91 No Country for Old Men (Images)
81 Black Orpheus (Mahaiwe)
79 The Visitor (Triplex, Spectrum, Upstate)
78 The Counterfeiters (Images, Spectrum)
78 Iron Man (Cinerom, Fairview, Moviehouse, Regal Berkshire)
72 Priceless (Triplex, Spectrum)
71 Young@Heart (Spectrum, Upstate)
68 Redbelt (Hudson Movieplex, Regal Berkshire, Spectrum)
67 In Bruges (Spectrum)
67 Forgetting Sarah Marshall (Canaan Colonial, Cinerom, Crandell, Hudson Movieplex, Regal Berkshire, Spectrum)
57 Smart People (Spectrum)
57 Forbidden Kingdom (Fairview)
56 Leatherheads (Hudson Movieplex)
56 Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay (Cinerom, Hudson Movieplex, Regal Berkshire)
56 Then She Found Me (Triplex)
55 Baby Mama (Cinerom, Regal Berkshire, Spectrum, Triplex)
55 Nim’s Island (Canaan Colonial, Cinerom, Fairview, Regal Berkshire)
48 21 (Gilson, Hudson Movieplex)
44 What Happens In Vegas (Cinerom, Fairview, Regal Berkshire)
42 The Bucket List (Gilson)
40 Speed Racer (Cinerom, Hudson Movieplex, Moviehouse, Regal Berkshire)
37 Made of Honor (Cinerom, Regal Berkshire)
34 Prom Night (Hudson Movieplex)

*Metacritic is a site that weighs film reviews from dozens of sources, averaging the results to achieve a score—the closer to 100, the more positive the reviews.

Great Barrington Farmers’ Market
At the historic train station behind Town Hall.
May 10 - October 25
Saturdays: 9 AM - 1 PM
 
Hudson Farmers’ Market
6th and Columbia Streets
May 10 - November 22
Saturdays: 9 AM - 1 PM
 

Kent Farmers’ Market
On the Kent Green
May 10 - October
Saturdays: 9 AM - noon

Lenox Farmers’ Market
55 Pittsfield Road (Route 7) at Aspinwell
May 9 - October 17
Fridays: 2 -6 PM
 
Rhinebeck Farmers’ Market
Rhinbeck Municipal Parking Lot on East Market Street
May 11 - Thanksgiving
Sundays: 10 AM - 2 PM
New day!
May 29 - October 9
Thursdays:  3 - 7 PM
 
Sheffield Farmer’s Market
New location!
Massini’s lot, 1/2 mile north of town center on Route 7
May 9 - October 10
Fridays: 3:30 - 6:30

Vicki Halliday grew up in Texas, and her good ole girl attitude is reflected in Smokin Barbecue, the West Cornwall restaurant that she co-owns with her friend Dan Evans.  Less than a hundred yards from a prime fishing and canoeing stretch of the Housatonic River, Smokin Barbecue is the type of joint where you can arrive in your waders or wet clothes, and sit down to a draft beer and baby back or country style ribs (in two sizes: $12.95 or $19.95), which come with a choice of a side such as potato salad or baked beans.  The greenest thing on the menu at Smokin Barbecue is coleslaw, and Halliday says that she’s not planning to make changes any time soon.  “This is my idea of a real barbecue place,” she says in a Texan twang, which means no reservations and no credit cards, either. There are old fashioned pinball machines to help pass the time if you have to wait. “Most kids who come in have never seen them before,” says Halliday. “They get a real kick out of them.”

The search for the right barbecue sauce for the ribs was easy, because it was Dan’s homemade sauce that inspired the restaurant in the first place. And it’s a picture of Dan dressed as an aborigine (at a Halloween party several years ago at Mohawk Mountain) that became the label for Dangerous Dan’s Sauce, which is for sale at the restaurant ($6.50) as well as local markets. “We started bottling the sauce last year in Russ’s kitchen,” explains Halliday, referring to Russ Sawicki, who owns the nearby Wandering Moose restaurant. “And people went crazy for it. People use the sauce to spice up Bloody Marys and meatballs, and vegetarians put it on tofu. They use it for the damndest things.”

9 Railroad Street; 860.248-3127
Thursdays (after Memorial Day) 5 - 11
Fridays 4 - 11
Saturdays noon - 11
Sundays noon - 5

Cash only

During the go-go Reagan years, even dropouts had clearly defined goals and strategies for achieving them.  Only 28 when, as an MIT research director and a prospective PhD candidate, Matt Rubiner decided to bail on academia, he took comfort in the knowledge that he was still young enough to retool. 

“I asked myself, ‘What else could I approach in this academic way?’ Wine, of course, but I wasn’t really that interested in it.”

Cheese, on the other hand, felt right.  So in 1992, Rubiner took a job with Fromage Kitchen in Cambridge, MA. His timing was perfect.  While he was learning the business, the nation’s economic boom converged with the Atkins diet and the artisanal food movement to make America safe for luxury cheese.  Soon, over cocktails, corporate lawyers were asking Wall Streeters, “Is this farmstead?” and “Was that one made from raw milk?” Matt Rubiner, who, by then, was Mr. Cheese was on his way.

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“It smells like Europe in here,” my friend Dan says as we step inside Rubiners, the luxury cheese and specialty food emporium on Main Street in Great Barrington.  When I tell Rubiner this, he is pleased.  “My grandfather owned groceries stores.  He always taught me, whenever you walk into a food store, close your eyes and breathe in deeply.  Do you smell bread baking?  Proscuitto being cut?  That’s good.  Do you smell floor cleaner?  That’s not good.”

