Opinion
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The Effortless Flow of Existence
Surrender and the Cosmic Drive
By: - Dec 02nd, 2025Is the large Norway maple in my garden trying to be alive? What specifically is it doing right this moment to be alive? The answer, if we are honest, is that the tree is doing nothing but allowing. It is not trying to push sap. It is not struggling to expand its canopy or striving to gather light. It is simply allowing the forces of the earth and sun to move through it. It exists in a state of perfect Wu Wei—actionless action.
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Northern Berkshires Blockbuster Arts Summer
From Warhol and Wilco to van Gogh and Inge
By: - May 14th, 2015Now in his final weeks as director of the Clark Art Institute Michael Conforti hosted a media event promoting a blockbuster season for Northern Berkshire County. There were presentations by Joe Thompson for Mass MoCA, Tina Olsen for the Williams College Museum of Art, and Mandy Greenfield for the Williamstown Theatre Festival. Notably absent from the media event were North Adams based arts presenters Downstreet, The Eclipse Mill Gallery, The Rudd Museum of Art and the fall annual Williamstown Film Festival.
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Calm But Alert
Martial Arts and Stillness
By: - Oct 12th, 2020Alan Watts once said that trying to define who you are is like trying to bite your own teeth; one of my Zen Buddhist masters used to say it was like trying to see your own eyeballs.
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Classical Music for Fun
Tom and Jerry and a Roller Coaster
By: - May 10th, 2020If you need a bit of levity, try opening the music below!
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MFA Cancels Programming
Suspended Through August 31
By: - Apr 04th, 2020Responding to the pandemic the MFA has issued this letter to its patrons.
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Music and the Virus
Pitching In
By: - Mar 25th, 2020Many organizations are offering wonderful streaming. Reports suggest that music with videos is doing better than sound only. Atlanta Opera, led by Tomer Zvulun, may be providing the most useful help.
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Donald E. Lacy's Colorstruck
Theater for the New City Mounts Premiere
By: - Mar 01st, 2020Colorstruck and its creators come to us from the San Francisco Bay area where they have been involved in radio, theater and film. They are also participants in community outreach in the arts. Lacy has crafted a one man show which straddles a gap where tears laughter and anger resolve. On an empty stage, Lacy emerges from darkness, a black man in black clothing. He speaks for 75 minutes, lighting up our hearts and minds.
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Recalling Sighting John Updike
The A&P of the Mind
By: - Jun 09th, 2018Summering in Annisquam Martin Mugar, like the Ipswich based author, John Updike, became aware of distinct difference of class and culture. Thre were the easy, self confident debutantes who shopped at the A&P in their bathing suits. And the townies, like Sam, who unnoticed lusted for them. Recently, Mugar was reminded and inspired by watching the author crossing a street ages ago. Here he spins the yarn of old.
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Federal Support for the Arts Under Attack
Five Boston Museum Directors Express Concern
By: - Feb 24th, 2017Five Boston museum directors have signed a letter of concern over reports that the National Endowment for the Arts is under threat of being abolished, along with the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Under the conservative agenda of the Trump adminsitration this is an attack on the arts in America. Guarding the Trumps in NY, DC and Palm Beach for a week is on a par with endowment support.
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Opera Love in Santa Fe
Exploring a Theme
By: - Aug 25th, 2016Love is the theme connecting the five productions of the Santa Fe Opera 2016 Festival. Leading off one week of the season was Don Giovanni, where an attempted rape and then a murder jumpstart the opera. The Don is a questionable subject for the discussion of love, as the Don mows down woman after woman in his quest for the Guinness Book of Records first place position as the world’s best, or most effective, seducer. Yet love triumphs.
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Other People
Why Infinity Is Not
By: - Sep 13th, 2015The infinity of time and space is not. The only limitation is an ability to understand. For all else there's God.
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The Mount
Booklaunch at Edith Wharton's Berkshire Home
By: - Jun 10th, 2015On a perfect June evening a booklaunch, my first, on the terrace of Edith Wharton's The Mount in Lenox. Witty exchanges with director Susan Wissler. Reading Gonzo poems from Shards of Life. Elegant gathering with Berkshire friends and neighbors, artists, writers and citizens of the world. Superb food and fine wine. Guests exploring the formal gardens. Signed a ton of books.
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Eric Rudd Announces for North Adams Mayor
Artist/ Developer Runs Against Incumbent Alcombright
By: - May 15th, 2015After establishing the former Contemporary Artists Center in the Beaver Mill the artist, Eric Rudd, developed the artists/ loft Eclipse Mill. He is now announcing his second campaign for mayor. The first some time ago was against John Barrett III and now he opposes Mayor Dick Alcombright. It is speculated that Barrett, who after being defeated sat on the city council, may join the race. The artists and potential voters who Rudd appeals to tipped the balance when Alcombright defeated Barrett. In fact he blamed them for running him out of a generation spanning dominance of North Adams politics. This could indeed be interesting.
