in there almost every day.
4. What’s you favorite place for bargain hunting?
My friend Richard Lambertson, who owns Privet House in Warren, has a spectacular summer tag sale that I never miss.
5. What do you buy for yourself when you need a treat and want to splurge?
Chocolate from Belgique (right) in Kent. A massage at The Mayflower Inn & Spa.
6. What’s your favorite way to spend a Friday night?
Home with my husband and son, eating ravioli and watching a good film, the dogs curled up at our feet.
7. What’s your favorite way to spend a Sunday morning?
Sleeping in!
8. What’s your favorite one-hour drive from your house?
Great Barrington, for a long stop at Rubiner’s Cheesemongers and a cappuccino and grilled cheese sandwich at Rubi’s.
9. Where’s your favorite place to hear live music?
Tanglewood.
10. What’s your favorite historical site?
The Litchfield Green.
11. Where do you shop for clothes? Do you have a favorite salesperson?
There is a colorful, eclectic store in Woodbury called Verderosa that’s owned by a young woman named Utta who used to work for Calypso in East Hampton. She knits a lot of her own designs. I also like Parlour in Millerton, NY, which feels very much like a hip Brooklyn boutique.
12. What’s your favorite hardware store or nursery?
Washington Supply.
13. Who do you trust to recommend wines?
Bill Fore at County Wine and Spirits in New Preston, and Chris at Casa Bacchus in Litchfield.
14. What three things do you always do with out of town guests?
A drive to New Preston; a drink in the tap room of The Mayflower; a hike in Steep Rock.
15. Who are your local heroes?
When we first moved from New York to Bethlehem, the fact that Arthur Miller, William and Rose Styron, A.R. Gurney, Francine du Plessix Gray, Frank McCourt, and Philip Roth all lived nearby was comforting—to know that there is such a rich literary history in these hills.
16. What newspapers, blogs or websites do you read every day?
The New York Times. I also check in on my writer friends’ blogs: Jane Green, Ann Leary, Martha McPhee, and Caroline Leavitt—I like to see what everyone’s up to!
17. What’s your favorite theatre?
Bantam Cinema.
18. Where’s your favorite place for breakfast?
Mamie’s in Roxbury. Also, Dottie’s Diner, in Woodbury.
19. What’s the best thing about a New England winter?
I actually love getting snowed in. We light a fire, pull blankets over ourselves and hunker down. Nothing to be done, nowhere to go—suddenly it seems the world stops as it gets blanketed in snow.
20. What are you most looking forward to doing this spring?
I’m doing a lot of traveling this spring for Devotion—I’ll be all over the U.S., and then my husband, son and I go to Positano, Italy in March where we run a writers conference, Sirenland. That’s one of the highlights of our year. When we come back from Italy, usually spring has just spring
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Posted by Dan Shaw on 02/02/10 at 08:58 PM • Permalink
Hudson On My Mind
Photographs by Scott Baldinger
Scott Baldinger is a writer whose work has appeared in Harper’s Bazaar, The New York Times and other publications. He has been living in (and taking pictures of ) Hudson for six years. This piece appeared previously in a slightly altered form on Melissa Stafford’s website, Hudson Art Affair.
It’s a chilly winter eve, and I am trudging home from the Amtrak train station in Hudson, New York. I take a slippery incline path past the gritty gingerbread townhouses and unoccupied mansions of Allen Street and then on to one or another of the town’s alleyways: Rope, Cherry, Prison, named as if to inspire Poe-like thoughts of a last meal before the gallows. It starts to snow—large, glamorous old MGM snowflakes, like the ones that fell towards the end of Ernst Lubitsch’s The Shop Around the Corner—and they swirl gorgeously around the horse barns and out buildings that tilt and lean toward each other on each side of the road.
A few things come to mind as I walk past the behinds of churches, meeting halls, and closely knit homes, pushed askew by withered vines and moss, and framed by piles of last fall’s leaves. About how Hudson looks as if the buildings from a dozen upstate towns and country roads have been transported and squeezed together into a tight urban configuration, and how this tight squeeze has kept so much of the town standing, despite years of neglect. About how there probably wasn’t anything in the world quite like this picturesque disassembly, magically unique and at the same time so vulnerable to “improvement.” And about how this transitory tableau of pentimento and makeshift repair was being experienced only by me, solitary pedestrian that I was on that night.
