Bill Shein

No to Mimes, Yes to Bill

September 6, 2012
By Mickey Friedman

I’ve been sleeping a lot more easily these days. Ever since Lenox banned street performers.

Would You Trust This Mime? - Mimes courtesy of freakingnews.com

I’ve never met Ms. Hagenah, the “living statue” who asked for a permit to statue on the sidewalk. And generally speaking I’m in favor of self-expression. But as Selectman David Roche suggested, this is a slippery slope. You let Ms. Hagenah be a “robot” for tips, and the next thing you know you’re invaded by a small army of mimes.

Some people like mimes. Not me. I think they’re sneaky. And presumptuous. Do you have any idea what a mime is really thinking? I don’t. One minute I’m walking down the street minding my own business, the next minute I’ve got to deal with a white-faced clown struggling to get out of an imaginary box.

It’s embarrassing. You can’t really help them. Because it’s an imaginary box of their own making. And you can’t gracefully elbow a mime out of the way because there are always other people watching. And mimes can always sense weakness. They not going to make it easy for you. A good mime can pretty much guess if you’re going to step to your right or try to go left. Whatever you do, the mime’s in front of you. It’s not fair.
READ MORE >>

A Brief Apology

We are sorry crows, aware we have been derelict in our duties. DS Red Crow has been hard at work editing a newsweekly, raising his children and writing a play. BS Red Crow has been doing his best to transform politics as we know it by running a valiant campaign for Congress, and I, MF Red Crow, am editing a documentary film on jazz pianist, singer, composer Bob Dorough, the musical man behind “Schoolhouse Rock.”

Here are a few columns from the most recent past.

We look forward to red crowing in the near future.

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.

READ MORE >>

Sen. Downing’s ‘Tips Bill’ & Fundraising Raise Questions

By Bill Shein
October 31, 2011

There’s at least one thread that runs through the many-flavored Occupy Wall Street protests: Big money from a narrow economic elite, flowing into and around our political system, has distorted participatory democracy to create an economic system that’s unfair and unjust. Concentration of wealth, historic income and wealth inequality, and forced belt-tightening for working people are hallmarks of our age.

A bill, S.922, filed by State Sen. Ben Downing (D-Pittsfield) at the request of the owners of Cranwell Resort & Spa, would have gutted legal protections for workers that rely on tips.

Those were also hallmarks of the Gilded Age of the late 19th and early 20th century, the time of robber barons, overt political corruption that would lead to Progressive Era reforms, and, here in western Massachusetts, the construction of enormous Berkshires estates.

One of those properties, inhabited by a succession of wealthy owners beginning in the 1850s, is now the luxury Cranwell Resort, Spa, and Golf Club in Lenox.

According to the resort’s website, “Over the years, Cranwell has served as a home to wealthy industrialists, clergy, writers, students, golfers, and culture lovers in Massachusetts … The history of Cranwell is entwined with many stories of the opulent period between 1880 and 1920 that is known as the Gilded Age.”

This month Cranwell is at the center of a story that reveals, very specifically, what’s broken about our political system in what many consider a new Gilded Age. It came to light when conflicting statements from State Sen. Ben Downing (D-Pittsfield), along with information about his fundraising receipts and expenditures that may be related to a campaign for Congress, raised questions about why he filed – and then withdrew – blatantly anti-worker legislation. READ MORE >>

Bill Shein & Occupy Berkshires

Bill Shein, Red Crow writer, reporter, racounteur and small-scale duck farmer, hits the airwaves to explain to WGBY’s Carrie Saldo what Occupy Berkshires is all about:

Occupy Movement comes to Western Massachusetts from WGBY on Vimeo.

My Summer with Ducks

By Bill Shein
September 26, 2011

Photo: Christina Lane

Early one morning last May, in a sleepy California town just 20 miles from the Pacific Ocean, eight ducklings emerged into the wider world beyond their shells.

