Every decision the community makes about historic preservation, land conservation, allowable density, provide housing, and destroy animal habitats, every single one opens one door as it closes another. And the problem is not new.
Monument Mountain should be our shining school on the hill, and right now it is more than a bit tarnished. Undoubtedly, you need no convincing that our single most important obligation is to educate the youngest in our community.
Back in the '70s, there were three widely understood flavors of sexual orientation: gay, straight, and bisexual. Somewhere along the way, gay women wanted to be clearly differentiated from gay men, and began to refer themselves as lesbian, not gay. This is how we arrived at LGB.
Stockbridge is not divided. We voted together in historically high numbers. We know what we want and where we want to go, and we are heading down the road together.
Who amongst us couldn’t argue that second homeowners bear responsibility for a lack of affordable and work force housing, high housing construction costs, cost of living increases, climate change, mass shootings, political polarization, social inequality, and high taxes?
I grew up in Milwaukee, Wis., where folks know a thing or two about bleak, frigid winters and the balm of summer barbecues. As a child, I lived for the moment on Memorial Day when my mother fired up the potbellied Weber grill and slapped on a full rack of baby back ribs.
Sometimes I conjure up images of good friends who have died, the number mounting with each passing year, and the sense of loss never quite disappearing. Other times I recall memories of pleasurable—even exhilarating—times my wife and I spent walking the streets and parks and sitting in pubs and cafes of London and Paris.
“River” showed me so many things about the arteries of the world that I never even once considered. For example, I don’t give dams a great deal of thought. Honestly, I’ve never seriously wondered why a specific dam is located where it is.
At least in Great Barrington, we are long past the time we would consider a candidate’s gender or race. Is it time we look strictly at a candidate’s qualifications and not gender, age, geography, and high school? A candidate’s judgment, not generations?
Lenny Cohen told me, “All the good stories were written by the Greeks. All we do is place them in modern context.” I don’t know my degree of creativity, but I know this: I knew some of the greats—the ones who defined this modern context.
The appalling lack of support, empathy, consideration and respect with which Great Barrington Library staff has been treated by those whose position should be to enhance their work rather than impede it, is the real story here.
I don’t know what kind of gold-plated mancave Trump crawled out of. Are there hieroglyphics on the wall depicting all of the cavewomen he found attractive enough to assault? It is clear that he thinks women should feel complimented by his thuglike sexual aggression because it means he thinks they’re pretty.