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John Berendt's Midnight in the Garden in Metabookâ„¢
New Digital Book Publisher Puts a New Spin on a Modern Classic
By: - Apr 03rd, 2015The publishing conundrum. How to attract readers tied to their mobile devices and induce them to read a book. Ken Siman and his partners Christian and Benjamin Alfonsi have produced a packed multimedia edition of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil for iphones and ipads. Is this the answer to book reading in the 21st century?
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Where Does Grand Opera Fit in the 21st Century
Peter Gelb is Not Answering the Question
By: - Mar 19th, 2015The New Yorker editor and Columbia's Bloomberg professor of business journalism, James Stewart, splendidly describes internal negotiations at the Met last summer as Peter Gelb, the general manager, tried to cut salaries and expenses by 16 % and the orchestra, chorus, stagehands and other smaller unions struggled for their lives. On the larger issue of the Met's survival at all, Stewart falls short.
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A Tale of Two Halides
Empty Calorie, Mineral Deficient, Low Fiber, Nutritionally \Non-dense Food
By: - Mar 03rd, 2015Among other insights our science correspondent reveals that "Forty and fifty years ago, Iodine, in the form of Sodium Iodate, was routinely added to American bakery products, both as a dough conditioner and a nutritional supplement. Then, of course because it was cheaper, Big Food started adding Bromates instead. These not only contain no Iodine, but are also capable of displacing it. Our FDA likes to say that all the Bromates (which are banned in the EU and UK) in dough will become the less-toxic Bromides in the processes of flour “ripening,†rising, and baking.'" It is likely that you didn't know that.
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How We Live
Thinking of Yeats
By: - Feb 18th, 2015Our friend the poet Stephen Rifkin often sends insightful and provocative e mails. It has been an ongoing and absorbing dialogue. I asked if he could expand a recent one into an op ed piece. Looking inward he was inspired by Yeats.
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Euro English
Toward Universal Language
By: - Feb 09th, 2015The European Commission has just announced an agreement whereby English will be the official language of the European Union rather than German, which was the other possibility.
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Super Bowl Inspired Fast Eddy
Arts Critic Reveals Passion for Sports
By: - Jan 31st, 2015As a critic and journalist New York based Edward Rubin, known to friends and colleagues as Fast Eddy, has a finger in many pies. On the eve of the Super Bowl he reveals a deep and abiding love of sports. Much of this passion was inherited from his sporting father. Hey, who knew?
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The Clark and Mass MoCA Stiff Locals
Negligible Off Season Free Admissions
By: - Dec 18th, 2014As of January One the Clark will no longer be free during the off season. It is offering token free days but adult admission is full freight at $20. Add another $10 to see special exhitions. Which is still more generous than Mass MoCA which has a single annual free day. It sends the wrong PR and marketing message to the local community. What price can you put on being a welcoming good neighbor?
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Words Matter
The Value of Education
By: - Nov 16th, 2014People who make money are successful. They are sometimes well educated, and sometimes not, but they are smart. They are smart enough to be successful in the way most of us value success.
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Boston Mayah Walsh on the Arts
Reply to Larry Stark
By: - Sep 16th, 2014Veteran Boston theatre critic Larry Stark wrote an open letter to Boston Mayor Martin Walsh. He stated his disappointment that campaign promises to the arts community were soon forgotten. We posted his original letter which is linked in this reply from the Mayor's spokesperson longtime arts advocate Joyce Linehan.
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Unexamined Life Isn't Worth Living
But Not By IQ Tests
By: - Sep 09th, 2014Schools used to assign children to classes based on their IQ test scores. Then schools decided it was better for children to be in heterogeneous, or mixed IQ, classes. They would get a better feel for life because many people are not so fast. Now experts may be reconsidering. It is one of the truisms of fashion, and there are intellectual fashions, too, that they change. Here Rifkin again rebuts Zaig.
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Outside The Machine
Waxing Philosophical
By: - Sep 03rd, 2014There has been a lively response to the provocative series of think pieces by the Berkshire artist David Zaig. Here the Berkshire poet Stephen Rifkin debates Zaig's contentions. They often sit at the same table during weekly Monday night Chinese dinners in North Adams. Rifkin recently gave a poetry reading at the Rudd Art Museum where Zaig is currently exhibiting his work.
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Vaccination Followup
Poor Former Dr. Wakefield
By: - Aug 31st, 2014In this sidebar to the Vaccination Divide we discuss the contoversies surrounding the research of Dr. Andrew Wakefield who uncovered links between autism and a particular type of gut inflammation. Eventually his findings were discredieted and his liscense to practice medicine was revoked. But he is correct that aluminum toxicity is capable of doing real damage.
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