By May 2004, Matt had hung his shingle, Rubiner’s Cheesemongers & Grocers, on an elegant former bank in Great Barrington.  A few months later, he opened a small café in back.  “A shop as expensive as ours is bound to be viewed as elitist,” he says.  “I wanted to give people another reason to come here.  We had to complete the adventure.”

But from the start he knew that a little café like his could never support a highly-trained staff.  “The restaurant business is not to be entered lightly,” he says.  “Our goal was to have a simple café.  We were betting that simple preparation coupled with extreme quality—not just eggs with salt, but eggs that had been laid that morning with fleur de sel—would trump technique.  And it worked.” Today Rubi’s café may be the most egalitarian restaurant in the Berkshires—investment bankers and ladies-who-lunch sit next to ratty parking lot kids, all parties pleased to be there and all eating exactly the same stuff.

Ever intent on shortening the distance between the producer and the consumer, Matt Rubiner’s latest mission is his march to the sea.  In an introductory e-mail to prospective customers of Rubiner’s Pre-order Fishmongers, he confessed, “I am an incompetent cooker of fish…my grilled tuna tastes like Chicken-of-the-Sea.” Finally, he concludes, “Maybe I’m just not getting good fish.”

In fact, he already had contacted a couple of suppliers in Portland, Maine, one of whom told him, “Fine, but you have to buy like our chef customers,” meaning superstars like Daniel Boulud, Eric Ripert, Charlie Trotter, and Barbara Lynch.  In some instances, that meant finding a customer willing to tangle with a whole fish, such as an 18-pound Alaskan king salmon ($25.95 per pound) or a 10-15 pound hake ($7.95 per pound). 

The response to his e-mail was encouraging.  And so it came to pass that, here, in the mountains of Western Massachusetts, we now can buy Maine periwinkles ($6.50 per pound) and halibut cheeks ($21.95 per pound)—cheeks so fresh that yesterday morning they were still living next door to a swimming halibut’s teeth.  Expensive?  Not when you compare it to filling up the tank and driving to the Cape. 

Place telephone or e-mail orders on Wednesday before 5 pm and pick up on Friday after 12 noon.  If that’s too inconvenient, Rubiner can arrange for home delivery, even across county and state lines, for “a nominal fee.” All orders must be secured with a credit card.

264 Main Street, Great Barrington; 413.528.0488

In addition to the hanging works by twenty painters and photographers, including Edward Steichen, Tricia Wright,and Jim Osman, signed first editions of books by three of the artists will be featured.  Photographer Benjamin Swett’s latest, the acclaimed Route 22, documents the 300-mile highway that connects Manhattan and Montreal.  Through Swett’s lens, this familiar artery is rendered unseemly, its tattoo and Off-Track Betting parlors scarcely more vital than the long-abandoned diners and detritus of defunct industry. Close at Hand, the recent book of Mariana Cook (whose photograph Thistle appears here) is a departure from her usual portraiture.  In it, she examines the power of the camera to imbue the familiar—objects that are close at hand—with poignance and mystery, a theme similar to that explored in Susan Paulsen’s, Tomatoes on the Back Porch.

Opening reception, May 10, 4 - 7
7 Academy Street, Salisbury; 860.435.2332

On Saturday night, The Hudson Opera House presents a group exhibition, DRESS.  Nine artists--Karen Bamonte, Mimi Czajka Graminski (who is also co-curator), Kathy Feighery, Bibiana & Maya Matheis,T anya Marcuse, Sarah Martinez, Lise Poirier (the other co-curator), Carla Shapiro (whose work appears here), and Regan Stacey--explore the relationship between apparel and art.  The exhibition will be on display at the Opera House through June 7th.

Along with the necessity to cover herself, clothing has traditionally provided women, in particular, with a means of creative expression, a way of selling herself, as well as a way of announcing actual or aspired to tribal affiliation. This exhibit explores that complex role. 

Opening reception, May 10, 6 - 8
327 Warren Street, Hudson; 518.822.1438

Save the Date

Saturday and Sunday May 17 & 18

Tickets are now on sale for Artscape, a tour of 14 artists’ studios in Columbia Counties. Seeing art in the environment in which it was created is a very different experience from seeing it in an immaculate gallery or museum.  The spaces often enhance your engagement with and understanding of the work.  And, as a bonus, you get to travel the back roads of beautiful Columbia County now, when it’s looking so lovely in its new spring dress. 

Artscape Studio Tour, $25 per person (less 10% for members of the Columbia County Council on the Arts)

Actress Annette Miller, who opens this month in The Ladies Man at Shakespeare & Company, with playwright Jodi Rothe, who wrote Martha Mitchell Calling, a play that Miller has starred in several times; Construct board member Linda Hebert with Anita Schilling.
 

Maggie Merelle, co-owner of the bistro Rouge in West Stockbridge, with Jen Harvey-Montano, co-founder of Berkshire Property Agents.

 

Graphic designer Jennifer Clark with Max Dannis , the owner of Local 111 in Philmont, NY. Maniraj Singh & Ravejeet Singh Chahal, whose father, “Puma,” owns the Aroma Bar & Grill n Great Barington.

