Commentary

The Internet came about at a time when I was trying to develop a column for the Berkshire Eagle, unaware that the local paper, once respected and beloved, had already peaked and would soon become the disreputable, widely hated property of a media conglomerate based in Denver, CO.

When I began discussing my ideas for a column with them in 1995, the paper had a hierarchy of editors, so that I was sent from managing editor, to editorial page editor and finally to the editor of the op-ed page, where two articles were printed early in 1996.

By the time of my final meeting at the Eagle, they were down to one editor who’s response to my latest effort was “Why should I pay you $45 for one column when I can get three William Safire’s for $8?” (I guess that was a reference to the paper’s subscription fee to an editorial features syndicate.)

Why indeed, I thought. The economics of it already was a joke from my perspective, because by the time a piece was in the paper, I had spent thirty or forty hours writing and rewriting. But I was in it for literary glory, drawn to the Muse, not Mammon, which made me a sucker for the then-emerging World Wide Web and its’ promise to writers that they could become their own publisher!

My introduction to publishing online was in the company of people who were on the same side of the Muse v. Mammon divide as my previous publishing benefactors, inspiring in me a binge worthy of the most disillusioned ink-stained wretch. But by February of 1997, I’d taken the cure, registered my own domain name, and set about to become the witty chronicler of our time that I knew the Muse wanted me to become.

What a joke that was! In those days, it would take all day just to cobble together enough hypertext markup language (HTML) to create a “page” and then figure out the intricacies of file-transfer protocol (FTP) so that it was indeed online, which only meant that approximately 0.02 % of your friends and neighbors may be able to feast on your delicious prose!

Somehow, I was able to tap into a reservoir of stick-to-itiveness and by the dawn of the new millennium, my initial online property, NewBerkshire.com was good enough to merit press credentials from cultural organizations throughout the Berkshires. It’s early legitimacy was due largely to the work of Frances Benn Hall, who mastered the computer and email in order to send us reviews of practically every play produced in the area until her death, at age 96, in 2014. Franny Hall’s reviews were so timely and well-regarded that they would be referenced in the various theatre festivals’ paid advertising and marketing efforts.

My own “feather-in-the-cap’ moment resulted from an article I’d written about Bob Dylan bringing his Rolling Thunder Revue to the Berkshires in Oct. 1975 for an all-day party at Mama Frasca’s Dream Away Lodge in Becket. My article was excerpted in “Maximum Bob” a single-issue collector’s edition published October 2000 in England by Q Magazine. It also helped me land all-access credentials for the 2002 Newport Folk Festival, which was the toughest ticket of the year because it was Dylan’s first appearance since upsetting the apple cart there with an electric guitar in 1965.

Today, the editorial we refers only to me, and NewBerkshire.com has been succeeded by BerkshireLinks.com, where I publish reviews from Tanglewood on a website that otherwise serves as a little almanac of the Berkshires, along with Google ads and an embedded lodging tool. None of the greedy people who dominated the local internet scene when I got started are around anymore. Fortunes have been made and squandered.

The last editor I dealt with at the Berkshire Eagle in the 1990s exhibited behavior worthy of a degree in ethics from Trump University. Ownership now extends no farther west than Buffalo, which didn’t make them any wiser on the management of Pittsfield’s prized cultural assets last fall than the previous regime had been about management of the Housatonic River.

During its long reign in Pittsfield, GE had converted the river into a corporate asset that allowed them to undercut their competition by dumping untreated PCBs. Since leaving town some years ago, GE continues to manage its assets by way of 1Berkshire, who’s deceptive founding was soon uncovered, but found acceptable by Mammon’s local adherents, who prefer their lies to be left unsettled, like PCBs in the riverbed.

To be continued…

(Originally published in the Berkshire Eagle, 1996) Like some giant, mutant plant burst full-blown overnight, Altresco dominates the newspaper, as it does the Allendale neighborhood of Pittsfield. Now that its foreboding ugliness is plain to see, the people are saying they’ve seen enough; thye want it stopped before it becomes something they can see smell and hear as well.

What happened to the people’s watchdogs, those elected and those appointed by the elected to guard what’s left of our environment against such monstrosities? Did someone throw them a hindquarter of meat while the burglar snuck in? The littlest dog is yelping now, calling for the big dog, the Massachusetts Environmental Policy Act unit, to come back and do what it pretended to do two years ago.

Since GE has had the run of that yard for so long, it wouldn’t seem the residents have much hope in their attempt ro reclaim their turf. Especially since the damn thing;s nearly finished. Remember Pyramid. These big guys build first and beg for permission later – and they get it.

