Lenoxology

The More Things Change, The More Things Change

July 14, 2012
By Mickey Friedman

It’s hard to knock the French. What with their incredible baguettes and that nifty decision to call potatoes the apples of the earth. But they got it wrong when it comes to change. From where I’m sitting their expression ought to be: “The more things change, the more things change.”

Have You Been Keeping Up With The Kardashians - E Television

Because I see change. I feel change. I experience change. Everywhere.

Like the words we use. Over time, some of them slip away. They die.

In the hustle and bustle that is life today, we don’t have time for complicated words. Especially words that describe things, but don’t sell them.

That came to me this morning as I was thinking about Bob B. Bob, a retired teacher and street performer, loves to read. He reads poetry. Pretty much every morning he brings a poetry book to Fuel. You just won’t find as many poetry readers today as you would fifty years ago, when many a young person would carry a dog-earred copy of Gary Snyder around, or Ferlinghetti, and some were brave enough to tackle Ezra Pound.

Aside from those slightly snooty literary critics, does any ordinary person know what the heck Ezra Pound was talking about? Or why?
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I Heart Rain Forestology

By Mickey Friedman
September 25, 2011
The Jungle, Costa Rica

Frank T, who transformed sandwich life as we knew it in Great Barrington, and simultaneously built a home for wayward Barringtonians of all shapes, sizes, and pedigree and fed them MacGuidos and Avocado Montalbans, starts his day here in Costa Rica with a look back in time and space by reading the Berkshire Eagle online.

I thought that by traveling into the jungle, I would leave news of home back home. Because I haven’t traveled in a very long time, I was stuck in the past, thinking of a pre-email, non-Facebook universe, where you got away. I mean far away. I can remember my first trip to Europe where I would have to find the nearest American Express office to send and receive old-fashioned, written by hand, often illegible mail. Correspondence weeks old. But today’s traveling is something new.

Sunset: The Pacific, The Jungle - Photo: Frank T

Frank says you can’t really get mail mail here because there are no real reliable addresses, let alone reliable roads or reliable mail-carriers ready to track down unreliable addresses on countless miles of unreliable roads. But with high-speed internet, there’s email, the internet, and The Eagle.
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Remember When Communities Cared

By Mickey Friedman
August 25, 2011

It’s been the best and worst of times for Lenox. Smidley, Crump and Crump’s innovative ad campaign: “Lennoxx: We’re More Than We Were; We’re More Than You Expect; And We’re More Than You Imagine” has borne fruit more quickly than some expected. A recent trip to Bean There, Lenox’s upscale coffee shop, found Town Manager Hartley Happ sharing details with doubter Ralph Spitster, owner of “Gazelles & More Gazelles,” the exclusive Church Street gallery.

The Old Lenox - Before Smidley, Crump & Crump's innovative "Lennoxx" Re-Branding Campaign

“We’ve had seventeen more tourists last week than the same time last year. And even though none of them bought a gazelle,” Happ explained, “the word is that six of them had lunch at Strudel, four bought kites at Flight, three spent the afternoon drinking at The Tavern, while only four of them ended up here accidentally. Abigail Starkfield-Crump told me they went the wrong way on the Turnpike. They were looking for Ye Olde Sturbridge and left in a huff without spending a cent.”

Spitster sneered: “Ye Olde, my ass. Sturbridge charges twenty bucks for their phony blacksmith, and their gristmill was built in 1937. As for Crump and Crump’s eighty grand for an extra n and an extra x …”

“Nobody said rebranding was easy,” Hartley Happ countered. “But we were on a roll, Ralph, until the dead dentist fiasco. Unfortunately I’ve been so busy with Smidley, Crump and Crump, I didn’t get a chance to do damage control.”

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

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