July 19 Issue

July 19, 2012Volume III, Issue 9

www.berkshirebeacon.comLenox, MA 01240

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Catherine M. KrummeyBeacon Staff Writer

LENOX – The relationship between The Tempest director Tony Simotes and star Olym-pia Dukakis has spanned four decades.

“Our lives kept intermin-gling in all these different ways,” Mr. Simotes said dur-ing a recent roundtable inter-view with members of the press.

Starting tonight (July 19), you can see Ms. Dukakis as Prospera in The Tempest dur-ing its preview week at Shake-speare and Company under the direction of Mr. Simotes, who is also the company’s ar-tistic director.

The relationship between the two theatre veterans start-ed in the mid-1970s, when

Ms. Dukakis taught Mr. Si-motes at New York Universi-ty’s Tisch School of the Arts.

“She was actually investing in me,” Mr. Simotes said.

“You’ve stepped over some kind of line where you have to stay connected to them,” Ms. Dukakis said of her relation-ships with her closest students, including Mr. Simotes.

Since that initial invest-ment, their relationship has grown to include Mr. Simotes performing as part of Ms. Du-kakis’ Whole Theater Compa-ny in New Jersey and the two of them working together on a production of You Can’t Take It with You in Delaware.

“Going to Delaware took me from a dark place to a wonderfully creative place,”

1 Local News 6 Editorial6 From the Tower9 Fast Picks10 Calendar12 Business Card Directory13 Movies 13 Girl-2-Girl12 Wine & Beer14 Sports

St. Ann’s Festival

- Page 3

The Berkshire Beacon

Index

Dukakis, Simotes celebrate 40 years of

collaboration

Susan M. Wicker GuerreroBeacon Staff Writer

GREAT BARRINGTON – Fans from throughout The Berkshires and beyond gath-ered at the Guthrie Center to remember Woody Guthrie, often referred to as “America’s greatest folk troubadour and songwriter.”

Free chili, cornbread and birthday cake as well as a rous-ing two-hour concert by local musicians, all Woody Guthrie devotees, helped celebrate on July 14, the day on which he would have turned 100 years old. It was a combined open house and birthday party.

The Berkshire tribute to Woody Guthrie is part of a year-long celebration of his life with concerts being held

Woody Guthrie honored on would-be 100th birthday

see TEMPEST page 2

see GUTHRIE page 4

SuSan M. Wicker Guerrero / BerkShire Beacon

The Guthrie Center in Great Barrington hosted a 100th birthday party for Woody Guthrie.

credit: kevin SpraGue

Kristin Wold (Ariel), left, and Olympia Dukakis (Pros-pera), right, rehearse a scene from Shakespeare and Company’s production of The Tempest.

kaMeron Z. SpauldinG / BerkShire Beacon

Elm Court soldThe Elm Court estate located mostly in Stockbridge and owned by Col. Helm George

Wilde and laer his family (grandson)-Robert and Sonya Berle of South Carolina was sold for $9.8 million to Front Yard LLC of Denver, CO. The estate was originally on the market for $21.5 million.

2 The Berkshire Beacon July 19, 2012

Mr. Simotes said. “Olympia had always been there.”

While Mr. Simotes was work-ing at the University of Wiscon-sin – Madison in the 2000s, Ms. Dukakis thought it was time for the roles to be reversed.

“On a cold night in Madison, Olympia said to me, ‘Tony, I’d like you to direct me in a show,’” Mr. Simotes said.

Fast-forward to 2012, and The Tempest appears to be the high-light of Shakespeare and Compa-ny’s 35th summer season.

This particular play was chosen in part due to Ms. Dukakis’ affin-ity for the work.

In 2008, she co-adapted and starred in Another Side of the Is-land, which is based on The Tem-pest, at Alpine Theatre Project in Whitefish, Mont.

“It was a real pleasure to do,” Ms. Dukakis said.

Her interest was sparked after meeting with scholars in England

who were examining the restruc-turing of the goddess. Shortly af-ter that conversation, she got the idea that The Tempest could be done with three women as the leads, a marked change from Wil-liam Shakespeare’s original work.

While Mr. Simotes’ production does incorporate the transforma-tion of the male roles of Prospero and Ariel into female characters, it follows the same basic plot line of Shakespeare’s version.

“We restructured the early scenes, but then it’s still The Tem-pest,” Mr. Simotes said.

“I’m not interested in doing it the way I did it before,” Ms. Du-kakis added.

While Ms. Dukakis has more experience with The Tempest, Mr. Simotes has never directed the play before and hasn’t seen very many productions of it.

“It’s been a real journey of dis-covery for me,” he said.

Mr. Simotes’ production also takes place in the pre-World War II

era, a decision he made to pick up on the romance of that time period.

“The world was a place where a strong leader could come in and shift a society,” Mr. Simotes said of that era.

The relationship between Mr. Simotes and Ms. Dukakis is just the start of the combined effort behind putting this production of The Tempest together, as they both indicated that the rehearsals are providing true collaboration be-tween the cast and the crew.

“The production is a true caul-dron of belief systems,” Mr. Si-motes said.

The rest of the cast includes

Kristin Wold as Ariel, Rocco Sisto (another former student of Olym-pia’s) as Caliban, Merritt Janson as Miranda, Apollo Dukakis (Olympia’s brother) as Gonzalo and James Read as Antonio.

“The story that’s in the room – that’s what we’re watching come together in a very interesting way,” Mr. Simotes said.

Not only is Ms. Dukakis acting alongside her brother in The Tem-pest, but she is also living with him during their time in The Berkshires.

“I’m living with him for the first time in 50 or 60 years,” she said, adding that they still have

arguments about him coming into the house and throwing his sneakers and socks off.

As for the rest of her (limited) free time in the area, Ms. Dukakis has been spending most of it checking out the other produc-tions and activities going on at Shakespeare and Company, in-cluding Endurance and the Fourth of July celebration.

“Olympia has seen the plays and gotten to know the people here,” Mr. Simotes said.

The previews of The Tempest, which Mr. Simotes referred to as “paid rehearsals,” run through next Thursday (July 26).

“Audiences that see the pre-views will have a great time, but it will be a different show from what we’ll have come opening night,” he said.

The official opening of The Tempest takes place July 27 with a 7:30 p.m. performance, and the production runs through Aug. 19 in the Tina Packer Playhouse.

Kameron Z. SpauldingBeacon Staff Writer

PITTSFIELD - The Preven-tion Partnership will present S.A.Y. It Proud Awards to four Pittsfield teens at the Westside Neighborhood's "Gather-In" on July 21 at 4 p.m. at Pitt Park.

S.A.Y. It Proud is a campaign to recognize young people who are involved in positive activities and making good choices.

The Pittsfield Prevention Part-nership believes that the commu-nity values the good choices teens make and how hard they work. By recognizing the achievements of the youth, a healthy and posi-tive community that prevents kids from turning to substance use is created.

The four award recipients are:Marisa Broderick: Nominated

by Shirley Edgerton, director of Youth Alive.

"Marisa is a natural born leader and musician. She has been a member of Youth Alive’s band for two years and in that time she not only has become a lead musician playing the keyboard and drums but she also arranges and writes many songs,” said Ms. Edgerton in her nomination. “She has tak-en on leadership of the group and is highly respected by her peers

and the music coordinator."Ashli Reese: Nominated by

Edgerton. "Ashli participated in the Rites

of Passage program for two years. She is developing her voice and expanding her experiences,” said Ms. Edgerton in her nomination. “She recently joined YA’s band and is learning to play the drums. She is becoming a leader and fast becoming a committed member of the band."

Anthony D. Stracuzzi: Nomi-nated by Vicky Kane, president

of Westside Neighborhood Initiative.

"Anthony is a polite young man. He is interested in science, computers and electronics,” said Ms. Kane in her nomination.

Dominic Fili: Nominated by Jodi Astore-Davine, director of Catholic Youth Center.

"Dominic volunteers after school at the CYC, mentoring young children providing guid-ance and leadership,” said Ms. Astore-Davine in her nomination.

Four Pittsfield teens honored for “good choices”

“The world was a place where a strong leader could come in and shift a society,”

—Director Tony Simotes on time period of his portrayal of The Tempest

TEMPEST from page 1


Four Pittsfield students will be honored this Saturday at Pitt Park.

July 19, 2012 The Berkshire Beacon 3

Call 413-637-2250

to Advertise in


Catherine M. KrummeyBeacon Staff Writer

LENOX – From “Casino Night” to a pancake breakfast, St. Ann’s Parish was the place to be this past weekend.

“It’s a rather complex event,” Fred Baron, a volunteer who served as the “casino manager” last Friday night, said.

St. Ann’s Summer Festival, the first in what the church hopes to be an annual event, included a casino night, a children’s carnival, a dog pageant, a live auction, a pancake breakfast and a “Taste of the Berkshires” dining experience that included tastings from 20 area restaurants.

“It’s incredible, the support that we’ve had in this whole event coming together,” Mr. Baron said, adding that St. Ann’s parish-ioners looked to friends, neigh-bors and colleagues to make the festival happen. “We wanted to broaden it to the entire Berkshire community.”

The planning, done by the St. Ann’s Festival Committee with assistance from Fr. Christopher J. Waitekus, the church’s pastor, started about a year ago, Mr. Bar-on told The Beacon.

“There was a lot of coordina-tion, a lot of trust and a lot of faith in having this come togeth-er,” Mr. Baron said.

St. Ann’s inaugural summer festival beats the heat

Glenda lee / BerkShire Beacon Volunteer Jim Tremblay (right) deals out a hand of blackjack to Pete Noyes and Dave Norton during Casino Night at St. Ann’s Parish in Lenox.

Glenda lee / BerkShire Beacon St. Ann’s Church festival goer and her dog participate in the dog show Saturday.


PITTSFIELD - Berkshire Medical Center has received the Get With the Guidelines-Heart Failure Gold Plus Quality Achievement Award from the American Heart Association for its excellence in the treatment of patients with heart failure.

This marks seven consecutive years that BMC has achieved gold status for heart failure treatment.

“The team at Berkshire Medi-cal Center is to be commended for this commitment to improv-ing the quality of care for their patients,” said Dr. Lee H. Schwamm, chair of the Get With the Guidelines National Steering Committee and director of the TeleStroke and Acute Stroke Ser-vices at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.

