Latest Story

It’s Not Me; It’s My Wife

February 12, 2012
By David Scribner

HOUSATONIC, MA – Like everyone else, I was surprised to learn that Sandra Muss, a painter and wife of Stephen Muss, the Florida-based developer and would-be savior of Housatonic, was buying the Barbieri mill building — and even more startled and dismayed that a condition of the sale was that the Berkshire Pulse Center for the Creative Arts would have to move out by the end of February.

Hip Hop Class at Berkshire Pulse, Barbieri Mill, Housatonic MA

After all, although Sandra Muss had a studio in the building, surely she didn’t need the whole building, at least right away, and besides she and her husband had once told me how much they valued Pulse as a component of the cultural life of Housatonic and South Berkshire.

I suppose, if she owned the real estate, she would do what she wanted.

So I called up Stephen Muss to find out what was going on.

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Housatonic Has A Pulse

February 10, 2012
By Mickey Friedman

With all the horrendous things adults do to children, from forcing them to fight and kill in Sierra Leone, making them make soccer balls for pennies in Pakistan, abusing them physically and emotionally, there are still many adults who love and care for, teach and nurture their own kids and the kids of others.

The Housatonic Mills - Photo: Berkshire Property Agents

In our town, I’ve heard from several parents about the great work Bettina Montano does at Berkshire Pulse in Housatonic.

In the old Barbieri Mill in Housatonic, Massachusetts, Bettina has been teaching hundreds of kids about music and dance and movement.

That’s the same Housatonic, Massachusetts you’ve been reading about in the local newspapers.

For a while now, the papers have been filled with articles about the man from Miami. Stephen Muss, we were told, was willing, no anxious, to spend hundreds of thousands on a master plan to reconfigure the old and ailing mills, the mills he didn’t own, to bring renewed hope to Housatonic. No ulterior motive, just a rare, pure and heartfelt gift from a man who had a galvanizing vision of new jobs, happy artists, and new tenants. A revitalization, a renovation, and a renewal. And, to prove his purity and silence the skeptics, Mr. Muss assured us he wasn’t interested in buying property in Housatonic.

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Small Schools

By Mickey Friedman
February 4, 2012

No kids, a different district, so I am just an interested bystander in the raging debate about the small schools of Monterey, Egremont and New Marlborough.

Having taught I have a continuing interest in how education happens; as a citizen and taxpayer, I care about how much education costs and whether those dollars are spent wisely.

I’ve tried to teach seventh, eighth, and ninth graders in New York City. I’ve taught and counseled college students in both New York and Massachusetts. While being a student is hard, being a good teacher is even more difficult.

It’s hard to separate the issue of small schools and rising school budgets from the larger money mess we find ourselves in. More and more, because of a radically unfair tax structure that favors the wealthy, the middle class is ask to pay a disproportionate share for government services. And the middle class has less to offer up. Here, in the South Berkshires, struggling taxpayer/voters are asked each year for an up/down vote for a rising school budget they can barely understand.

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A More Mickey America

Mickey Friedman
January 25, 2012

I’ve tried to convince Bill Shein not to run for Congress. But my friend hasn’t listened to me. Don’t get me wrong, Bill would make a fine Congressman. And I’ll vote for him.

It’s just that I no longer believe in Congress. And don’t think it’s worth Bill’s time to try and get there. Or the time, energy and money his supporters will spend in the effort.

I was surprised by my response. I hadn’t realized I had gotten that cynical. But as I debated Bill, my anger and annoyance at what government has become was impossible to deny.

I think of it as playing in a crooked card game. Richard Neal, who many will tell you is as good a Congressman as you will find, has raised millions of dollars from lobbyists near and far. If you search the Federal Election Commission for Richard E. Neal you can get a list of all those who over the years have given him big money. Try this: http://query.nictusa.com/cgi-bin/can_give/H8MA02041. Don’t try printing it. It comes to 221 pages.

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The War’s Not Over

Mickey Friedman
January 7. 2012

Few Americans know about David Emanuel Hickman. The media jabbers about Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul, Michele Bachmann and Rick Santorum and neglects David Emanuel Hickman.

After attack in Ramadi, Iraq 2006, U.S. Army photo: SFC David D. Isakson

For all their rhetoric about standing tall and tough and fighting the fight against Islamic extremism, the politicians do their talking surrounded by the trappings of wealth and power. They are the 1%. They are safe. David Emanuel Hickman went out to do their work and died. The Defense Department says he died in Baghdad on November 18, 2011 “of injuries suffered after encountering an improvised explosive device.”

The Army Times called Hickman “the last American fighter killed in combat” in Iraq. To our ever-lasting shame, Hickman will be remembered by his family and friends in North Carolina and by those who watched him playing outside linebacker for Northeast Guilford High School, but will never be known by the American people. There will be no parade past Wall Street for David Emanuel Hickman nor for Marine Pvt. Jonathan Lee Gifford, our first casualty.

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Occupy Christmas

Mickey Friedman
December 25, 2011

As 2011 comes to a close, it’s fair to say Occupy has occupied the land.

