The Top Left Corner

We speak with Alison Case of the Store at Five Corners Stewardship Association about the search to find the right operator to reopen the historic cafe/general store. THEN we speak with State Senator Adam Hinds about legislation he is supporting to direct the remaining $2.3 billion in ARPA funds to bring equity to communities of color. Click on the headlines below to expand the tab for the transcripts of our conversations with each of our guests.

Editor’s Note: At this time, we are able to provide a rough transcript of interviews. By choice, we edit the text of our conversations to remove verbal pauses (um, ah, uh, you know, etc.) and fragmented phrases not to make the speakers look smarter, but to make it easier for audiences who are unable to listen to the podcast and must rely on the transcript. We attempt to remain as faithful as possible to the speakers’ original meaning, and apologize for any errors of transcription.

That said, even the imperfect transcription we perform is costly. Please support us financially by becoming a member or making a one-time contribution to help us continue to provide this service.

ADVERTISEMENT

On January 27th, 2022, the Store at Five Corners Stewardship Association (SAFCSA) finalized its purchase of the historic Store at Five Corners, at the intersection of Routes 7 and 43 in Williamstown. SAFCSA is a new non-profit organization formed in the fall of 2021 to purchase and maintain the Store, and has now closed on the sale of this iconic property.

Parties interested in applying for the chance to take over operations at the Store at Five Corners and do so right here.

The Greylock Glass: And with me on the line is Alison Case representing the Store at Five Corners Stewardship Association, Inc.. Welcome to the show.

Alison Case: Thank you.

The Greylock Glass: So, exciting news. The Store at Five Corners is one of my favorite hangouts, my very favorite place to have a business meeting in the little sunroom off to the side and was one of my favorite places to get baked treats and so forth. When it shut down during the pandemic, I was, along with a lot of people crushed, but I’m happy to see that there is this new life being breathed into it. Alison, can you give us a history of the store? Of the Five Corners — at least what you know of it.

Alison Case: Well, just a quick history before it shut down during COVID, it was one of the oldest continuously operating businesses in the country. It began as a tavern in 1767 and then gradually evolved into a kind of general store and general store and cafe in the 1830s. The current building was built kind of around the original tavern, and the upstairs was actually used for town meetings in the 1830s. It was a gas station in, I believe, the 50s. And but it’s always what it’s always been is a place for the community to gather and a place for people to get what they need, and that’s what people have really missed. So, we came upon an opportunity to buy the store separately from the Green River package, which initially Frank Lewis, the previous owner, had packaged them all together — the whole Green River property with the store. He agreed very generously to sell it to us separately. And when we came upon that opportunity, we being some members of the South Williamstown Community Association who were approached with this, we formed our own organization and gathered together the money and went ahead and bought it.

The Greylock Glass: Well, that’s I didn’t know all that history, but about five corners, it’s certainly a majestic building that sits alone on that corner. It has a certain elegance and quiet grandeur, and it makes sense that it would be a community gathering spot. The farm, all the land— has that sold yet? Do we know?

Alison Case: It has not.

The Greylock Glass: It has not.

Alison Case: I know there are various groups interested in it. Things are moving, but I can’t say any more than that.

The Greylock Glass: I’d love to see it. I’d love to see it farmed again. It would be such a wonderful thing. I don’t know if that can happen, but that’s just such a well, I mean, obviously it is the place that people photograph more just about anywhere else in town. They stand on the hill overlooking the farm. And obviously, I think that Williamstown should put like a little donation receptacle at the top of the hill across from the high school. Really, come on. I mean, if you get people from all over the world stopping to take pictures, they should drop a quarter in the slot. Yeah, and that would help maybe to keep it maintained. But what are the challenges involved in finding…well, first of all, in keeping a store like this or a location like this open, and what are the challenges that a new operator will face?

Alison Case: Obviously, we want someone who’s going to be able to make a go of it over the long term. You know, one of the things that the history of the store — it has changed owners changed operators several times. And it’s created this sense that people just can’t make a go of it there. You can’t make quite enough money to make it work. One of the reasons we’re stepping in is it’s clear to us from talking to previous owners that the real burden of making that place function as a business was the burden of buying and maintaining this 200 year old building. People told us, well, if it weren’t for the mortgage, we could have made a living, right? So that’s and that has been true actually of a number of small town general stores all over New England, particularly like small towns in Vermont. Sure. For example, where someone has been running this general store forever. But, they just can’t make quite enough to pay their staff and keep it open. And what’s been happening in a bunch of different ways all over the place is community groups coming together in these kind of public private partnerships that in some sense, partially subsidize the store so that they can keep it going because there’s a recognition that it is important to the community to have this place there, to have it open, to have it be a resource for people.

Alison Case: And it’s important in a way that is not necessarily going to be reflected entirely in the receipts of that business. That said, I think the store at Five Corners, actually because of its spectacular location, because it’s such a beautiful building. It’s actually in a better situation than a lot of these kind of out-of-the-way small town general stores. I mean, it’s right on that crossroads of 43 and seven. You know, it’s a major route and it’s very striking, very attractive. I think it’ll be a challenge just to get things up and running because you’re not picking up a business that’s already moving. Right. It’s been shut down for a couple of years. That will be a challenge for the operator. The challenge for us, I think, is the challenge where we’re meeting right now, which is just bringing the store, bringing the building into as good condition as we possibly can, including making energy improvements. There was a dirt, really a crawl space basement and we’ve just had that coated with cement and had all the masonry repainted in there.

