Latest Story

Edward Passetto

Monday, May 27, 2013
By Mickey Friedman

Edward Passetto came down from Pittsfield to The Best Small Town in America to find some peace, to end his pain. A Marine, at war in Afghanistan, he saved two civilian victims of a helicopter crash. But here at home he was just another casualty.

Without realizing it, the Berkshire Eagle published Edward Passetto’s suicide note. Clear, concise, his letter to the editor told a simple, sad story: “I am a proud veteran who has served in both Iraq and Afghanistan and was medically discharged from active duty in 2011. I returned home and no one noticed. So I went on with my life, filed my papers with the Veterans Administration and started the waiting game. The same waiting game hundreds of Berkshire County veterans are struggling through along with millions of vets across America.”

No one noticed. Imagine: one moment, far from home, there’s the hypervigilance of combat, IEDs and suicide bombers, and the reality that the Afghan soldier we just trained could turn killer. The next moment, back in the Berkshires, nobody wants to know where you’ve been, what you’ve seen and done, and how you’ve managed to survive.

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Sorry, Mother Earth

Thursday, May 23, 2013
By Mickey Friedman

I got my ass kicked. Playing Democracy In Action at The Mahaiwe.

You might have seen the poster advertising not the opera or the Chinese acrobats but our Annual Great Barrington Town Meeting at The Mahaiwe.

The scheduling stunk: the Red Sox vs the Twins, and the second round of the NBA Playoffs. My neck hurt but the invitation was irresistible: “Be A Part of Democracy in Action … Vote on the annual operating budget; Authorize borrowing if necessary; Consider amendments to zoning bylaws or policies.”

So I’m sorry Big Y, Price Chopper, Guidos and the folks at Azteca who put my rice and beans in the little red and white plastic bag. Sorry, Mother Earth. I suck at Democracy in Action.

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Too Much With Us

April 26, 2013
By Mickey Friedman

I took Peter’s advice and bought clear packing tape to patch the major cuts and bruises of my sign, then went back out to demonstrate this past weekend. Peter, as he often does, took a short break from his retail duties to join me.

Peter has been one of the best things about my weekly manifestation. Like others who have known war up close, it is always with him. He has known profound loss and his empathy and understanding, his spirituality, is so very hard earned. His impatience with bluster and rhetoric and hyper-inflated patriotism is also profound. It doesn’t take much of it to get him going.

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Just Say No, Thanks

April 11, 2013
By Mickey Friedman

Will loves Simon and Garfunkel and Simon without Garfunkel and Bob Dylan and Van Morrison. So when Will opens Fuel at seven, he tells Pandora to sing the 1960s. Which means early mornings at Fuel are all about flashbacks for some of us. Bob B and I hear a song and immediately recall a moment, or an event we lived through. “Happy Together” by The Turtles sends me back in a heartbeat to City College. I can see E walking past the Administration Building. And I loved E.

A bit later, Pandora offers Bob Dylan crooning “Lay Lady Lay” and I’m confronted with memories of M and my boatload of regret. I loved M. At some point, Anthony tells Bob B that he missed the 1960s entirely. Reminding us that if he had his way, Will would be offering us non-stop Frank Sinatra.

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Treason

April 4, 2013
By Mickey Friedman

My “Support The Troops / It’s Time To Come Home” sign has seen better days. I’ve taped and re-taped it; stapled and re-stapled it.

This Saturday a big wind blew it and me several feet, bending us both. But I really don’t want to make a new sign. To acknowledge I’ll be standing out in front of Town Hall long enough to justify the effort it will take to make a new sign.

Google says tin and aluminum are the appropriate gifts for a tenth anniversary. So ten years later, should we send the Iraqi people our tin foil and aluminum cookware? It’s got to be better than shock and awe. The destruction of their middle class, the disintegration of their families, schools, hospitals, neighborhoods.
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The Dark

March 23 2013
By Mickey Friedman

Last week began for me with the news my former love had hung herself. The obituary reported she died at home. True, but hardly the real story.