Hudson manages, even just from its weary backside, to transfix at these moments, and there are enough of them to keep a person going—or at least edified—in spite of all of the “in spite ofs”: an erratic economy, some really scary poverty, a local population suspicious of all newcomers, the lack of basic services such as groceries or cobblers or dry cleaners, and, until recently, a city government willing to give away the city’s birthright for a mess of potash—or cement, as the case might have been. “I don’t think Hudson will ever lose its dumpiness, ” says David Petrovsky, a local antiques dealer. “Its social and economic fabric was too completely eviscerated during the 70s and 80s and too many vestiges of its impoverished past remain, due to slumlords who continue to profit so much from the city’s disadvantaged.”
Things are a lot better than they used to be though. In Byrne Fone’s ennobling book, Historic Hudson, An Architectural Portrait, phototographer Lynn Davis and her husband Rudy Wurlitzer, a novelist and screenwriter, describe having “an eerie sensation, as if we had slipped through a scrim of time and landed at the tail end of the 19th century” when they first drove onto Warren Street back in 1991. Even though there were “only a few cars and the sidewalks were deserted, except for what looked like a huddle of crack dealers lurking in front of a pizza joint,” they decided to rent and then finally buy an 1835 Federal house across the street from the post office. Soon after moving here, Davis photographed every building on Warren Street, most of them nearly unrecognizable in their unrestored state.
For Petrovsky, Davis, Wurlitizer and so many others who have made their home here over the last decade, it is perhaps that very in-betweeness, a paradox of time and economic status, that continues to compel as much as it does bewilder. Ask anyone, veteran or newcomer, who has found him or herself hanging around on a Tuesday or Wednesday, when the entire place seems to have shuttered like a closed museum. On those days, there is a true disconnect—not between the astonishing sophistication of today’s Warren Street, parts of which equal SoHo and Madison Avenue as a retail experience, and the Appalachian dreariness of so much around it. Nor is it the disparity between the haves and have nots, disturbing as that is; anyone from any major urban center around the world has gotten used to that kind of polarity. It is a disconnect between the town as you are seeing it—the visual evidence of Hudson’s miraculous and continuing preservation—and the gnawing sensation that, despite all the apparent progress, and everyone’s best work and intentions, it is, like Generalissimo Franco, still dead.
OK, maybe not dead…but not really moving. And frankly, it is that lack of movement that makes it such a fascinating place for visual artists and other retinal types such as art and antiques dealers, decorators, etc. James Corbett, a New York interior designer and member of Historic Hudson, recalls making the decision to move here from the city right after he got off the train, after seeing Jeremiah Rusconi’s 1835 Greek Revival house at Front and Allen Street. “I was amazed at how intact everything was. And in fact ten years ago, when I first started coming up, there was a lot more. All along Warren Street you could see the same doorknobs that had been on doors since the 19th century. You could tell because old glass had a purplish color, after it’s been exposed to light for a long time.”
Now Let Us Praise Superficial Men (and Women)
“Is this really happening or is it the hash?”
That memorable Lily Tomlin quip came to mind one evening after coming home and turning on the television set to see, in 1950s black and white, the very same buildings and street corners I had just walked past on Warren Street moments before. The images were so eerily familiar and yet so completely different that the connection seemed at first unconscious: a neon lit luncheonette with a view towards a store window displaying streamlined 50s furniture (in its first incarnation); a neoclassical bank building just like the one at whose ATM I had just withdrawn cash, a clapboard church across the street from that, and a grand Victorian mansion hazily capping the vista.“There are a lot of American towns that look like this one. It just can’t be Hudson,” I thought, as I held my held my head in my hands and watched a shoot out involving Harry Belafonte and Robert Ryan (they’re wearing masks but are still somewhat recognizable, just like the location). The Belafonte and Ryan characters stagger away down an alleyway, moodily counterpointed right behind the bank .
