Saturday, February 8, 2025

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Fighting a hate with no boundaries: Jewish Federation of the Berkshires looking for support in its ‘Hate has no home here’ campaign

"We also know that hate never travels alone," Jewish Federation of the Berkshires Executive Director Dara Kaufman told The Berkshire Edge. "We’re in a community where if you stand up for one, you stand up for all."

GB Main Street Reconstruction to begin in July

Work on the Main Street Reconstruction is to begin in this summer, starting at Cottage Street, and conclude in the spring of 2016, but won't proceed within the downtown core, from Bridge to Elm streets, during July and August.

How Share the Bounty got started

I was struck by the notion that every dollar donated — in serving three goals —would effectively triple in value: supporting a local farmer, preserving our rural landscapes, and providing fresh, healthy food to community members in need. -- Jonathan Hankin, founder of Share the Bounty

Food Justice: So others may eat

According to the Food Bank of Western Massachusetts, roughly one in eight people continues to experience hunger in this part of the Commonwealth, an eye-opening fact. Furthermore, one in five children lives in food-insecure households.

Gilded Age loses its glitter in Stockbridge — for now

"Stockbridge is a model, small New England town, and we’ve maintained its character for 250 years. The intent of bylaws is to save these properties, but we don't want to be creating a Club Med North.” -- Stockbridge Planning Board member Eugene Talbot

Our very own Mass. imprisonment

Prison reform in the age of our own Mass. imprisonment has become a low-priority issue for today’s brand of timid political activists, who often seem more concerned about their own comfort than they are about the greater good of the society.

School choice forum provides abundant information, but few were there to hear it

Total revenue for Berkshire Hills from students choicing in to the district is $1,450,000. Subtracting what is lost by students choicing out, net revenue comes to $850,000.

Great Barrington Selectboard endorses the Ride$hare concept

We believe that the Ride$hare concept – if widely adopted – could have important public benefits, including reducing gasoline consumption and air pollution, expanding the employment radius for job-seekers, and fostering a sense of civic connectedness. -- Great Barrington Selectboard resolution

Big bad things that didn’t happen: How the southwest corner of Massachusetts nearly drowned

Northeast Utilities had proposed to construct the world’s largest pump storage hydroelectric facility, drowning Plantain Pond on the heights of Mount Washington and most of Sheffield south of the village under two lakes.

Weep

Why is it we always know best? Especially when we know nothing. Why? Because we are Americans? Because we know best? That, of course, is something Republicans and Democrats can always agree upon. We not only know best, but are the best.

Fairgrounds improvements on hold, awaiting required floodplain engineering studies

We are not professional developers. We’re the leading edge of a community movement to get this done and to make this happen at the fairgrounds. -- Janet Elsbach, co-proprietor of the Great Barrington Fair Ground

Eye on the Pipelines: Opposition gathers to network of natural gas pipelines from the ‘fracking’ fields

The pipeline proposed by Kinder Morgan would add more than 15 times the expected growth rate in natural gas consumption in New England. This pipeline is providing natural gas for export.

World Cup fever mounts in the Berkshires

It is a soccer extravaganza with an estimated worldwide viewing population of 3.2 billion humans, long anticipated and riddled with controversy. Yet soccer itself is the everyman’s game, ferociously beloved by both rich and poor, and everyone in between.

Once heralded RiverSchool redevelopment of Searles School now in default, future uncertain

The terms of the repayment of the $640,000 may be able to be renegotiated, but not the amount to be repaid. -- Great Barrington Selectboard Vice Chairman Sean Stanton

Where’s Great Barrington’s first Main Street? A legacy of reconstruction and relocation

The public disdained using the new roadbed for several years. You can improve our roads, but you can’t make us use them, people declared silently. -- Reaction in 1812 to improvements in what would become Route 7

Book Review: The surveillance state: No place to hide, really

Page after page reveals to us with ever increasing horror that we are the most surveilled and spied upon people to ever walk the earth. This is not fiction.

Berkshire Playwrights Lab: Seven Successful Years Celebrated with a Gala

"This is one of my favorite events in the Berkshires. It’s a true honor to be a part of this -- they are celebrating new playwrights, new work, rich language and stories that resonate within all of us." -- Shakespeare and Company actress and Communications Director Elizabeth Aspenlieder