Alison Case: We’re doing a bunch of things just to make the building as functional as possible. And then our challenge, of course, is going to be to select the right operator. Someone who can really make this what it has been at its best: a community hub that also serves people who are passing through and that serves as a kind of center for the community. We got so many responses from people when we did a survey about — before we decided to buy the store — we did a survey of just people on the South Williamstown Community Association mailing list, not all of whom are in South Williamstown about what the store meant to them. And we got an 85 percent response rate on that survey, which is insane. It’s insane. Nobody gets a response like that. The average rating of the importance of the store to the community was 8.9 out of 10. To them, personally, it was like 8.7 out of ten. I mean, comments poured in — people sharing what the store had meant to them, why they love to go there. So it’s clear that this was just a really beloved place. So, we want to find an operator who will bring it back to that. We have interest from a number of people. They are not going to be paying a rent that meets all of the expenses of the building, for one thing, we’ve bought it outright so they’re not going to be paying a mortgage or the equivalent of that. But we need to figure out what is the right lease arrangement to make this work? And that’s a challenge for all of, I mean, we’re still kind of finding our feet in terms of what does it cost to run everything in the building — what’s going to be reasonable and so on. So it’s a lot it’s been a lot to do all at once, I think. The six of us, for the six of us, it’s been like a part time job, at least. Well, for me it felt like a full time job.

The Greylock Glass: Let me ask what sorts of I mean, obviously a lot of people like it pretty much as it was most recently. Have you gotten any interest from people who have slightly different notions? What sorts of setups have been proposed?

Alison Case: Well, I think so. Certainly more interest in beefing up the catering aspects, that is…I think people are interested in having something more like a restaurant there in addition to the kind of general store cafe thing. So people who’ve suggested it would be a general store cafe during the day, but then maybe will be open for restaurant type meals at night, at least some of the time. That’s one possibility that people have come up with, other people have been interested in  having a particular specialty like barbecue or something like that. But one of the things we’ve stressed is that we do want the place to still be able to operate as a kind of general store for the community because one of the things that came through is really important is people in South Williamstown, particularly not having to drive all the way into town to get a gallon of milk. Right, right. And so we want to make sure that stays one thing we would like to see. That would be something of a departure from what it had been most recently, is more emphasis on local, local, locally produced food, locally produced items and more. A lot of people felt that the store was pretty expensive, that it was really priced for tourists to a large extent, and we want to make sure that there’s there’s greater economic range in what’s offered, that it’s affordable for local people as well.

The Greylock Glass: Well, I’ve got a restaurant background myself, in addition to a million other backgrounds. There are ways of making sure that you have menu items that anybody can afford. And yes, you can have a gourmet omelet, but you can also have two eggs, home fries and toast. Right? And the two eggs, home fries and toast is going to be two point ninety nine. It’s a loss leader. You don’t make any money on it, but that’s what a lot of people want, or at least a certain segment of people want when they want something quick and easy and cheap. But there’s me, and I’m not just going to get the omelet, I’m going to go à la carte because à la carte is like my middle name. And it’s something of a time when it comes to it, I admit. But I’ll get the hash browns, I’ll get the omelet, I’ll get the fruit cup and I’ll just keep going. And before you know it, I’m up to like, you know, 60 bucks for breakfast. Like, how did this happen? And there’s a lot of me out there, there’s a lot of versions of that.

So, I think that there’s always going to be a way. You mentioned general stores and sort of similar stores in Vermont. There is one and its name escapes me, but it has the option to have local free range eggs or not in your in your thing. And it’s another two bucks. You want local free range eggs? Sure. We got them another two bucks. And I think it’s successful because the local people always get it. They never don’t choose it. It’s just one of those things. Why would you not support your local farms? And that is a way that they can distinguish. The restaurant can distinguish itself, but also if somebody does want to pay the extra two bucks boom, no problem. We’ve got commercial eggs. So sometimes it’s a matter of sort of negotiating what different constituents want and need. Has anybody brought on the idea of — and this is just kind of my own wish list here for the store — of a small area that could be set aside for maybe a guitar and a violin and an upright bass a little…

Alison Case: Oh, music,

The Greylock Glass: A little folk, you know, acoustic. Nothing big, you know, quartets? Yeah.

Alison Case: That hasn’t. I mean, we haven’t begun interviewing operators yet — the applications are due at the end of February, beginning of March, and we’re only just beginning to kind of meet with potential operators and show them the store. But we haven’t begun the interview process yet, but that would certainly be a really attractive thing to have there. Definitely something. We would be drawn to anything. One of the things we want to give potential operators some flexibility to be creative. But you know what? But part of our bottom line is things that draw the community in three things that draw the community together are inherently a good thing. And certainly, music is one of those things. So, we would be very enthusiastic about that.

