Mickey Friedman

My Dinner With Mel

November 18, 2012
By Mickey Friedman

Mel Greenberg invited me to have dinner with him Thursday evening. At the American Legion Hall in Sheffield. I must have been daydreaming because I drove right past it, through Sheffield and then had to double-back. I got there right on time at 5:15, and was lucky enough to grab the very last parking spot.

Learn more about hunger in our communities in this report from the Food Bank of Western Massachusetts.

Because I wasn’t the only one Mel and his friends were feeding. There were seventy-nine of us.

Ever since I lost my office on Railroad Street to gentrification and transformed my small dining area into a small film editing suite, I’ve been eating simple dinners in a desk chair facing my Sony. And most often dinner is a sandwich on a paper plate. I’ve come to love the dinners me and my remote control share with TiVo.

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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.
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The River: It Ain’t Over

October 2, 2012
By Mickey Friedman

A loyal reader admonished me recently: “You haven’t written about the River in a while!”

Sometimes thinking about the thirty year fight for a PCB cleanup makes me want to go to sleep for a very long time.

The story of GE and PCBs is a story about how hard it’s been to wrench the truth from those who’ve always known the true costs of PCBs. The billions made versus the uncounted costs to human and environmental health: the years the workers have lost; the healthcare costs: and the toll its taken on our waterfowl, the fish.

We worked hard to find where they dumped the PCB waste. A children’s park here; an elementary school there. Landfill by landfill, backyard by backyard. The State argued with us. The Mayor attacked us. But workers, enviromentalists, and neighbors made the GE Housatonic River site a national battleground for a comprehensive cleanup.

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Hard Times High

August 25, 2012
By Mickey Friedman

In the old days, doing nothing cost you nothing. And there was a big difference between doing nothing and doing something. Somehow, now, doing nothing costs forty-two million dollars.

Monument Mountain Regional High School

I know squat about building new buildings or fixing up old buildings, about making buildings accessible to those with disabilities. So I’m a bit shocked to learn we’ll be spending forty-two to seventy million to either repair or replace Monument Mountain, our forty-year old high school.

I know a lot of people who are having a difficult time of it lately. Paying their mortgages, their rents, their real estate taxes. Quite frankly, after the new middle school, and the new police station, the new fire station, and the renovated library, I was hoping that the town fathers and mothers would find a way to begin reducing taxes. But it’s hard to imagine lowering taxes when folks are talking about forty-two million for doing nothing and seventy million for doing everything. Of course, those folks are quick to point out that the state will pick up 50% of the costs. Like the state will pay for Downtown Revitalization. But the state, unfortunately is us, so we pay one way or another.
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Four More Years

August 15, 2012
By Mickey Friedman

I’m still shaken. Only my fellow Olympians understand what it’s like to train for four years and have your Olympic dreams shattered.

My Broken Rings - My Broken Dreams

I realize most people probably don’t even know about the event I’ve dedicated myself to. Most people would rather watch Beach Volleyball.

But the Men’s 1-Meter All-Day Olympic TV Watching Event has a proud history. The Austrian Gerhardt Schmidtt-Schmidtt won the first competition during the Munich Olympics when he filled his one room apartment in Krems, Austria with seven black and white TVs. Schmidtt-Schmidtt managed to watch every Saturday event and could name every medalist. Sadly, Schmidtt-Schmidtt paid a price for his prowess, and has suffered from excruciating migraines ever since. He no longer owns a television.

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The Small Stuff

July 28, 2012
By Mickey Friedman

I’m trying not to sweat the big stuff. Like the end of the world as we know it. I mean, if God wanted us to have arctic ice and antarctic penguins, he wouldn’t have made coal.

Adelie Penguins - Photo: Heid Geisz

And I’m trying not to let it bother me that it no longer makes sense to see Batman on the silver screen. Although my friend D. says it’s still safer statistically to see Batman than drive. Which he hopes is reassuring, but only makes me want to walk more.

Fact is, I’ve already had one friend murdered by a psychopath who was packing right here in the Best Small Town in America. So statistically my few remaining friends are safer than me.