This award is given only to hospitals that achieve 85 percent or higher adherence to all Get With the Guidelines-Heart Fail-ure Quality Achievement indica-tors for two or more consecutive 12-month intervals and have achieved 75 percent or higher compliance with four of nine Get With the Guidelines-Heart Fail-ure Quality Measures to improve quality of patient care and outcomes.

According to the AHA, about 5.7 million people suffer from heart failure. Statistics also show that, each year, 670,000 new cas-es are diagnosed and more than 277,000 people will die of heart failure.

Get With the Guidelines is a quality improvement initiative that provides hospital staff with tools that follow proven evidence-based guidelines and procedures in caring for heart failure patients to improve outcomes, prevent fu-ture hospitalizations and prolong life.

Under Get With the Guide-lines–Heart Failure, heart failure patients are started on aggressive risk reduction therapies such as

cholesterol-lowering drugs, beta-blockers, ACE inhibitors, aspirin, diuretics and anticoagulants in the hospital. They also receive al-cohol/drug use and thyroid man-agement counseling as well as re-ferrals for cardiac rehabilitation before being discharged.

“The goal of the American Heart Association’s Get With the Guidelines program is to help healthcare providers implement appropriate evidence-based care and protocols that will reduce disability and death and improve the quality of life for patients,” said Dr. Schwamm. “Published scientific studies are providing us with more and more evidence that Get With the Guidelines works. Patients are getting the right care they need when they need it. That’s resulting in im-proved survival.”

According to the hospital, Get With the Guidelines–Heart Fail-ure helps BMC’s staff develop and implement acute and sec-ondary prevention guideline processes.

The program provides hospi-tals with a web-based patient management tool, decision sup-port, robust registry, real-time benchmarking capabilities and other performance improvement methodologies toward the goal of enhancing patient outcomes and saving lives.

“BMC is committed to being among the top hospitals nation-wide in the care of heart failure patients and implementing the American Heart Association’s Get With the Guidelines–Heart Fail-ure program is helping us accom-plish this goal by making it easier for our professionals to improve the long-term outcome for our patients,” said Dr. Gray Ellrodt, chief quality officer and chairman of the department of medicine.

This high-tech, evidence-based approach enables BMC to im-prove the quality of care it pro-vides heart failure patients, save lives and ultimately reduce healthcare costs by avoiding re-hospitalization.

BMC wins heart treatment award

“The team at Berkshire Medical Center is to be commended for this commitment to improving the quality of care for their patients.”

—Dr. Lee H. Schwamm


Philip S. KampeBeacon Staff Writer

Fireworks lit the Lenox sky af-ter the star-studded “75th Tan-glewood Birthday Bash” wowed the overflowing Tanglewood-lov-ing crowd of 15,000 this past Sat-urday evening.

Distinguished guests for the evening included Massachusetts Governor Deval L. Patrick and Alan and Arlene Alda of MASH fame.

Stars from the classical music world and contemporary local hero James Taylor joined in the gala celebration.

The evening featured perfor-mances from Yo-Yo Ma on cello, Anne-Sophie Mutter on violin, Emanuel Ax and Peter Serkin on piano and Lenox’s own James Taylor on guitar.

Conductors John Williams, Keith Lockhart, David Zinman and Andris Nelsons led the Bos-ton Pops, Boston Symphony and Tanglewood Music Center or-chestras with their unique styles.

The evening began with ener-getic conductor Keith Lockhart conducting the Boston Pops’ ren-dition of Copeland’s “Fanfare for the Common Man,” followed by Bernstein’s Three Dance Episodes from On the Town.

James Taylor entered the stage, cheered by a loyal local following before he sang a medley from the Great American Songbook led by John Williams, which included “Over the Rainbow,” “Shall We Dance” and “Ol’ Man River.”

Mr. Taylor left the stage amid a standing ovation from his die-hard fans.

A film celebrating 75 years of Tanglewood, Music Under the Moon, followed and mesmerized the audience with glimpses of Tanglewood’s past, focusing on clips of Gertrude Robinson Smith, Seiju Ozawa, Serge Kous-sevitzky, Leonard Bernstein and The Who’s notorious 1970 visit.

Emanuel Ax then took center stage and seduced the audience with his low-key Haydn’s “Piano Concerto in D.”

The audience was in for a treat when smiling Yo-Yo Ma entered and captivated the audience with his interpretation of Tchai-kovsky’s “Andante Cantabile” for cello and strings.

Anne-Sophie Mutter followed with a gut-wrenching version of Sarasate’s “Carmen Fantasy” for violin and orchestra; a standing ovation was given for this violin prodigy.

After a short intermission, Lat-vian-born conductor Andris Nel-sons took the stage and trans-formed the crowd of 15,000 patrons into believers of his spe-cial talents as a premier conduc-tor. It was his first appearance at Tanglewood, amid speculation that he may join the BSO as a conductor in 2014. He conduct-ed Ravel’s “La Valse” to a star-struck crowd.

The evening ended with Beethoven’s “Fantasia in C Mi-nor” for piano, chorus and or-chestra, Opus 80.

all across America.Arlo Guthrie, one of Woody’s

eight biological children, found-ed the center when he bought the old Trinity Church, at 2 Van Deusenville Rd., in 1991.

George Laye, current director of the center, who has worked with Arlo for 47 years, was happy with the heavy turnout of Guth-rie fans last weekend.

“I love it,” he said of the many fans coming to the center. “It’s wonderful.”

A secret no moreThe center has been The Berk-

shires’ “best kept secret” but no more, Mr. Laye said. The center wants to attract as many people as possible, he said.

He also mentioned how badly the center needs a new roof and air conditioning. Sheets on how one could sign up to be members of the Guthrie Center were passed out among audience members who often fanned themselves with folded papers on the hot afternoon of the concert.

Also housed in the center is the Guthrie Foundation, a not-for-profit foundation whose empha-sis is education. Currently, free tutoring for children is in-the-works, Mr. Laye said.

Both the center and founda-tion mirror the philosophy of Woody and Marjorie Guthrie as “a place where we work with the issues of our times and try to make a better world.”

The center is a not-for-profit Interfaith Church Foundation.

Multiple offerings at centerThe center offers free Wednes-

day lunches, a free Thanksgiving dinner, Thursday evening hoote-nannies and plenty of music. The Troubadour series of upcoming performances can be found on the center’s website, guthriecen-ter.org.

According to a brochure, well-known artists have performed at the Guthrie Center, including Johnathan Edwards, Barry Mc-Guire, Country Joe McDonald, Tom Paxton, Tom Rush and Jim-my Webb.

Iamlei, also known as “Pappy,” sporting a long beard, narrated the two-hour concert. He elo-quently read excerpts of Woody Guthrie’s soul-stirring writing. The audience heard how he be-lieved “love is the only medicine” and he was out to “sing the songs that make you feel proud of yourself.”

“This Land Is Your Land”The concert began with a mu-

sician on a violin walking down a flight of stairs, through the audi-ence and up onto the stage, all the while playing one of the songs Woody Guthrie became famous for, “This Land Is Your Land.” The song is one of America’s best-loved and famous folk songs.

The musicians on banjo, gui-tars, harmonica, mandolin, piano and violin kept the audience clap-ping, singing and remembering all the songs the renowned musi-cian gave to American culture.

The performers, all from Great Barrington, included Elizabeth Bertimer (stage name Jaane Doe), Ryan Foss, Steve Mole, Tom Nor-ton, Eric Reinhart, Rose Tannen-baum, Rick Tiven and Iamlei “Pappy,” narrator.

The appreciative audience came in tank tops and Hawaiian shirts, cowboy hats and jeans and skirts and T-shirts. They were young, old and in between, bearded and clean-shaven, sport-ing pony tails and short hair.

One poignant song, with words such as “If I could only hear my mother sing again,” brought some people in the audience to tears, including the violinist who slipped off his glasses and wiped his eyes up on the stage. The song noted, “In my heart I hear her voice again.”

The audience joined in the singing of several songs including “Sticking to the Union” and “This Land Is Your Land.”

Many people attend concertOne of the attendees of the

concert was a retired dentist, Dr. Robert Johnson. He practiced dentistry in Pittsfield from 1945 to 1979 on South Street. Dr. Johnson is now 90 years young.

His wife, Helen, is 20 years his junior. She also attended the Woody Guthrie celebration. She has spent years in several states renovating and building libraries, Dr. Johnson said of his wife. They are both avid skiers.

Dr. Johnson said his son ran a sound system for Arlo Guthrie for many years.

The Johnsons live in Stockbridge.

“Even at 90 you don’t get tired of living,” Dr. Johnson told The Beacon interviewer while waiting for the concert to begin. He said Woody Guthrie’s music was “fun.”

The Woody Guthrie website (woodyguthrie.org) has a wealth of information about the per-former. He was born in Okemah, Okla., in 1912 to parents who were both musically inclined and

GUTHRIE from page 1Tanglewood celebrates 75 years

credit: hilary Scott

Emanuel Ax and Stephan Asbury shake hands after a perfor-mance of Haydn's “Piano Concerto in D” at the Tanglewood 75th Anniversary Gala.

Woody Guthrie devotees, helped celebrate the day on which he would have turned 100 years old.

see CENTER page 10


Bera B. DunauBeacon Staff Writer

BECKET – Husband and wife folk duo Mike + Ruthy, who per-formed at the Dream Away Lodge on July 13 and will return on July 21, are no strangers to western Massachusetts or The Berkshires.

The couple, Michael Merenda and Ruth Unger, lived in Cum-mington for a year before decid-ing to make music their full-time careers and have performed in the area countless times.

“That October we quit our day jobs and began only performing music,” Ms. Unger said in an in-terview with The Beacon.

That was in 2000, and ever since Mr. Merenda and Ms. Un-gar have been a persistent pres-ence in the American roots and folk music scene with their dis-tinctive harmonies and skillful playing of multiple instruments.

Forming the folk band The Mammals with Tao Rodríguez Seeger in 2001, Mr. Merenda and Ms. Unger toured with The Mammals for seven years before leaving the group in 2008.

They got married in 2006, and in 2008 they released their first album as the duo Mike + Ruthy, The Honeymoon Agenda.

Made in lieu of going on a hon-eymoon and produced by long-time friend José Ayerve, The Honeymoon Agenda was followed by Waltz of the Chickadee in 2009

and Million to One in 2010, which made the top 20 on the Americana album charts. All three albums were released on the group’s own label, Humble Abode Music.

