The midway at the Columbia County Fair, which will open Wednesday, Aug. 29, in Chatham, N.Y. Photo courtesy Columbia County Fair

Bits & Bytes: Columbia County Fair; Festival of Books; Gregory Pardlo at Simon’s Rock; ‘Following the Ninth;’ scientists predict corona shape

Gregory Pardlo’s long-awaited memoir in essays is a meditation on fatherhood, class, education, race, addiction and ambition.

Columbia County Fair to begin Wednesday

Chatham, N.Y. — The 178th Columbia County Fair will bring summer to an unofficial close Wednesday, Aug. 29, through Monday, Sept. 3, with six days of more than 200 exhibits, shows, contests, amusement rides and attractions, entertainment, food and agriculture.

Highlights include “Columbia County’s Got Talent” Wednesday, Aug. 29; the demolition derby finale Thursday, Aug. 30; the 81st annual School Girl Queen pageant as well as a truck-pulling tournament Friday, Aug. 31; the annual firefighters’ parade, a monster tractor pull, ventriloquist Tim Holland and hypnotist Corrie J Saturday, Sept. 1; country music stars Parmalee Sunday, Sept. 2; a horse show, a performance by the Ghent Band and the Painted Pony Championship Rodeo Monday, Sept. 3. Exhibits will include schoolwork, quilting, fruits and vegetables, photography, Grange, flowers, domestic arts and crafts, scarecrows, sunflowers, wool, and 4-H displays and presentations. A heritage village will feature handcrafts of the past including woodcarving, paper-marbling, book-binding, basket-weaving and candle-making.

Tickets range from $5–$15 and are free for active-duty military personnel and children age 12 and under. For more information, see the Berkshire Edge calendar or contact the Columbia County Fair office at (518) 392-2121 or columbiafair@fairpoint.net.

–E.E.

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The book sale is a popular part of Spencertown Academy Arts Center’s annual Festival of Books. Photo: Peter Bandori

Spencertown Academy to hold annual Festival of Books

Spencertown, N.Y. — Spencertown Academy Arts Center’s 13th annual Festival of Books will take place Saturday, Sept. 1, through Monday, Sept. 3. The festival will feature a giant used book sale, two days of discussions with and readings by authors, and a children’s program.

Featured authors this year include Sandy Allen, Jamie Cat Callan, Linda D. Dahl, Carol Durant, Donna Kaz, Jessica Keener, Karen Schoemer and Jon Michael Varese. Authors’ books will be available for purchase and signing. Snacks and beverages will also be for sale throughout the weekend, including the Academy’s signature “to-die-for, no-alarm vegetarian chili.” Proceeds from the book sale help support the Academy’s programs as well as preservation and maintenance of its historic building.

Admission to the Festival of Books is free with the exception of the book sale’s early-buying events. For more information and a detailed schedule of events, see the Berkshire Edge calendar or contact the Spencertown Academy Arts Center at (518) 392-3693 or info@spencertownacademy.org.

–E.E.

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Gregory Pardlo. Photo: Rachel Eliza Griffiths

Simon’s Rock to welcome author Gregory Pardlo

Great Barrington — Author and Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Gregory Pardlo will discuss his new book, “Air Traffic: A Memoir of Ambition and Manhood in America,” Thursday, Aug. 30, at 7 p.m., at Bard College at Simon’s Rock’s Daniel Arts Center.

Image courtesy Bard College at Simon’s Rock

Pardlo’s long-awaited memoir in essays is a meditation on fatherhood, class, education, race, addiction and ambition. The book is Simon’s Rock’s 2018 Book One selection, read by first-year students over the summer.

Pardlo’s poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, Boston Review, the Nation, Ploughshares, Tin House, and two editions of “Best American Poetry,” and anthologies including “Angles of Ascent: a Norton Anthology of Contemporary African American Poetry.” He is the poetry editor of Virginia Quarterly Review and teaches undergraduate writing at Columbia University. Pardlo also serves as an associate editor of Callaloo and is a facilitator of the Callaloo Creative Writing Workshop. He received the 2015 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry for his volume “Digest” and has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. His first collection, “Totem,” was selected by Brenda Hillman for the APR/Honickman Prize in 2007.

The lecture is free and open to the public. For more information, contact Bard College at Simon’s Rock at (413) 644-4400 or info@simons-rock.edu.

–E.E.

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Mason Library to screen ‘Following the Ninth’

Image courtesy followingtheninth.com

Great Barrington — The Friends of the Great Barrington Libraries will screen the documentary film “Following the Ninth” Saturday, Sept. 1, at 7:30 p.m. at Mason Library.

The 2013 film traces the global impact of Beethoven’s final symphony. Celebrated to this day for its ability to heal, repair and bring people together across great divides, the Ninth has become an anthem of liberation and hope that has inspired many around the world. Director Kerry Candaele chose four points in history that best match the drama and sweep of the music: East Berlin just before the Wall came down; Chile, where citizens suffered under Pinochet; Tiananmen Square during the bloody student uprising; and Japan, where a long-lived tradition of performing the Ninth in December took on added significance after the 2011 earthquake and tsunami.

The event is part of the Friends’ First Saturday Free Film Series and will begin with a wine and cheese social in the vaulted reading room at 7 p.m. More socializing and community discussion will follow the film until 10 p.m. The film does not reflect endorsement or advocacy for any particular point of view by the library or the town of Great Barrington. The event is free and open to the public. For more information, contact the Mason Library at (413) 528-2403.

–E.E.

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Scientists successfully predict the shape of the corona seen at the 2017 solar eclipse

Williamstown — The solar corona was spectacular at the Aug. 21, 2017, total solar eclipse, but a team of scientists had predicted its shape fairly well. The pearly white halo of brightness around the sun, normally hidden behind the blue sky, is actually spiky like a porcupine’s quills. Viewers of the eclipse in the 60-miles-wide band of totality that stretched from Oregon through parts of 14 states to South Carolina were treated to streamers to the sides of the sun, starting broad at their bases and coming to points at higher levels, while thin plumes of gas were visible at the sun’s north and south poles.

The overall form of the streamers was predicted on the basis of the sunspots and magnetic field on the everyday sun’s surface over the preceding month, as described in a scientific paper appearing Monday in the journal Nature Astronomy. A team led by scientists Zoran Mikic, Cooper Downs and Jon Linker of Predictive Science in San Diego, California, posted a prediction of the shape of the corona a few days before the eclipse.

The published paper compares the calculated advance appearance of the corona with actual coronal images. However, because the corona falls off in brightness by 1,000 times within the first sun’s radius above its edge, dozens of individual photographs must be combined to show the shapes of the corona over a wide range of heights. In the article, high-contrast images composited by Czech computer scientist Miloslav Druckmüller from the Brno University of Technology and lower-contrast images in a collaboration between Williams College astronomer Jay Pasachoff with computer work by New York electronic-music expert Wendy Carlos both showed successful agreement with the predictions.

–E.E.