The Greylock Glass: Yeah, I would say that would solve two of my issues because I know that this is New England, OK? I’ll just put that out there right now. New England typically shuts down at six o’clock and I get that, but it would be swell if some place, some place that had great coffee and snacks and just a place to meet was open past six o’clock. I’ve never, especially in a college town, not being able to go, sit and have a cup of coffee. Other than Dunkin Donuts is weird to me, it’s a very strange thing.

Alison Case: It has always puzzled me because yeah, I feel like college students need coffee at 11:30. Yeah, and when I was in college, we would go to see a movie and then we would go and get coffee and talk about it at. Right. And you can’t do that in this town.

The Greylock Glass: And we have exactly the kind of theater that college students would go to see some independent art movies and go talk about them afterwards. And I’m like, OK, we’ve got one major ingredient here. What about the other? Not to, you know, cast aspersions on the coffee shops we have in town, but come on! Six o’clock? So if we had a coffee house sort of gathering spot that was open, say it doesn’t have to be open until like 2:00 in the morning, but maybe 11:00, something like that. And if there were some music, just soft music that you can talk over if you’re not interested in really hearing it. I think that would be just such a joyous thing. And I don’t know if you know this, but there was a person working there. Melanie Glenn, who is a member of the band, Upstate, which is a fantastic Americana, mostly vocal harmony acoustic group that does sort of folky stuff. And I was waiting for her to make an announcement that she was going to be performing there. Never happened. Mm. But she and her group were just amazing. So, yeah, Google “Upstate.”

Alison Case: That’s yeah, that’s actually a terrific suggestion. I just found out last week that one of our board members, Matt Baya, has a background of arranging house concerts in a previous job. He was in rice. So that’s something worth keeping in mind. Thank you.

The Greylock Glass: I know that if you’re going to be open later, that means that there are some complexities to it, but as long as you’re keeping it small, you’re not having big band jazz shows or heavy metal shows. I think that something that is aesthetically a good match would be a big draw, I think because we are so short on performance venues in the Berkshires. It could be a real hit. So what are the next steps in the process? You’ve got an application and what sort of timeline are we? Are we looking at?

Alison Case: Well, applications are due March 1st and they’re already starting to come in. We’ll be interviewing applicants as soon as possible after that. We hope that we can get the store up and running early summer, late spring or early summer. That is why we lined up the work on the building like before the contract was even signed or before we even owned the building, we had things set up so that as soon as we own the building, like those, those concrete guys went into the basement literally like a day later. So, so we’ve really been trying to get things going fast because we would really like to get open for the summer. Now, does that mean we will succeed? I don’t know. You know, it will partly depend on the operator that we select, but that’s certainly what we’re hoping for.

The Greylock Glass: Hmm. Well, it is ambitious, but it’s doable. It is. It is doable because it sounds like you’re willing to do whatever you have to do to be a resource after the contract is signed simply because you really want to make sure that it all comes together.

Alison Case: That’s fantastic. I think one thing the operator, whoever we select, can look forward to is a kind of built up pressure in the community of enthusiasm to have this place open. So, I think people are going to be stopping in a lot more than they used to. At least at first, kind of like, Oh, you’re back, thank god, I want to support you.

The Greylock Glass: Yeah. Let me ask one question, though, it’s a technical detail parking.

Alison Case: Parking, yes,

The Greylock Glass: Parking is a little bit challenging. Is there any chance that you’ve been able to work out a deal with the owners of the farm store and then the farm that you could somehow maybe have overflow parking there or something?

Alison Case: We have been very open to various forms of cooperation with. Whoever comes to own the farm store, so that would certainly be one thing we would talk about. Another possibility is, I would like us to talk to the historical museum about overflow parking there at least some of the time, which would have the added advantage to them of bringing people into the museum potentially.

The Greylock Glass: Makes sense.

Alison Case: We have also looked at the possibility of expanding parking. There is planned work over the next couple of years, there’s going to be this rotary installed there, which fortunately is not going to be swallowing up any of our parking places. But in conjunction with that, we may want to think about, although I’m hesitant to kind of pave more land for all kinds of reasons. But we’re certainly very aware that parking could be better. One of the things that the Rotary is going to do is it’s going to make the entrance and exit scenario smoother, particularly for big trucks that are making deliveries and stuff like that. So that is something that they have actually planned in. So it won’t be quite such a kind of juggling match to get your car in and out. We are also planning to install some EV charging stations, because we think that’s an important thing to be supporting and obviously it brings in business into the future.

The Greylock Glass: Well, I think that I mean, the rotary idea I’ve been curious. I think the Rotary’s can solve a lot of problems, I think. I have never seen a rotary at the bottom of a hill like that before. Yeah, so I have some concerns because the rotary that we do have in town already at the library is already, it’s amusing enough to watch people who aren’t familiar with them try to navigate them, to ask them to do two of them in one trip within a few miles. That will be something else. That’s what we’re going to be known for. Williamstown, the rotary destination. But anyway, yes,

Alison Case: I remember Williamstown before that rotary at the library was a proper rotary when you could turn left from Route Seven south onto Route Two. And I remember how many accidents there were and how insane and I would drive out of my way to avoid having to make that turn.

