Great Barrington MA

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.

READ MORE >>

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.

READ MORE >>

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.

READ MORE >>

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.

READ MORE >>

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.

READ MORE >>

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.

READ MORE >>

Great Barrington and the Arming of America

February 7, 2013
By David Scribner

Political fortitude appears to be in short supply among the members of the Great Barrington Board of Selectmen. Shortly after the horrific killing of 20 Newtown, Connecticut elementary school children – mostly first graders – and six adults at the hands of a disturbed young man with access to a military style semi-automatic rifle, Barrington selectmen expressed understandable sympathy for the parents of the victims and recalled that precisely 20 years ago Great Barrington was itself the site of gun-driven violence.

READ MORE >>

Traffic = Transformation

January 17, 2013
By Mickey Friedman

News commentators like me, Maureen Dowd, and David Brooks, and old-fashioned reporter-types like the Woodsteins – who met their source in a dark parking garage, then blew the whistle on Nixon’s plumbers – well, people tell us things. Slip important documents under the door or throw them over the transom.

We don’t have a parking garage and I don’t have a transom but I got mine when I returned from the bathroom at Fuel and found it tucked under my almond croissant.

READ MORE >>

Happy Mad New Year

January 3, 2013
By Mickey Friedman

Anthony, my bestest Republican in the Best Small Town in America, frets about the Obama Death Panels. But as I transition to New Years, taking stock, a part of me looks forward to my own 1950s candy store-like death dispensary with its malteds, egg creams, and happy death pills.

The recent brutal killings have taken a toll and the world is too much with me. Having lost a friend to a psychopath armed with his Second Amendment-sanctioned semi-automatic killing machine, these mass murders of the innocent are never just news stories to me.

READ MORE >>

And Even More Cheese

December 31, 2012
By Mickey Friedman

We’re supposed to celebrate another great moment in the life and times of The Best Small Town in America. So many good things: The clean-up of the toxic New England Log Homes site; another Housatonic River Park; a new town piazza; and a state-of-the-art green food market with more parking and even more cheese.

Proposed Site for Expanded Berkshire C-op Market – drawing: Coldham Hartman Architects

But I can’t help wondering: If the Berkshire Co-op Market increases its size by 100%, and increases its business by 50%, what will this mean for Gorham and Norton? For Guido’s? For Rubiner’s? Locally owned businesses that employ good people and serve the community.

Some will say tough patootie! Business is business is business.

But the Berkshire Co-op Market is not your run of the mill, profit-making, business-is-business corporation. The Berkshire Co-op Market is supposed to care, I mean really care, about the community.

READ MORE >>

The Best Town Manager We Ever Had

October 22, 2012
By Mickey Friedman

Like icebergs, only a small portion of what goes on in a small town is visible. So much of what really happens, happens beneath the surface.

The Old Firehouse, Great Barrington – Photo: David Scribner

The Great Barrington Selectboard finally acted on what they’ve been experiencing and hearing about for the longest time. Much of what they saw and heard for a whole host of reasons – privacy, proper procedure, etc – will probably never be talked about. Which is too bad and probably the reason why again and again people in a position of power are allowed to stay long beyond the point of return.

We’ve all heard a million times the Lord Acton quote about power and how it corrupts. A lot of people learned that lesson all over again. Now we’re in the midst of reaction. We’re going to hear over and over again about how the trains ran on time. How, finally, things were getting done. What we won’t be hearing about is all the people who felt bullied, about the competent town servants who left rather than deal with someone who clearly didn’t respect their work.
READ MORE >>

Red Crow Everywhere

  • RSS Feed
  • Facebook

Follow Red Crow News on Twitter

Support Red Crow

Donate to Red Crow News and support an independent source of news and commentary in western Massachusetts.

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.

As always, we're guided by our founding principle: It's News To Us!

And if It's News To You, or you want to add your comment to any of our stories, please use our CONTACT RED CROW form on the left sidebar and send it along.

“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

"Junius Scales is a fascinating character whose experiences tell us so much about his period, and Friedman's family approach opens up new angles on the story." --James R. Barrett, author of William Z. Foster and the Tragedy of American Radicalism

You can purchase the paperback edition of A Red Family for $25.00. Just click on the buy from amazon.com button:


CALENDAR

June 2013
M T W T F S S
« May    
 12
3456789
10111213141516
17181920212223
24252627282930

Red Crow News

Meta