It seems the Founding Fathers wanted all of us to have AK47s. Even the mentally-ill. If God wanted us to have gun control, he wouldn’t have made the NRA.

It’s time to ignore the big stuff and see the small.

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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’m Bringing It Home

June 21, 2012
By Mickey Friedman

I’m bringing it home. That’s what Bob calls finishing the song or the gig.

I’ve been doing what I said I wouldn’t ever do again. Making a film. When my friend Beth began her film about Bob Dorough, she wanted me to come down and shoot Bob singing in a small New York jazz club.

Bob Dorough - Blue Note Records

I couldn’t do it. I was burnt to the core. Making my film, “World On Fire,” the story of John F., one young soldier’s Iraq War, had sent me on an exhausting journey. His war was real, physical, three-dimensional. My war was internal. The willing suspension of disbelief times ten. The only way I could do justice to John was to do my all to understand.

I listened day and night to radio reports; spent hours looking at photographs. Iraq must have been the most photographed war ever fought: most soldiers had small video cameras. If they weren’t making videos they were blogging. The Defense Department couldn’t crack down on these soldiers fast enough.

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Going, going, gone

June 7, 2012
By Mickey Friedman

Things are different since Vladimir left. Now when I rant, mutter, or converse in more measured tones, there’s nobody listening.

Vladimir responded in his own unique Quaker Parrot way and most of it went over my head. What I could understand was his laugh.

And I could use more laughter. These are difficult times. Several of my favorite TV shows are going away. And I’m not talking hibernation. The usual end-of-season-fadeway only to reappear in the fall.

Goodbye Jason Isaacs. Thanks for "Awake."

We’re talking going, going, gone. Cancellation. Kaput.

Unfortunately, I’m hooked. Hooked on the characters and hooked on their stories. Like a junkie with no junk and worst of all, no connection.
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Losing My Grip

May 19, 2012
By Mickey Friedman

Do you remember when people would say “he’s losing his grip on reality” about someone who seemed not quite there? When an expert on something or other would announce on TV that some adamant, outspoken, overly-passionate woman had “lost her grip on reality?”

Avocadoes

A scary thing. But now I can relate. I’m having a hard time with reality. Quite frankly, between you and me, I’m not even sure I could recognize reality if I saw it.

In my world there are now several realities.

Let’s start with the here and now reality. I’ve got one of those red plastic baskets with the little metal handle and I’m trying to find two ripe avocados at the Big Y. Two for three dollars. I’m doing great because I have a back-up plan. I know if I can’t find the perfect two with my name on them, there’s always Guidos. And I can always use a half-pound of Marketplace turkey. That’s my everyday reality.

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A Greater Barrington

April 21, 2012
By Mickey Friedman

I like knowing where things are. Where the bathrooms are? Where you can find pasta sauce at the Big Y? And I get used to things the way they are.

It’s taken me years to get used to Great Barrington. So I’m a bit unsettled by the fact that Great Barrington is about to become Greater.

South Main - Greater Barrington, MA

I know most people aren’t as neurotic as me. I imagine many of you are chomping at the bit to live in the new and improved version of Barrington.

The signs are everywhere. Greater Food. Greater Shopping. Greater Fun. A Greater Barrington in the Making. I see them when I drive into town. I see them when I go to the Pittsfield Cooperative Bank. I see them when I stand with my “It’s Time To Come Home” sign.

I appreciate the effort that’s gone into this campaign. I know it takes time to come up with a slogan. And it costs money to print signs.

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The Bestest Small Town in America

May 5, 2012
By Mickey Friedman

Gettya free money! Free money! Right over here!

Reminds me of the Marx Brothers and A Day At The Races. Gettya ice icream. Tootsy fruitsy ice cream here.

Free Money

I thought of this walking to Fuel at seven this morning as the machines tore up the street for the new water main. Imagining when the Little Dig morphs into The Bigger Dig.

Digging up and replacing what we’re told is the worst street in the Best Small Town in America. You know the Main Street with the worst flowering pear trees in the Best Small Town in America. You know the trees that reside beside the worst sidewalks in the Best Small Town in America.

What were those Smithsonians thinking when they decided Great Barrington was The Best Small Town in America?

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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

"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

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