The movie turns out to be Robert Wise’s 1959 Odds Against Tomorrow, a downbeat caper about three drifters (played by Ryan, Belafonte, and Ed Begley, Sr.) who decide to journey upstate from New York City in order to execute a meticulously planned bank robbery. And yes, it was shot in Hudson (called Melton in the film), although, having misplaced my TV listings guide, I had to wait until the next day to confirm this fact (with the help of Dan Barton, a longtime resident who recalls the making of the movie and the fact that Belafonte moved to the area afterwards). Wise, in the noir-ish “with it” style he was known for before going on to directing West Side Story and The Sound of Music, presents Hudson as it was at the time—a functioning American town with a normal degree of business going on, small scale yet by no means lost in time or backwards, an everyday place with soda jerks and bank guards and teenage girls wearing cardigan sweaters, shown in stark contrast to the claustrophobic waywardness of its urban protagonists.
Hudson normal? Everyday? Worth planning a bank heist in? Who knew? I recommend a viewing of the movie (decent enough to watch on its own merits) as a strong corrective to anyone who thinks that the town, with its overwhelmingly 19th century architectural profile, somehow stopped in its tracks at some Our Town—not to mention Rip Van Winkle—moment in time. This is documentary evidence, from a Hollywood film of all things, that Hudson was a real town right up until the very last, when the very concept of tight-knit towns was superseded by isolated suburban living and shopping malls, and not so long before that concept was embraced once again by a new generation of intrepid emigres.
There are still some remnants of that period on Warren Street, in storefronts sitting untouched and unused for what seems like decades. The display window of a place once called Ziesnitz Opticians is an incongruous diarama of Buddhas and brightly colored animal miniatures. Up the street, viewed through windows badly in need of Windex, the Samuel Sutty & Son luncheonette is a neutron-bomb moment in time, with assorted candies from the 1960s and a Fruits Daily advertisement collecting dust and fading in the sunlight. An orthopedic supply store, H&W Orthopedic Supports, now empty save for a lone American flag, was until recently a Dadaist display of a toy podiatrist holding arch supports, balanced on each side with artificial flowers and a small American flag.
None of these accidental shadow boxes is noticeable if you drive around Hudson in a car, stopping only to go to one destination or another. “I’m always lecturing people about the need to get out of their cars and walk around,” Corbett, an inveterate nondriver, says. Indeed, even the most appreciative of year-round residents do this and, as a result, are often unaware of some of the stranger wonders of the town.
There is nothing quite like veering from these odd places to the town’s retailers, who are so talented at window display that their storefronts sometimes look like year round art exhibitions. Considering how bleak everything might be without them, a case could be made for giving urban renewal funds to these antiques dealers, gallery owners, and other masters of retinal pleasure who have located here over the last decade or so. Or at least a tax deduction for lighting their resplendent displays at night time, no matter how many or how few might see them. The fact that their focus is an aesthetic one gives people the impression that they are too elite, specialized, expensive or unapproachable. Which misses the point entirely: like Hudson’s architectural master builders, this new generation of entrepreneurs are once again arranging things to make community life a thing of grace and beauty every day and night of the year. —Scott Baldinger
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Posted by Marilyn Bethany on 01/04/10 at 11:45 AM • Permalink
Greetings, Neighbors! Our First Annual Holiday Poem
Season’s greetings, County Kin
Let the merriment begin!
Happy Hanukah, Merry Christmas
Is it local? That’s our litmus.
The arts and farms help define us
So much driving, the only minus.
True, this is a magic region
It’s rural life that we believe in
Millbrook’s South, Adams’s North
We’re always driving back and forth
Becket’s East, Hudson’s West
Too much to do—we are so blessed!
Our region’s rich with artsy elves
We couldn’t list them all ourselves
Nonetheless, we’ll nix our doubts
And offer up a few shout outs
Hail Kevin Sprague and Tina Packer
Julie Boyd, who is no slacker
We wish a hearty ho,ho,ho
To Hammertown’s great Joan O
To farmers who run CSAs
We sow our fields with seeds of praise
To all the merchants on Warren Street
We send a hearty New Year’s tweet
Happy holidays Ella Baff
And to Canyon Ranch’s staff
To theatregoers geriatric
And Red Lion’s N. Fitzpatrick
To Joe Thompson, Megan Whilden
And the folks who teach our children
We offer up a loud hosannah
To the mensch who runs Olana
To curators savant at Bard
A little something avant garde
Hark James Taylor, Carol King
We wonder what S. Claus will bring
For Alan Chartock—what the hell?