Graphic Image: Alexandra Clotfelter

Far from the opening and closing bells of Wall Street, and its powerful bull, here in the southern Berkshires, Occupy Berkshires demonstrates each Sunday (excepting this Sunday) from 1 PM to 2:45 PM in front of Great Barrington’s Town Hall on Main Street. It then holds its General Assembly at 3 PM at the Quaker Meeting House on 280 Main Road (Route 23 towards Monterey.) There are similar groups in Pittsfield and North Adams.

It’s easy to get rhetorical about the extent and impact of Occupy but a recent study by researchers at the University of California, Riverside (UCR) found occupy movements in 143 small towns and cities in California alone.

“Big cities got the movement early. The spatial depth of the movement to small towns is not well-known,” said Christopher Chase-Dunn, a distinguished professor of sociology who is known internationally for his research of social movements.

People in medium and small-sized towns are occupying space, organizing events, and lending their voices to the movement in their own towns, graduate student Michaela Curran-Strange added. “They are focusing on local issues as well as national and regional ones.”

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Let’s Buy A Farm

Mickey Friedman
December 17, 2011

If there’s one thing I learned from hearing “Oklahoma” eight million times it’s that the cowboys and the farmers should be friends. We’re short of cowboys and growing short of farmers around these parts. Which is all the more reason to help those farmers we’ve got left.

Shaw Farm From Seekonk Road - Photo: David Scribner

It’s really not the fault of our farmers that they’re forced to consider selling or leasing their land to others. For solar farms or real estate developments. We’ve allowed the corporatization of farming to overtake the small farms that for so many years were a critical part of life in New England. In the 40 years I’ve been here I’ve seen one small dairy farm after another disappear.

My conservative friends never tire of proclaiming the evils of government, and the army of corrupt bureaucrats who over- and incompetently regulate us. Yet they have remained silent as corporations gained one unfair advantage after another with lower taxes, taxes they don’t pay, and enormous government subsidies. Real and fair competition, the bedrock of Adam Smith’s theory of capitalism, has long disappeared.

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Hasta Luego, Pablo – Occupy Everywhere

By Mickey Friedman
December 12, 2011

I’ve been very sad lately, having lost another dear friend to cancer, Dr. Paul Epstein, Pablo to me, Rufus to his family. Paul was one of the world’s leading experts on the ever-increasing effects of the climate crisis on disease. Pablo was a constant, continuing inspiration to me. He was energetic, sympathetic, and so very quick to smile and laugh. As cranky and curmudgeonly as I am, Paul was happy and gracious.

Dr, Paul Epstein

I met him in New York a long time ago and watched him study and become a doctor and marry my friend, Andy. He practiced medicine, wrote, taught, and organized. He worked for the Center for Health and the Global Environment at the Harvard Medical School. I am sure his kindness to patients and students, to friends and family, and the great work he’s done lives on.

Click here to listen to Living on Earth’s Steve Curwood’s short tribute to Paul Epstein.
READ MORE >>

Re-Invent America; Re-Imagine the World

Mickey Friedman
December 2, 2011

(This column, without illustrations, appeared in the Berkshire Record on Thursday, December 1, 2011. This morning my very conservative friend Anthony told me I should start packing. This time I went too far; I’d probably be deported. We argue and joke all the time about politics. He jokes about retiring to a small imaginary village in Sicily where he and his lovely wife and his new-found donkey don’t have to deal with spam, the e-mail version not the lunch meat. He thinks this column might get me to Sicily before he gets there.)

_________________________________________________________________________________

Poster by Frank Kozik

Nobody asked me, but I have a suggestion for the Occupy Movement. Be audacious. Dare to dream big. I see that Michael Moore has his ideas: increasing taxes on the rich, limiting corporate contributions, a single-payer health plan. All good ideas that I support. But still too small.

I say that because the Arctic is melting; and Antarctica is next. Because it’s too late for little changes. You can argue that these reforms will greatly change the lives of many. But Nature is telling us loud and clear: the time is now. Actually, the time was decades ago, but we humans are so very slow to learn.

I’ve been a dissident for a very long time so I may not have enough audacity left. But the folks who Occupied the Verizon building using their nifty video projector, flashing the slogans of the movement on valuable New York City corporate real estate, well, they know audacious. The young folks with their cellphones, all live streaming video of police misconduct, they have audacity.

I say take that courage and re-invent America.

READ MORE >>

Some More Moments Of Occupy

Mickey Friedman
November 22, 2011

Remember the mythic and mystical friendly neighborhood policeman. He is alive and well in the form of Retired Police Captain Ray Lewis of the Philadelphia Police Department. Captain Lewis was recently arrested as part of activities at Occupy Wall Street. Here is what he told the very hardworking streaming videographer, Tim Pool, of wearetheother99:

And then there’s the inside look at the creative projectionists of the OccupyTheVerizonBuilding. I was able to watch some of this live on New York City television as it was happening:

And then for those of you who once took English or taught English, here’s how the brave English faculty at UC Davis responded to the immoral and anti-collegial acts of the Administration. This is what was posted on their webpage:

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

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