Community

Community

Spring for Art: 50 More Reasons to Visit Millerton

In the past two years, RI has given you a baker's dozen of good reasons to visit Millerton, NY: 1.Harney Tea Bar After shopping for tea in the tasting room, you can have a civilized lunch at the adjacent tea bar. 2.HunterBee Jonathan Bee and Kent

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Community

POST-INTERNET-AGE? Welcome, The Sandisfield Times

PRINT BOOM IN WOODSY, MYSTERIOUS CORNER OF THE BERKSHIRES A local arsonist who got out of prison and hangs out at everyone’s favorite bar. The raging, no-one-didn’t-believe-it rumor that Brad and Angelina were building a house, and a helipad, on a deserted road here.  A police raid on

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Community

The Spirit of Bohemia Lives at Sheffield's Race Brook Lodge

Before it became a brand, the Berkshires was a state of mind. If you're searching for that now mythic land where Alice's Restaurant was not just a song but a place where hippies congregated, you can start at Race Brook Lodge in Sheffield, MA. Owned by

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Community

The Real Housewives of Berkshire County Sing Out

Technically, Lisa Kantor, Pam Rich, Laurie Schiff and Debbie Zecher are not housewives. "We're all wives and mothers with jobs," says Zecher, the senior rabbi at Hevreh of Southern Berkshire in Great Barrington, where she has worked since 1992. But Dangerous Women: An Evening of Song

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Community

Portrait of the Pittsfield Artist as a Young Man

Michael Boroniec calls himself an Art Soldier, which is fitting since he's on the front lines of Pittsfield's cultural revolution.   A ceramic artist and painter who graduated from Taconic High School and went to the prestigious Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) on full scholarship, he

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Community

Twenty Questions for Novelist Diane Meier of Kent, CT

Diane Meier's debut novel, The Season of Second Chances (Henry Holt and Company), is about Joy Harkness, a 48-year-old tenured professor of literature at Columbia University, who is gifted as a teacher and scholar but hapless and hopeless in her personal life. New York City has not been

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Community

A General Store at A Crossroads in Warren, CT

"Doesn't every small country town deserve to have a general store?" says Maureen Jones, who is hosting an open house this weekend at the Warren General Store, which she and her husband, Clifford, opened two months ago. Jones credits her landlord, the legendary retailer Joe Cicio

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Community

Karen Lee Creates a Hullabaloo to Benefit the Lenox Library

Karen Lee is the Lady Gaga of Lenox. She's the unlikely chair of an improbable fundraiser—Burlesque for Books—at the venerable, white-shoe Lenox Library on Saturday, March 27. The three-tiered evening features the music of Kristen Gray & Michael Raye, a performance by the Sugar Shack Burlesque

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Community

Community: Bank Locally, It's a Wonderful Life

When it comes to financial matters, I am no go-getter.  Generally, I open an account at the bank nearest home and sit by mutely while my husband, who actually seems to understand credit default swaps, handles the investments, which he does through a large firm whose letterhead changes with every

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Community

Milestones: We're Celebrating Our Second Anniversary

During our exhilarating second year of publishing Rural Intelligence, we helped celebrate many local milestones such as the 10th birthday of MASS MoCA, the 15th anniversary of Barrington Stage Company, the 40th anniversary of the Norman Rockwell Museum, the 75th birthday of the Berkshire Botanical Garden, and Marge Champion´s

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Community

Deja Vu: Sam Pratt's All Over It Again

Back in 2005, when Hudson community activists Sam Pratt and Peter Jung celebrated their hard-won victory over St. Lawrence Cement, they believed that seven intense years of battle had ended in triumph.   New York Secretary of State Randy Daniels' unequivocal ruling had instructed the town authorities in Hudson to

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Community

The Best of Media Matters 2010, Part I

You could think of 2010 as the year that The New York Times seemed besotted by the Rural Intelligence region. There were more than two dozen stories in the newspaper of record that catalogued the people, places and rituals that define our area. In Part II, we'll offer

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