The duo’s latest project is the The NYC EP, a six-song release built around “My New York City,” a Woody Guthrie song that Mike + Ruthy were asked by the Guthrie family to put to music.

“That was a huge honor,” said Ms. Unger.

They were given the song in or-der to contribute to My Name Is New York, a four-CD compila-tion album of Woody Guthrie songs about New York that in-cludes performances by artists such as Bob Dylan, Pete Seeger and Woody’s son, Arlo Guthrie, as well as tracks from the legend-ary folk singer himself. My Name Is New York is being released as part of this year’s celebrations of the 100th anniversary of Woody Guthrie’s birth.

Woody Guthrie wrote a num-ber of songs with either no, or very little, accompanying music that survives, and over the years numerous musicians have put music to these lyrics. Although Mike + Ruthy have a long history with the Guthrie family, “My New York City” was the first time they were given a Guthrie song to work on.

Mike + Ruthy make local stops


LEE – The town may be get-ting a new package store soon.

At the Lee Board of Selectmen’s July 17 meeting, the proprietors of the Daily Stop, better known as the Lee Sunoco Station at 15 Park St., applied for a transfer of their liquor license.

The Daily Stop’s proprietors are under contract to purchase the old Napa building at 35 Old Pleasant St. and are seeking to convert it into a convenience and package store.

“It’s their intention to operate at that location as a package store and as a convenience store,” said Attorney Nicholas L. Parsenios, of the law offices of Michael J. Considine, who was representing The Daily Stop’s ownership at the hearing.

“Essentially everything they’re

doing at their current location minus the gasoline.”

The Daily Stop’s ownership is leasing the 15 Park St. location and will be moving from those premises sometime this year.

“The landlord and the tenant have elected to part ways,” said Atty. Parsenios during the hearing.

Atty. Parsenios acknowledged that there would be a gap be-tween the time his clients exited the 15 Park St. location and opened the 35 Old Pleasant St. one.

“We’re hoping that that gap won’t exceed this calendar year,” he said.

“I would think that there would be some extensive renovations that would happen at that address [35 Old Pleasant St.],” said Select Board Chairwoman Patricia Car-lino, which Atty. Parsenios ac-knowledged was a possibility.

Selectman Gordon Bailey asked whether there was a timeframe for how long a liquor license could be held in a limbo state.

Atty. Parsenios was uncertain about the answer to this question, but was hopeful that by the time the Massachusetts Alcoholic Bev-erages Control Commission (ABCC) got back to them that his clients would have title to the property.

“I guess I would equate it to if they were to cease…selling alco-hol for the purposes of a renova-tion,” he said.

In the end, the select board vot-ed unanimously to approve the li-cense transfer.

“Good luck,” said Chairwom-an Carlino.

Both the Daily Stop’s owner-ship and their legal representa-tives declined to comment on the matter for this story.

Liquor license transfer gets approved for Lee gas station

see FOLK page 7

credit: Mike + ruthy

Husband and wife folk duo Mike + Ruthy will perform at the Dream Away Lodge Saturday night.


LENOX - Berkshire Grown will soon celebrate the 10th an-niversary of its project Share the Bounty.

They will mark the occasion with a lecture by the Nature Con-servancy’s Frank Lowenstein ti-tled “Climate Change and Local Agriculture,” followed by a party in honor of local farmers on Sat-urday, July 21, 2:00pm at Stonover Farm in Lenox.

The reception will feature tastes of locally grown food and an opportunity to meet farmers from local farms.

Some farms that will be includ-ed are the Community Coopera-tive Farm, Cricket Creek Farm, Indian Line Farm, Leahey Farm, Three Maples Market Garden, and Woven Roots Farm.

There is a suggested donation $10 but advance reservations are not required.

Share the Bounty is a unique project that raises money to buy shares in local farms and then do-nates the fresh food to local food pantries.

Every dollar raised works twice:

helping farmers and feeding some of the hungry people in the com-munity. Berkshire Grown’s pio-neering project has inspired more than $104,000 in contributions since its founding by Jonathan Hankin in 2002.

Funds have bought shares in Community Supported Agricul-ture (CSA) farms in the greater Berkshire region (Massachusetts, New York, and Connecticut) and then donated the fresh food to

area food pantries and kitchens and WIC participants.

This year Share the Bounty purchased shares in 14 farms that will help feed approximately 600 families each week through the harvest season, which generally runs mid-June through October.

The Food Bank of Western Massachusetts recently made a $1525 grant to Share the Bounty to expand the program into Pittsfield.

Share the Bounty plans party to celebrate 10th anniversary

The 1300 acre Holiday Brook Farm has been apart of this year’s Share the Bounty program.


Editorial: View From the TowerGeorge C. Jordan III

LEE - A former owner of the Morgan House and the widow of Nat King Cole, died July 10 in Boca Raton, Fla. She was 89.

Maria (Hawkins) Cole, former-ly of Tyringham, owned the Mor-gan House in the 1970s after her husband died.

She operated it with her twin daughters, Timolin Cole Augus-tus and Casey Cole Hooker, who at the time were attending North-field School for Girls.

Natalie Cole was in Los Ange-les in 1975 with her debut album, Inseparable, which earned her a no. 1 single. She started her sing-ing career while at University of Massachusetts at the English Pub, both in Amherst, in 1972.

In Tyringham, Mrs. Cole owned the Fernside estate on Je-rusalem Road, which later was owned by J. Player and Bobby Crosby.

According to the Associated Press, the cause of Mrs. Cole’s death was stomach cancer.

Born in Boston, she grew up in genteel circumstances in North Carolina, then left college in Bos-ton to pursue a jazz career, mov-ing to New York and joining Ben-ny Carter’s band.

She performed with Count

Basie and Fletcher Henderson be-fore Duke Ellington heard a re-cording of her throaty, resonant voice in the mid-1940s and hired her as a vocalist for his band, Duke Ellington’s Orchestra.

In 1946 she began appearing solo at Club Zanzibar in Harlem as an opening act for the Mills Brothers.

One night the Nat King Cole Trio had substituted for the Mills Brothers, and as Mr. Cole stood backstage and glimpsed her as she sang, he was smitten. He divorced his first wife, Nadine, and they were married in 1948 by Adam

Clayton Powell Jr., the congress-man, at the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem.

“Nat wanted to improve him-self,” Mrs. Cole told The Boston Globe in 1989. “I wanted to help him improve. What he needed, I had. What I needed, he had. That’s why our marriage worked.”

Before Mr. Cole died of lung cancer at 45, Mrs. Cole had re-turned to singing, recording songs with her husband with Capitol Records, according to her family. Her best-known solo al-bum, Love Is a Special Feeling, was released in 1966.

We, in The Berkshires, have been lucky to date in terms of overriding the fi-nancial woes that are oc-curring across the country.

Also, we have been suc-cessful to date in avoiding severe weather patterns – from droughts and severe heat waves to brown-outs and power failures.

Thus, we have achieved mid-summer regular atten-dance at our numerous non-profit venues.

Tanglewood, one of our tourist draws, has not been affected by weather to date.

With this edition of The Berkshire Beacon, we have enclosed our supplement

tourist publication, The Berkshire Sonata. This is distributed also as a stand-alone publication through-out Berkshire County.

We are getting ready for the second half of our tour-ist season which includes most of the 32 cities and towns.

Our tourists have be-come not only our support system by generating mon-ey into our local economy, but in some instances they have become our friends and soon-to-be our neighbors.

Help to welcome them with your hand of kindness and smile of goodwill.

Since the late 1990s, The Berkshire Beacon has been advocating the push-ing back of Tanglewood on Parade to the third Tues-day of August.

This was the date when Tanglewood and its com-plimentary musicians from the Boston Symphony Or-chestra, the Boston Pops, soloists and conductors performed, along with a day-long setting that in-volved the former Eastover Resort personnel with can-nons fired during the play-ing of the Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture finale.

The event also celebrat-ed the wonderful memora-ble summer with a display of fireworks.

Yet, when the BSO’s man-agement changed its phi-losophy including bringing in corporate America, it changed some parts of its calendar.

Tanglewood on Parade not only salutes the works

of its own, but the audi-ence – tourists, campers and the locals – noting the end of summer. Like many resort areas, it is a time for management to pay hom-age to its employees with picnics and individual cel-ebrations on the lawn, while campers and coun-cilors play games during the day-long event.

Eastover, under George Bisacca, reached out across the county to fulfill a climatic summer with a parade and the firing of cannons during the finale.

Moving the date up from its original third-week cel-ebration into July, and at present Aug. 7, does not fulfill the combined pur-pose of a county celebration.

Tanglewood officials would be better served to go back to the original third-week performance with an end-of-summer celebration for one and all.

Editorial:Parade should march to end

of August

Mid-summer welcomeMaria Cole - a singer/performer and

former Lee innkeeper succumbs at age 89

George C. Jordan IIIEDITOR & PUBLISHER

Kameron Z. SpauldingEDITORIAL ASSISTANT

Susan G. RobinsonGRAPHIC DESIGNER

Bera B. Dunau, Rae A. Eastman, Susan M. Wicker Guerrero, Janel M. Harrison, Catherine M. Krummey, Dick L. SyriacCONTRIBUTING WRITERS

Janel M. Harrison, Nancy G. Shepherd, Glenda LeeADVERTISING SALES

The Berkshire Beacon is published weekly. The Beacon is distributed throughout Berkshire County, MA. The Berkshire Beacon assumes no financial responsibility for failure to publish an advertisement, incorrect placement or typographical errors pub-lished. Advertisers are solely responsible for the content of their advertising and claims and offers contained within their advertising. The Berkshire Beacon reserves the right to refuse advertising for any reason. All contents copyright ©2012 The Berkshire Beacon. No portion may be reproduced without written permission of the publisher.

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Dear Mr. Jordan,I feel this letter of appreciation

is due you from a retired Lenox town clerk who remembers a fre-quent visitor at town hall with a distinct “Maine” accent!

The Beacon issue of July 12 was excellent, and I especially liked the well-written story on Eastover.

It seems you have captured the true essence of our community and all its branches.

Bravo – you have a worthy lit-tle newspaper and a very worthy staff.