The Greylock Glass: Yeah, I wasn’t here, but that’s terrifying. Yeah, that sounds just ghastly. Yeah. Well, I’m excited. You know, if I were a bit more energetic and I wanted to go back into restaurant work…Well, you know, I hear about a place opening — my brother, my late brother was a chef, a trained chef, classically trained chef, and he and I were always talking about opening a place together. Although I’ve cooked, I’ve spent as much time in the front of the house as well, and I saw that and I thought, you know, this is exactly the kind of place that he would love to open. And so I really hope that somebody gets in there and somebody who understands the real beauty of baked goods — not just fancy cookies, but maybe even something as simple as a bear claw. Maybe you should make that a condition of renting…

Alison Case: A bear claw…

The Greylock Glass: Yeah, whatever you do, you’ve got to have bear claws. We don’t really care about anything else. Just make sure you’ve got bear claws. Anyway, where could people find out more information about this project?

Alison Case: StoreAtFiveCorners.org — all one word — and the five is spelled out.

The Greylock Glass: I will put a link to this in the show notes. Alison, it’s been a real pleasure. I’ve learned so much about this. I this is one of the things I think I really the reason I do this whole grain like glass thing is so that I get the full scoop on the things that I care about the most and a wonderful destination like the story Five Corners is one of the things I care about, because if you don’t have those community spaces, you’re missing out. I mean, you’re missing out on communities. So, I thank you for the work you’re doing, and I hope you pass that along to the rest of the team.

Alison Case: Thank you. Yes, it’s certainly been an education for me, too.

The Greylock Glass: Great. All right. Well, have a great twenty twenty two. I’m sure we’ll talk again soon.

Alison Case: Yes.

The Greylock Glass: Thank you. Take care. Bye bye.

NOTE: Full text of the senator’s official release below this interview.

Greylock Glass: And with me on the lines is state senator Adam Hinds. Adam, thank you so much for being on the Top Left Corner.

Adam Hinds: Great to be here. Thanks for having me.

Greylock Glass: Well, I should say I should say this has been a really big year for you. You’ve got a campaign going on, but that hasn’t stopped your work in the Senate. Just yesterday, you announced that you’re calling for the remaining two point three billion dollars in ARPA funds to be spent in a way that promotes racial equity on a number of fronts. Tell us a little bit about, first of all, what? Just remind everybody what ARPA is and how it is that we have two point three billion dollars left over.

Adam Hinds: Right. So, this is really a rare opportunity that we have right now, and maybe I’ll start with that, that this is a moment when folks are recognizing all that’s been highlighted through COVID 19 and the economic downturn that followed, who was impacted first and longest and ongoing racial awakening. And it’s combined with billions of dollars in federal funds. And so it’s this rare moment, I would say, when you have the will to do something and the resources. And so one of those pots of money is the American Rescue Plan, where the state received a direct allocation of about five billion. There was also ARPA funds going directly to municipalities and going to other areas of spending, but this is directly to the state. We’ve already spent a little more than half of that, and that went to things like economic development and job creation. Workforce development is a lot related to education and housing and our health care system. So we’ve already spent quite a bit. And we also have about $9 billion in infrastructure money that we’re about to take up. We also have a $1.5 billion annual budget surplus. And so there’s a lot of money floating around. And I said, Look, this is a moment when we can use the second part of this. We essentially took up the ARPA funds in two pots and we’re asking the question what is the one time investment for that $2.3 billion that will be that will pay dividends over years? And so my argument is the best thing that we can do is not only the most, just thing, but it’s also something that would contribute to a strong economic recovery. It would invest in reducing our vulnerabilities when the health care crisis was really most acute in communities where there’s concentrated poverty and the like. And then it would also result in a boost in expenditures to our gateway cities like Pittsfield and others. And so I said, let’s make sure this money goes directly to closing gaps by race in housing, education and, let’s say, the capital investment to businesses.

Greylock Glass: Okay, now this sounds to me like a huge task on a number of fronts. First of all, I mean, certainly being able to identify various zip code plus fours that can use the funds is not the hard part. It’s the “how do you distribute this so that it trickles down through the programs, whether it’s education or infrastructure or whatnot” problem. How do you see to it that the money gets to these programs? And of course, how do you decide which programs?

Adam Hinds: Yeah, well, when you kind of take it piece by piece, so let’s say housing, right, and it’s a part of the objective here is saying, look, we have a history of policies and lending practices that actively blocked access to mortgages. So we’re talking about redlining. And so we’ve seen that is one of the biggest contributing factors to the wealth transfer between generations. And there was a famous study about five years ago that showed the family household wealth of African-American families was $8, where it was over $100000 for white families. And so a lot of that is because of that transfer of a home. And yet. And so you can say, OK, great. Well, then let’s invest this in programs that will support first time homeowners and the like and. And so that’s one avenue for doing it. We’ve also seen during this process that, again, black owned businesses receive less capital investment than others. And so you can very clearly identify various programs to either support community banks or community organizations to assist with BIPOC owned businesses. And so I think that’s that’s the vision that myself and the several others have been working on as well.

