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A Bangin' Berkshire Boîte

Club founder Heather Fisch (left) with Amy Wong and Mael Raoult. Photo courtesy DCSC. While Sheffield’s the Down County Social Club has been generating buzz for a couple of years now, it’s still very much (and very literally) underground. Located in the basement of the historic Stagecoach Tavern,

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Hudson Goes Giddy for the Holidays

Hudson, although far from being merely on the upswing, is still a study of contrasts. You can see this veering from the town’s more down- and- out  areas to the retailers on Warren Street. These are not your everyday vendors; they are all so talented at window display that

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At The Not So General Mills Mansion: A Gilded Age Holiday

Once upon a holiday, the Mills Mansion — now the Staatsburgh State Historic Site, near Rhinebeck, NY — was home to some of the most exclusive Christmas parties in the country. This Downton Abbey-styled household, flush with Gilded Age cash and helmed by ambitious socialite Ruth Livingston Mills (portrait below by Francois

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Christmas (Etc.) In Connecticut

This time of year, you can’t throw a snowball (if there was any of the white stuff to throw) without hitting a holiday bazaar. But Litchfield county’s well-crafted festive collaborations — their winter strolls and lighting ceremonies — will shine especially bright this month. Sorry Fox News, but none are

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Bunny Williams Opens Her House for Historic Holiday Tour

Bunny Williams is used to greeting hundreds of people in a single day as they troop through her famous Falls Village garden that she opens for charity events several times every summer. The New York-based interior designer lets visitors poke their noses inside her Adirondack-style pool house as well as

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Wilderstein: A Grand Middle Ground

Despite the brickbats of revisionist history, FDR was a great president and his wife Eleanor a towering public figure. But their taste in architecture and design were rather lacking in, shall we say, devil-may-care fun. In fact, this deficiency, if it is one, was quite deliberate. The statement made by

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Community: 20 Questions for Laurie Norton Moffat

Photo: Sue Geller Laurie Norton Moffatt, champion of the artwork and legacy of Norman Rockwell, spearheaded the transition of the Norman Rockwell Museum from a local house museum to an internationally recognized cultural institution dedicated not only to the work of the iconic American illustrator but also to a scholarly

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The Briarcliff Motel: Not Just Another Roadside Attraction

Londoners Clare Weatherall and Richard Proctor first came to the Berkshires 15 years ago as tourists on a whirlwind tour of New England, staying mostly at bed & breakfast lodgings. Motels were out of the question. Like many Europeans, their impression of the quintessentially American roadside accommodation had been informed

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Made in the Berkshires Unites Artists of All Stripes

Barbara Sims and Hilary Somers Deely Two years ago, Stockbridge actress Hilary Somers Deely received a fateful phone call. Kate Maguire, the CEO and artistic director of the Berkshire Theater Group, wanted Deely to pioneer a new kind of arts festival—one that would pool the Berkshires’ wealth of visual

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Olanafest 2012: Eat for Art's Sake

“Edible art” is a term that’s bandied about quite a lot these days. Few, however, come as close to the concept as the trustees of Olana, the sprawling, architecturally beguiling estate that Hudson River School painter  Frederick Church built for himself in 1870, set majestically on a sylvan hilltop

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Omega's Women & Power Conference Explores What’s Possible

“When sleeping women wake, mountains move.” So goes the Chinese proverb. The influential women gathering at Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, NY this weekend, September 21 – 23, for the biennial Women & Power Conference can’t be accused of sleeping, but they sure are moving mountains with their work, words, and

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High Art Meets Hootenanny at MASS MoCA's FreshGrass Fest

Infamous Stringdusters perform on 9/21 “People might think of museums as being places where you have to be quiet and careful,” says Katherine Myers, director of public relations and marketing at Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art. "But MASS MoCA -- we like to try new things." The

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