Category: Art
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When I asked my father why, when he graduated with his Ph.D. in 1940, he didn’t immediately begin a job search, he answered, “Because I knew we were going to war.” Apparently that same logic applied in reverse when it came to having a baby. With war looming, their biological clocks ticking, and the optimism…
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The excitement from Labor Day’s shoot (2012) had barely settled down when another movie crew came to Shelburne Falls to film The Judge, a melodrama set in Indiana. Mistaking Shelburne Falls for a town in Indiana requires considerable suspension of disbelief, but, as Irving Thalberg told his art director, who complained about using an ocean…
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Mid-June, 2012, had Shelburne Falls and much of the rest of Franklin County all a-gawk as the film crew for Labor Day came to town. For several days, the village of Shelburne Falls became “Holton Mills, New Hampshire,” with principal filming in or in front of many local businesses: Rethreads, Keystone Market, Baker Pharmacy, and…
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Every Thanksgiving and Christmas, when our garden is frozen and we have more time to be in town, we try to catch up with a few movies at the Greenfield Garden Cinema. This year we caught Spielberg’s Lincoln on the Sunday before Christmas and enjoyed it, especially the acting. Critics have heaped praise on Daniel…
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True confession: I dragged my feet getting to MassMoCA. After six years in the Berkshires and numerous trips to North Adams, we finally made it there January 1, 2011. I’d never been a fan of contemporary art, even though this was ostensibly the area of my Ph.D. But as a medievalist-turned-film-historian, I was much less…
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Flower by flower, Mill Brook House is coming back. There are bluebirds in the birdhouses, yellow-bellied sapsuckers tapping up a storm in the woods, and a great blue heron is frequenting the Irene-enlarged stream that runs behind the house. Having channeled the entire Mill Brook for one week, the stream is now large enough to…
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Veteran’s Day this year will be 11-11-11. It won’t happen again for another millennium. 2011 is also my mother’s centennial, a year she didn't live to see, although she came close. She died in 2004, the year we bought Milll Brook House, and money from selling the modest home in Michigan where she had…
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