When it comes to mental illness, we don’t often tell the real story.

Three people in my life have killed themselves.

We didn’t talk about mental illness, although there were deep strains of depression in both the Italian and Hungarian sides of my family. One cousin was never diagnosed. She just lived at home and hardly ever left the house. Her brother killed himself in his late twenties.

A college friend, a bright, talented poet, newly married, killed himself. I obviously didn’t know him well enough because I was shocked his pain so overwhelmed his love of language, his love for his wife.

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A Letter to the Red Crows

March 4, 2013

Dear Mickey,

Totally agree about Old Mill. I’ve had some wonderful meals and parties there – we used to fit all of CHP in the small dining room at Christmas and it was so lovely. We weren’t old ones then tho’ God knows we are getting there now! I even tried brains there one night and they were beyond compare. All of it is low key and that isn’t a style some folks find attractive now, but I hope the Berkshires doesn’t lose it.

Was also interested in the tree issues. My dad was a landscape architect and he was always trying to find ways to use tree plantings to slow down traffic – he designed many public parks in the south and his hero was Frederick Law Olmstead. I suspect that Great Barrington is having to solve too many problems with these trees and thus the higglety-pigglety nature of choices. As everyone who has ever had the misfortune to work on construction of anything knows, the costs keep going up and up and up. No solutions from this quarter but I wish you all good luck with it. My observation has always been that Chip E. knows the ins and outs of finance better than most of us and his advice is worth giving a listen to. Now I live in Maine where there isn’t enough money to put in a tea cup most of the time but we are always working for the tourists’ dollar. Love to you all in Great Barrington.

Linda Small

(Editor’s Note: Linda changed the lives of so many of us in South County when she helped to create the Children’s Health Program, providing affordable healthcare for young people in our communities.)

The Good, The Bad, The …

March 3, 2013
By Mickey Friedman

I’ve been meaning to tell you how much I like The Old Mill in Egremont ever since I read that cruel review in the Berkshire Beagle last summer. Reviewers are odd ducks. I’ve occasionally been one and always have to remind myself of the extraordinary ripple effect of reviews. There is something inherently unfair about sitting, watching, judging what you’re seeing, hearing, eating in just a series of moments, influenced, of course, by your moods, your biases, most of which you’re not terribly conscious of and haven’t shared with your readers.

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It’s Time To Act

February 16, 2013
By Mickey Friedman

Rather than act, the Great Barrington Selectboard decided to discuss guns and gun violence. We Americans like to discuss/argue about everything.  But some arguments defy resolution. Like the argument about abortion and women’s rights. Or the argument about the right to bear arms versus the need to control gun violence.

We’ve had similar seemingly insolvable arguments in the past. The argument over slavery torn the nation apart. At a certain point you have to stop arguing and take action. Slavery was a crime against humanity. It always was and even today few Americans appreciate the enormity of the African holocaust.

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Digging in the Dark

February 7, 2013
By Mickey Friedman

When last we spoke I was selling old CDs, used books, and desperately organizing a bake sale to raise the five hundred bucks to buy the second half of the still Not For Public Consumption PR Proposal For Great Barrington’s Downtown Revitalization.

But while I was debating whether to go with oatmeal raisin or chocolate-chocolate chip, I got smacked by the great cold and/or flu of 2013. No cookies. No money. No clandestine meeting with my secret source by the bandstand.

Instead I slipped into a week’s worth of sneezing, coughing, sore throat, chills and more coughing.

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RED CROW NEWS

An online newsmagazine based in the Berkshire Hills of Western Massachusetts, Red Crow News covers what's happening and what we hope will happen.

Along with our slightly unconventional news coverage, you'll find musings and scribblings, and comments about what we care about.

Highly subjective, our C/V/ultures will be writing about culture or the lack thereof.

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