Editor

Real Estate

Room For All

The game room in this Monterey home encourages family time because it's also a media room, family room and exercise room, with a walkout to the back lawn. The six-bedroom, five-and-a-half bathroom house is a unique mix of contemporary and traditional architecture that includes a classic rocking chair

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Real Estate

Play With Friends

This Tuscan-style villa in Clinton Corners has a large room with a pool table and wet bar — and also a table for some serious poker games. The property is surrounded by meadows, pastures and paddocks, rolling hills, sweeping lawns and a six-stall barn complex, as well as covered terraces and

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Real Estate

The Valley Below

While the upstairs may be formal and dramatic, the lower level in this Salisbury house offers casual lounging with a game room and wet bar. Perched to capture views of the Salmon Kill Valley, this property is on the market for the first time in 100 years. The living room

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Arts

Review: "The Comedy of Errors" at Shakespeare & Company

By Dan Shaw When you walk into the Tina Packer Playhouse at Shakespeare & Company in Lenox for its production of The Comedy of Errors, you feel as if you’ve stumbled into a backyard barbecue scene about to be shot for a John Waters movie. The actors, who are

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Community

The Rural We: Rebecca Soffer

Raised in the suburbs of Philadelphia, the co-founder of Modern Loss also holds a master's in journalism from Columbia and is a former producer of "The Colbert Report." For the past four and a half years, she and her husband and young son have been splitting

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Parties

What A Marvelous Night For A Barn Dance At Pleasant Valley

Mary Garnish Bauman reports from Lenox. A barn dance in the Berkshires — that’s what Pleasant Valley Wildlife Sanctuary decided to do for its 7th annual fundraiser on July 18, welcoming 100 guests to celebrate “An Evening in the Woods." The center of the action this year was Pleasant

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Food

Recipe: Honey Hibiscus Iced Tea

Twice a month, Berkshire County native Alana Chernila, mother of two, and author of the cookbook, The Homemade Pantry: 101 Foods You Can Stop Buying & Start Making (Clarkson Potter), contributes a thoughtful and heartfelt essay/recipe created exclusively for Rural Intelligence readers. Her first cookbook has achieved top-seller status,

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Parties

Dish + Dine Brings Ceramics Experts To Ferrin Contemporary

Amy Krzanik reports from North Adams. If you’ve ever watched an episode of Antiques Roadshow, you may have recognized a couple of familiar faces at Independent Art Projects (IAP) on Sunday, July 19. Specialists, collectors and Roadshow appraisers Suzanne Perrault and David Rago were joined by the show’s

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Community

Kent Presents: An Ideas Festival About What Comes Next

Speakers include Jeffrey Toobin, Henry Kissinger, Mia Farrow, Soledad O'Brien, Siddhartha Mukherjee and Paul Krugman. Photo of Krugman: Frank R. Conrad, The New York Times. By Jamie Larson It is impossible to overstate the caliber of speakers, the depth of knowledge or the collective value of experience planned

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Parties

Slideluck Mixes Art And Community At Stonover Farm

Amy Krzanik reports from Lenox. Suky Werman, co-owner of Stonover Farm Bed and Breakfast and a board member of IS183 Art School of the Berkshires, curates an amazing benefit art show for the School in her Barn Gallery each summer. She boasts an impeccable eye for art, but isn’t

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Parties

Hancock Shaker Village Goes Back To Its Roots

Lisa Green reports from Pittsfield.Hancock Shaker Village celebrated its 55th anniversary with a gala themed “Back to Our Roots." And, indeed, the theme was carried out through the dinner, which was prepared over open fire by Fire Roasted Catering of Great Barrington, with nearly all of the food

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Arts

At Rhinebeck Writers Retreat, Watch Musicals In The Making

By Robert Burke Warren When it comes to creating art, inspiration is only a fraction of the process. Artists also contend with time constraints, isolation, and financial woes, especially in aggressively capitalist, crowded, notoriously noisy New York City. Musical theater folks have it particularly hard; Broadway depends on lavish sure-thing

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