We pledge to give a jingle bell
To Carrie Haddad and Tom Swope
We offer up the gift of hope
For Lauren Ambrose and Karen Allen
SoCo ice cream by the gallon.
To Bjorn Somlo who runs Nudel
We wish both kit and caboodle
Some bling for Shaker Ellen Spear?
Oh, no, that really would be queer.
Our praise to Rhinebeck’s A.L. Stickle
Where a nickel’s still a nickel.
We thank the gals at Paper Trail
It’s stationery’s Holy Grail
Hail Red Devon, the Red Dot
And every other yummy spot
Let twenty-ten be among the greats
We’ll toast with grapes from Little Gates
To Jimmy Crisp, who is so swell
And stonemason Mark Mendel
Cheers Paul Rich and Frances Palmer
To Kripalu, which makes us calmer
For Susan Silver, something sterling
Here comes the snow, the wind is swirling
Skol! to dealers Edith Gilson,
Tim Dunleavy and Ben Wilson
We’d also like to pay respects
To Morris Adjmi Architects
Colin and Katrina Stair
Such tasteful people everywhere!
Here is to the Not for Profit
Vision of one L. N. Moffatt
To all the bookstores independent
And Vicki Bonnington resplendent.
Who make us smarter every day
At least, they make us look that way.
We’d be remiss to not make space
For the gang at Guido’s Marketplace.
And lest we set off rude alarms
To that at M (Group) and Turkana Farms.
It also would seem more than mean,
To fail to mention Bess Hochstein.
Would we be reaching above our station
To send regards to Maria Nation?
If you’d like a mention in next year’s poem,
Just give a ring to our own Kate Cohen.
Only kidding, to be fair,
Everyone knows we live on air.
Anticipating, as we should
Our thoughts go straight to Tanglewood
For now, we sit by fireplaces
With not a thought of trading places
Perhaps it is our common sense,
Or just sound Rural Intelligence.
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Posted by Dan Shaw on 12/23/09 at 11:41 AM • Permalink
Berkshire Taconic’s Neighbor-to-Neighbor Program
A sign on Route 44 in Salisbury CT, photographed by RI on November 20.
“Poverty is all around us but it’s more hidden in our region than in other places,” says Jennifer Dowley, the president of the Berkshire Taconic Community Foundation, noting that 15,000 people in Berkshire County alone receive fuel assistance. “Whether you’re in Millbrook or North Adams, Pine Plains or Salisbury, the Neighbor-to-Neighbor program can help you help people in your community.”
Dowley, who lives in Millerton and works in Great Barrington, points out that some of the most industrious people in our region have a tough time making a living during the winter months. “It’s a resort economy and many people rely on seasonal work,” she says. “There is a serious underemployment problem for the people who mow lawns and work in coffee shops—everyone who makes $15 an hour or less. There’s a guy who does some outdoor work for me at my house. He works twelve hours a day from April to November, and every winter he falls behind on his mortgage.”
If You Need Aid . . .
Neighbor-to-Neighbor Partners
Berkshire Community Action Council
413.445.4503
Columbia County Healthcare Consortium
518.822.8820
NED Corps Client Advocates
845.264.4675 or 845.235.5713
Northwest Litchfield County
Contact individual town social workers
The Neighbor to Neighbor program was created this June to provide emergency financial aid “for strategic intervention to help achieve a measure of stability and avert further crises.” Berkshire Taconic collects the money and distributes it directly to social service agencies in Berkshire, Columbia, Northeast Dutchess and Northwest Litchfield counties (see sidebar). “The social workers love our money because it’s the missing element in the aid package,” says Dowley. Most of the grants are for less than $500 and go for essential things like car repairs or daycare fees so someone can look for or get to a job; the money is not given to the client but checks are written to landlords, utility companies, medical facilities or other vendors. “It gives social workers discretionary money that can fit into their plan—it’s the wild card that makes the hand work.”
Dowley (left) acknowledges with a mournful sigh that a $500 grant does not offer solutions to systemic problems. “It won’t change a life but it may offer someone a helping hand out of dire straits,” she says. “The money is given to people who are working with social workers who can help them plan their way into a more productive state of sustainability.”
