Rural Intelligence (Page 736)

Parties

For the Love of the Library: Book Signings in Sharon

Under tents erected next to the venerable Hotchkiss Library of Sharon overlooking the town green, some three dozen authors signed copies of their books for shoppers with the proceeds benefiting the library. Many guests said they were stockpiling books to give as Christmas gifts. Author Betsy Howie of Falls Village

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Style

Pringle & Zimring is Now Open 24/7

One of our mantras is "Shop Local," but sometimes it's inconvenient or impossible. Betsy Zimring of Pine Plains, who runs an interiors-and-gift-shop in Millerton, understands, so she has launched an online boutique, PringleandZimring.com, so her faithful customers can patronize her store wherever

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Community

A Modernist Bed and Breakfast in Williamstown

When a top-notch innkeeper rhapsodizes about a bed-and-breakfast other than his own, you pay attention. Ira Goldspiel, a design aficionado who runs the Inn at Kent Falls, recently stayed at the Guest House at Field Farm in Williamstown and he raved about experiencing authentic 1940s modernist architecture

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Food

Recipes: Grateful for Gratins

Every time I've pored over cookbooks this summer, looking for ways to use the bounty carted home from my farm share and the farmers' markets, I have found myself choosing some version of a gratin. According to Julia Child and Jacques Pepin (who should know) the term

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Style

Eden Reconsidered

Duncan Brine’s first garden was in Brooklyn, in a dumpy plot behind his new girlfriend, now wife, Julia’s apartment. “I made a garden so I could film it,” says the Princeton theatre major turned filmmaker turned landscape designer. “It blew my mind.” Brine’s gardens have been blowing

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Style

Berkshire Botanical Event: Gardening As Blood Sport

Don't let the theme of the 39th-annual flower show fool you: The Nurturing Garden: Birds, Bees, Butterflies and Best Friends sounds gentle, but the competition promises to be fierce. Which brings to light a seldom mentioned fact: gardeners are as competitive as athletes. This weekend they get

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Parties

Shaker Museum Gala at Future Site in New Lebanon

"Raise the Roof!" was the theme of this year's Shaker Museum and Library Gala, a dinner dance with silent and live auctions held under a tent on the grounds of the Darrow School, a beautiful former Shaker enclave in New Lebanon. The roof in question is

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Parties

A Litchfield Garden Party for Two Good Causes

It's called Tea for Two Hundred but there seemed to be many more people than that at the home of Gael Hammer and Gary Goodwin in Washington, CT, on Saturday afternoon, July 26, at the fundraiser for the Northwestern Connecticut AIDS Project and the Susan B. Anthony Project,

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Food

Quinn’s Cause: Once Forbidden, Now #1 Superfruit

“I always knew I would live here,” Greg Quinn says of idyllic, 140-acre Walnut Grove Farm, which he and screenwriter-producer Carolyn Blackwood moved to from Manhattan eight years ago. “I just didn’t know where ‘here’ was.” Or what “here” held in store. At the time, Quinn, a

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Arts

Alonzo King's LINES Ballet Astonishes at Jacob's Pillow

Memo to organizers of Barack Obama's inauguration: Book Alonzo King's LINES Ballet. On Wednesday night at Jacob's Pillow, the San Francisco-based troupe opened a five-day run with two epic pieces Migration: The hierarchical migration of birds and mammals and Rasa, which is

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Arts

"The Violet Hour" Gets a Radiant Production at Barrington Stage Company

When Richard Greenberg's play The Violet Hour opened on Broadway at the newly refurbished Biltmore Theater in 2003, New York Times critic Ben Brantley wrote that it was an "example of the funk that descends when bad casting happens to good plays." Now, Barrington Stage has

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Food

The Red Lion's Courtyard

The pebbled courtyard nestled behind the venerable Red Lion Inn is a quiet oasis steps from the throngs of tourists on Main Street. With colorful impatiens planted everywhere, it has the pleasant air of an old-money country club that has opened its doors to the public. There's

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