A former reporter and Managing Editor for The Edge, Heather Bellow is now an investigative reporter for The Berkshire Eagle. She lives in Great Barrington.
Gov. Charlie Baker’s administration is quietly flirting with massive private companies like Comcast to deliver what will likely be inferior and expensive service to rural towns. “It’s a slow-rolling tragedy that will blight Western Massachusetts for generations.”
-- Susan Crawford, Harvard law professor and director of the Berkshire Center for Internet and Society
In Berkshire County, we have a free indoor sister event in solidarity with the Women's March on Washington at the Colonial Theatre on Saturday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. The event was organized by a local steering committee that includes Kristen van Ginhoven of Lenox-based WAM Theatre, which focuses on work by female theater artists and stories for women and girls, and volunteers Jayne Benjulian, Lynn Festa and Mary Lincoln.
Ward says he wants to stay alert to potential consequences of future remediation and construction work at 100 Bridge St. in case “disturbances to the site could lead to enhanced pollution” of the Sheffield water supply.
“Do you know that most of the poor people in our country are working everyday? They are making wages so low that they cannot begin to function in the mainstream of the economic life of our nation. These are facts which must be seen. And it is criminal to have people working on a full-time basis and a full-time job getting part-time income.”
-- Dr. Martin Luther King, in a speech to Memphis sanitation workers in 1968, just before his assassination.
Prana Bar owner Shelly Williams says restaurant work is not about “the bottom line” for her. “We want to make people happy,” she said. “Why else be in this business?”
Housatonic Railroad Company Associate General Counsel Matt Whitney said the Massachusetts State Police Collision Analysis and Reconstruction section “so far...determined that the railroad did nothing wrong.”
Representatives from Stockbridge, West Stockbridge and Great Barrington, along with school committee members, were finally able to hash out something that could ease some of Great Barrington’s financial burden.
Wheeler & Taylor owns the building and the bank on the corner of Bridge and Main streets, and construction may block access to a 30-foot right of way that it was deeded access to.
Developer Jeffrey Cohen of Mill Renaissance LLC said he modified his roughly $70 million redevelopment plan somewhat after two “significant” real estate development and construction companies approached him with the idea of a partnership to build an 85-room hotel.
One of the women filed a civil suit against the Berkshire HIlls Regional School District in federal court last June against the district and, in September 2016, two more women joined the suit, haunting the district with sexual abuse claims from the events of more than a decade ago. Muir was found not guilty of the charges in 2014.
The highly contaminated site, having sat idle and an eyesore in a mostly residential area–and with groundwater contaminated with PCPs right next to the Housatonic River–is wearing patience thin.
That sacred Native American sites are along the path is just the latest controversy over the pipeline in Otis State Forest. Tennessee Gas is still tied up in court with environmental groups over potential harm to water and animal habitats; the company reneged on a deal to give the town of Sandisfield $1 million for wear and tear to its roads and reimburse legal fees.
The 8-acre parcel on the Housatonic River has sat for more than 20 years, scraggly and undeveloped, and is still loaded with chlorinated organic compounds like dioxins and PCPs. The site’s owner, Community Development Corporation of South Berkshire (CDC), will hold a public information meeting at the Mason Librarytoday (Wednesday, Jan. 4), at 5:30 p.m. to provide current plans for the site and gather public input.
“Maybe there’s someone out there at the 11th hour. I don’t want the community to lose their music store. It’s a turnkey business.”
-- Claudia d’Alessandro, owner of The Music Store in Great Barrington
“We would have absolutely nothing if it wasn’t for everyone’s generosity. This incredible outpouring of love and support has provided our family with much comfort while having to face this devastating loss.”
-- Dianna and David Lupiani, on the funds established to help them recover from the destruction of their home
The Paris-based Middle East editor of Newsweek, Janine di Giovanni has written about atrocities of war from the civilian perspective. She gave a reading from “Dispatches from Syria” at Griffin in Great Barrington on Wednesday (December 28).