The Southfield Store during the day

The Berkshire Babe was in heaven. “Wow!” she said. “This is the best mole I’ve ever had—it’s sweet, smoky, spicy, with layers of flavors. It gets better with every bite.” The mole, which was served with an astonishingly juicy and flavorful pork tenderloin ($20), is on the menu every Thursday when the Southfield Store has its Oaxacan Night. Since last year, the Southfield Store—an old general store that was gentrified in restrained Martha Stewart-style by a previous owner—has been owned by Peter Platt and Meredith Kennard of the redoubtable Old Inn on the Green. Now, they’ve let their chef—Gustavo A. Perez who worked with Peter at Wheatleigh years ago—cook the food of his native state on Thursday nights. “It’s hard to find real Mexican food in the Berkshires,” says Perez, who makes every taco and tostado to order. “That’s why the food comes out slow, but I think it’s worth it,” he says. It certainly is. Waiting is part of the experience. With only six tables and a no reservation policy, the Southfield Store is not for Type A personalities. There is a small bar and full liquor service so you can have a margarita or a glass of wine during the inevitable wait. But if you check your attitude at the door, you can enjoy home-style food that is plated as if it were haute cuisine. Everything we had on our first visit made us happy: Crispy fish tacos ($9), chicken tamales with tomato sauce ($8), Quesadlila Oaxacan Style with queso fresco and mushrooms ($8) and tostados topped with quesillo ($8). The Berkshire Babe’s boyfriend vowed to return next Thursday to try the Pozole, Ensalada with Cactus leaves and Chile Releno.  “But I’m not sure I want you to tell anybody about this place,” he said.
 
The Southfield Store
163 Main Street, Southfield MA; 413.229.5050
Breakfast & Lunch: Monday - Saturday, 7 AM - 5:30PM, Sunday Brunch 8 AM - 2 PM
Dinner: Thursday - Sunday, 5:30 - 9

Rule 1

Make it a Pavilion; Add French Doors
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“This was the last cheap house in Hudson--an old carriage house with nasty metal awnings and an attached garage lined with baby blue vinyl.  I thought I might use it as a painting studio.  I didn’t have it inspected before I bought it, then afterward I discovered the sills were totally rotted--just another in my succession of Mr. Wrongs.  Since I had to rebuild the whole thing, I thought why not make it a pavilion.  In 18th-century France, court etiquette was so murderous that nobles had to have a place to get away.  So they built modest (by palace standards) pavilions.  These little pleasure palaces outside of Versailles are like lanterns--you can see through them from front to back--and their classical layout tells you how to move through them.  Every house I do, I think of as a pavilion.”
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Rule 2

Bring in Light and Life
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“They are the two most important things a room can have.  Sunshine, breezes, plants, books, of course, but also sparkle--mirrors, candles--lend vitality.”
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Rules 3 & 4

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Curtains Should Blend
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“Curtains should match the color of the wall as closely as possible.  The cheaper the fabric, the better, so they can be very full.  And they should always be unlined.  I usually do them out of muslin with brass grommets at the top, so I can hang them from a simple rod with white plastic shower rings.  I always tell myself the rings are ivory.”
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Treasure Threadbare Rugs
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“I am a member of a confederation called The Rotten Rug Society.  Nothing is more hideous than a new Oriental rug or a brightly colored one.” The painting is Faulkner’s Cold Sun.
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Rules 5 & 6

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Upholstery Should be Anonymous
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“What’s interesting here is the Mark Beard painting and the board-room photographs, not the chairs.  As a rule, upholstered furniture should be the least eye-catching thing in a room.  And I nearly always slipcover it.  I like slipcovers to be a little baggy--they should look as if the housekeeper ran them up in her spare time.”

Use Color Cautiously
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“I love color but I use it very respectfully.  Generally, I employ a huge range of non-color colors that go from the whitest whites to the darkest darks and everything in between.”
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Rule 7

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Trust Symmetry
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“When you shop, look for pairs.  If perfect symmetry isn’t possible, then aim for balance by using things of equal volume.”
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Rules 8 & 9

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Mix the Humble with the Refined
.
“I like Mark Hampton’s maxim, ‘If it looks good, it is good.’ I’d just as soon take a piece of junk and tart it up as buy an expensive antique.  I’ll often spend as much as $40 a weekend at Mark’s Antiques or at Dan the Man’s Flea Market [both on Warren Street, Hudson], and I’ll find things that give me more joy then an antique with the highest provenance.  If I do have something good, I’ll put something humble next to it, to de-glaze the good thing--make it less pompous.  This sepia print was in Hudson Antiques Center for at least two years.  I finally bought it and hung it over this rather good Biedermeier chest of drawers.  I can’t tell you the number of decorators who’ve since asked to buy it from me.  Yet it sat there for two years, unloved and unwanted, for no money.”
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Distrust New Wood
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“I don’t like wood that isn’t old, dark or distressed--for anything; furniture, floors.  I hate floors that get sanded, then covered with orange polyurethane.  I paint floors unless they are very dark or very light, as in our kitchen, like scrubbed Swedish pine.”
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Rule 10

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Nothing is Sacred--Paint it, Strip it, Bleach it!
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“When I found this Gothic cupboard in a flea market, it had a starved dark brown varnish finish.  I’ve painted it, over the years, white, gray-green, several shades of red (you’ll never see me use a clear, true red--I like orange-reds, corals) and, finally, as it is now, black-overlay with some red showing through.  I sometimes buy good quality department store lamps in lacquered brass or bronze, then bring them home, prime them with Bin, and gesso them.” [Bin is a primer available at hardware stores; Gesso, the thick white material artist’s use to prime canvasses, is available at art supply stores.]
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Rule 11

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Play with Scale
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“The dealers I most respect--Vince Mulford in Hudson, Michael Trapp in West Cornwall--have an incredible understanding of scale. It’s an instinct: Nothing’s more fun than an overscaled piece of furniture when it’s right, yet I’ve bought huge sofas and had to get rid of them. Even if you’ve spent a lot of money for something, if it doesn’t work, throw it out. Otherwise, it holds the entire room hostage.”
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Rule 12


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Spend as Little as Possible on Kitchens and Bathrooms
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“Fancy kitchens depress me.  I think kitchens and baths should be simple and utilitarian.”
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Rule 13

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If It’s Gloomy, Paint it Gray
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“When we finally got it all stripped down, there was a little bit of gloom.  You can’t force cheer just by painting everything yellow, it never works, so throughout the house, I painted all the walls gray [Benjamin Moore’s ‘Nimbus’], and used the same color cut by half with white on the ceiling and the woodwork. The floors are also painted gray [Benjamin Moore’s ‘Shadow’] On furniture, I like to use a Walmart flat latex in a color they call Aluminum that is the perfect French gray.”
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Rule 14

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Collect Busts
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“They’re classical and whimsical at the same time.  And I love plaster as a material--in nearly every room, there’s some object that’s made of plaster, and often it will be a bust. This wrestler is by the same artist, Mark Beard, who did the painting of the fencer in the living room.”