Greylock Glass: Now you touched on it that helping out these populations of color. It’s good for the state. But let me play the devil’s advocate here and say, why isn’t this money? It’s a lot of money, two point three billion. Why should it be directed toward any one specific group? Why is directing it toward people of color, businesses of color communities? Why is that going to help everybody? I don’t get it.

Adam Hinds: Well, you can talk about just the sheer economics — there’s a study that came out while an analysis by the Massachusetts Taxpayer Foundation, which, and they’re conservative leaning, pro-business research group. They came out and said if we were to close these gaps by race, the Massachusetts gross state product would increase by $25 billion over five years. So just good economics. They went further and they said, Look, if you level college graduation rates, then we would see that the state would see an additional $22 billion in state revenues over 10 years. And so it’s one of those things where it genuinely should be. We should be doing this anyway. But now you can talk about it in economic terms, you can talk about it in terms of how do we reduce our vulnerabilities for future pandemics and economic downturns? And so honestly, it’s to me that part of the reason I’m framing it this way is really to counter exactly what you’re saying is, Well, hey, wait a second, why is one group getting money? And maybe another group is not. And this is just a smart economic investment.

Greylock Glass: So basically think within an abundance mentality, the more the more we have, the more we have. A lot of folks would be thinking, Well, what about jobs? Obviously, if you’re helping all groups create wealth, rather, if you’re helping some groups catch up a little bit, it’s going to create jobs, it’s going to create disposable income that’s going to be spent all over the place. Oh, I totally get this, but not everybody does. Let’s talk, just briefly, though, does this one fear that I have? It’s administrative costs. Having worked in a fundraising organization once before, I watched so much of the money that was raised sort of get just sort of siphoned off by the administration of the spending of the money. Is there going to be any sort of mechanism by which we can be sure that more of this money goes directly to the communities that need it?

Adam Hinds: Yeah, that’s the age old question and the problem, so I’ve called for this, and so it’s not like the programs are receiving funds today or anything to that nature, but it’s so it’s a general issue in the administration of governance. And so I think we have an auditor whose job is to do this. We often will build this into the bills that we pass to make sure that there’s clarifications on accountability and efficiency and transparency. And so that’s another route. But yeah, I mean, I think it’s an interesting piece, especially when we talk about, I think the increased recognition that technical assistance matters and it is actually a tool in itself, either for a small business that’s receiving funds or folks or will need help with the home buying process. And so there’s some evidence that there’s value in spending money, especially on supports if you want that kind of sustained good use of the money. But I take your point that the overhead and the administrative fees. That’s not the purpose of this spending.

Greylock Glass: Yeah,  it’s often difficult to, on the flip side, get people to understand that you do need people to make these things happen and they like to get a paycheck too. And you can need that. You need that. But it’s difficult because if you say we’re going to build a building, we’re going to build a new school. Well, you can see the school,  it’s a physical thing. Well, this is exciting and I’m sure that we are going to be keeping up with this. And obviously here in the Berkshires looking to see, as you said, how this impacts gateway cities like Pittsfield, like North Adams and elsewhere in the county. So we’ll be excited. But it’s not it’s not a bottomless cup of money, but it’s a good chunk of change there. So this is going to be great stuff. What other initiatives and bullet points do you have going on right now that we should be paying attention to besides this?

Adam Hinds: Yeah, you got it. And so you’re right, this spring there are a lot of spending bills moving around the Commonwealth. So that’s the good news for the region. We have and then the regular budget, a couple of exciting things. I mean, one is we learned recently that CSX is going to, I guess, grant access to their rail. And so the Berkshire Fyer will kick off this summer. That’s great news. Amtrak and CSX, the freight company and the Department of Transportation, are all on board and so that’s moving ahead. So that’ll take some of my time. It’s also this interesting point in the legislative process that the two year session and we just passed last week, the point when all bills should be moved out of committee either passed favorably or unfavorably. Or maybe sometimes there’s an extension for further consideration. I had a couple of bills included in that. One was creating incentives for keeping trees on your property, so for the purpose of carbon sequestration. And so that’s a big deal out here, obviously. Would I probably have the most trees in the Commonwealth, in my district? And there’s increasing recognition that  using those for carbon sequestration is a big part of how we confront climate change. And so I’ve said, look, if we have beneficial tax treatment for farmers and the like, can we apply that also to folks who are deliberately managing their forests for optimal sequestration? So that’s an exciting and fun one that’s moving forward.

Greylock Glass: In Massachusetts, conducted, I don’t even think it was 10 years ago a survey on forest surface area in the Commonwealth. So that information is actually fairly new. I remember getting a survey because I’ve got some land out in Franklin County and giving a survey asking exactly that: how much of your land is in forest, permanent forest or harvestable forest?