Sincerely,Lorita BosworthFormer Lenox Town Clerk


ADAMS - Berkshire Arts and Technology Charter Public School announced the honor roll for the third and final trimester of the 2011-2012 school year.

Students who earned 80 per-cent or above in all of their classes received the distinction of “Honors.”

Students who earned 90 per-cent or above in all of their classes earned the distinction of “High Honors.”

In Grade six Heather Perkins earned High Honors.

Students in Grade six who earned Honors are: Grace Kelley, Harrison Todd, Mark Borelli II, Kyle Brooks, Alyssa Cahill, Mor-gan Covert, Gabrielle Fruet, Kimberly Perkins, Raegan Phil-lips, Amber Pizani, Cole Seaman, and Jamie Vachula.

Students in grade seven who earned High Honors are Alain Morrissette and Emma Cook.

Students in grade seven who earned Honors are: Mykhenzy Cuyler, Hannah Decensi, Peter Elliott, Blaize Pandell, Paul Peck-ham, Kelsey Rod, John Sebasti-no, Aiden Shaw, Emma Wheat, Cassie Winn, Heather Belisle, Daniel Cook, Samuel Daley, Kas-sandra Desmond, Cody Knox,

Jason Mills, and Elijah Mosley.Students in grade eight who

earned High Honors are Noah Chicoine and Samantha Dorwin.

Students in grade eight who earned Honors: are David Carlos, Lauren Cornell, Nathan Lapine, Katilyn DeMarsico, McKayla Di-Gennaro, Nathan Ellis, Jack Hydon, Courtney Munson, Tay-lor Phillips, Zainab Raza, and Jeanicia Smith.

In grade nince, Dylan Quinn earned High Honors.

Students in grade nine who earned Honors are: Kelsey Cook, Tyler Deschaine, Colin Douglas, Olivia Falandes, Brandon Grego-ry, Jeannette Lambert, Lauren Shamburger, Kuwanna Bobbitt, Sydney Johnson, and Joseph Tierney.

Students in grade 10 who earned Honors are Audrey Aka, Jamie Kaczowski, Tina Stanley, and Caitlin Moriarty.

Students in grade 11 who earned High Honors are Cassan-dra Chicoine, Dean Covert, and Charles Kirchner.

Students in grade 11 who earned Honors are Christianna Berti and Danielle Milesi.

In grade 12, Colleen Garrity earned High Honors and Cassidy Matthew earned Honors.


Around 400 home and busi-nesses in Lenox and Lee were without power for over three hours on Tuesday, according to West ern Massachusetts Electric Company.

WMECO officials reported the power outage occurred

around 4:20 p.m. when a tree fell on electrical lines near the in-tersection of East and Bradley Streets.

According to the WMECO outage center all of the power had been restored in Lee and Lenox Dale was by 8 p.m.

Much of Lenox was restored even earlier, by 6 p.m., according to local residents.

Lee and Lenox lose power for a few hours

BaRT announces honor roll

“This one (‘My New York City’) is one of the songs that ac-tually had an initial melody,” said Ms. Unger. “They said we could keep that or we could modify it.”

Ultimately, Mike + Ruthy de-cided to work with the original melody in their composition, and the result is a beautiful and mov-ing love song.

In order to record “My New York City” and The NYC EP, Mike + Ruthy traveled down to New York City from their home in West Hurley in upstate New York to work with friends Robin Macmillan and Jacob Silver.

Mrs. Macmillan and Mr. Silver own and run Media Blitz, a re-cord label dedicated to releasing 7” vinyl records.

The plan with The NYC EP was to record two songs for the record, and then make any addi-tional songs made during the ses-sion available through a digital download card that would come with the album.

Additionally, the tracks were re-corded directly to tape, which sharply limited what could be done to them in the post-produc-tion process.

“In the digital realm it’s easy to get a little lax,” said Mr. Meren-da, “When you’re in the analog realm I think you perform at a higher level.”

In the end, it became a six-track EP, with two songs on the record and four available via digi-tal download. In addition, Mike + Ruthy got permission from Mrs. Macmillan and Mr. Silver,

who have also served as their ac-companying band on numerous occasions, to release The NYC EP as a CD through Humble Abode as well.

Mike + Ruthy performed at the Dream Away Lodge in Becket on July 13, and will return to The Dream Away on Saturday.

“The Dream Away always feels sort of like our home away from home,” said Mr. Merenda. “It feels like a safe port to pull into.”

Indeed, Mike + Ruthy’s show at the Dream Away on July 13 was their first performance since the recent birth of their second child, Opal June.

Mr. Merenda and Ms. Unger have already had four years of bal-ancing parenthood with their ca-reers, and their four-year-old son, Willy, has been raised playing music and traveling with his parents.

“Willy learns more on the road than he does at home,” said Ms. Unger, who expects to able to continue to take their son touring with them at least until early ele-mentary school.

Being raised in such a creative environment seems to have had quite a positive impact on Willy, as there is already footage of him on the internet adeptly playing fiddle and singing with Mike + Ruthy on stage.

As for future projects, Mike +

Ruthy have a number on the horizon.

In addition to playing some lo-cal shows during the summer, they will be touring Colorado and New Mexico this fall and promoting The NYC EP. They’re also considering a number of pos-sibilities for their next release, in-cluding a ukulele project, a banjo record and a family record.

“Our biggest challenge, espe-cially with the new baby, is carv-ing out time to tinker around with new songs,” said Mr. Merenda.

Additionally, inspired by Mike + Ruthy’s contribution to Occu-py This Album (a compilation that was made to benefit the Oc-cupy Wall Street movement), “We Are Human,” Mr. Merenda is looking at releasing an album of political songs, either as a Mike + Ruthy record or as a solo project.

“That sort of got my engines going,” he said.

When asked what the best and worst thing about working with your partner was, both Mr. Mer-enda and Ms. Unger said that all the time spent with one another was the primary positive and neg-ative aspect.

“The pros far out way the cons,” said Mr. Merenda. “We’re just lucky that it works creatively.”

Letter to the editor: Former town clerk praises Beacon

FOLK from page 5 “Our biggest challenge, especially with the new baby, is carving out time to tinker around with new songs,”

—Mike Merenda

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Susan M. Wicker GuerreroBeacon Staff Writer

Carter Phipps, author of Evo-lutionaries: Unlocking the Spiri-tual and Cultural Potential of Sci-ence’s Greatest Idea, released last month by Harper Perennial, will discuss his new book tonight at 6:30 in the Sedgwick Reading Room of the Lenox Library.

Copies of the book, which is his first, will be available for sale and signing, following the presentation.

Evolution, according to the au-thor, embraces everything from economics to psychology, politics to religion and ecology to tech-nology. It’s much more profound and far-reaching than fossils and fruit flies.

“Evolution is not only a line in the sand between science and faith,” he has said. “It is also, I have been surprised to find, a bridge that connects them.”

Evolution is a fact. It is simply true, he has said.

Carter Phipps, in addition to being an author, is a journalist and well-known voice in the emerging field of evolutionary spirituality.

Oklahoma nativeMr. Phipps, 43, was born in

Ponca City, Okla., which is named after the Ponca Native American people. He was the youngest of five children brought up by liberal and progressive par-ents who provided a rich environ-ment in the home and encour-aged intellectual curiosity.

His father, who died about four years ago, was a lawyer who loved to read and was curious about ev-erything, Mr. Phipps said.

His mother studied the classics, became a clinical dietician and wrote several books, including one on raising children and one on nutrition. She still lives in Oklahoma.

There was a spiritual energy in the household and, as a child, Mr. Phipps attended services at a Presbyterian church. He has since left that church while pur-suing a different spiritual path.

The author earned a bachelor’s

degree in business economics from the University of Oklaho-ma. At the time, he said, he was thinking about going to law school. He contemplated going into corporate law and was al-ways interested in economics. However, he changed his mind about that particular career path.

Moved to CaliforniaAfter college, he moved to Cal-

ifornia and supported himself do-ing odd jobs. He eventually be-came a computer engineer and worked for about five years in that field in both California and Boston.

While in California, in 1990, Mr. Phipps met Andrew Cohen, founder of a magazine titled En-lightenNext and a teacher of evo-lutionary enlightenment. (The magazine ceased publication in 2011.)

A New York City native, Mr. Cohen was raised in a secular Jewish family. He has been a huge influence in Mr. Phipps’ life.

“I first heard about him from a brother in Boulder, Colo.,” Mr. Phipps told The Beacon. His brother had seen Mr. Cohen teach and was familiar with one of his books. Mr. Phipps eventu-ally attended a retreat in India given by Mr. Cohen.

Mr. Phipps joined the staff of EnlightenNext magazine and served as an executive editor for about seven years. He said he has met and interviewed many inter-esting people during his years as editor, including Mario Cuomo, John F. Haught, Ray Kurzweil, the Dalai Llama and Eckhart Tolle. He’s come in contact with many religious and spiritual fig-ures as well as scientists.

Has traveled extensivelyWhile working on the maga-

zine, giving lectures and attend-ing retreats, Mr. Phipps had the opportunity to travel throughout the United States, Asia and most of Europe.

In his book, Mr. Phipps notes that evolutionaries (a play on the word revolutionaries) are the “new thinkers.”

They are biologists, cosmolo-

gists, historians, futurists, priests and philosophers who have be-gun to think about evolution in new ways.

Since its release last month, the book has been no. 1 in science and religion on Amazon. Natu-rally, Mr. Phipps hopes it be-comes a best-seller. To date, the book has been quite successful and already 5,000 ad-ditional books have been printed.

“It’s very gratifying and great,” Mr. Phipps noted.

Married to a writerFor nine years, Mr. Phipps has

been married to Ellen Daly, a writer from southern England. They met through friends and live in Lenox.

Both are associated with the EnlightenNext World Center which has its world headquarters in Lenox on 220 acres of land known historically as Foxhollow. Mr. Cohen also founded the center.

According to information on the center, it is “a nonprofit orga-nization committed to a single pointed goal: to help create a new moral philosophical and spiritual framework for the 21st century.”

Following tonight’s lecture,

Mr. Phipps will leave on an ex-tended book tour. Some of the places he will travel to are Mon-treal, Toronto, Dayton, Ohio, and San Francisco.

Mr. Phipps considers himself a “broad generalist and an intellec-tual with a spiritual bent.”

