Rural Intelligence (Page 754)

Community

Whole Lot of Shakerin' Goin' On

Before the industrial revolution, living alone was virtually unheard of for people without the means to keep a staff. This appears to have been the principal draw, apart from spiritual striving, for followers of the strange religion popularly known as The Shakers. The tidy, well-run, and, in many ways,

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Arts

Young at Art

Geoffrey Young doesn't expect you to buy anything at his second-floor gallery on Railroad Street in Great Barrington, and he's OK with that. "Nine out of ten people who come into the gallery don't buy art" says the elfin Young with

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Parties

ArtCircus: A Storefront Artist Project Benefit

In 2002, artist Maggie Mailer founded the Storefront Artist Project in downtown Pittsfield with three goals: to provide non-traditional, visually accessible studio space for artists; to present innovative exhibitions and installations; and to bring artists and art-making to under-served communities. On Saturday May 31, hundreds of the

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Arts

Hudson Summer Concert Series Launches

On Saturday night, you have a choice: You can either kick up your heels and take a picnic to the Hudson Waterfront Park, spread a blanket on the ground, and, even as you nibble cold chicken and sip vinho verde, experience bands like Bunnybrains, Family of Love, Franklin Mint, Hexual

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Arts

Theater Review: "I Am My Own Wife"

Julianne Boyd, the artistic director of Barrington Stage Company, is nothing if not audacious. For her first show of the season, she chose a play that sounds like a hard sell for a bourgeois Berkshires audience: I Am My Own Wife (a hit on Broadway in 2003), which is the

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Food

Cocktails: The Grey Ghost

Former beer drinker and Berkshire Mountain Dilstillers founder Chris Weld is becoming an expert on cocktails as travels the region selling the gin, rum and vodka that he makes at Soda Springs Farm in Sheffield, MA. For the opening night party of the Berkshire International Film Festival, he devised this

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Food

The Saturday Night Special

Leave it to Matthew Rubiner to turn eating a prosaic grilled cheese sandwich into an event. A few weeks ago, Rubiner decided to start keeping Rubi's cafe in Great Barrington open until midnight on Saturday nights (it closes at 4 PM the rest of the week) and feature

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Food

Liquor for Locavores: The Berkshires Own Booze

You might assume (as I did) that Berkshire Mountain Distillers is a boutique brand dreamed up by a green-minded, martini-drinking MBA as as a thesis project. It has a smart slogan ("Think Globally • Drink Locally") a product line whose evocative names have regional resonance ("Ice

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Style

Nesting: The Second Home Takes Center Stage

Many people profess that a second home changes their life, but actress Annette Miller can make the case more emphatically and convincingly than most. Nearly twenty years ago, she and husband, Michael, who were living in Newton, MA, started looking for a little weekend house in the Berkshires. The place

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Style

Salander-O’Reilly Bankruptcy Auction at Stair Galleries

For nearly a year, the art world has been abuzz with news of the closing of the Salander - O’Reilly Gallery, and its subsequent bankruptcy filing. On June 7th, Stair Galleries of Hudson conducts the first auction of goods from the collection. “It was a struggle from start-to-finish

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Parties

Mass MoCA: Good Times at the Badlands Opening

Our friend Leslie Ferrin, the Pittsfield gallery owner, filed this report from the opening of Mass MoCA's powerful new show, Badlands: New Horizons in Landscapet. "The mood was upbeat last Saturday night. The enthusiastic audience included a lively mix of artists, curators, musuem and gallerists, patrons and

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Arts

Theatre Review: BTF's "The Caretaker"

Netflix has made it easy for anyone to be an autodidact when it comes to the history of cinema—you just order up movies from the Classics category, and they arrive in your mailbox in whatever sequence you choose for your syllabus. But you can't design your own

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