Adam Hinds: Another bill of mine got pulled out of committee. It says that by 2030, all vehicles purchased in Massachusetts would be electric and would be. We would include rebates to make sure it’s more affordable. The purpose here, by the way, and I feel like the industry is going there anyway. As you kind of see with every week or month, there’s another kind of announcement from a car company that’s the direction they’re headed. And this is an effort we might change to 2035, just because that’s where California is. And his executive order put them at 2035 for all purchases, electric and that’s just when you, the industry, wake up and take notice when you have these states with larger populations going in this direction than the market moves in that direction. So that’s pretty exciting. And we have a commitment to move in that direction, but this bill would put it into law. And so I’m hoping that that becomes a part of the next climate omnibus bill that we will do this year.

Greylock Glass: But Senator, Senator, remember that California, for the most part, doesn’t have the salt on the roads that we do, so their cars last longer. That’s why they want to extend it to twenty to thirty five. I say I say with the salt that we put on the roads and just the general wear and tear on vehicles that we have around here. I think that 2030 is plenty, plenty of time. Most of the cars that are on the road, are we going to be on the road by then? So I say be bold, but I understand 2035 is maybe giving people some time. But honestly, we’re talking. We’re talking a decade in some. So anyway. Right?

Adam Hinds: And you need the infrastructure, the chargers and the like. There have been studies that show that  this concept of range anxiety doesn’t really apply for our daily usage. We drive further out here, obviously, but for the most part, you’re covered by current infrastructure. But we are seeing massive investments in this through current federal funding. But also we’re putting aside as a state so that we’ll have kind of more accessibility. So it’s exciting because we know that transportation is 40 percent of our carbon emissions right now, and we just haven’t made the progress we need to.

Greylock Glass: Now this obviously is going to have some carve outs for used cars, perhaps.

Adam Hinds: Yeah, so this is just new purchases, so if you have a car and it’s still lasting to 2045, 45 more power to you is the concept in this bill at least. So it’s just the new purchases.

Greylock Glass: Okay. There’s certainly classic cars that are bought and sold, and collector’s items and things like that. You got it. I cut you off. Was there more and this grab bag?

Adam Hinds: Those are some big ones, I think we’re excited to make sure that we’re using this moment for four big investments here in the region. I think there’s a lot of excitement, for example, and how do we take advantage of this movement towards remote work and ensuring that folks can live here and work anywhere? And so for me, that’s meant also investing in not only the rail and obviously broadband, but outdoor recreation is a growing industry. So we’ve made an investment over in Franklin County. As you mentioned that in Charlemont, we released about a month ago, half a million dollars for their outdoor recreation infrastructure. We’ve just seen that there’s there’s a real appetite now and the evidence in home purchases in our area is showing that people are making that move to try to spend more time out here…

Greylock Glass: Charlemont is a town to watch. It really is. I agree a lot of people don’t know, but it used to be a hot spot on the on the trail en route to and it was typically where the Charlemont Inn. Well, it’s still there. It’s just in disuse. That was where people stopped on the way to Albany because the horses were tired. I mean, you probably know that the horse is retired and no one was going to make those poor horses on this. On the coach go over the mountain. Well, two sets of mountains on the way to Albany. So Parliament was obvious. Last stop before Albany. And it was a hot little town. And of course, the automobile helped it for a while during the glorious days of road tourism and the 40s and 50s. But then, there was a little bit of a bit of fall-off in the late 20th century, but I foresee you’ve got Berkshire East there, you’ve got good fishing, you’ve got all kinds of great stuff going on there. I foresee quite a little bit of a return to some, some good times, especially if there is a train depot, a train stop there, another the original depot is now a private home. But that doesn’t mean we couldn’t find another place to put one. Which brings up my question. Governor Baker made some sort of heartwarming discussion of the East-West line. But he talked about Worcester to Springfield, and a lot of people scratched their heads and said, Well, wait a minute here. What about Pittsfield? Do you have any thoughts or knowledge about that?

Adam Hinds: Oh, yeah, that was incredibly disappointing that’s how it was framed by the administration talking about Worcester to Springfield and omitting the importance of Pittsfield to Albany. Really, I keep emphasizing, look, connecting our state capitals would be incredibly beneficial. And so here’s an opportunity. I talked about the fact that we have more than $9 billion in infrastructure money coming to us and the estimated costs of each of the three proposals put forward by the East-West Rail Advisory Committee that I serve on or served on. Each of those were about half of that. So you can see how the state could easily put together the funding package, either through federal funds or through bonding to move forward with that. So, now there’s no excuse. And yet even then, Governor Baker did not include it in his initial plans for the use of the $9 billion in spending for infrastructure, instead said he would work with the federal government to identify funds for it. So, disappointing on both fronts. And we’re, of course, not going to let that be the last word. There’s talk of, well, can you start in Springfield and simultaneously build out west and east? I think that might be more acceptable. But yeah, I think further evidence of why we need someone from Western Mass in the executive branch.

Greylock Glass: And yeah, I was going to say, this is getting this is getting really, it’s the same old. Nothing exists west of ninety one. And it’s just really frustrating. And I don’t I don’t know what it’s going to take to get folks to understand that. If Pittsfield in particular, were connected to Albany and how many people go to Albany and the area of Troy and whatnot from brochures, but they have this thing called it commerce over there. There’s jobs in those businesses and it’s booming and there’s growth. There’s construction, there’s all kinds of stuff. And we could be tapping into that if we had easier access jobs and it could flow both ways. So I think that a really great — I mean, I’m editorializing and I’m sort of preaching to the choir here, but the benefit to the Commonwealth. And again, it wouldn’t just help the Berkshires, it would help the state as a rule because more money means more money. Anyway, that all sounds like really, really good initiatives. Good, an agenda to keep an eye on, and we’ll be doing just that. Talk just briefly about. About your campaign, you decided to run for lieutenant governor. Why?

