Anyway, Andy was impressed and asked Michael for advice on what to see on a weekend trip to the Berkshires. Iâm sure Michael is busy earning more windmills (âTeacher says, âevery time a bell rings, Michael gets a windmill!â), so I will offer a few suggestions of sites with political importance that might appeal to BMG participants. Berkshire aficionados, please feel free to add more suggestions.
For fans of Thomas Jefferson, the Cheshire Cheese Monument. Go to the traffic light, and turn right (east). You canât miss it â itâs on the Appalachian Trail.
For fans of the Bill of Rights, Shaysâ Rebellion, and emancipation (and the perceived incompatibility among those concepts and events), the Colonel John Ashley House in Sheffield.
Nearby, the stone marker for the last battle of Shaysâ Rebellion in 1787. You canât miss it â itâs on the Appalachian Trail.
Susan B. Anthonyâs birthplace in Adams, MA.
The Old Schoolhouse in New Ashford, site of the âfirstâ vote cast by a woman in a presidential election (1920).
W.E.B. DuBois birthplace in Great Barrington and the river he loved.
God bless FDR and the CCC, we love Bascom Lodge at the summit of Mt. Greylock. (You canât miss it â itâs right on the Appalachian Trail.) At an anniversary celebration for the DEM (now DCR) a few years ago, a historian said that the Massachusetts parks program was actually the model for the CCC back in the 1930s and 40s.
Wahconah Park, a home of minor league ball since 1892, in the City where the first mention of the word âbaseballâ appeared in print in 1791. This is political because the word appeared in a city ordinance banning the playing of baseball (some local historians say that the word probably referred to a game better known as âroundersâ) on a park near the new meeting house.
Politically-connected customs house employee, Nathaniel Hawthorne, along with pals Herman Melville and Ralph Waldo Emerson used to hang out in the Berkshires. (Alright the political conx is a bit strained, but we BMG readers need to broaden our interests, anyway.)
Also, the audio version of Sarah Vowel’s book, Assassination Vacation, opens in the Berkshires where she was visiting Chesterwood, the house where Daniel Chester French sculpted the statue of Lincoln for the memorial in Washington, D.C. We also have Mount Everett, named after the Senator who spoke for two hours at Gettysburg before Lincoln made his brief remarks about that Four Score situation.
OK, thatâs enough for now. Is it enough to tempt you onto the safe, open portion of the Turnpike to make the trip west?
Hey, shack, you’ve been to my house. Granted, you didn’t see it from that angle, but if you use your astral projection abilities, I’m sure you can see that I took that picture (some years ago now, to be sure) from the west side of the valley, overlooking my neighbor’s grazing lands, showing how my house is nestled at the base of Tom Ball Mountain.
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btw, from the top of that Mountain (about an hour’s hike from my house), one gets a 360-degree panoramic view of the Berkshires and the Taconic mountain range in NY state. The peak is the tallest between two of the mountains you mention, which are clearly visible; Mount Greylock (the tallest mountain in the state) to the north, and Mount Everett (the 2nd highest) to the south.
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Also worthy of note is that the spot from where I took the pic is within a 600-acre parcel that is owned by the Berkshire Natural Resources Council, so it will never be developed. The farm next to me (the one with the heifers visible in the photo) is being put in the APR program. So, although I own a small plot of land (not likely to be on the AG’s radar screen), it feels like I live in the middle of a nature preserve. Which, in a way, I do!
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No plans that I know of out this way to put in a rail link to Boston (or anywhere else!). But, as I was out riding my horse in the fields yesterday, I was thinking that if the price of gas keeps going up, even with my hybrid getting 40+ MPG, I may just ask Stewart to take me into town to do my grocery shopping. Trouble is, I think they’ve taken out all the hitching posts.
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Anyway, thanks for your wonderful response to Andy, and for giving me an excuse to ponder on some of the reasons I live here. I love Boston (and lived there for years), but there’s something very special about this part of the world.
I was just teasing you using a slim pretext to broadcast the picture of your incredibly great abode for all to see.
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But I am not kidding when I inform you that Mt. Everett is not the second highest mountain in Massachusetts.
… and I was using THAT slim pretext to further aggrandize myself. I’m so smart for living here!
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You did bring me up short (so to speak) re Mount Everett, though — that’s so much part of local lore that I guess I never checked it out! Although a quick look at your list makes me suspicious that those peaks are really all part of Mount Greylock, broadly defined. I have a friend who hikes all of the NH peaks regularly, and he tells me there is disagreement over which ones are really peaks in their own right, and which ones are just spurs of a taller peak. Well, that’s above my pay grade, and I’ll leave that debate to people who actually care…
I have nothing to do this weekend…I think it is time to storm MFW’s territory! Anyone know a good website to check out hiking this Mass. monster?
Looks as if DCR has a complete site with links for more info:
http://www.mass.gov/dcr/parks/western/mgry.htm
That my husband and I plan to drive through Western MA on our way to visit friends in Albany, NY? 😉
… don’t get off at Exit 1 and pay me a visit. That goes for Andy, too, of course, and any of my right-side friends.