Though the Neighbor-to-Neighbor was designed to be used throughout the Berkshire Taconic region (which is nearly identical to the Rural Intelligence region), donors may designate their gifts for residents of a specific town or community. “People are very passionate about their local areas,” says Dowley. For the residents of seven Berkshire County hilltowns—Becket, Cummington, Dalton, Hinsdale, Peru, Washington and Windsor—there is currently a $100,000+ matching grant, which will kick in $7 for every $1 donated by local residents by December 21. Dowley emphasizes that donations to the Neighbor-to-Neighbor program provide direct aid. “We charge no administrative fee,” she says. “The idea is to spread the money around and help as many people as possible right away.”
Berkshire Taconic Community Foundation
271 Main Street, Great Barrington, MA
413.528.8039
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Posted by Dan Shaw on 11/24/09 at 11:27 AM • Permalink
The Sun Never Sets On The Silent Auction
Even as the days grow shorter and summer segues into fall, Silent Auction Season continues. Actually, it’s always Silent Auction Season in the Rural Intelligence region. When was the last time you attended a benefit for a library, theater company, day care center or museum and weren’t handed a bid number with your name tag? Though silent auctions verge on becoming supererogatory, they remain vital fundraising tools and a permanent part of the not-for-profit landscape.
The best silent auctions offer both the fantastic (a week at an apartment in Paris) and the prosaic (a 
dump truck of cow manure for the garden) so everyone feels there is something for them to buy. For the past few years, interior designer Bunny Williams has offered a luncheon for twelve and a garden tour at her estate in Falls Village for the David M. Hunt Library’s annual auction (coming up on September 26); it usually sells for about $600, which makes it one of the big ticket items for the small town library. This year, Williams is offering a cocktail party for 20 in her barn (right), but she’s insisting that the minimum bid be $1,000. “For my effort, I want to raise real money for the library,” says Williams, who, coincidentally, has donated another cocktail party for 20 to the Berkshire Taconic Community Foundation silent auction on the same night at Hammertown Barn.
Bidders seem to take a two-pronged approach to shopping at auctions, choosing things they might not otherwise buy as well as gift certificates to businesses that they already patronize. “It’s especially fun to find one-of-a-kind works,” says Madeline De Vries Hooper, who’s on the board of the Berkshire Botanical Garden. “We won a great garden bench at the Shaker Museum benefit this year, and we always bid on dinner for two at the Old Inn on the Green when it is offered because it is one of our favorite restaurants and it is always used and appreciated.”
Many businesses and organizations see donating to silent auctions as a way of cementing relationships with their loyal patrons and attracting a new clientele. “We actually have a Donations Committee for both Porches and the Red Lion Inn,” says marketing manager Carol Bosco Bauman. “Our reason for giving is two fold: It’s a part of our company’s core values that we participate in our community and donations are a way to market our businesses. We generally give to arts organizations and local organizations, especially those for which our employees volunteer.”
Gift certificates, tickets and passes are an easy way to entice new visitors and customers. “Also, gift certificates allow the recipients to come in and select his or her own prize,” says Serine Hastings, co-owner of Paper Trail in Rhinebeck, who notes that the store gets daily requests for donations and having to choose an item from their inventory for every auction would be quite time consuming; thus, she always donates gift certificates. “The requests have become overwhelming,” says Lester Blumenthal of Route 7 Grill in Great Barrington, who can’t say “yes” to everyone. “We get one or two calls per day asking for donations. The set policy is to donate a $25 - $50 gift card as the auctions are usually local and community focused and supporting these efforts is what we are all about.”
The Norman Rockwell Museum (right) donates all sorts of items—books, prints, private behind-the-scene-tours, memberships—to other not-for-profits’ silent auctions. “Anyone who is willing to purchase a Norman Rockwell experience at a silent auction is someone who has expressed interest in our museum, and I look forward to meeting them,” says president Laurie Norton Moffatt. “It is another form of marketing that reaches philanthropically minded individuals and supports the fabric of the community.”
Katherine Myers, the marketing director of MASS MoCA who gives away scores of museum passes to silent auctions for other charities, has built her own personal art collection at silent auctions. “I’m a bit loathe to share my secret, but the A Better Chance program in Williamstown—which offers promising students from underperforming urban schools the opportunity to live and study in Williamstown—runs an art auction every few years that is phenomenal,” she says. “Because of the artistic community here, they have a very impressive gallery of work to sell, and we’ve scooped up some excellent pieces over the past decade.”
