Expansion of the surveillance society
The show analyzes how some artists incorporated new scientific and technological discoveries about the atmosphere into their work. For more information, please visit here.
A hot and satisfying Jan. 20 party in the northern Berkshires
On the evening of Inauguration Day, Jan. 20, a score of revelers gathered in a field in the northern Berkshires to bid farewell to Donald Trump in a time-honored way, by burning him in effigy.
Head of Trump effigy
— Photo by Ann McCallum
Williamstown architects Andrus Burr and Ann McCallum fashioned a seven-foot-tall figure of the Apricot Toddler.
Trump effigy
— Photo by Ann McCallum
Sharing hot toddies and welcoming the local fire marshal around their bonfire, the group read aloud the names of the 147 members of the U.S. House who had voted not to accept the election results.
— Photo by Ann McCallum
Like the bonfires lit across Britain after the defeat of the Spanish Armada or Queen Elizabeth II’s Jubilee, or just simply to exorcise a demon, the Trump burning was both cathartic and warming.
— Photo by Cleo Levin
William Morgan is a Providence-based art historian and writer.
Or a certain kind of spring
It is not Spring -- not yet --
But at East Schaghticoke I saw an ivory birch
Lifting a filmy red mantle of knotted buds
Above the rain-washed whiteness of her arms.
It is not Spring -- not yet --
But at Hoosick Falls I saw a robin strutting,
Thin, still, and fidgety,
Not like the puffed, complacent ball of feathers
That dawdles over the cidery Autumn loam.
It is not Spring -- not yet --
But up the stocky Pownal hills
Some springy shrub, a scarlet gash on the grayness,
Climbs, flaming, over the melting snows.
It is not Spring -- not yet --
But at Williamstown the willows are young and golden,
Their tall tips flinging the sun's rays back at him;
And as the sun drags over the Berkshire crests,
The willows glow, the scarlet bushes burn,
The high hill birches shine like purple plumes,
A royal headdress for the brow of Spring.
It is the doubtful, unquiet end of Winter,
And Spring is pulsing out of the wakening soil.
‘‘Berkshires in April,’’ by Clement Wood (1888-1950)