His book, he said, offers some powerful new ideas to readers and encompasses different disciplines. It can help bring “more meaning to human life.”

The book offers a new look to help transform culture and the world, he said.

Local author to host a book discussion at

Lenox Library

Carter Phipps, author of Evolutionaries will speak at the Lenox Library tonight (Thursday) at 6: 30 p.m.

photo credit / the SpauldinG FaMily

Newlyweds Anna Shippee and Kameron Spaulding (The Berkshire Beacon’s editorial assistant) ride in style with Mr. Spaulding’s niece, Mattison. They were married at Centenary United Methodist Church in Greenwich, N.Y., on July 14.


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BEACONCall us at 413-637-9822 or write to [email protected]

Front Page

Grab Readers!AdNOTES

June 7, 2012

Volume III, Issue 3

www.berkshirebeacon.com

Lenox, MA 01240

FREE

1 Local News 6 Editorial6 From the Tower8 Pets9 Fast Picks10 Calendar13 Books13 Girl-2-Girl14 Fun & Games14 Beer/Wine

15 Sports16 Camps

View from

the Tower- Page 6

The Berkshire

Beacon

IndexKameron Z. Spaulding

Beacon Staff Writer

GREAT BARRINGTON

– Photographer Marie Tas-

sone documented everyday

life in the town from the

1930s to the 1980s.

Now, the Great Barrington

Historical Society is archiving

and inventorying her work

after receiving a $1,500 Mas-

sachusetts Humanities grant.

GBHS President James

Mercer said the state research

inventory grant “advances

the society’s mission to pre-

serve, protect and stimulate

awareness of our great

history.”

He credits GBHS treasurer

Sharon Genin for her

“dogged pursuit” of funding

to continue the project be-

gun by the society in January.

The project will culminate in

several exhibits of the Tassone

photos, including one on im-

ages of the former Barrington

Fair.“We are extremely pleased

that the importance of the ar-

chival holdings has been rec-

ognized by the State of Mas-

sachusetts,” Ms. Genin said.

“This grant helps the work

being done by Margaret

Cherin and her team of hard-

working volunteers.”

Ms. Cherin, who holds

masters’ degrees in art history

from the Courtauld Institute

of Art in London and library

science/archival management

from Simmons College in

Boston, has been inventory-

ing the collection, cataloging

and identifying the many

photos and negatives, which

are held in storage upstairs at

the Ramsdell Public Library

in Housatonic. A resident of

South Egremont, she is the

exhibitions curator and col-

lege archivist at Bard College

of Simon’s Rock.

Born in 1904, Ms. Tassone

came to Great Barrington in

1936 and lived there until

see FUNDING page 3

Preserving the pastGB Historic Commission receives more grants

Susan M. Wicker Guerrero

Beacon Staff Writer

LENOX – The call came in

to Michael Sullivan, animal

control offi cer for the towns

of Lee and Lenox, from a po-

lice offi cer friend.

The offi cer said there was a

man in an old Honda that

had broken down on Route

20. Inside the car was a

strange bunch of passengers,

namely 12 ducks, eight baby

chicks, a rooster, a peacock

and a trunkful of pigeons.

Would Mr. Sullivan please

go down and check it out?

At fi rst, Mr. Sullivan said,

he thought he’d have to start

looking for a farm to place the

animals. The driver of the

menagerie was from New

Hampshire.He drove down to this area

to try and sell the animals in

see ANIMAL page 10

SuSan WicKer guerrero / BerKShire Beacon

Animal control offi cer Michael Sullivan loads up the

truck to head out on another call.

Animal control offi cer

wears many hats

see SOLAR page 2

New solar rules unveiled

Pittsfi eld and Lenox join state

renewable energy program


PITTSFIELD – Over 100

people gathered in a room in

the Berkshire Life Insurance

Building in Pittsfi eld to learn

about a new solar energy pro-

gram being offered to resi-

dents of Pittsfi eld and Lenox.

“Solarize Mass” is a program

being offered to the residents

of 17 different communities

in Massachusetts through the

Massachusetts Clean Energy

Center (CEC). It seeks to in-

crease the number of houses

with solar photovoltaic (PV)

installed by educating the

public about solar PV and

making the technology more

accessible and more affordable.

Solar PV is the most com-

mon and widespread method

of generating electricity

through solar power.

Pittsfi eld and Lenox applied

and were accepted into the So-

larize Mass Program as a team.

As such, the two communities

will be working together with

the program for its duration.

The pilot program for So-

larize Mass provided solar PV

for 162 homes and businesses

in four different communities

at a discounted rate,

The program was explained

at the June 5 meeting by CEC

Senior Director for Renewable

Energy Generation Andy

Brydges.Director Brydges explained

the environmental and eco-

nomic benefi ts of solar PV, as

well as how the technology

generates electricity. He also

detailed how net metering and

solar renewable energy credits

(SRECS) work and how, along

with government subsidies,

these mechanisms can help

make the technology afford-

able for a homeowner. Addi-

tionally, Director Brydges

talked about different owner-

ship options for the technolo-

gy which include buying the

panels outright, entering into

a power purchase agreement

with an installer, (in which the

homeowner buys power from

panels at a fi xed rate that the

installer installs and main-

tains) and leasing.

One common question that

Director Brydges clarifi ed in

his talk was the concern that

Massachusetts doesn’t have

enough sun for solar power.

Director Brydges addressed

this by pointing out that Ger-

many, which has more solar

than any other country in the

world, has worse sun than any

place in the United States.

Director Brydges also went

into detail about how the So-

larize Mass program worked.

He explained that the solar in-

staller for the program would

evaluate residences and busi-

nesses of those interested in

participating to determine

whether or not they would be

suitable for solar power. Di-

rector Brydges cautioned that

only 30-40 percent of those

interested in solar PV would

have a suitable site on their

property.“We’re really only interested

in supporting well-perform-

ing systems,” said Mr.

Brydges.Elements that Director Bry-

dges said made a good site

were a Southern exposure,

four to six hours of direct sun-

light and an open roof area of

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BEACON


Community Calendar

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would like listed in our calendar please email us at

[email protected]!

Rae EastmanBeacon Staff Writer

Susan Geller is now a writer and freelance photographer, but in 1976 she wrote the history of Stockbridge as seen though the eyes of a little girl who loved the town, collaborating with artist Susan Merrill.

That little girl loved Stock-bridge well enough to find out everything she could about her town. The result was this book. Thirty six years later, Geller and Merrill have updated and re-is-sued it.

In it the little girl tells the story of her town: its history, starting with the Indians, then following the gradual growth of the town, concentrating on Main Street and how it looked at different times, the kind of people who first came for the summer (rich ones), the struggle to keep trollies off Main Street, the various cus-toms that grew over the years (in-cluding a torchlight parade through Ice Glen) and the growth of the number of houses – origi-nally built with fences to keep the livestock at home; there were no stores. The book also talks about how many of the houses which began elsewhere were moved to Main Street.

Much of the history of her town she gets from an elderly

lady with whom she chats occa-sionally on the porch of the Red Lion Inn. Mrs. Ashburner re-members her early days in Stock-bridge (the lamplighter); the cus-toms of the summer people (a boat parade) and the Childrens’ Chime Tower, built in 1878. Er-nest Gray played those chimes “from apple blossom time ‘til frost” for 45 years, retiring in 1974. She remembers as well some of the famous artists who lived there: Nathaniel Haw-thorne, Norman Rockwell.

The tone is totally consistent – affectionate wonderment – and in its walk-through, the growth of Stockbridge should interest many who are there today.

Geller, now associated with the Berkshire Eagle, will have her first solo photography exhibit open on Oct. 5 in Pittsfield at Gallery 25.

Merrill is the author and illus-trator of the children’s book Washday and of the novel Warm Morning. She has become known for her solo exhibitions of farm animal paintings which she has shown at the Hancock Shaker Village every April for the past five years.

taught him many songs.Mother had same disorderHis father was a “cowboy, land

speculator and politician.” His Kansas-born mother tragically was institutionalized and died when Woody was quite young. Apparently, she had a hereditary, degenerative nerve disorder, Huntington’s Chorea.

The family also faced financial ruin and Woody’s only sister, Clara, died accidentally, so even his early life was difficult.

According to the website, Woody Guthrie married three times in his life and fathered eight children.

One of his daughters, Arlo’s late sister, died tragically in a house fire when she was only four years old.

Struggled to support familyWoody Guthrie often struggled

to support his family and traveled from state-to-state, taking what-

ever jobs he could find. The web-site noted he was “often broke and hungry.”

Given his background, it’s un-derstandable that he was well known for honoring the working class and “giving voice to the disenfranchised.”

Woody Guthrie died in Octo-ber 1967 at Creedmoor State Hospital in Queens, N.Y. He had the same debilitating disorder as his mother.

Despite his tragic end, his con-tributions to music and the world-at-large were immense.

He received numerous acco-lades and commendations for his achievements and contributions to American culture.

Wrote close to 3,000 songsBy the time he died, Woody

Guthrie had written almost 3,000 song lyrics, his website noted.

He was also a published writer of two novels, poems, prose and plays.

I Live in Stockbridge By Susan Geller; Illustrated by Susan MerrillThe Susan Press, $10

A great local tale

CENTER from page 4

FRIDAY, JULY 20

OUTDOOR MOVIES AT CLAPP PARKPittsfield, 8:30 p.m.Rango: The City of Pittsfield De-partment of Community Devel-opment Recreation Program has announced that the “Summer Outdoor Movie Series” will begin Friday and continue each Friday night this summer until August 3; rain cancels the movie. The movies will be shown at Clapp Park beginning shortly after dusk (about 8:30pm).

MUSIC AFTER HOURSLenox, 5 – 8 p.m.The Mount, Edith Wharton’s Home, 2 Plunkett St. Join us on Friday and Saturday evenings starting July 6 for a blend of tra-ditional and modern music with influences from the Americas and beyond, performed by the re-gion’s musicians. Relax on the terrace with a glass of wine and light fare (available for purchase).

SATURDAY, JULY 21

HOOSIC RIVER GUIDED WALKING TOURNorth Adams, 11 a.m.Guided Historical Walk along Hoosic River meets at the City Hall parking lot. Hoosic River Revival will be offering guided river walks every third Saturday of the month from from June through October. These walks will start at 11 a.m. and last 45 minutes to an hour. We will walk along the river siting historical sections of North Adams.

