Editor

Style

Trade Secrets Weekend: Plants, Antiques & Garden Tours

Trade Secrets is northwestern Connecticut's grandest garden party of the year. What started nine years ago at Bunny Williams's Falls Village house as a community rare-plant-and-antique sale for charity has morphed into a two-day, horticultural carnival—our region's unofficial kick-

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Parties

Paper Trail Celebrates the Art of Paper

Paper Trail owners Maureen Missner and Serine Hastings (left) are more than savvy merchants with great taste and a tongue-in-chic sensibility. They curate their Rhinebeck store more than stock it, filling it with winsome cards, stationery, books, wrapping paper, ribbons, jewelry and objets d'art. And if

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Community

Tracy Seckler Is A Mother On a Mission To Save Lives

Mother's Day, like every other day of the year, is bittersweet for Tracy Seckler. The high-energy, one-time elementary school teacher lives in a 200 year-old-farmhouse in South Egremont, MA, with her adoring husband, Benjamin (a doctor whom she met when they were both undergraduates

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Style

Wishing Won't Do it, Saving and Slaving Will

Some would argue that the ramshackle property you see at left is my house.  This is a scurrilous contention I would hotly deny. What I see when I look at my house is not what you see, or anyone else, for that matter.  When I look, it is already painted

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Arts

The 4th Annual Berkshire International FIlm Festival Will Be Boffo: May 14 - 17

Kelley Vickery is feeling guilty because she is praying for more rain next weekend. The founder of the Berkshire International Film Festival knows that more people will buy tickets for the 70 films she will be screening from May 14 - 17 in Great Barrington if the sun isn't

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Community

The Porches Inn at MASS MoCA

I have to make a confession: I was skeptical about staying at Porches. Although I love visiting MASS MoCA, I could not imagine paying to spend a night in converted Victorian factory-workers' houses across from the museum in order to wake up in North Adams instead of my

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Arts

Dan's Diary: Jarvis Rockwell—The Son Also Rises

When I innocently walked into the gallery at 73 Main Street in North Adams on Saturday morning, I was drawn by an enormous, stepped pyramid covered with thousands of plastic action figures and small rubber dolls.  I was captivated and charmed, because this work of art had an anthropological quality

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Food

Foraging for Ramps with Chef Peter Platt

Update:  Knowledgeable naturalist Russ Cohen (click on comments below) will be conducting a foraging walk at the Hawthorne Valley Farm in Ghent on Saturday. June 6, sponsored by the Columbia Land Conservancy. Farmed + Foraged: A Weekend of Spring Flavors,  on May 15 - 17,  is a farm-to-table dining event

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Food

AgriCulture: Fruitfully Multiplying

Peter Davies is a dealer in world textiles and kilim rugs, particularly those from Turkey, a destination he knows well and for which he also is a travel consultant.  His partner, Mark Scherzer, this week's correspondent, has his own law firm, specializing in health law.  For most of

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Parties

Community Foundation of Northwest Connecticut Reaches Out

It was a blue-blazer occasion when Dan Dwyer and James Montanari invited friends and neighbors to their house in Salisbury to learn more about the Community Foundation of Northwest Connecticut, which supports worthy causes in 20 smalls towns and cities in the foothills of the Berkshires. With an endowment

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Community

Dan's Diary: The Daffodil House

Every town has one or two. If you're lucky, there may be half a dozen houses with breathtaking fields of daffodils, which make you take scenic detours this time of year.  In Salisbury, CT, one of the most stunning roadside attractions belongs to Inge Heckel, the former president

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Community

DUI Inc., A Growth Industry

Now, let's get one thing straight from the outset: I am against drunk driving, even if it's a friend who is doing it.  I have been a supporter of Mothers Against Drunk Driving since it was founded in 1980. I cheered the judge who threw the

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