Adam Hinds: I think I’ll circle back to the way we started our conversation, and I feel like this is a rare moment when we can actually make progress on regional equity on equity by overcoming income inequality and racial equity. Because everyone is so focused on what we’ve been going through for the last two years and all of the challenges that we’re facing. Combine that with the billions of dollars that we have. And so we’re literally on a month by month basis and the Legislature giving the next administration billions of dollars and making sure that this moment isn’t lost and wasted is one of the things that drives me. It’s been going well so far. A lot of folks, as I go around the Commonwealth, resonate with the concept that we’ve been talking about today relating to. We need every corner of the Commonwealth to feel like they’re seen and heard by the government. And that’s not always the case, and that resonates when I’m down on the south coast and in central mass and out on the Cape. And so it’s a perspective that folks appreciate. People also appreciated my background in the U.N. and negotiations as kind of bringing people together to actually take on the big problems and big challenges. And so, so far, so good. We’ve rolled out more than two dozen endorsements statewide, which is important from the guy from Western Mass. And I feel like we’re at the point where the field is set. And now that we’re in the election year, things are really heating up and it’s feeling good.

Greylock Glass: Are you disappointed that Ben Downing dropped out?

Adam Hinds: Yeah, I have to say, you might imagine we spent a lot of time together on the campaign trail. We are constantly going to Democratic town committees and community events and the like. And so it’s always, always great to see a familiar face. I will say more than once, and this is a fact people called me then. So I guess this is maybe not the worst thing now. Now I will be the only bald guy from the Berkshires running statewide. But, I think having both of us in the statewide race did kind of elevate the Berkshires and people were taking notice where we are on the map. Well, it was great to have them there.

Greylock Glass: And a lot of people who I’m sure many people know, but you’re running individual campaigns, which can result in some, some unusual pairings and once you actually get into office. But with you and Ben running, it was very close to being running mates in a traditional sort of sense. What is it like? Well, first of all, lieutenant governor, I mean, I get the press releases every morning, so I know what Karyn Polito is doing, and so I know that it’s a big job. Explain to people what the lieutenant governor does.

Adam Hinds: Yeah, interestingly, it’s a notoriously undefined role in the Massachusetts Constitution, so you’re there to take over when the governor is out of state or departs office. And then second is an ex officio member of the governor’s council and you chair the governor’s council, which is a little known but important judicial function in our government in terms of judicial appointments, especially. So that’s one. The other function is they’ve really taken on this role of being a liaison with municipalities. And I’ve seen that firsthand. That’s exactly the critical function that whether it’s legislators or mayors and select board members, they all have the cell phone number of the lieutenant governor, and you can really use that to direct projects or cut through red tape when needed. So that’s a big one. I would add another function, which is, I would like to use my negotiation background to actually lead on some big projects, I think using the power of the cabinet. So you have the secretaries of all of the major agencies and departments really working for the governor. And I think being able to use that power, whether it’s promoting  equity or moving the ball down the field on climate change, it’s a powerful function and I would hope to be at the center of it.

Greylock Glass: Sure. Sure. Yeah. And if, of course, the governor ends up being somebody that you can work with well, then you can end up being a really sort of a strong team. Like you said, Karyn Polito is out there every day, and she and Baker seemed to have a pretty decent synergy. I don’t know personally how they get along, but they seem at least publicly to get along pretty well. Yeah, yeah. So you mentioned climate change just a minute ago, and this is something that I have been watching and I saw quite a bit of legislative activity, in the last two years, but I haven’t heard about the ultimate results of it. This is an issue that a recent study showed that Gen Z and I guess the sort of the lower end of the millennial spectrum there they’re really concerned about, I mean, it’s keeping them up at nights. I have heard from college students who…they panic about this every time there’s a setback and it’s it’s not a it’s not an academic sort of cerebral thing. It’s it’s they are afraid on a visceral level, they are afraid of the future. Massachusetts, being a coastal state, is going to see some real, real challenges, and we don’t have a lot of time to act. I know tha, you’re only going to have so much ability to affect change in the role of lieutenant governor. But what do you foresee? What do you foresee our best chances of being prepared for? Well, the obvious coming climate. I don’t say catastrophe, but it’s going to be ugly.