4TH ANNUAL HINSDALE FIRE DEPT BLOCK DANCEHinsdale, 5pm - Midnight

The Hinsdale Fire Dept will hold its 14th Annual Block Dance with a giant fireworks display at 9:30 p.m.. Music will be on yeo stages at the firehouse with Acoustic Blue, Arthur Holmes Blues Band, Rick Rebel Band, Static Band, Grind Band and The Leon Savage Band performing. Food, drink and novelty vendors will be on site. Family friendly event.

KIDS CAN COOK! STRAWBERRY JAM & BISCUITS Great Barrington, 10 - 11 am Sign up to learn how to make this tasty summer treat, perfect for picnics or just a special snack! Call 413.528.9697 or stop by the Front Desk to sign up!

ARTSCAPE TOUR FOR OUTDOOR SCULPTURESPittsfield, 1 p.m.Artscape, the public outdoor art exhibition, invites people of all ages to explore the variety of pub-lic art in downtown Pittsfield with artist and educator Craig Langlois. The next tour will be held on Saturday, The 90-minute tours begin at 1:00pm, leaving the Pittsfield Visitors Center lo-cated at the Colonial Theatre, 111 South Street. The new 2012 sculptures follow the nautical theme embodied in Pittsfield’s “Call Me Melville” summer festi-val. The dates are July 21, August 25, September 15 and Oct. 6.

SUNDAY, JULY 22

FAMILY FLICKS UNDER THE STARS: A LEAGUE OF THEIR OWNWilliamstown, SundownFree films are shown on Sunday evenings in July at the top of

Spring Street; “League” is rated PG and runs 2 hours, 8 minutes. In case of rain, the movies will screen at Images Cinema, 50 Spring St., at 8pm.

MONDAY, JULY 23

SUMMERTIME...AND THE LIVIN IS EASYLenox, 8 p.m.A Summer Cabaret featuring: Lisa Kantor, Vocals, Rob Kelly, Piano, Dan Broad, Bass, The Gateways Inn, 51 Walker Street, www.gatewaysinn.com No Cover Charge, Light Fare and Full Bar available during the performance Advanced Reservations HIGHLY recommended! (413) 637-2532

TUESDAY, JULY 24

COMMUNITY BAR-BEQUE BENEFITING COTY AND YOUTH CENTERAdams, 5:30 - 7:30 p.m.Community Barbeque Tuesday, Bounti-Fare Restaurant, 100 Howland Ave., Relax on the ter-race while enjoying Bounti-Fare’s steamers, mixed grille and picnic fare! Served ala cart and reason-ably priced, $1-$8. There will be fun for the whole family includ-ing a fish bowl, raffles and baked goods. The barbeque will happen rain or shine! Proceeds benefit Youth Center Incorporated and the COTY Youth Center.

CLARK PRESENTS ‘INCENDIO.”Williamstown, 6 p.m.Latin guitar world-fusion group Incendio will perform outside The Clark, 225 South St. The music is free and there will be barbecue fare for sale. 413 458 2303, clarkart.edu.


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From London to LenoxOver the next three weeks the Beacon will have updates from our editor Kameron Spaulding from London covering the Olympics.

From eight events, the lighting of the torch and even interviews with US athletes you will find it all in The Beacon.

The first part will be a preview of the games in next weeks edition.


Philip S. KampeBeacon Staff Writer

Francois Lurton is known as the “flying winemaker” from Bordeaux. Francois is a hands-on owner, winemaker, marketer and enabler that takes every wine from every vineyard that he owns (Spain, France, Portugal, Chile, Argentina) through every step of the process from grape to bottle.

He participates at each harvest of his estates in the northern and southern hemispheres. Making wines from around the world en-ables him to borrow techniques from different winemaking cultures.

Francois Lurton produces award-winning wines at each of his vineyards.

Today, there are 15 Lurton family members who make wine, which makes the Lurton family the largest winemaking family in the world.

According to the Lurton fami-ly, “You won’t find a group like ours anywhere else. We are the only family in the world to have so many of its members all work-ing in the wine industry. While each has their own individual business, synergies between dif-ferent branches of the family tree naturally occur from time to time. By working together like this, we like to think we’re giving those within our industry a clear-er insight into our individual dif-ferences, in terms of who we are and what we do. Our family’s in-volvement in such a high caliber and range of business activity makes us extremely proud of what we produce. We’re delight-ed to share our passion for wine with you.”

Personality, respect for nature, high standards, independence and performance are the essential characteristics of the Lurton family.

And Francois has all of the above Lurton family characteris-tics plus above average business and entrepreneurial skills.

Francois uses a natural wine-making style striving to to pre-serve the aromatic intensity of the fruit in his wines, which gives them a freshness and purity of flavor as naturally as possible. His estates in South America are

moving towards becoming biody-namic. In Europe where the dis-ease pressure is greater, every ef-fort is made to produce wine as naturally as possible. No herbi-cides are used in any of his estates.

Francois and his brother Jacques started working for their father, Andre, at several of his es-tates, including Chateau Bonnet, Chateau La Louviere and Cha-teau Couhins Lurton.

After school, they decided to go on their own and create their own empire, as there were no signs of their father retiring. Francois learned a lot when he worked for his father at the estates, especially how to produce white wines. With that knowledge coupled with his enthusiasm for adven-ture, Francois searched the world for special terroir to show off his winemaking skills.

Francois was a true pioneer in Argentina. With his brother Jacques, Francois planted one of his first “Alto Valle de Uco” vine-yards in 1995. Today, Valle de Uco has become one of the most important areas of Argentinian viticulture.

Situated at the foothills of the Andes appears black against the snow covered volcanic summits, the area is named “Piedra Negra,”which means black stone. Francois’ winery is located in this special area and naturally shares the same name, Piedra Negra. The wines I sampled were all

from his Piedra Negra winery.I found the 2009 Malbec to be

elegant, yet complex, with pure, dark fruit overtones giving way to vanilla and tar. The aroma of wild strawberries danced in my mouth. At $24 a bottle, I believe this smooth 14-percent alcohol wine is a true bargain.

The big brother 2009 Gran Malbec at 15.5-percent alcohol drank as smooth as a 13-percent wine. Velvety and seamless, the subtle dark fruit wine was a per-fect match for lamb and a year-old Sansuena cheese from Zamo-ra, Spain.

Francois is a master winemaker, as his 2012 Bodega Piedra Negra Alta Coleccion Pinot Gris is a gem of a lively, fresh citrus-driven wine that sparkles at any event. The white grapes of this wine sing out a yearning for seafood. I paired this food wine with fresh oysters and shrimp ceviche. At $10 a bottle, it takes the guess-work out of finding a summer wine.

The Gran Lurton 2011 Corte Friulano stole the show. At $17 a bottle, this elegant wine is every-thing a white wine should be. El-egant and complex, this aromatic tokay is in a class of its own.

The collection of Bodega Pie-dra Negra wines are a commit-ment to get the best from this ad-opted land. Francois Lurton’s name is his guarantee of high quality wines at reasonable prices. His signature is on each bottle.

The flying wine maker strikes gold again

Francois Lurton holding a bottle of his win in Bordeaux.


Due to the high demand for Shipyard Pumpkinhead, Ship-yard Brewing Company has an-nounced it has leased space to be-gin brewing at an additional location in Memphis, Tennessee.

This will also allow Shipyard to offer its products in cans, join-ing the growing movement, and for the first time and expand its overall brewing capacity.

“This is a very exciting time in our growth,” said Shipyard’s pres-ident Fred Forsley. “Our brewery in Portland is at full capacity and this allows us to meet consumer demand for our products.”

Shipyard has leased space with-in a brewery in Memphis and manufactured tanks to employ its signature open top fermentation brewing process using Ringwood Yeast.

Master Brewer Alan Pugsley did the first brew in June and cans of Shipyard Export will be available in Maine starting next week with other select markets to follow this summer.

Shipyard Pumpkinhead will be available in cans this fall.

This is not the first time Ship-yard has brewed outside of Maine.

In 1997, Shipyard opened the world’s first airport microbrewery at the Orlando International Air-port. Today, the Shipyard Brew Pub in Winter Park, Florida op-erates its own nano-brewery.

Plans are also underway to open a 20 barrel brewing facility elsewhere in Florida later this year, using the same brewing sys-tem that had been installed at the Orlando airport.

New York beer taxGovernor Cuomo has rein-

stated a tax credit for New York's local beer breweries this week, to the relief of well-known brewers like Brewery Ommegang, Sara-nac and Southern Tier Brewing Company.

"On behalf of all of New York's more than 90 craft breweries, we would like to tip our pints to Governor Cuomo, Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos and Speaker Shel-don Silver, in addition to our greatest member ad-vocates in both houses,

including Senators Lee Zeldin and Dan Squadron and Assem-blyman Joseph Lentol,” said New York Brewers Association presi-dent David Katleski.

New York’s craft beer industry has nearly doubled in size this past decade, contributing $200 million in sales to the state’s econ-omy and accounting for around 3,000 direct jobs – and nearly 100,000 indirect jobs when posi-tions that rely on this industry such as wholesalers, retailers and suppliers are included as well.

“”This was truly a bipartisan effort on the part of Albany to not only do what was fair, but also to do what is right for small business, and ultimately all New Yorkers stand to benefit,” said Katleski.

In March, it was an-nounced that breweries would now be required to pay 14 cents in state tax per gallon, in addition to 12 cents per gallon tax for beer sold in New York City, after a complaint from a Massachusetts brewery found New York's tax credit's unconstitutional.

In May, Squadron joined Sen. Chuck Schumer, Sen. Lee Zeldin and Assemblyman Joe Lentol to work out a bipartisan plan to re-instate the credit and protect the city’s small brewers.

“In addition to producing some of the finest beer in the world, New York’s craft breweries are creating jobs, supporting our state’s farmers and hops growers, as well as bringing in tourism dollars in local communities across New York,” said Governor Cuomo. “The legislation signed today demonstrates that the new New York is truly working for small business, as this law will al-

low breweries and wineries the opportunity to invest in new opportunities and expand their operations. I commend the bill sponsors and legislative leaders for their work on this impor-tant law.”

Shipyard has an-nounced that they will now offer Shipyard Pump-kinhead in cans starting this fall.

