Category: Voices

Our local communities share their stories — the Hill Country Observer offers a place to lift up many perspectives, from many backgrounds and experiences, bodies and minds, places and languages — from many migrations and diasporas and Native roots and more.

  • Issue:

    Couple’s efforts lead to new arts center for Pittsfield

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    By JOHN TOWNESContributing writer PITTSFIELD, Mass. Over the past two years, a Pittsfield native’s desire to give something back to her hometown has resulted in the creation of a new arts center in a converted mansion in the city center.The Whitney Center for the Arts began hosting performances and exhibitions last summer in a sprawling read more

    Couple’s efforts lead to new arts center for Pittsfield
  • Issue:

    In defense of love

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    By EVAN LAWRENCEContributing writer SALEM, N.Y.   The black-and-white photographs could be of almost any happy, affectionate family from the mid-1960s. They show a husband and wife sharing a conversation or tender moment, playing with their three children on the living room couch, working with a friend on a car in the back yard, the read more

    In defense of love
  • Issue:

    Poetry and place — Edna St. Vincent Millay

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    Visitors get more access to home of Edna St. Vincent Millay By JOHN TOWNESContributing writer   AUSTERLITZ, N.Y.Although the poet Edna St. Vincent Millay was one of the most prominent and colorful literary figures of the 20th century, her former home in Columbia County has had a very low profile in the region’s tourism scene.But read more

    Poetry and place — Edna St. Vincent Millay
  • Issue:

    Teresita Fernandez — Large in scope, tiny in detail

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    Perception of scale provides keys to new Mass MoCA exhibit By JOHN SEVENContributing writer   Carrie Snyder photo The installation “Sfumato (Epic),” featuring 40,000 small graphite rocks, is among the pieces that make up Brooklyn artist Teresita Fernandez’s new show at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art in North Adams.   NORTH ADAMS, Mass.When Brooklyn-based read more

    Teresita Fernandez — Large in scope, tiny in detail
  • Issue:

    For a locally grown Passover

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    ‘Vermatzah’ links ancient traditions, contemporary tastes By STACEY MORRISContributing writer   MIDDLETOWN SPRINGS, Vt. Micro-bakers Julie Sperling and Doug Freilich have enjoyed a decade of commercial and critical success for their organic, fire-baked Naga Bakehouse breads, but in the past few years they’ve also been developing a seasonal product for Passover. They call it Vermatzah. read more

    For a locally grown Passover
  • Issue:

    Mass. weighs immigrant driver’s licenses

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    Backers say change would boost safety, help foreign workers By DAVID SCRIBNERContributing writer   Nestor Vazquez, an undocumented immigrant from Mexico who has lived in the United States for seven years, would love to have a Massachusetts driver’s license. But Vazquez, who lives in Springfield and works for a company in Connecticut, can’t get a read more

    Mass. weighs immigrant driver’s licenses
  • Issue:

    Panel backs licenses for undocumented workers

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    Vermont may allow driving privilege regardless of legal status By EVAN LAWRENCE Contributing writer Vermont’s debate over providing driver’s licenses to undocumented foreign workers appears to be shifting from the question of whether to issue licenses to the question of what kind to provide. In January, a nine-member study committee appointed last year by the read more

    Panel backs licenses for undocumented workers
  • Issue:

    Bound by cotton — region’s forgotten role in slave trade

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    Historian, artist detail region’s forgotten role in slave trade By EVAN LAWRENCE Contributing writer NORTH ADAMS, Mass. Most Northerners assume that slavery was a Southern issue, and that the main role of people in upstate New York and New England was to help slaves flee to freedom in Canada and to muster troops to fight read more

    Bound by cotton — region’s forgotten role in slave trade
  • Issue:

    Celebrating a folk legend

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    Performances around region mark Woody Guthrie centennial By EVAN LAWRENCE Contributing writer Woody Guthrie, one of America’s great voices during the Great Depression and World War II, was a restless soul. Leaving his home in Okemah, Okla., at the age of 18, he spent the next 23 years wandering the nation, moving frequently and traveling read more

    Celebrating a folk legend
  • Issue:

    Confronting a painful past

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    Berkshires artist leads as new group takes aim at sex trafficking By JOHN TOWNES Contributing writer LENOX, Mass. It’s a long way from Jeanet Ingalls’ early experiences of extreme poverty, violence and sexual abuse as a “street kid” in the Philippines four decades ago to her life as a mother, fitness trainer and artist in read more

    Confronting a painful past