Editor

Community

Berkshire Taconic's Neighbor-to-Neighbor Program

"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

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Community

Road Trip: Sinterklaas is Comin' to Town

A fairy tale: A town was going through a time of trial, as towns often do when they grow.  Newcomers were impacting the outcomes of elections, and some even took exception to the quasi-religious celebrations that took place seasonally in their children's new schools.  For their part,

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Parties

Night of 100 Plates: A Feast to Help Feed the Hungry

Cultural correspondent Bess J.M. Hochstein reports from Pittsfield: Art dealers Leslie Ferrin and Donald Clark were thinking of ways to give back to the community during the holidays, so they decided to host a festive dinner to benefit St. Stephen’s Table on November 21. The meal followed the

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Parties

"The French Blue" Book Party at The Mount

Cultural Correspondent Bess J.M. Hochstein reports from Lenox: It should come as no surprise that self-taught goldsmith and gemologist Richard W. Wise gets things done with a certain flair. Rather than hold the typical author's reading and signing to launch his new book, The French Blue,

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Food

Butternut Pie with Gingersnap Crust

Amy Cotler, the author of The Locavore Way: Discovering the Pleasures of Eating Fresh, Locally Grown Food (Storey Publishing, $12.95) has an uncanny way of using fresh, local produce. Unable to find good cooking pumpkins and unwilling to use pumpkin from a can, she devised an alternative dessert pie

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Food

AgriCulture: The Superior Long Island Cheese Pumpkin

Peter Davies and Mark Scherzer are the owners of Turkana Farms in Germantown, New York. This week Mark writes: Although it's Friday the 13th, things seem relatively stable here on the farm. The coyotes have returned, but the calf is sticking close by his mama and has not

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Community

It's Finally Show Time at the Beacon Cinema in Pittsfield

Richard Stanley knows first hand how a movie theater can be a tipping point for a community. After all, fourteen years ago, he opened The Triplex, a brand new independent movie house in Great Barrington. By all accounts, The Triplex was the catalyst for Great Barrington's metamorphosis, attracting

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Style

Innocents Abroad: Falling in Love with a Fixer Upper

From the moment they first saw Columbia County, Australians Sacha Dunn and Edmund Levine were hooked. "It was like a fairy tale to us," says Sacha, who, like her husband, works in New York as a stylist and set decorator for magazines, print ads, and television commercials.  "

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Parties

Urban Renewal! Williamstown Theatre Festival's NYC Benefit

It wasn't surprising that many of the Williamstown Theatre Festival's hometown trustees made the trek from the Berkshires to New York City for the company's fall benefit at the baroque Prince George Ballroom (left) on November 16.  What was surprising—and gratifying—was to

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Parties

Hark! Opening Night of the Berkshire Museum's Festival of Trees

The Berkshire Museum's Festival of Trees is like being in the toy department of some bygone department store (think Marshall Field's or J.L. Hudson) except the only toys are the Alexander Calder push-and-pull toys in one of the adjacent galleries. For the 25th

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Parties

Wine & Cheese in the Poesis Workshop

It's becoming a familiar story in our region: A young couple moves to the country and buys a house with a barn so they can work from home. Designer Rob Bristow (photographed with his friend Michelle Childs, left) and his wife, Pilar Proffitt, run a design business called

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Style

The Wandering Eye: It’s Huntin’ Season! Oy...

Our blogger, interior designer Carey Maloney, and his partner Hermes Mallea, an architect, are principals in the M (Group). Hermes reminds me I’m overdue on a new blog—this during an afternoon walk on Woods Road, wearing multiple cunning bits of  “Don’t shoot me!” orange. A vest for

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