Within hours, the small, fuzzy creatures were placed in a cardboard box along with chopped straw, a heat pack, and a container of green, nutrient-rich gel (just like the green, nutrient-rich gel found in nature).

Then, completing the hatching-day ritual that ducklings have endured for millennia, the box was passed along to the U.S. Postal Service and placed in the cargo hold of a jet aircraft.

Two days later, my phone rang at 7:00 a.m. “Your chicks are here,” reported a postal worker, unaware that the cheeping box contained ducks, not chickens.

“On my way,” I said, excited and ready – after months of obsessive-compulsive preparation – to meet the latest additions to my animal menagerie. READ MORE >>

Looking Back On Lenox, 2011

By Bill Shein
June 30, 2031

“[One Lenox resident] told the Selectmen that the slogan is dividing the town.” – From “Criticism of Lenoxology marketing plan continues,” Berkshire Eagle, June 25

Sometimes it’s funny how things work out, you know? I mean, here we are, in the year 2031, enjoying our flying cars and telepathic InterGoogWeb service and coping with summer temperatures that often reach 140 degrees. (You were right, Bill McKibben! We cooked our own goose!) And the town of Lenox? It’s doing great.

One of those "Entering Lenox" street signs, seen here in the year 2031 with a "Lenoxology" reference.

And yet it was just 20 years ago that the little town of Lenox, in what used to be called Berkshire County – long since renamed “Manhattan North” – began a discussion about how to increase tourism to the historic village.

Remember that back in 2011, the local economic picture was grim. Many Lenoxites were rightly concerned. Was the town’s economic base diverse enough? Might a newfangled “marketing and public relations campaign” attract additional tourism dollars? Soon a committee was formed, options were reviewed, proposals were considered, and action was taken.

And then all hell broke loose. READ MORE >>

An End to Blandness in the Berkshires

By Bill Shein

GREAT BARRINGTON – Finally! For those Berkshire-ites who find their food a bit bland, their mental clarity a bit fuzzy (see below), and have been unsure what to do about it, there is an exciting new development on the local commerce scene.

Got salt?

In Great Barrington, there is now AN ENTIRE STORE devoted to selling salt (and salt-related products, which apparently exist). That’s right, the locally based HimalaSalt empire (okay, not really sure it’s an “empire,” and salt from the other side of the planet is not exactly “local”) now has a retail store located next to the Triplex movie theater off Railroad Street.

For sale? Pink sea salt, mined from what’s described on the company’s Web site as a nonspecific “hidden location deep in the Himalayas,” and promoted as “pure” and full of goodness. It’s far more expensive than regular table salt, but it’s free of nasty things like “anti-caking agents” and “flow agents” and “bleaching agents” which are surely bad, as are so many of the things considered “food” today. No doubt HimalaSalt beats chemical-laden, heavily processed salt any day.
READ MORE >>

Facebook: When Will It Become Sentient and Enslave Us All?

We had to know this was coming: Facebook, the uber-application that has rapidly aggregated unprecedented amounts of very personal, very detailed information about 600 million humans (and counting!), now uses facial-recognition software to identify people in photographs uploaded to the service.

Each time a Facebook user “tags” someone in a photo – that is, names the people in a posted photo – the service’s computers make a note of the name and the face. With this information, aggregated across Facebook, people in other photographs can be easily identified.

Facebook honchos say the feature is all about “convenience,” but privacy advocates are calling it “creepy.” And they’ve asked the U.S. Federal Trade Commission to investigate. They suggest that with this kind of information in a central database, it will become easy to take photos of a crowd of strangers and then not only identify them, but have access to mountains of information about them.

Click here to read Bill Shein’s entire story.

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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.

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“A Red Family: Junius, Gladys & Barbara Scales” by Mickey Friedman

"An extraordinary set of reminiscences, beautifully put together by an extremely sensitive, even gifted interviewer. It is a jewel." --Glenda Gilmore, author of Defying Dixie: The Radical Roots of Civil Rights, 1919-1950

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