Shipyard Pumpkinhead will come in cans this fall



Girl-2-GirlRelationship gardening

Janel M. HarrisonBeacon Staff Writer

I just love writing for you each week and am thrilled in knowing when dining out with friends that some of you are reading and in-deed noticed one week’s missing rant. Thanks Jim.

As I said in my debut Girl 2 Girl over a year ago (yay!), in “keeping it real, Berkshire wom-en,” if I can give you something, perhaps a bit of inspiration to take with you, or make you feel less alone as you go about your life, I’ll be happy.

So here we go, inhale… and ex-hale… very good – now take off your snake-skin or leopard pumps, high wedge sandals, com-fy flip-flops or All-Star colored sneaks and put your feet up, then let your hair tumble down, grab an iced coffee, iced tea, chilled Chardonnay, a refreshing cocktail – whatever your flavor – because baby, it’s so hot outside! And sit down with me for just a spat.

Let’s talk about relationships and gardening. By the way, how’s your gardening going this year? I love to plant a seed and wait in watchful anticipation for the tiny green sprout to burst through the earth and say hello!

But we all know that little sprout can’t grow without tender loving care, water, food, support and plenty of warm, pure light.

So what am I getting at here? In a relationship if there is no water, but plenty of sun then the person might get burnt. If there is too much water and hardly any sun then the person will drown. We all need the essential elements for a healthy relationship like a flow-er needs the essential elements to grow. Without these we die.

I know the analogy is starkly simple, but think about it? How do you treat your significant oth-ers? Do you give them what they need to grow or are you disabling and keeping them stagnate, caus-ing them to wither? There may be plenty of fun in the sun, but don’t forget to keep them wet – wow that sounds provocative, I think I’ve been reading too much Fifty.

Water brings fluidity, enabling

human emotion to flow; it cleans-es and purifies.

Seems I’m not the only one who feels this way. Take for in-stance Lisa Brookes Kift, MFT, therapist and author.

She says: “Have you watered your relationship garden? If you leave it unattended you can imag-ine what it might look like”

Create the environmentEmotional safety is the glue

that binds relationships; it’s when we feel like we have a “safe base” to return to in each other. This environment doesn’t occur spon-taneously. It requires some effort, so put on those garden gloves!

Here are five ways that you can attend to your relationship garden:

Communicate: Communica-tion is to relationships like water is to plants. As obvious as this may seem to some of you, the re-ality is that many couples don’t communicate often enough – or well enough.

Pull out the weeds of resent-ments: There’s always times when we behave like nincompoops and upset each other. Don’t sit on it, discuss.

Apologize: If you mess up, own it. Just say two simple words, “I’m sorry” – it demonstrates an ability to be humble, compassionate and validating. And don’t forget to show empathy – one of the most powerful ways to create emotion-al safety.

Bring on the love hormone: Laughter and hugs both have the ability to reduce stress hormones like cortisol (“fight or flight”) and increase oxytocin (“love hor-mone”). Research shows that a 20-second body hug can release oxytocin; try it and watch what goes on in your body. Have you ever hugged a tree?

Don’t ya just love to garden? Keeping those flowers and people healthy in your life is nourish-ment to feed your soul! Perhaps if everyone always visualized lush, green leaves and breathtaking petals of color, maybe the essen-tials would never be forgotten…

Ciao Bella


It’s a rare thing when a movie teaches you something new about yourself.

Moonrise Kingdom is a truly lovely film. Co-written and di-rected by brilliant filmmaker Wes Anderson, Moonrise Kingdom boasts an excellent story, inspired structure and one of the finest casts I’ve had the pleasure of see-ing in a recent movie.

But it is Moonrise Kingdom’s subject matter, and its intrinsic understanding of it, that truly makes it magnificent.

Set on the small (fictional) New England island of New Penzance in the summer of 1965, Moonrise Kingdom tells the story of Suzy Bishop (Kara Hayward) and Sam Shakusky (Jared Gil-man), two misfit 12-year-old kids.

Sam is an orphan and is attend-ing a Khaki Scout summer camp on New Penzance, while Suzy lives on the island full-time with her two lawyer parents (Bill Mur-ray and Frances McDormand). Suzy loves reading fantasy novels and has a habit of going berzerk and getting into fights at school, while Sam is a skilled survivalist and painter, but also socially awkward and violently disliked, both at his foster home and by the campers at Camp Ivanhoe.

Having met the year before and corresponded ever since, Sam and Suzy hatch a plan to run away together into the island wilderness.

I can’t praise the quality of the acting in Moonrise Kingdom enough. In most other movies, any one of the main cast’s perfor-mances would be the standout feature of that film, and that’s not even mentioning the terrific cam-eos by Harvey Keitel and Jason Schwartzman.

Gilman and Hayward are per-fectly cast as Sam and Suzy, and the young actors playing Khaki Scouts also do an excellent job in their roles. Edward Norton is glorious in the role of Scout Mas-ter Ward, McDormand and Mur-ray make a terrific couple on the rocks and Tilda Swinton is pure entertainment as “Social Services.”

Perhaps the biggest delight of the movie, however, is Bruce Wil-lis as lonely policeman Captain Sharp. People tend to forget just how good an actor Willis is and how wide a range he has. Moon-rise Kingdom gives him an oppor-tunity to demonstrate both quali-ties, and he takes full advantage of it.

What’s also really sweet about Moonrise Kingdom is how all of its characters are essentially good people. That doesn’t mean there isn’t conflict in the film and the characters don’t make mistakes, but the story revolves around ev-eryone essentially trying to do the right thing. In the wrong hands this element could have been sac-charine, but under Anderson’s di-rection, it’s a wonderful and re-freshing change of pace that gives this often surreal film a sense of weight and realism.

While Moonrise Kingdom’s per-formances and characters are its driving force, what makes it stand out, however, is its beautifully-re-alized setting.

So much of what we see of the ‘60s revolves around flashy sub-jects, like rock music, the coun-terculture and the Vietnam War. But while all of these things were important, there were also the ev-eryday lives of the majority of Americans and the “mainstream” cultural items that were produced for them.

I grew up reading many of the books from this era, the same ones read by my father and his siblings in the ‘60s that were passed down to me. I still have many fond memories of them, particularly my family’s set of 1960 World Books and, aside from the presence of blatant anti-communist propaganda, they of-ten proved to be excellent re-sources that taught me much about the world.

Another connection to mid-’60s New England is my Oma’s summer house in Wolfeboro, N.H. From the very first shot of Moonrise Kingdom, I began feel-ing nostalgia for Wolfeboro and those old books, and the movie captures what I know and love from that era.

I can only imagine what effect it will have for those who were ac-tually kids in the ‘60s, as the whole film is made up of pitch-perfect brush strokes of period detail, all the way down to the Reader’s Digest-style narration that crops up throughout the film, provided by veteran charac-ter actor Bob Balaban.

Moonrise Kingdom is one of the best films of the year, and it is not to be missed – a celebration of love, youth, growing up and New England, I would advise anyone to see it as soon as they can. It is simply terrific.

Moonrise Kingdom hits all the high notes

credit: FocuS FeatureS



NORTH ADAMS - It’s all-star season.

Highlighted by three position players who rank among several offensive statistics on the league leader board and two of the finest relief pitchers in the league to date, North Adams will be repre-sented by five members on the Western Division All-Star Team, the New England Collegiate Baseball League (NECBL) an-nounced Monday.

On the offensive end, the Stee-pleCats will serve three position players to do battle at Montpelier Recreation Field on Sunday, July 22, in a showcase of the league’s best talent.

Catcher Brett Clements, first baseman Charlie Law and center-fielder Jeff Roy will represent the black and gold, while relievers Tom Bammann and Matt Long-field will bolster Western Divi-sion pitching staff.

Clements has enjoyed tremen-dous success at the plate over the last few weeks and ranks among the top 10 in the league batting average leader board, as the ju-nior receiver has posted a .364 average (28-for-77) with four doubles and three homers while driving in 18 runs.

The Riverview, Fla., native also ranks among the top 10 in on-base percentage (.467) and at one point reached base in 21 consec-utive games.

A pure catalyst at the top of the SteepleCat lineup, Roy’s perfor-mance has been exactly as adver-tised after a stellar season with the Rhody Rams.

The A-10 Player of the Year and recently tabbed College Baseball Insider All-American Honorable Mention Team mem-ber, Roy has seen time in the first three spots in the lineup over the course of the year.

Not only does he swing one of the sweetest bats on the side (.340 batting average), his speed on the base paths has made him one of the most dangerous play-ers in the league.

Roy’s 19 swiped bags not only lead the league, but are tied for former SteepleCat John Schultz (’09) for the single-season record, a mark that Roy is likely to

shatter.Rounding out the trio of posi-

tion players, the imposing Law – and all 6’7” of him – will provide another capable power swing at the plate for the Western Division.

The Linwood, N.J., native has made just one error at first this season while offering a threat to leave the yard with every appear-ance at the plate.

The right-hander has batted .353 (36-for-102) over 28 games and has stroked 11 doubles and five homers while driving in a team-high 29 runs.

Moving to the bullpen, the West will be bolstered by two of the best arms in the form of Bam-mann and Longfield.

The former has posted five saves and two relief wins with no losses up until this point over a span of 14 appearances.

His 1.35 ERA ranks second on the team to compliment a 2-0 re-cord while striking out 18 and walking only two over 20 in-

nings, as opponents have hit just .149 against the Dowling College star.

Longfield, meanwhile, has been equally dominant in addition to shouldering the greatest work-load of the season indicative of his league-high 21 appearances.

The southpaw owns a 5-1 re-cord – one shy of the league lead in victories – while posting a 0.92 ERA over 19.2 innings.

He has struck out 27 while yielding only five walks while op-ponents bat a paltry .194 against him.

The Vermont Mountaineers will host the 2012 NECBL All-Star Game on Sunday, in what will promise to be a daylong cel-ebration of the best of the best in the league.

Components of the day’s itin-erary include a skills competition coordinated by MLB scouts; the 2012 Home Run Derby; a special skydiving pregame ceremony; and more.

First pitch is set for 6:30 p.m.

Local players highlight NECBL all-star game

Jeff Roy has added NECBL all-star to his growing list of awards after being named a College Baseball Insider All-American.