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Plenty of beautiful hiking trails right around here. Tanglewood is in full swing. Experienced riders might want to saddle up Spot, the horse who boards with me.
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Or, a tour of the wine cellar can be arranged.
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btw, Taj Deval is only about 10 minutes from here. Not that he is ever there, what with the demands of the campaign trail, but he will be in Lenox for his 50th. Feel free to invite anyone you know who lives out here or is willing to travel.
…do you have any friends that can sit to your left-side? Ever since Al Giordano left Chester, there maybe but a handful of folks to your left. Hell, even Sam Bowles has left the Valley!
but I was referring to the right side of the map of the Bay State, not the politcal spectrum!
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That said, no, there aren’t too many people to the left of me either way — I can spit into New York state from my backyard when the wind is favorable.
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I’m a bit mystified by your reference to UMass, since that is in the central part of the state. It takes me an hour and a half to drive to Amherst versus a two-hour drive to Boston. I’m willing to concede that Northampton can be considered Western Mass — at least it’s on the left side of the Connecticut River.
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I realize that the population center of gravity in the state is somewhere near Wista (Uxbridge comes to mind, but I’m not sure if that’s correct).
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Anyway, on your trip out west, don’t get too excited when you get to Sturbridge and the Pike changes from 3 lanes to 2 — you’re only about a third of the way there. My favorite spot on the Pike for first-time visitors is when they get to Exit 3 in Westfield (the Berkshires are at Exits 1 and 2) and think they’re almost there. Then they see the sign, “Next Exit 30 Miles”!
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In the small world department, Charley actually knows some people who live on my road, and not through politics, either.
and if my memory serves my correctly Sam Bowles lived very west of UMass. But you are correct, I actually lived in the Sturbridge area and I’d mention it to people in the Boston area and they’d say, “Oh, it’s so beautiful out there”. Well it is a nice place, as libertarian Gary may attest to…but beautiful? Finally I realized that those city folk were confusing Sturbridge with Stockbridge.
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I ain’t no stranger to your area (although it’s been a while since I was a stone’s throw away–and I don’t mean Sturbridge. Jacob’s Pillow, cross country skiiing in DAR State Park, Zoar (and Rowe). But the best experience in the Berkshires is picnicing (sp) and listening to the BSO at Tanglewood.
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As for the population center of gravity in the state–I have no idea. But I think you suffer from the opposite biases of Bostonians, because only 12% of the ’02 general vote (there I go again with historical indicators again) came from West of 495. It has to be way east of Uxbridge and probably around Framingham and maybe even more east.
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(Sounds like a challenge to me.)
I grew up in Stockbridge in the days before ZIP codes, and we were forever getting letters that were backstamped Southbridge and Sturbridge.
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And in the days before regional schools (my, I AM dating myself!), when my high school was too small to field a football team, we had a soccer squad. One of the other tiny towns in our league was Chester, and we used to bus over the mountains to play there once or twice a year. So, it’s not in Berkshire County, but close enough.
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The Pillow and the Lawn at Tanglewood are two of my favorite summertime experiences. I haven’t been able to see much of either this summer, what with this campaign and all. I keep thinking, oh good, 8 more weeks and I can have my life back, then I realize, oh it ain’t over for 15! Went to Shakespeare & Co. in Lenox the other night and it was fabulous!
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Well, the geographical center of the state is in Rutland, so maybe that’s what I was remembering.
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The population centroid is, as you guessed (or maybe remembered without realizing it!) is just to the east of Framingham — almost exactly halfway between 495 and 128.
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The parameters for that map, btw, came from here, and the mapping service was linked to via this website.
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That’s what I get for assigning homework!
Andy, you’re a city guy and Greylock will kill ya. Here’s a nice walk to a wonderful place.
thanks for the vote of confidence! 😉 Thanks for the link, it does look like a great place and my wife digs waterfalls.
Sounds like a call for an attack on a preppy politician.
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You caught me, though. I was trying to hide the best places and steer everyone toward the second-rate attractions. But Greylock won’t kill you. There is a visitors’ center toward the base of the mountain in Lanesboro, where you can get advice about trails to match your skill level and the length of time you want to be hiking. Then you drive up Rockwell Road (Edith Wharton claimed that her longtime driver, Charles Cook, was the first to make it to the top of the mountain, and the road was later improved by CCC workers) to the trail head, Bascom lodge or war memorial of your choosing.
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I will say this for Bash Bish Falls: the park has the added advantage of being close to MFW’s wine cellar.
MFW has time to share! On an unrelated note I am thinking of going out Western Mass for the farms! I am reading a book (Omnivore’s Dilemma, a must read) that has me on the hunt for grass fed beef and it seems all of the farms that practice this type of farming are in far, far Western Mass.
and there’s the beginning of a movement, but not a huge supply in this County yet. Berkshire Grown offers a list of local producers. There are a number of suppliers in the Hudson Valley, although you might want to be careful what you buy there because, apparently, MFW likes to stand in his back yard and spit in their direction.