Shandell’s carries a wide array of new and vintage finials, which begin at $5.
 

Vintage wood and brass wallpaper rollers, $500 and up, make unique lamp bases.
 
Shandell’s
34 Main Street, Millerton, NY; 518-789-6603
Thursday - Saturday 11 AM - 5 PM or by appointment.

Journalist Bess Hochstein with Nicholas Puma Jr, Shakespeare & Company’s managing director; Sophia Garder, the theater company’s manager, wore a costume to sell raffle tickets during the reception.

Pam Johnson with Christopher Sink, the former managing director of Shakespeare & Company, and John MacClaren, the director of administration and finance for Bard College at Simon’s Rock; Writer Judy Linscott with Sarah O’Connell of Salisbury Bank and Ann Usher of Crane & Co.

Cooking teacher Pooja Karina with accordionist and clown Heather Fisch; Jean Wolfersteig and Lois Walsh who teaches art at Marist College.

The BIFFMA Bunch: Gary Hill, the Church Street Gallery’s Denise Ulick, photographer Kevin Sprague and Berkshire International Film Festival founder Kelley Vickery

Breadloaf Mountain Lodge & Cottages
13 Route 7, Cornwall Bridge CT; (860) 672-6064


The Dogwood cottage’s screnned porch

The view of the lodge from Housatonic Meadows State Park, where you can fish year round.

“Competing” associate brokers Victoria Hoyt and Ann Dyal

Broker Gary DiMauro with clients Deborah and Russell Frehling; Assemblyman Molinaro liaison and Rebuilding Together board member Harold Ramsey with Jake Dunn

Starr Place owner Lawrence Henry Bank with the evening’s organizer Julia Crowley and restaurant manager Arlin Smith; realtors Gail Saucier, Tecia Poulas, and Stephanie Winne

“At best, most college presidents are running something that is somewhere between a faltering corporation and a hotel,” Leon Botstein once said.  Leon Botstein has spent the past 33 proving that he’s the exception to the rule. As the president of Bard College since 1975, he has not only remade Bard into one of the country’s best liberal arts colleges but also redefined the role of the college president by holding down a second job as music director and principal conductor of the American Symphony Orchestra.  This weekend at the Sosnoff Theater at the Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts, he’ll be conducting Samuel Barber’s Knoxville Summer of 1915, Jean Sibelisu’s Violin Concerto in D Minor, Op. 47, and Richard Strauss’s Also sprach Zarathustra, Op. 30.

‘Northwind” Switch Grass

You don’t have to live in Connecticut to take advantage of the Earth Day Plant Sale sponsored by the Northwest Conservation District at the Goshen Fair Grounds this weekend. This annual fund-raising event benefits the non-profit group dedicated to the conservation and sustainable use of local natural resources. There are things you probably can’t find at your local garden center, like bare-root seedling of Balsam Fir, Norway Spruce and White Pine ($30 for a bundle of 25).  There are ornamental shrubs such as white forsythia ($20 for a 2-gallon container) and non-invasives such as ‘Northwind’ Switch grass ($20 for a 2-gallon container), and groundcovers such as periwinkle ($40 for 100 bare root plants).  For a full list of what’s for sale Click here. A spokeswoman for the district advises shopping early on Friday (9 AM to 6 PM) for the best selection.

Rural Intelligence: In your book, you use the biographies—and the autobiographical lyrics--of three singer/songwriters to make sense of a period in American feminist history that is not easy to explain: the messy, compass-less transition from traditional values, through sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll, to liberation, or whatever you choose to call the relatively tidy accommodation we’ve reached today.  Please describe the process of coming up with this complex idea?

Sheila Weller:  I just always wanted to write this book! Certainly ever since I read Sara Davidson’s nail-on-the-head Loose Change, I first thought, Why didn’t I think of this? and then: I’ll do something like this later...when more time has passed.

Perhaps every generation is solipsistic, but there was something about having gone through the unique wind tunnel of the ‘60s—where so many of us went, overnight, from being luncheon-suited, teased-hair girls-who-were-going-to-get-engaged-right-after-college to...well, to People Who Could Never Run For President—that was instantly one of those One-day-I-HAVE-to-write-about-this experiences. And, indeed, the more years that passed since those halcyon days we were a little too stupid to know we might NOT have survived (there’s a Tangier jail cell out there somewhere with my name on it that by some fluke of luck I just missed inhabiting....), the more you do see, as you so well put it, the “tidy accommodations” that you made.

As the years rolled on, I kept waiting nervously for the book in that once-familiar genre (that started with Mary McCarthy’s The Group and ended, by my count, with Barbara Raskin’s Hot Flashes--and had Loose Change and Alice Adams’s Superior Women in between--that expressed ‘60s women in early middle age (a horrible term that we only freely use now since we’re actually past it ). Luckily, it didn’t come out. People seemed to have forgotten about that three-or-four-women-going-through-time convention. (Maybe “Sex and the City” used up all the air.)