Hunter Kerr Runnette, who co-chaired Jacob’s Pillow‘s silent auction last summer, thinks the low-key nature of silent auctions make them right for fundraising in our region. “They seem to take the pressure away from the buyer and giver to allow for a more organic, friendly transaction, as opposed to the live auctioneers, who seem to be only as good as their vocal manipulation, interrogation and sometimes humiliation,” he says.
Laury Epstein, the former president of Berkshire Grown, remembers when silent auctions were not ubiquitous. “They were few and far between so they tended to the unique side,” she says, noting that the most money was usually raised by people bidding on a week at vacation homes in place like Provence and Santa Fe. Epstein says the best thing she ever won at a silent auction was a ten-day tour of northern California wine country. “We won it at a James Beard Foundation auction and we have never been treated so royally.” Epstein has donated a practically new “fancy” Schwinn bicycle to the Berkshire Grown silent auction on September 21 at the Eastover Resort in Lenox. “I bought the most expensive bike in the store, figuring it would shame me into riding it, but I simply can’t get over the fear of falling off and breaking bones, so it’s going to the auction.”
While many people think of silent auctions as enlightened shopping sprees, others think they undermine the spirit of charity. “It’s sad that philanthropy has been reduced to bidding on things,” says one prominent Berkshires cultural leader who asked for anonymity. “I wish we could concentrate instead on helping people be joyful givers and purposeful philanthropists, focusing instead on the good they are doing and the difference they are making in the world. In some way it is taking the focus off the higher purpose and tremendous difference donors make and putting it on things, the antithesis of what most not-for-profits are about.”
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Posted by Dan Shaw on 09/16/09 at 11:27 AM • Permalink
If the Parade Passed You By: July 4th in Pittsfield
Our cultural correspondent Bess Hochstein was an official judge at Pittsfield’s famous Independence Day Parade and filed this photo essay and report: Last year USA Today called the Pittsfield 4th of July Parade one of the Top Ten in the nation, so this year I grabbed a front-row seat to see what all the fuss was about. Preceded by the Berkshire Medical Center’s 24th Annual Independence Day Run—a sanctioned 5K road race up and down North and South streets—the two-hour parade has all the elements of a classic patriotic procession: cheerleaders, marching bands, vintage cars, veterans’ groups, hand-shaking politicians (including Governor Deval Patrick with Mayor James Ruberto, right), Shriners in mini-mobiles, floats, flag bunting, balloons, and scores of police and fire departments, honking the horns and blaring the sirens of their various vehicles. This all-volunteer effort, which dates back to 1824, also shows its hometown stripes (and stars) with performances by Barrington Stage Company’s Youth Theatre; a rolling farmstand stocked with produce from local CSAs; cartwheeling firemen, a Norman Rockwell ringer painting his iconic self-portrait in the back of a truck; and a panel of expert music judges including Tony-Award winning composer William Finn—who called on a friend, Broadway musical star Chip Zein, to serve as guest celebrity judge—and Ed Bride of the Pittsfield CityJazz Festival. Music ranged from bagpipes to bluegrass to barbershop choruses, with a heavy dose of fife and drum corps, all playing holiday favorites: America the Beautiful, She’s a Grand Old Flag, God Bless America, Yankee Doodle, plus Chicago’s Saturday in the Park. In the gray-skied morning before it all began, it was impossible not to think of Don’t Rain on My Parade, but the clouds never let loose, not even after being sliced through by a flyover of F15s from Barnes Air National Guard Base.
The Philmont Fire Department’s 1860 hose cart.
The Moodus Drum and Fife Corps from Moodus, CT.
Children and adults were equally in awe of the enormous balloons.
The Adams Alert Hose Company brought a beautiful 1885 parade cart built in Seneca Falls, NY.
The float from Here at Home, a Pittsfield not-for-profit that welcomes back soldiers from Iraq, Afghanistan and other combat zones.
Some Shriners showed up in miniature cars.
What would a parade be without vintage cars?
Members of the Baltimore City Police Department Marching Revels, which one first prize for best musical group.
The Uncle Sam Chorus from Troy, NY, the birthplace of Uncle Sam.
A grand old band.
Members of the Pittsfield American Defenders baseball team, which plays in historic Wahconah Park.