All of which was on my mind as I drove through Lenox the other day. I went past Canyon Ranch and then the Kripalu Center, down by Tanglewood. It occured to me that those outfits represent a new kind of industry, one that already has a strong foothold in this part of the county. I guess you could call it the Lifestyle Repair Industry.

Approaching the ranch, I was made to move into the eastbound lane to avoid hitting four chubby folks in fur parkas. They were walking side-by-side, taking up as much of the road as a Range Rover would, glaring at me as if I were a trespasser. Maybe they think their grand-a-week de-fatting fee entitles them…

It was such a different scene down by Kripalu. I encountered walkers there too, but they were strung out along the shoulder, wearing smiles and natural fibers.

Canyon Ranch and Kripalu Center are like great service stations – one promises to rid its customers of adipose tissue, the other specializes in exorcising bad karma.

The question is: Are these industries environmentally sound? I’m not sure they are, and I wonder if we need to deputize a new watchdog to protect us. Obviously all that fat has got to go somewhere. Not onto the water table, I hope. And what safeguards can be set to ensure that all those exorcised karmas aren’t left to haunt the area, ready to possess some unsuspecting soul after a visit to Tanglewood?

After all, it’s not unusual for one to experience an unpleasant feeling, a tinge of sadness, when a concert’s over. Next time you’re driving away from Tanglewood, on one of those lovely moonlit evenings, there may be another factor, not post-concert blues, not the crowd shouldering its way onto Rt. 183, but something more eerie. Maybe it’s time to bring your karma in for a check-up.

(Originally published in the Berkshire Eagle, 1996) I’d like to weigh in on the new issue that is growing in popularity in the Berkshires and may go on to replace the north-south connector question as impetus for most letters to the editor. I refer to the question of whether or not Berkshire County ought to secede from the Commonwealth.

It is conceded that suffiient grounds for such radical surgery have long existed. The wound is worsened by the beaneater’s failure to show adequate gratitude for Berkshireites; after all, wasn’t it Lenox’s own Col. John Peterson and his Berkshire regiment, including a company of Stockbridge Indians who marched east within hours of the first shots fired at Lexington and caused the British to cease their naval bombardment of Boston?

My observation of this nascent campaign, particularly as propagated in the pages of The Eagle, indicates that the popular idea is to effect a union with Vermont. Though various good reasons have been proffered for such action, they presuppose the acquiesence of our charming, but fiercely independent, neighbors to the north.

Vermonters enjoy a well-deserved reputation for hospitality. They regularly welcome the clogging of their highways and byways by cars full of flatlanders eager to exchange cash money for jugs of maple syrup, chunky ice cream, any and all Holstein-stencilled thingamajig, and ski lift tickets. However, the observant interloper will notice an even more enthusiastic wave of the hand from the otherwise stoical Vermonter as he heads back to whence he came.

It ought to be noted that the state of Vermont came into being only because a small group of large landholders managed to manipulate the secession of their territory from New York state. The political chicanery employed by Vermont’s founding fathers would merit at least a segment on “60 Minutes” today.

So perhaps we’re better off looking at this issue without thinking about the Green Mountain state. Why do we need to unite with another political entity anyway? Maybe we don’t, but it does make for more interesting speculation than just going it alone. furthermore, why limit ourselves to consideration only of contiguous places? If it’s true that we’re in the age of the global village, and if so much depends now on traveling the information superhighway, why not consider joining with an entity somewhat removed from our own pastoral home?

Certainly, it would make sense to look to make common cause with a similarly aggreived group of citizens. Staten Island comes readily to mind. Those poor folk are fed up with the shabby treatment they receive from the despots of Manhattan. Why, we Berkshireites, especially south county denizens, already share kindred feelings with Staten Islanders. Who among us isn’t irked by the haughty attitude flaunted by the flocks of Manhattanites who usurp our rustic preserve every summer?

Whereas hooking up with Vermont would add nothing but more of what we’ve already got, union with Staten Island would give the Berkshires the one thing that keeps it from being the most fabulous place on earth – the ocean. Think also of the literary implications. If Melville was able to write Moby-Dick by hallucinating Mount Greylock into his mystical leviathan, just think what some present day scribe could conjure from his seaside Berkshire cottage.

Best of all, we could put to rest once and for all the annoying question of which neighborhood to raze to build a toll booth. After all, once we bolt the Commonwealth, the Turnpike will terminate at Blanford. Once union with Staten Island is effected, creating a population of just over a half million, we’ll pool our funds and dig a canal from Park Square to the Hudson River and establish the Berkshire-Staten Island Ferry. Manhattanites can paddle their own canoe.

