The Rural We

Community

The Rural We: Barbara Watkins

Barbara Watkins is the owner of Evergreen Fine American Crafts in downtown Great Barrington, Mass. Almost 40 years ago, she and her husband, Robert Watkins, settled in the Berkshires. He was a potter, and Barbara, who had gone to art school, helped decorate the pots. But after doing that for

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The Rural We: Matt Tannenbaum

Matt Tannenbaum grew up in Mt. Vernon, New York and began his book career in New York City, then later moved to Washington, D.C. But the literature lover found a home in the Berkshires, where he’s been happily running The Bookstore in Lenox for the past 40 years.

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The Rural We: Ralph Gardner

For many years, Ralph Gardner wrote a column, “The Urban Gardner," for the Wall Street Journal. At times, it might have been called “The Rural Gardner," because he also wrote about his life at his country home in Ghent, NY. “I have a sort of Seinfeldian type of

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The Rural We: Akemi Hiatt

Akemi Hiatt was born in one paradise — Hawaii — and now lives in another — the Hudson Valley — but in between she, like so many of us, took a detour to New York City. Since graduating from NYU, she’s worked for arts nonprofits in the region, including Basilica Hudson and Omi

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The Rural We: Ryder Cooley

Ryder Cooley is an inter-disciplinary artist, musician and performer based in Hudson, N.Y. She studied sculpture at RISD, has a combined media masters from SUNY Albany, and an MFA in integrated electronic art from RPI. Currently, she performs with Hazel, a disembodied (taxidermy) ram, and with her band Dust

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The Rural We: Peter Steiner

Peter Steiner has had a variety of careers and lived in a handful of cities. The former German professor and longtime New Yorker cartoonist (he's published over 400 cartoons in the magazine and his drawing captioned 'On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog.'

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The Rural We: Daniel Seward

Daniel "Dan Bunny" Seward, the central and only permanent member of the amorphous and prolific noise/punk/performance group Bunnybrains (New EP now available on Bandcamp) has run some incarnation of a record/vintage shop for 20 years. He’s been in 10 different locations, most of them

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The Rural We: Carolyn Odell

Photo by Kristine Palmer Photography. One of the Instagram feeds we love to follow is that of Rhinebeck resident Carolyn Odell. Her daily photographs of our natural world are so consistently stunning that we were compelled to find out more about this gifted artist. A self-taught photographer, she is also

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The Rural We: Karl Mullen

Painter and musician Karl Mullen may have been born in Dublin, Ireland, but the community-minded expatriate has been in the States since he was 20 years old. For the past five of those years, he’s been a Williamstown resident, organizing BarN concerts and managing the Barntone record label, while

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The Rural We: Anna Rachminov

Anna Rachminov is the owner of Stone Bridge Cider in Hudson, N.Y. and a member of the Hudson Area Library board of directors. The traces of a lilting accent are clues to her heritage: although she was born in Winnipeg, where her father was a professional hockey player, her

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The Rural We: Dan Bolognani

You may know Lakeville resident Dan Bolognani from his 20-year tenure as Interlaken Inn’s director of sales and marketing, or as a board member of many of our region’s important organizations, such as the Berkshire Visitors Bureau, Western Connecticut Convention and Visitors Bureau, the after-school program at Salisbury

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The Rural We: Natalie Buck

Aussie Natalie Buck is a five-time Australian Ice Dance Champion who moved to the U.S. to train with Russian coaches in Connecticut. After she retired from her skating career, she stayed in Litchfield County and now has a thriving photography business in Bridgewater, Conn. Although her camera focuses mainly

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