The Randy Roderick Jockey Balloon did a few spins on North Street with help from 34 handlers from UNICO.
The Oldies-But-Goodies Singers in their souped-up ‘57 Chevy.
The Party’s Barn’s patriotic balloon float.
Some of the kids who walked alongside the Party Barn’s float.
Broadway composer William Finn, who was a parade judge, with Uncle Sam (aka Fred Polnisch).
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Posted by Dan Shaw on 07/06/09 at 04:04 PM • Permalink
The Mahaiwe’s Mix-Master: 20 Questions for Beryl Jolly
Beryl Jolly with hunky trumpeter Chris Botti; photo by Stephen Donaldson
Beryl Jolly, the executive director of the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center in Great Barrington, has been at the historic theater since its grand renovation and reopening in 2005. Before joining the Mahaiwe, Jolly was the director of individual giving and development at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) and a general management associate at The Public Theater/New York Shakespeare Festival, which helps explain her eclectic taste and instinct for programming for a sophisticated audience. The Mahaiwe’s lineup is all about the mix, and Jolly has recently presented Rufus Wainwright, Chris Botti, Judy Collins, MOMIX, and hosted readings by the Berkshires Playwrights Lab. The Mahaiwe has ongoing partnerships with Symphony Space’s Selected Shorts and the Paul Taylor Dance Company, and regulalry sells out the Metropolitan Opera “Live in HD” broadcasts. Here’s how Jolly, who lives in Lee with her husband, Matthew Adelson, and two children, makes the most of rural living.
1. Where do you go when you crave solitude?
In the middle of a workday, it’s Housatonic River Walk. If I have an hour or two on a weekend, it’s straight up October Mountain.
2. Where do you go when you crave buzz?
I survive on a lot of caffeine, so I frequent all of the coffee shops from Lee to Great Barrington—Cakewalk, Uncommon Grounds, Daily Bread, Rubi’s and Fuel—but not usually all on the same day.
3. What’s your favorite historical site?
I’m on the board of the Housatonic Heritage Area and I’ve learned so much about the wealth of historical sites in our region. Everything from the African-American Heritage Trail (as I type this, I’m looking outside my office window in Great Barrington at Clinton AME Zion Church) to the Performing Arts Trail, Iron Heritage Trail and Paper Heritage Trail that’s currently developing.
4. What’s your favorite library or bookstore?
For quiet moments of browsing, Yellow House Books in downtown GB, and the Bookloft; for after-school visits, the Stockbridge and Lee libraries.
5. What’s your favorite way to spend a Friday night?
I’m very happy when we have an exciting show at the Mahaiwe and there’s an enthusiastic crowd dancing in the aisles or cheering from their seats. Even better, though, is when I’m reading my daughters their bedtime stories on the couch.
6. What’s your favorite way to spend a Sunday morning?
Sleeping in! And then pancakes or waffles with the family. My cousin makes fantastic maple syrup at Mountain Valley Maple Farm in southern Vermont, and we go through a lot of it.
7. What do you buy for yourself when you need a treat and want to splurge?
Ice cream at SoCo, chocolate at Chocolate Springs or a little spa day at Michele’s Salon & Day Spa. Also Jane Iredale products at FaceHaven and Studio Day Spa... Come to think of it, I think I’m overdue on all fronts; better work on that!
8. What’s your favorite one-hour drive from your house?
After 20 years of living on the west coast, my parents, Carol and Bill Jolly, moved to Chesterfield, MA, in the Pioneer Valley when we came to the Berkshires four years ago. They’ve been a terrific support system and are spending more time with their grandkids now every month than we used to have together each year. And the 60-minute distance is just right for all of us. We attend the Chesterfield Fourth of July Parade and Cummington Fair every summer.
9. Where’s your favorite place to hear live music?
There’s a very special theater in Great Barrington that has beautiful acoustics and a dynamic line-up of shows,
year-round!
10. What’s your favorite place for bargain hunting?
I love vintage clothes—my wedding dress was from 1905—andI have a few special spots in Brooklyn that I return to on nostalgic shopping expeditions.
11. Who do you trust to recommend wines?
Nejaime’s and Ed Domaney have always been very helpful
12. What’s your favorite hardware store?
It’s always fun to pop into Carr’s and get that hardware store smell, browse paint chips for when we finally paint our living room.