At the same time, I started noticing that younger people had the era all wrong. I remember, for example, that Renee Zellwegger movie [Down With Love] where she went from being a Doris Day, headbanded early ‘60s type to a power-suit feminist. I thought, Whoa! People are missing a whole era—when girls turned into chicks (term worn proudly, not as insult). In 2000 I started working among young women, at Self and then Glamour magazine. My sister, a lawyer (and a compatriot during the great crazy years), also worked among younger women, and we noticed a tantalizing difference--they were instantly “together:” (to use the old term), demanding and making good money, married to nice, sensible guys (no crazy drug dealer boyfriends...), albeit with discreet tattoos, etc.  Even the hippest-- most purple-haired--of them got...engaged! with a...ring! and bridesmaids!  It was illuminating to see the quirks and landmarks of our own generation (female-wing) against the bas relief of this other one we were thrust among.

I wrote other books..true crimes [Marrying the Hangman, Raging Heart, Saint of Circumstance], a memoir [Dancing at Ciro’s]...but I kept thinking of this one. And of course the music and personae of Carole, Joni and Carly were the soundtrack of those thoughts. They were middle class girls, too. There were aspects of each of their lives which we all knew about, and of course their music, that resonated as a counterpart-across-the-celebrity-divide to ours.

One day--this is true; the Berkshires part!--in early 2002..it was winter—I took a walk down Beech Plain Road in Sandisfield, and it literally just came to me. To write an intertwined biography of these three women but more in the manner of The Group and Loose Change than a standard music biography. I came back to the house and called my sister--Liz Weller is her name. And I said, What do you think? And she said: That’s IT. It took me a full year to write and rewrite the proposal to convince my agent, Ellen Levine (from airy conception to concrete proposal is a long journey, as every writer knows) but once she was convinced, oh, man!, was she convinced.

I sold the book at a kind of mini-auction in May 2003.  I’d already started doing interviews, but now I carpet-bombed the territory, looking for interviews. So it took six years from conception, five from contract. And a house re-mortgaging in between!

R.I.: Did you ever consider anyone other than Carole, Carly and Joni? If so, who, and why didn’t she make the cut?

S.W.: Actually, I did. I considered Linda Ronstadt for about two days. A, she provided geographical (Southwest) and some ethnic (she’s half Hispanic) diversity (and, by the way: yes, the white-girl-ness of the book did bother me; my sense was that the African American experience was so much more momentous during that span of years, it was another order of significance from my little-white-girls); she Was There. (I remember loving “Different Drum” in summer ‘67); she was key in the Lucy’s El Adobe L.A. social scene, the Troubadour bar scene...and she had interesting lovers. (Jerry Brown...Albert Brooks...George Lucas. In fact, she, more than the others “dated”—to use a crass word - “up,” as women were supposed to do.) But Linda didn’t write her own songs, she only sang others’ songs. And four women were just too many. She also didn’t have quite the...pathos and complexity, nor nearly the significance of the others.

Writ large over the book, also, is Laura Nyro, who was evanescent, extraordinary. For a lot of reasons I didn’t consider her (there was already a biography, her life was too private, etc.), but SHE was the one whose music I felt the most kinship with, back then.

R.I.: I always thought it was Janis Joplin who closed the deal.  Girls heard her sing, “Piece of My Heart,” and promptly changed their mailing addresses to their boyfriends’ fraternity houses.

S.W.: Interesting. I would have said Grace Slick. I remember girls wanting to be like Grace but not like Janis. Also, Janis was more extreme. I wasn’t choosing extreme girls; I was going for girls you could have turned to in a Bloomingdale’s fitting room and said, “how does this look?”

R.I.: When you were growing up in Beverly Hills were you aware that just a few miles east in Laurel Canyon there was a creative/social zeitgeist occurring among rock musicians comparable to the between-the-wars Paris of Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast?

S.W.: I’d already left BH for NYC by the time that was going on but my sister lived there and I visited and, yes, we were, envying, aware. When I was growing up in LA, Laurel Canyon was, indeed, always a bohemian place.

R.I.: “Grim and dour” is how you describe the household in which Joni Mitchell’s illegitimate daughter grew up.  But didn’t Joni herself grow up in just such a household, feeling every bit as alienated from her birth parents as her child did from the couple who adopted her? Isn’t that how the household of every rebellious child feels; “grim and dour”?

S.W.: Oh, dear, if I said that (via a source) that was probably a little mean. Kilauren’s adoptive parents were bookish and not at all charismatic. And, yes, it matches a bit the relationship that Joni had with her extremely proper parents. In fact, Kilauren was SO much Joni’s daughter—down to the modeling, down to the loving of clothes—it does show you the impact of genes. I don’t know if every rebellious child feels she’s from a grim and dour family. (The rebellious girls I grew up with in BH would say their parents were materialistic and had “plastic” values, but weren’t necessarily grim.) but that’s certainly a good backdrop to rebel against.

R.I.: What if Brad MacMath hadn’t dumped pregnant Joni?  Wouldn’t she have been forced to face the same dilemma—the demands and constraints of motherhood vs giving vent to her immense narcissism-fueled creativity? 

S.W.:  That’s a great question. I think she would have dumped him. She was never madly in love with him, according to my sources. They may have married, quickly--because Myrtle [Joni’s mother] was the biggest stumbling block; her disapproval would have been seismic--but it wouldn’t have lasted. One way or another, she would have ended up with a green card and in NY.  “Narcissism-fueled creativity”: well put!

R.I.: Joni is the one whose actions are the most mysterious to me; the hardest one to like.  Do you agree? If so, do you think it’s because she is the greatest artist of the three?  Does genius like hers get in the way of like-ability?  Do we care when the genius is a man if he’s likeable or even good to his kids?

