At last, a major institution in America is standing up to the bullying and extortion that seems to characterize every action of the Trump administration.
Louise took my hand and kissed it. It was a gesture that always melted my heart. She was so very appreciative that I had seemingly transcended my cynicism and given her the lynx family she had always craved.
A discussion of African-Americans’ Berkshires history and culture as well as the stories and voices not being told or heard, 'Being Black in the Berkshires' will remember the past, assess the present and plan for the future.
HeatSmart Mass is a community-based education and group purchasing program for clean heating and cooling technologies, which, via a $9,000 grant, will enable Great Barrington to reduce its carbon emissions.
How many times had he made the identical trip to the hotel? Every morning for nineteen years minus weekends, and returned back the same way, every evening, five times a week. 52 weeks. 4,940 times. Minus vacations, days off. 4,800. And this time was the last time. He exited at 60th Street and turned up Third Avenue.
The sun had set over the Jersey skyline. From the roof, she could see the mighty Hudson River. Technicolor pinks, oranges, and periwinkle. Even if it was pollution, what a show. She took another hit.
Suite 42: “Simmering in a thick iron pot overnight, the potatoes, onions, garlic and kidney beans had melted with the beef, creating a cholesterol paste made for masonry, not a mortal mouth. Chicken shmaltz was the secret ingredient in her cholent.”
Saul could’ve bought the Last Hotel in 1972. Saul recalled that Otto Stern, the original owner, offered to sell it to him. “I can’t take the aggravation no more,” he had told him. He wanted $125,000 in cash. It was a steal.
Installment 13: Fred, the scavenger in Suite 62, on his daily round: "On the street, Fred hopped on his bike. As soon as he started pedaling, the wind and car exhaust in his face, he got the feeling. He was totally free! Free as a NYC pigeon. Neither rain nor snow could keep him off his bicycle, the best fastest and cheapest way to get around the city."
In this, the 11th installment of "The Last Hotel," there's a New Year's Eve party going on in Suite 49, when an unexpected visitor appears and is shot, just as midnight strikes and the decade of the 1980s is ushered in.
Installment 10, the Penthouse: Leah scrutinized her face in the mirror. She didn’t look like either of her parents. Maybe she was born to one of those relatives who got gassed by Hitler. A refugee changeling. It probably wasn’t true, but she never felt part of her own family.
This is installment seven of Sonia Pilcer's novel "The Last Hotel: A Novel in Suites," in which we meet Monica Parker: "People said that she resembled Vivien Leigh. Her pale, white, never-exposed-to-the-sun skin, her dark shoulder-length hair, red lips and cheeks."
Installment 5: "Most hotels and boarding houses have a certain place where the habitués hang out, the professional tongue-waggers. Theirs was the turquoise vinyl couch near the elevator, chained to the wall so no one stole it."
Herewith we begin weekly chapters of an as yet unpublished novel, The Last Hotel, by Sonia Pilcer. Serialization of literary work has a noble history. Uncle Tom's Cabin, Madame Bovary, Anna Karenina, Bleak House and The Brothers Karamazov, to name a few, made their first public appearances in serial form. It’s a shame this form has, for the most part, gone out of fashion. The Edge intends to revive it – with Pilcer’s tales of the Upper West Side in the 1970s --The Last Hotel: A Novel in Suites.
