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Community

Lift Ev'ry Voice Arts and Heritage Festival

by Tresca Weinstein Berkshire County’s Lift Ev’ry Voice arts and heritage festival doesn’t officially begin until Sunday, but it’s already bringing the community together. “This has been one of those projects that is very unifying—there’s a place that has been made for everyone,” says

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Food

Food News: Le Pain Not So Quotidien

by Scott Baldinger Warren Street in Hudson is an uphill climb from its start at Front Street to its commercial finale a couple of blocks past Park Place.  Luckily there’s a quality pit stop every half a block or so for pedestrians in need of lattes, iced coffees and

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Food

Culinary Insitute of America's Grilling and BBQ Boot Camp

by Betsy Miller Ladies and gentlemen, start your charcoal.  Or propane. Or gas. The grilling season has arrived. Across the country, summer hails the beginning of the outdoor cooking season.  Legend has it that food cooked al fresco tastes better.  At the Culinary Institute in Hyde Park, they are doing

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Community

Dan's Diary: Musical Chairs in Millerton

It's a good thing that the merchants of Millerton never decided to make a Monopoly board of the village, because there have been several changes in the retail landscape. Most notably, Jane Eckert Fine Art, which features the work of Eric Forstmann and Robert Rauschenberg, has arrived from

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Food

Serge Madikians Cooks from the Soul at Serevan in Amenia

Serge Madikians treats running a restaurant as if it were a cross between a grand opera and an extreme sport. As the chef/owner of six-year-old Serevan in Amenia, NY, he does everything from taking reservations and driving to New York City to buy fresh fish to crisscrossing the Hudson

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Food

John Andrews: Reinvigorating the Farm to Table Restaurant

Dan Smith, the chef who opened John Andrews restaurant in 1991 in an old farmhouse in Egremont, MA (on the Berkshire/Columbia County border), has always cooked with as many local ingredients as possible. "They weren't as easy to come by back then," says Smith, who

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Food

Food, Glorious, Food! Guido's Grows in Pittsfield

As Tanglewood is to music, Guido’s Fresh Marketplace is to groceries. (Or, if you prefer, it’s to food what Jacob’s Pillow is to dance and MASS MoCA is to art.)  Whichever analogy you like, it’s incontrovertible that the Masiero family’s grocery stores in Pittsfield and

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Community

20 Questions for 'Money and Power' Author William D. Cohan

When RI last chatted with William D. Cohan, he had just published House of Cards, his New York Times best seller about the fall of Bear Stearns. Now he's written another insider account of Wall Street greed called  Money and Power: How Goldman Sachs Came to Rule the

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Food

The Dream Away Lodge: A Boho Berkshire Dream Come True

You could call the Dream Away Lodge a living landmark. Surrounded by October Mountain State Forest in Becket, MA, the former roadhouse is a time capsule of Berkshire bohemia, the place where Bob Dylan (photo below), Joan Baez, Arlo Guthrie and Sam Shephard made a movie, Renaldo and Clara,  in

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Food

Not Just Bread at Bread Alone Café & Restaurant

By Kathryn Matthews For over a decade, discerning carb lovers have been able to get their fix of artisan breads, from French sourdough (levain) and whole wheat sourdough (miche) to baguettes, challah and peasant bread—all made with organic flours—at Bread Alone Bakery in Rhinebeck village.  Pastries, too, like

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Community

RIP Jack Stern: The Retired Rabbi Who Wasn't Retiring

You did not need to know that Jack Stern had been a great rabbi to know that he was a holy man.  When he moved to Great Barrington full time in 1991 (after retiring as the senior rabbi at Westchester Reform Temple in Scarsdale, NY), he became involved with Construct

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Community

Pittsfield's 250th Anniversary

History is often taken for granted in our neck of the woods with so many of our town dating back to before the revolution and the Declaration of Independence. Pittsfield, which is turning 250, will be having a year-long celebration, which kicks off this weekend. It will be a history

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