A Singular Ray of Light

December 3, 2014 By Mickey Friedman I drove with Jurek Zamoyski and Mel Greenberg to pick up and deliver food for Great Barrington’s four food pantries. There’s a pantry at the Calvary Christian Chapel on Route 41, one at the…

Selfish, Greedy People

By Mickey Friedman November 9, 2014 The debate about the Monument Mountain HS renovation has sent me back in time. Dreaming my five block walk from Webb Avenue to P.S. 86. A small army of kids streaming from our apartment…

School Facts Not Fiction

By Mickey Friedman October 27, 2014 Michael Wise of the Great Barrington Finance Committee says I’m “unhelpful.” Alan Chartock calls the 955 of his fellow town citizens who voted NO last November “selfish” and “un-American.” They say the issue is…

Love and Lies

By Mickey Friedman October 20, 2014 I woke to learn from The Eagle that I’ve been instilling “anger and fear in the most financially vulnerable citizens of our community.” From the Berkshire Edge, I’m “short-sighted and selfish.” And “deceiving you.”…

NO, then YES

By Mickey Friedman September 30, 2014 I left the most recent meetings about the Monument Mountain High School renovation with heightened respect for Principal Marianne Young and Superintendent Peter Dillon, yet feeling sad that the School Committee had asked these…

Our New Fire-To-Farm-To-Table House

By Mickey Friedman September 18, 2014 Remember being told the old firehouse was a serious hazard to the town employees who worked there and the citizens who came to consult them? So why are our town employees are still working…

Walk a Black Mile

By Mickey Friedman September 2, 2014 Kevin Durant, young, gifted, and black is the second-best basketball player in the world. Michael Brown, eighteen, quite possibly gifted in other ways, was black, now dead. While Kajieme Powell, twenty-three, black, quite possibly…

Care

By Mickey Friedman August 30, 2014 When I was a kid I hated the hospital. And in the throes of youthful fear, I wasn’t too crazy about doctors. Seems I was allergic to dust, dirt, grass, just about everything. And…

The One Room Compromise

By Mickey Friedman August 16, 2014 Monterey’s one-room schoolhouse is just miles from the much larger Monument Mountain Regional High School, but the expected operating costs of less than $162,000 for 2015 seems to engender as much controversy as the…

Everybody’s Diary

By Mickey Friedman July 22, 2014 I had a lovely dinner at the always Pleasant and Main in Housatonic with my dear friend Patricia. I had a delicious pasta and she had the terrific chicken. We talked about a lot…