S.W.:  Hmmm… I got so into her I felt I “knew” her, you know? The reflexive need to bolt, to relinquish, while knowing it was considered aberrant...all the pain at her damned idiosyncracy that “River” expresses.  But, yes, she’s not only objectively at a higher level of artistry than the other two (though they have equal, compensating merits—there is one Joni album, “Court and Spark”...oh, and maybe a couple of cuts from “Hejira,” that I would ever listen to driving around in the car; it isn’t bouyant, elegiac music...) , but, just as important, she quite obviously considered herself an artist so early on, a self-definition that intensified with time. Despite living in, of all places, Bel Air, she is the one who is avant garde. Genius and likeability...again, interesting. I think many fans like her because they want to like her—they love her and respect her so very much, they over-champion her, and every wound she feels, they feel, too. And there’s something superficially very pleasing about Joni—her femininity, the cornsilk hair. But her ego is..whoa! And, indeed, we take it for granted that a brilliant male musician or artist has a big fat obnoxious ego. (BTW, people who’ve recorded with her—like Russ Kunkel—say she is a pleasure to work with. “Humble.")

R.I.: Of all the troubling behavior you describe in this book, you seem most perplexed by Carole King’s choice to live for several years under relatively primitive conditions in the wilds of Idaho with a succession of (by any measure) unsuitable men.  Is it possible that she suffered the men just to get that life?  It has its virtues: Idaho is, after all, very beautiful, and the nice thing about having goats to milk, etc, is you always know exactly what is expected of you next.

S.W.:  Eventually she took great pleasure in the life. Cynthia Weil says, “Carole was always a hippie at heart,” but close friends say she was very depressed during those years, and she herself has said she was hiding...that the city (and the reviewers) had become the frightening creatures in the woods, while the woods became safe.

I loved the adventurousness and unexpectedness of Carole’s choices in those two husbands. They were the biggest stretch that any of the women made. And if you listen to Carole’s beautiful and completely underrated “Welcome Home” (the song, not the album), you hear the beauty in her finding herself in a life so different than the one she was born in.

R.I.:  There’s a thread that runs through all three of these women’s stories, and his name is James Taylor.  Did you know from the outset that he had played a vital role in each of these women’s lives—lover of two, colleague of all three, his own wife, perhaps most ambivalently, since he never really respected her work?  (Nor did he take pains to hide the fact; Sweet Baby James, indeed!) Do you know what his objections were to her work?  Does he address it in his own autobiography?

S.W.:  I definitely knew he had been with Joni and, yes, I knew that he and Carole were such close musical friends (I didn’t realize the whole nexus at the beginning). Why didn’t he respect Carly’s work? He probably thought it slick, or standards-based. Also, he was, especially during his drug taking years (and there was a long stretch of them), so narcissistic, he wasn’t going to take much interest in her work. He didn’t write an autobiography; Timothy White wrote an authorized biography, Long Ago and Far Away. It was not very illuminating, overall.

R.I.: All three of these women have had more romantic opportunities deeper into middle age than most women do yet today all three of them, grandmothers in their 60s, live alone.  Do you think this is a coincidence?  If not, do you have a theory as to why?

S.W.: Yes, all three live alone. Indeed. And, yes, they had more opportunities longer than other women; fame and charisma extend opportunities for women. I think Joni would have definitely ended up alone. She is solitary and quirky. Carly was very unhappy when her second marriage really finally ended (and she has a boyfriend now). Carole, I think probably is the example of someone who was so richly domestic for so long--four kids, starting very young--that she is happy to live alone, with abundant family around her.

R.I.: You’ve said that Carly Simon was the only one of the three who cooperated with you.  But in the end, I think you’ve done a great service to all three of these women; if nothing else, by offering an objective description to their children of the circumstances that led their mothers to make some of the pain-inducing choices they did. Have you heard from any of them?  Do you hope/expect to?

S.W.: THANK YOU, Marilyn! I have not heard from the other two.  Carly loves the book and has been very supportive, but I know enough about Carole to know that anything written about her personal life she will automatically not like. However, I am enormously gratified by a review that’s coming up Sunday in the Times Book Review. Stephanie Zacharek gave me a nice mixed review (started off, like Maslin did, with the girding-herself-against-Baby-Boom-corniness but then relaxed and was relieved) that then veered into an almost couldn’t-help-herself, full-throated paean to the significance and brilliance of Carole. That gratifies because, at the very beginning of the process, I sat with Carole’s close and protective manager and told her I wanted to do this book partly because young women don’t know enough about Carole King, don’t know how important she was/is. The manager agreed and that is why initial blessing for the book (rescinded after they found out I was asking questions other than just about music) was given. Well, this review--by a young (42 is young to me) woman, with its ecstatic singling out of Carole--was the completion of my promise.

As for Joni, she is notoriously prickly and has been known to find a negative in even worshipful reviews of her. That said, she also hates bullshit. She recently said she wanted to be viewed at eye level. I think I did that. And as I was writing the chapter (seven, I think...) of her and her jazz drummer boyfriends, and meeting Georgia O’Keefe and driving across the country in the red wig and fake name...I thought: Something tells me that, as much as she might try to hate this book, she will, when she reads that chapter, have to admit: “She got me.”

R.I.: Where in the Berkshires do you live?  How long have you lived here?  What do you like about it?

S.W.: We live in Sandisfield, the most rustic part...geographically huge, only about 750 people. Bought the house in October 1995.  Love it. The difficult winters (brings out the macho in you), the satisfaction in beating back the forest and clearing a hard-fought half acre at a time, the unique characters in our ‘hood’ (come see the famous fence made of old mattress springs on Bob Never-Left-the-Nineteenth-Century Minery’s property), the great neighbors, the nice guys at Terranova (it’s more deli than general store—that’s the vibe—even though it’s in the woods), Monterey Beach in August, the white clapboard Congregationalist churches and the proud history of abolitionism.  The anti-Hampton-ness. Everything.