Berkshire Eagle, February 14, 1996

Article updated June 27, 2017 by Dave Read

780 Holmes Road Revisited,* or, Where’s the Art, Bob?

Throughout his career, Bob Dylan has been an exponent of the “folk process,” wherein an artist appropriates an extant song, modifies it to the degree that now there are two songs, which may appear to be siblings, but not identical twins.

Blowin’ in the Wind is an example, adapted from the African-American spiritual No More Auction Block; no one would confuse the two, nor would anyone deny that the new song has it’s own merit.

Whether or not one improves the other or amounts to a meritorious extension of the other, is irrelevant – upon composition of the new work, a new discussion begins.

But Dylan also has simply appropriated the folk process product of others when it suited him, such as on his first album, when he recorded Dave Van Ronk’s adaptation of the traditional folk song House of the Rising Sun, depriving his mentor Van Ronk the full benefit of his own artful work.

Dave Van Ronk was a big man, got over it, and eventually was delighted to point out that Dylan eventually stopped performing the House of the Rising Sun after Eric Burdon and The Animals had a big hit with it, for fear of being dissed for ripping them off!

Now there’s news that Bob Dylan has taken the “folk process” to a whole new level, of particular interest to us in the Berkshires, because he’s playing fast and loose with Moby-Dick. In order to fulfil his obligation to the Swedish Academy, which blew the world’s mind last year when it awarded him the Nobel Prize in Literature, he delivered a lecture on June 4, just 2 days before the $923,000 cash part of the prize would have turned to dust.

In it, he said Moby-Dick, All Quiet on the Western Front and The Odyssey “have stuck with me ever since I read them way back in grammar school…” and he wanted to tell us about them. Regardless of precisely when Bob Dylan attended “grammar school,” it’s clear he’s referencing a long-ago time, and so we wouldn’t begrudge him a little “googling” in preparing his remarks.

But, especially with a million bucks at stake, one would expect a little more “folk process” than what Mr. Dylan delivered. If you google “Moby-Dick,” the website SparkNotes appears – and if you read the Moby Dick section of Dylan’s lecture, you’ll see enough of SparkNotes to earn a grammar school kid a failing grade for plagiarism.

As reported by Andrea Pitzer in Slate:

“Across the 78 sentences in the lecture that Dylan spends describing Moby-Dick, even a cursory inspection reveals that more than a dozen of them appear to closely resemble lines from the SparkNotes site. And most of the key shared phrases in these passages (such as “Ahab’s lust for vengeance” in the above lines) do not appear in the novel Moby-Dick at all.”

I’ll bet there are a thousand MFA candidates in writing programs across America, and not a few tenured professors too, who would pay good money for a chance to help Bob Dylan edit his shopping list! Why, then, wouldn’t he reach out for help on a $923,000 speech – at least enough help that would merit a passing grade in grammar school?

*780 Holmes Road is the Pittsfield, MA address of Arrowhead, where Herman Melville wrote Moby-Dick; Bob Dylan’s most famous album is called “Highway 61 Revisited.”

Article updated Nov. 4, 2016 by Dave Read

giving baseball another shot?

Since it was an off-night in my fandom, I tuned in to game 7 between Chicago and Cleveland, and grew more and more irritated as the game continued way past bedtime, until I tuned out and went to bed at midnight when they called a giant time out with the score tied at six. Except for the Impossible Dream year of the Red Sox when I was at college in Boston, I’m not a baseball fan, but I’ve tried to become one at various times for various reasons, such as when I was dating a girl who was a big fan and because many of my literary heroes are. Compounding the drag of not seeing the last inning, after staying up late anyway, was the awful chore of finding out how it played out next morning because all the news stories went way overboard on all the ancillary business, without first stating the simple facts of how the Cubs broke the tie and how the Indians rally failed.

Bottom line: Rain delay also keeps baseball off my must-love list. A little rain shower – hold up the World Series, game 7, at midnight – c’mon boys. There may be no crying in baseball, but there sure is dumb.

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2019 Tanglewood schedule

The Boston Symphony Orchestra has released the schedule for the 2019 season at Tanglewood, which will be remembered for the opening of the Tanglewood Learning Institute, the four buildings overlooking Seiji Ozawa Hall on the Leonard Bernstein camopus.

Music director Andris Nelsons will be present for the month of July, conducting 13 programs, including the world premiere of a new work by Kevin Puts, The Brightness of Light, based on letters of Georgia O’Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz on July 20, and a concert performance of Wagner’s complete Die Walküre on july 27 and 28.