NORTH ADAMS - After a dominant four-game stretch over the past week, left-handed reliev-er Matt Longfield has earned the North Adams SteepleCats’ sec-ond weekly league honor in 2012, as the Villanova southpaw was named the New England Colle-giate Baseball League Pitcher of the Week, the league announced Sunday.

Longfield, a Miami, Fla., na-tive, appeared in four games out of the bullpen, facing 20 batters and striking out 10 of them. In 5.1 innings of work, he didn't walk a batter and surrendered just three hits and one run.

Longfield, a 6'5" lefty, earned the win on July 11 at Holyoke with four strikeouts in 1.1 in-nings, and ranks second in the league with five pitching victories.

Establishing himself as one of the league’s top bullpen options through the SteepleCats’ first 30 games, Longfield stands at 5-1 with a 0.92 ERA over 19.2 innings.

The southpaw has yielded only

two earned runs on 13 hits over that span with 27 strikeouts and five walks. Longfield also boasts three saves on the season and has allowed only four extra-base hits.

Longfield has spent the better part of three seasons as one of Villanova’s most lethal lefty op-tions out of the bullpen, and that continued during his junior cam-paign during which he held op-posing hitters to just a .217 bat-ting average.

He yielded no home runs and only 10 hits in 12 2/3 innings while striking out 20.

No stranger to summer base-ball, Longfield pitched in the Prospect League for the West Vir-ginia Miners in 2011, appearing in 24 games and pitching 33 1/3 innings.

He struck out 48 while allow-ing only 17 hits and went 2-1 with a 2.16 ERA.

The lefty made an appearance in the Prospect League Champi-onship Game, as well. The sum-mer before, Longfield pitched in the ACBL for the Westhampton Aviators.

SteepleCat reliever named pitcher of

the week

Matt Longfield New England Collegiate Baseball League Pitcher of the Week.


NORTH ADAMS - Trailing by a run, 2-1, entering the home half of the sixth, the North Ad-ams SteepleCats exploded for eight runs in a single inning to propel them to an 11-3 victory over the visiting Holyoke Blue Sox in a New England Collegiate Baseball League Western Divi-sion showdown on Sunday night at Joe Wolfe Field.

After the start of the game was delayed nearly 90 minutes due to rain in the area, the SteepleCats (18-13) erased an early 2-0 deficit and capitalized on three Blue Sox (11-19) errors in an unforgettable sixth inning to see them go ahead by a 9-2 margin.

Helping the cause on offense was Charlie Law, who homered for his third-straight game to up his team-leading total to five long balls on the year.

The first baseman finished with a game-high three hits and three runs scored while driving in three.

Picking up his first victory as a starter in the process, Brian Hunter allowed the only two hits that Holyoke would muster over the course of the game – both back-to-back doubles in the top of the first – before settling in and finishing with a dominant seven-inning outing.

The righty struck out six and walked two to lower his season ERA to 4.74 and improve to 1-1 on the year.

His counterpart, lefty Chris O’Hare, was cruising through his

first three-plus innings before be-ing tagged for a run in the fourth and six more in the sixth. He would strike out an impressive nine batters while walking four and yielding six hits and took the loss.

After Sheehan Planas-Arteaga pulled the ‘Cats to within a run on an RBI single in the bottom of the fourth, Law led off the sixth with a full-count walk and moved to third on a two-base error. Brett Clements would single him home to tie the game before stealing second and moving to third on an error.

Moments later, Will Klausing knocked in the go-ahead run to score Clements, as North Adams was just getting started in the multi-run sixth.

Planas-Arteaga drew a one-out walk and Adrian English singled to load the bases, setting up a sac-rifice fly for Conor Biggio and another RBI single for Julian Santo to up the edge to 5-2.

After a walk loaded the bases and a wild pitch drew in another run, Law teed off against new pitcher Josh Mason for a three-run jack to stretch the lead to 9-2 and complete the plentiful inning.

The Blue Sox would tack on a late unearned run against Hunt-er, but that would be it, as the ‘Cats added two more late runs that proved to be unnecessary, as Adam Sargent and Bubba Baron-iel kept Holyoke off the board in the last two innings.

North Adams completes comeback

Brian Hunter picked up the win in his first start with the SteepleCats.

When conditions are accept-able, observers, like Trudeau, will allow an intermediate pilot to take off from Greylock. Trudeau can give the pilot the ins and outs of Greylock and help as much as possible before takeoff.

“Once they’re in the air though, it’s all up to them. I can’t fly for them,” Trudeau said. “But allow-ing intermediates to fly here when conditions are right helps them to gain the experience they need to advance their rating.”

On some occasions an inexpe-rienced or unrated pilot will look to circumvent the rules.

“We’re self-policing,” Trudeau said. “If we run into a problem here we’ll get the rangers involved and if necessary the state police. But generally we try to handle is-sues internally.”

Since gliders have had a good history of self-policing, the Fed-eral Aviation Administration keeps a largely hands-off ap-proach. However, the FAA does maintain rules which pilots learn during training.

“The short version of the FAA’s Visual Flight Rules (VFR) is you have to be in sight of the ground at all times,” Trudeau said.

Gliders are restricted to an 18,000-foot ceiling and are pro-hibited from flying into clouds.

Though Mt. Greylock is just under 3,500 feet in elevation, gliders seek to reach heights many thousands of feet higher.

After a glider takes off, he or she immediately starts looking for an updraft to go higher. It’s not unusual for a glider to spend many hours aloft in the right conditions.

“We’re always falling at 200 feet per minute,” Trudeau said. “So if we can find air that’s rising at more than that, we can rise with it.”

Trudeau has had flights that were as brief as five minutes or as long as five hours. Often the lon-ger flights are terminated only by darkness (which would violate the VFR).

On occasion Trudeau has glid-ed from Mt. Greylock to where he now lives in Cheshire.

Earlier this month, American Dustin Martin and Australian Jonny Durand broke the open-distance record with a powerless flight of over 474 miles. The ride went from Zapata, Texas, to east of Lubbock, Texas.

“Paragliding takes a lot of con-centration,” said Berthold Schrempp, who was visiting the

area from Germany. “It’s a won-derful sense of freedom but you have to pay attention to what you’re doing at all times.”

Schrempp was just one of the two paragliders visiting Mt. Grey-lock recently from afar. Sam Ein-horn, originally from Connecti-cut, now lives near Grant’s Pass in Oregon.

“When I moved out there I would sometimes see [gliders] all over the sky,” said Einhorn. “If it intrigues you there’s no way you can stay away from it.”

Einhorn was hoping to find the right conditions in New Hamp-shire the night before but struck out. He was encouraged to make the trip to Greylock after seeing Trudeau’s comments in a chat room on the Vermont Hang Gliding Association’s website.

As for Schrrempp, 64, he’s been an outdoorsman all his life. Mountaineering about the Alps was once his favorite pastime. His passions have now evolved into paragliding. While he has had the pleasure of gliding around the Alps, he enjoys Mt. Greylock as well.

“This mountain can be as chal-lenging as any,” Schrempp said. “It can be tricky here so you have to pay attention.”

Once the ride is over, getting back to one’s car is not usually a problem. The gliding community is welcoming and friendly with a lot of camaraderie, says Trudeau. They do a lot of car pooling. On this day Trudeau drove up the mountain with a friend and left his car at the base.

“If all else fails my wife’s home today,” said Trudeau. “Perhaps I can glide home and she can bring me back to my car.”

When last seen, Trudeau was thousands of feet above his boy-hood home, well on his way to Cheshire.

He later reported that he flew more than two hours and reached heights exceeding 7,000 feet. And yes, after many planned de-tours, Trudeau eventually landed at home.

“It was rough at first, I had to work hard to find an up-draft. Once I found a good therma,l I pretty much stayed up there,” Trudeau said.

GLIDING from page 16

Stephen Mckay / BerkShire Beacon Gary Trudeau paragliding shortly after takeoff from Mount Greylock.

Stephen McKayBeacon Staff Writer

ADAMS – Throughout the history of humankind there have been countless numbers of fools and geniuses alike whose bodies have wound up in a crumpled heap at the bottom of some hill hoping they could learn how to fly.

While the geniuses have ulti-mately given us cross-continental 747s and moon-bound Saturn 5s, the real dream of manned flight is still to soar like the eagles do.

Growing up in Adams at the base of Mount Greylock, Gary Trudeau often had that familiar dream. He routinely witnessed humans soaring overhead like birds and hoped someday to join them.

“I’ve been watching these guys fly here since I was a kid,” said Trudeau atop Mt. Greylock last Wednesday as he prepared his paragliding rig. “I can’t tell you how many times I looked up and wished I could be with them.”

Trudeau has been looking sky-

ward since the 1970s, when hang gliding and later paragliding be-gan to become popular in the United States. Today, according to Trudeau, there are more than 10,000 active hang gliders and paragliders in the United States.

In the early ‘90s, Trudeau bought a house which demanded much of his attention. About that time he read an article on the Morningside Flight Park in Charlestown, N.H., and his boy-hood dreams were rekindled.

In 1994, “It was now or never,” said Trudeau. He was a fast learn-er and before long he was soaring with the eagles.

“It’s worse than any drug you can think of,” said Trudeau laugh-ing. “I sold the motorcycle, the jet ski, the boat and all my toys and bought a hang glider.

“It’s hard to describe, but it’s so peaceful up there,” he added.

Much like an airplane, gliders need to take off and land into the wind. In order to take off from Mt. Greylock, a roughly easterly wind is necessary. Unfortunately, the prevailing winds atop the

mountain are generally from the west. At least this season the con-ditions have been favorable more often than usual.

“I’ve been out here six or seven times this season which is pretty good,” said Trudeau.

Patience, added Trudeau, is one of the characteristics a glider must have.

Training is also necessary. Trudeau learned his skills from Morningside Flight Park. At Morningside, trainees learn the basics and eventually learn how to take off from progressively tall-er heights.

When the instructor sees that a student is ready, he/she can take off from a 50-foot hill. As skills improve, a trainee continues until reaching the 450-foot hill.

Since both gliders and takeoff areas are rated, a glider must have a sufficient rating to take off from a particular area. Mt. Greylock is rated as advanced, so only ad-vanced-rated pilots are allowed without an observer.

Gliding through the Berkshire air

see GLIDING page 15

Stephen Mckay / BerkShire Beacon Gary Trudeau observes the conditions before taking off from Mount Greylock in his paraglider.

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