Series Description:

For more than 15 years I’ve been exploring the Berkshires as a writer and a journalist. While the world of news has changed rapidly, I’ve tramped the hills with a reporter’s notebook and talked with people. Community journalism is at risk, and some say it’s endangered. Let me tell you what it’s like, while it still exists. 

I’ve talked with many kinds of people, from Chinese artists to mill workers, a rabbi immersed in Passover and women celebrating Easter hundreds of miles from their native towns in Central America. This part of Western Massachusetts has a rare combination of real country and intellectual richness — in these open ridges, so far west that most of Massachusetts forgets we’re here, we have the most diverse set of people in the state outside Boston.

Here I will share some of the stories I’ve heard and the experience of finding them. Come with me inside the newsroom and into artist studios, theater rehearsal rooms, museums, farmyards and woods.  

I’ve learned that good conversation is a craft; it improves with practice, and at its best it’s a natural high. And I have gotten to know this place, from wood-fired kilns to Quebeçois reels to new-laid eggs. Let me tell you about it. 

Category/Genre(s): , Nonfiction, Essays/Columns
Updated: Every Other Week
Status: Completed