RED CROW NEWS

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.

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.

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.

Making The World Safe For Whoopee

December 1, 2012
By Mickey Friedman

Ignore the gossip-mongers: the mission remains critical. We’ve invested so much making Afghanistan safe for Hamid Karzai and his drug-running relatives, it would be a crying shame to cut and run. Just because our generals appreciate the enthusiastic support and feminine charms of Paula Broadwell and Jill Kelley.

U.S. Army soldiers conduct a combat patrol in Khowst province, Afghanistan, Jan. 25, 2012. The soldiers are assigned to 2nd Battalion, 377th Parachute Field Artillery Regiment. U.S. Army photo by Staff Sgt. Jason Epperson

Paula Broadwell met Peaches Petraeus at Harvard in 2006. In 2008, he became the subject of her doctoral dissertation on leadership. And they began to jog together. That same year, Peaches assumed leadership of ISAF, the international forces in Afghanistan. The dissertation became a book and Paula went to Afghanistan many times to run, to listen and learn. A “mentee,” she became.

As for the pesky war, General Petraeus testified in March 2011: “The momentum achieved by the Taliban in Afghanistan since 2005 has been arrested in much of the country and reversed in a number of important areas. However, while the security progress achieved over the past year is significant, it is also fragile and reversible.”
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The Real Heroes

November 22, 2012
By Mickey Friedman

I was fifteen but looked more like twelve. Frightened, but determined. My local Woolworth’s was on Fordham Road. My sign said something about equal rights.

Ronald Martin, Robert Patterson and Mark Martin sit-in at Greensboro, NC Woolworth Counter, 1960 – Photo: UPI

The Greensboro, NC sit-in of February 1960 was a moment of crystal clear clarity for me. The first born son of parents who experienced bias and bigotry first-hand, I had a Hungarian-Jewish father and Italian-American Catholic mother: two poor immigrant families who never came to appreciate one another. My mother’s family was so angry she married a Jew, they exiled her; my Hungarian grandmother could never hide the disappointment her favorite son had married a crazy Italian. Young people today probably don’t understand how divisive religion was in the United States, but believe me, it wasn’t easy being a mutt in the 1950s.

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.

What If We All Helped Mel?

October 25, 2012
By Mickey Friedman

I spent Thursday and Friday mornings with Mel Greenberg. Mel Greenberg feeds people.

The Folks at Mazzeos, The Marketplace, and Guidos all help Mel help feed people in South County.

On Thursday, I went with Mel and Jurek Zamoyski to Big Y, Berkshire Co-op Market, to Guidos, The Marketplace, and Mazzeos, the Great Barrington Bagel Company, Home Sweet Home Donut Shoppe and The Meat Market. We picked up bread and cookies and bagels and donuts, vegetables, meat and fish.

We dropped off some food at People’s Pantry, located at Cavalry Christian Chapel on Route 41 in Great Barrington. Some of the food fed 70 people at the Breaking Bread Kitchen Community Dinner at 5 PM that night in Sheffield.

On Friday, Mel and I made more food pick-ups and dropped off food at the Women’s, Infants & Children program (WIC) located at the Community Health Program complex in Great Barrington. The rest of the food went to the Berkshire South Regional Community Center on Crissey Street to supplement their free Monday night community dinners.

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 >>

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.

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 >>

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Traffic = Transformation

Happy Mad New Year

And Even More Cheese

Making The World Safe For Whoopee

The Real Heroes

My Dinner With Mel

What If We All Helped Mel?

The Best Town Manager We Ever Had

The River: It Ain’t Over

No to Mimes, Yes to Bill

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