Falls Village Children’s Theater Little Kids Camp, 2007

“Hey kids, let’s put on a show in the barn” was OK in Mickey Rooney’s day, but it’s no longer what kids in the country say if they love theater. Instead, they say, “Mom, can I go to camp?” Fortunately, many of the theater companies in our region offer summer classes and workshops, and they are filling up quickly. Here’s a round-up of what’s being offered. (If we’ve omitted a nearby theater-oriented day camp, please leave a comment at the bottom of this post so we can add it to the list)
 
Kidsact! @ Barrington Stage Company
Great Barrington & Pittsfield, MA; 413-499-5446 x118
Ages 8 - 15:  Three-week session in Great Barrington (July 7 - 25)/ Three-week session in Pittsfield (Aug 4 - Aug 22) $500
 
Summertime Classes @ Berkshire Theatre Festival
Stockbridge, MA’ 413-298-5536 x19
Ages 7- 9:  One week session (Aug 11-15) $180
Ages 10 -12: One week session (July 14 -18) $180
Ages 11-14:  One-week session (July 7 - 11) $180
 
Kids on Stage @ Center for Performing Arts at Rhinebeck
Rhinebeck, NY; 845-876-3088 x12
Ages 11 - 15: Two sessions (July 7 - 25 & Aug 4 - 22) $500.
Ages 7 -10: Four one-week sessions (July 7-11; 14-18; August 4-8; August 11-15*) $200
Ages 5-7:  Two session ( June 30- July 3 & July 28-August 1*) $200
*Class filled: wait list only  
Summer Camp @ Falls Village Children’s Theater
Falls Village, CT; 860-824-4303
Ages 10 -17: Three-week sessions (June 23 - July 11 or Aug 4 - 22)) $675
Ages 5 -9: Two-week session (July 21 - Aug 1) $300
 
Musical Theatre Workshop @ Mac-HaydnTheatre
Chatham, NY; 518-392-9292
Ages 6-18 : Four week session divided by age and experience (July 7-August 11) $450
 
Riotous Youth @ Shakespeare & Company
Lenox, MA; 413-637-1199
Ages 7-9: Two sessions: ( June 30 - July 11 & July 28 - Aug 8) $420
Ages 10-12: Two sessions: (July 14 - July 25 & Aug 11 - Aug 22) $420
Ages 13-15: Two sessions: (June 30 - July 11 & July 14 - July 25) $420
 
Summerstage 2008 @ StageWorks/Hudson
Hudson, NY; 518-828-7843
Ages 7-12: One session (June 30 - July 12) $425
Ages 13-17: One session (June 30 - July 12) $425
 
Youtheatre @ TriArts
Sharon, CT; 860-364-7469
Ages 5-7: Two-week session (June 30 - July 11) $325
Ages 6-18 One-week session: (June 23 - 27) $250
Ages 8-12: One-week session (Aug 18 - 22) $200
Ages 8-14: One-week session: (Aug11 - 15) $150
Ages 8-18: Two-week session (June 30-July 11) $450; three-week session: (July 14 - Aug 2) $799; one-week session (August 4 - August 8) $250
Ages 10-18: One week session (June 23 - June 27) $200
 
Summer Arts Program @ Warner Theatre
Torrington, CT 860-489-7180 x128
Ages 7-12: Two-week sessions (July 7 - 18 & July 21 - Aug 1) $425*
Ages 10-16: Two-week session: (Aug 4 - 15) $425*
(* $400 before 5/17 )

The other day I took a drive out to Gigi’s Market at Greig Farm, which is tucked away half a mile off Route 9 in Red Hook. For lunch, I ordered the Bianca Skizza, a flatbread “pizza” that’s an intoxicating combination of figs, Coach Farm goat cheese, arugula and white truffle oil ($10.50). Paired with a salad dressed in gossamer sherry shallot vinaigrette, it’s a great lunch for two.  Everything was so delicious that I decided to buy some prepared food to take home, and the lasagna Bolognese and Tuscan style Minestrone were both superb, savory and satisfying. But it was the Chicken Liver Pâté that was a revelation—creamy, tangy with a hint of fruit. I expected a refined version of the chopped liver from the Jewish delis of my childhood, but Gigi’s version tastes like it’s made by an Italian grandmother instead of a Kosher one.  When I asked for the recipe, I discovered the three secret ingredients (which were not used back in the shtetls of Eastern Europe) that make this pâté so divine: heavy cream, orange zest, and truffle oil.  For those of us who don’t live close enough to shop regularly at Gigi’s, this recipe is truly a prize.

Make the pate ahead as the flavors will only get better, about 2 days and up until 2 weeks. Serve spread onto croutes with cornichons.

1 tablespoon olive oil
1 medium shallot, chopped
1 lb chicken livers, rinsed and drained
1 tablespoon fresh thyme leaves
1 cup white wine such as a dry Riesling, Pinot Grigio or Sauvignon Blanc
1 cup heavy cream
1 navel orange
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
½ teaspoon truffle oil, optional
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper

• Heat olive oil in large skillet over moderately high heat, until hot but not smoking and cook shallots, stirring, until golden brown, about 4 minutes. Add chicken livers, with thyme and cook, stirring, 4 minutes. Add wine and simmer, until reduced by two-thirds, about 8 minutes. Stir in heavy cream and simmer until reduced by half, about 10 minutes more (chicken livers will be cooked through at this point). 

• Transfer mixture to a food processor and finely grate the zest of the orange with a micro plane or with the small holes of a hand held grater into the processor. Blend chicken liver mixture with lemon juice and truffle oil until smooth.

• Strain mixture through a fine sieve set over a bowl and season pate with salt and pepper to taste. Chill pate until cooled and thickened.

