Editor

Style

Out on a Limb: Architects Take a Bough

According to Vitruvius, the Roman scholar who authored De architectura, architecture is man's imitation of the nests, lairs, and hives animals build for themselves.  He also famously observed that architecture must have commodity, firmness, and delight. One wonders where he would have stood on treehouses.  These improvised structures

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Parties

Berkshire Botanical Garden Opens the Season on a High

Everyone was looking up at the Berkshire Botanical Garden as it opened it season with a reception for the exhibit Out on a Limb: Architects Take a Bough which was curated by Matt Larkin and Elizabeth Hamilton. The designers are Robyn Sandberg (left, in her bamboo-and-climbing-cord construction)

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Parties

Hudson Dines Out for Life

Now in its seventh year, Dining Out for Life is the day in Hudson when lunch or dinner at participating restaurants means a minimum 25%-of-the-check donation to the The AIDS Council of Northeastern NY.  Each restaurant has a Council-appointed "ambassador" to meet and greet,

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Community

RIP Jack Stern: The Retired Rabbi Who Wasn't Retiring

You did not need to know that Jack Stern had been a great rabbi to know that he was a holy man.  When he moved to Great Barrington full time in 1991 (after retiring as the senior rabbi at Westchester Reform Temple in Scarsdale, NY), he became involved with Construct

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Community

Pittsfield's 250th Anniversary

History is often taken for granted in our neck of the woods with so many of our town dating back to before the revolution and the Declaration of Independence. Pittsfield, which is turning 250, will be having a year-long celebration, which kicks off this weekend. It will be a

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Food

AgriCulture: Father Time Rules the Roost

AgriCulture bloggers Peter Davies and Mark Scherzer are the owners of Turkana Farms in Germantown, NY. This week,  Mark writes: "The clock is ticking," my father said recently with respect to an impending major birthday.  As if I didn't know.  His comment should have clued me

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Parties

Carrie Haddad Celebrates Her 20th

A huge crowd, spilling onto the street, gathered on Saturday, April 23, to help Carrie Haddad celebrate the 20th anniversay of the Carrie Haddad Gallery. Twenty years ago when Haddad (left, with her Warren Street neighbor Mark Wasserbach of Mark's Antiques) held her first art exhibition in Hudson,

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Food

Hudson's First Annual Ramp Festival

The ramp, that incorrigible first forage-able of the season, will be celebrated in all its odiferous glory on Saturday, April 30 at Hudson's First Annual Ramp Fest.  “The ramp is a harbinger of spring," says the event's organizer, Jeff Gimmel, of Swoon Kitchenbar in

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Arts

A Happening Reading Relaunches the Basilica

A reading of renowned novelist and screenwriter, Rudolph Wurlitzer’s 1984 novel Slow Fade by singer-songwriter, folk-music legend Will Oldham (below), who has played with the band Palace Brothers as Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy.  The evening celebrates the release of Slow Fade, the first in a new line of

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Food

A Royal Opportunity for Harney Tea

The Harney family is living proof that you can create and grow a global business from our neck of the woods. The Salisbury-based clan who run their tea empire from headquarters in Millerton have developed some royal connections, blending special teas for Historic Royal Palaces,  the independent charity that

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Community

Whimsical, Winsome Winvian Now Cooks

By Kathryn Matthews “Ninety-five percent of our guests never leave the property—until they head home,” says Maggie Smith (below), owner of Winvian, a private resort tucked amid the rolling Litchfield Hills in northwest Connecticut. Famously discreet, Winvian reflects the spirit of its former owners—Winthrop Smith, a founding

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Food

AgriCulture: The Birth of a White Calf - Holy Cow!

AgriCulture bloggers Peter Davies and Mark Scherzer are the owners of Turkana Farms in Germantown, NY. This week, Peter writes: On Tuesday morning while making the morning chore rounds with our farm helper,  Darlene, I commented to her as we stepped into the sheep barn on the constant mooing of

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