13. Where do you shop for clothes? Do you have a favorite salesperson?
Said at Main Street is always helpful, and I love darting into Karen Allen Fiber Arts, Petria, and Homeward Bound for creative inspiration.
14. What three things do you always do with out-of-town guests?
After picking them up at Wassaic, we often visit Berkshire Pottery in Hillsdale (my in-laws first bought pottery there almost forty years ago) and walk through Bartholomew’s Cobble in Sheffield. I also like to take visitors to the gardens at The Mount.
15. What’s your favorite theatre?
There’s only one Mahaiwe Theater and I feel pretty privileged to be running it! I earned my stripes at The Public Theater/ New York Shakespeare Festival and Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM), which have some pretty special theaters within their halls as well.
16. Where’s your favorite place for breakfast?
Martin’s, Great Barrington Bagel and Rubi’s.
17. What newspapers, blogs, websites do you read every day?
The world is becoming so internet-oriented; I readily check Rural Intelligence, The Rogovoy Report, ArtsJournal, as well as the Berkshire Eagle, New York Times and Google News. It’s all about multi-tasking!
18. How many Facebook friends and/or Twitter followers do you have?
I’m afraid once I start I won’t be able to stop—so I haven’t started. The Mahaiwe has about 700 Facebook friends.
19. Who are your local heroes?
My folks, Carol and Bill Jolly, are number one. They have always been role models on how to make the world a better place, with integrity; how to balance work and family—with family as the first priority; how to confront tough decisions and make the best choices given the reality of the circumstances.
Also, I wouldn’t be here in the Berkshires, and the Mahaiwe wouldn’t be enjoying its current renaissance, without Lola Jaffe. Her vision, intelligence and perseverance makes all things possible and her energy and generosity of spirit are truly remarkable. So many other inspiring individuals live in this region and dedicate countless hours and efforts to wonderful causes -they are all part of the fabric that makes this community so extraordinary.
20. What five things are you most looking forward to doing this summer?
Camping and hiking, visiting my sister and brother-in-law in Burlington, hearing my daughters’ summer camp stories every night, seeing the shows my husband, Matthew Adelson (photo) is lighting at Berkshire Theatre Festival, and welcoming folks to the Mahaiwe!
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Posted by Dan Shaw on 07/01/09 at 05:34 PM • Permalink
Creative Solutions for Hard Times: A Great Barrington Auto Dealership Morphs Into an Art Gallery
Pip Deely and Kalika Farmer at Pete's Motors in Great Barrington
Beginning Saturday, if you drive by Pete’s Motors on Route 7 in Great Barrington late at night, the venerable Ford and Dodge dealership will be lit up inside but there won’t be any cars on view. Pete’s Motors closed last year, and it is being transfomed into a temporary 24/7 art gallery by Philip “Pip” Deely and Kalika Farmer (left), with help from Pip’s father’s cousin, Cathy Deely, who suggested the idea last winter. “The production of contemporary art exhibitions in vacant buildings and temporary spaces is not a new phenomenon,” says Pip, a scion of a prominent Stockbridge clan, who cites North Adams and Pittsfield as Berkshire pioneers in holding art exhibits in unlikely locations. A New York City art dealer, Pip is bringing sculpture, paintings, photogaphy and video art by a diverse group of established and emerging artists to the Berkshires for Made in the USA at Pete’s Motors.
The show is the curators’ creative response to the current economic crisis. (Remember how the best thing about the Great Depression, besides Hollywood’s screwball comedies, was the Works Progress Administration, which gave us Milton Avery, Stuart Davis, Walker Evans, Mark Rothko, and Willem deKooning?) “It highlights the potential for car dealerships and other businesses affected by the changing economic environment across the US to play a role in support the visual arts,” he says. The exhibit will be “open” 24/7 because you won’t actually be able to go into the Pete’s Motors showrooms. It is being designed to be viewed from outside through the large plate glass windows that once framed shiny pick-up trucks and SUVs. The not-for-profit installation is being funded by donations and IS183 Art School of the Berkshires has stepped in to administer the event so it can have not-for-profit status. “We have gotten so much encouragement,” says Pip. “We’re doing this because large empty buildings are a bruise on the community.”
Made in the USA at Pete’s Motors
Opening: Saturday June 27, 7 - 9 p.m.