• Transfer pate to a serving bowl or spread on croutes and serve with cornichons.

Makes about 3 cups

In the afternoon, Mendel will continue with another program that focuses on flatwork--paths, terraces, edging, walkways--and his range of materials will now extend to include brick.  After instruction in how to evaluate a project and choose the best material for it, students will participate in the construction of a patterned brick terrace. 

Pre-registration required
Saturday, April 26 (or, in case of rain, Sunday, April 27)
Morning workshop (9 a.m. - 1 p.m):  “Stone Walls for the Garden”
Afternoon workshop (2 p.m. - 5 p.m.):  “Paving with Brick and Stone”
Half day, $50 ($45 for Botanical Gardens members); full day, $90 ($81 for members)
Dress: outdoor work clothes, heavy-duty gloves, and safety glasses.

Berkshire Botanical Gardens
Intersection Routes 102 & 183; Stockbridge; 413.298.3926

Pittsfield.

You heard me.

Pittsfield, as it happens, is at an idyllic mid-point in its acclaimed renaissance.  It has a good, kid-friendly museum, greatly enhanced through a recent infusion of cash.  It also has sophisticated art galleries, restaurants and boutiques.  But it still has its innocence and enough traces of its past to feel authentic.  And it has not yet turned that fateful corner where upscale blandness bumps headlong into inconvenience—rents so high there’s no one left to mend your shoes. 

There are two kinds of family outings: entirely kid-centric, which, in the long run, benefit no one, or the sort where everyone gets some time to do what they want. For the latter, we offer a range of options--several cultural/educational activities, a bit of sport, some interesting shopping, and a reasonably civilized-but-not-too-expensive or patience-taxing lunch.  Since everything we recommend is on the main thoroughfare of Pittsfield (conveniently called South Street south of the town green; North Street to the north), there’s no need for a fixed itinerary.  Let the mood of the group tell you when to tarry and when to move on.

The Berkshire Museum
39 South Street; 413.443.7171 ext. 10
Monday - Saturday, 10 – 5, Sundays noon to 5
This museum works hard to keep kids stimulated and engaged.  There’s plenty to interest grown-ups here, too, but this Saturday, April 19, the focus will be on Earth Day.  Visitors may explore green technology, learn about local environmental groups, make paper, and create inventions out of recycled materials. A variety of family activities, as well as lectures and a film for adults, will be offered. Puppeteer Meredyth Babcock of Marmalade Productions will perform in the galleries from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. At 11:30 a.m., Ross Robertson, associate Editor of What Is Enlightenment? Magazine, will give the talk A Brighter Shade of Green: Rebooting Environmentalism for the 21st Century. At 2 p.m., Maria Sangiolo will perform songs from her latest CD, Under the Mystic Sea, in a program that teaches children to respect the planet and the creatures of the sea. At 4:30 p.m., the Berkshire Museum’s Little Cinema will screen the documentary, Manufactured Landscapes (2006, 80 minutes). Tickets to the Maria Sangiolo performance are $10 adults, $7 children 3-18 ($5/$3 members). All other Earth Day activities are free with Berkshire Museum admission.

usbluesware
141 North Street; 413 442-5533

A perfect Armani pantsuit ($200), a new Ralph Lauren alligator belt with a sterling silver buckle ($25), Louis Vuitton, Chanel, Farragamo—usbluesware specializes in “pre-owned” but virtually new designer clothes plus a few cannily selected lines of new, inexpensive women’s wear.  At any given moment, a certain percentage of their stock is out of sight, as it’s being auctioned to an international audience of fashion fans via E-Bay.  What doesn’t sell rotates back to a space the owners Linda Mitchell and Giora Witkowski call “the warehouse”—actually a spacious and attractive retail store (shown above).  What we get that E-Bay customers don’t:  Linda, a fashion expert who seems to know just how every customer ought to dress.

The Garden
148 North Street; 413.442.9088
Tuesday - Saturday 11 - 6; Sunday noon - 5

Their website is hosted by MySpace, okay?  So, if you want your son to think you’re, like, really, really cool, take him here.  In addition to the latest in hip-hop footwear, The Garden carries state-of-the-art skate- and ski-boards.  While your little man is lost in dreams of coolness and derring do, you can take a quick refresher course in what’s happening on that front these days.

Candle Lanes
255 North Street (2nd floor; above the Indian restaurant); 413.447.9640
Monday – Saturday 10 – 10; Sunday noon - 10

This isn’t bowling; it’s candlepin, an old-fashioned game played with a 4-inch-diameter ball that weighs less than three pounds, just one of several things that make this sport ideal for little ones.  Another: there is no such thing as a perfect game--the world record is 245 out of a possible 300.  Judging from this photograph, which appeared in the Berkshire Eagle in 1973, the atmosphere at Candle Lanes hasn’t changed much since George Aslan and his father Anton bought the place from the original owner, universally remembered as Mr. Daury.  Prices, too, seem to be caught in a time warp: A family of four can play one string (game) for $12, (shoe rental, $1.50), and indulge in steamed hotdogs that cost just a buck apiece.

Little House
East side of North Street for the moment; open 24/7

At the entrance to a parking lot a couple of doors south of Dottie’s restaurant stands a curious structure with walls of plank and twig.  It appears to be a booth or a kiosk but, in fact, it is a sculpture, Little House to Honor a Request for Poems, by Gene and Susan Flores.  Up close, you notice how well made it is, but when you open the door puzzlement turns to awe.  Inside (top photograph), the light forms horizontal stripes—like in a corn crib or a tobacco barn--that play against the horizontal siding.  It is a poetic space, designed to inspire poetic thoughts.  In the middle is a small metal desk and chair, plus paper and pens.  You are invited to write a poem and clip it to one of the strings that hang, cl