Adam Hinds: It is and. And look,  we see the impact already, and not only is it when we have these kind of storm events when we see inland all the culverts and bridges being blown out, and we got 7.5 million in the last in the ARPA bill for some of our small towns that had a surge storm event last summer. But seeing it on the coast, we have towns that have put up seawalls and they’re getting breached. They were designed to never be breached and they already are years after construction. And so the evidence is there as if he needed it. And so some of the problem is, OK, are we being aggressive enough in key areas of action? And I think the answer is no. I would hope to again use the lieutenant governor’s role to pick up the Transportation Climate Initiative, which is a regional interstate negotiation, a kind of a cap and invest system to kind of put a market price on carbon. There are those types of things that we just need to make sure our finalized and yet, and of course, greening our energy. And so we have some amazing investments. This ARPA bill also included $100 million for offshore wind. Essentially, the ports in New Bedford. And so making sure that we’re really going one hundred ten miles an hour. I don’t know if that’s the right metaphor, but anyway, full speed ahead towards greening our energy sources, our transportation sources. And yet, even when you do all of that, you’re I’m very conscious that we’re just one small portion of the United States. And so are we doing enough at the national level and the international level? And the answer right now is clearly no. And so it is worth panicking about it is worth being stressed about it. We’re not on the right track.

Greylock Glass: Well, first of all, as long as we’re going one hundred and ten miles an hour in an electric vehicle, that’s okay to do that.

Adam Hinds: I think you’re stepping on the electric gas pedal.

Greylock Glass: The electric Harley-Davidson that they’ve come out with. So you’re right on a national and international level, it’s really hard to get everybody on the same page. Obviously, we pulled out of the Paris accord. We were back in it now after an embarrassing couple of years. But even that didn’t go far enough. Most climate scientists agree. It may be that the climate readiness is going to have to happen alongside carbon sequestration, capture harvesting. However, it works. And of course, just lowering levels. Massachusetts is uniquely situated to be more self-sufficient than many states. We have an industrial, strong industrial history, and we still have the infrastructure in many places. We have the agricultural history, though we’re losing a lot of arable land to development. If the climate, I mean, we’ve seen this with extreme drought affecting farming agriculture in the Midwest. Along the Mississippi and the Missouri Rivers floods in some of the most productive river valleys. Arable land we’ve got in this country and in the depression. A lot of people forget that during the dust bowl, when the soil just through overuse and bad practices blew just pretty much blew away. It was the West Coast, especially Northern California, central California and Portland, Oregon and New England, that fed huge swaths of the country because the breadbasket was a dust bowl. And we were able to do that because New England was still, in the thirties, very solidly rural in so much of it. We have good weather for it. It’s not the longest growing season around here, but we get plenty of rain and we have the ability to on a dime switch over to production. At least we did. Is there anything that Massachusetts might do to help protect our agricultural potential?

Adam Hinds: Hmm. Well, I…

Greylock Glass: Know that was a really long lead-in, but…

Adam Hinds: Yeah, I loved it, though I appreciate the history. It’s a big question that a lot of us Western mass legislators grapple with pretty regularly. I met recently with a group of farmers, Senator Comerford to our east is working on a farm bill at the state level. Farmers are having a hard time keeping afloat. And I grew up on a street that is a very good indication of where things are headed. A dairy farmer closed down like most have in their region. And we still have an apple orchard or two on that same street. And so fruits and vegetables and livestock are doing OK, but it’s hard. And so the fact that we’re the breadbasket and I guess the lungs with our trees for the Commonwealth and the region is not an overstatement. But it’s it’s it’s not. It’s tough to kind of keep these generational farms going and. And so I’m deeply worried and we’ve done a lot in terms of, well, can we assist with equipment and other things? But I don’t think we’re there yet, either. So the problem is the food system is dysfunctional. I mean, we are, essentially as buyers too; we kind of demand lower and lower prices.

Adam Hinds: And as a result, we’ve seen bigger and bigger corporations and agribusiness kind of do this mass production of food that is really unsustainable for our local farmers who can’t produce at that level of income, i.e.,  a lower, lower revenue from each unit of output. And yet we’re dominion of them. And so there are some things you can do direct to market and the like. But I don’t know. We’re still trying to find a way to make sure we are protecting it here because we’re, to your point, we can’t grow multiple seasons the way other parts of the country can. We can’t, we don’t maybe have the open space that they are making use. And so it’s a niche that we’ve seen a lot of folks take advantage of. Well, OK, at least we can do local organic and people will pay a premium and so we’re playing with different ideas there, like direct to institutions or schools and hospitals buying. And then maybe that requires a little subsidization so that they actually are going local and in Massachusetts trying to play with that to see what works.

Greylock Glass: Yeah, no. There’s a lot of, like you said, niche sort of imperatives out there, such as the farm to school, which I think are valuable and they should be expanded. I think from where I’ve been I see a lot of young farmers or farmer wannabes, they’re graduating with skills and advanced knowledge that farmers in generations past have not had. I have a lot of friends who have soil science degrees, right? I mean, they understand more about what’s going on. And you know what? They’re going to go into UMass. They’re going to other other colleges, both state colleges around Massachusetts or New York. You’re going to Cornell, they’re going to UConn, whatever, but they’re ending up here to do internships. And the problem is that when they get to the end of that. There’s nowhere to go. Right, I mean, they can stay interns, and they’re happy as interns for what it’s worth, but there’s no way to buy land. I mean, there is a program that helps connect, tries to connect farmers whose whose children don’t really want to. They don’t want that life. And so it tries to encourage them to sell to young farmers at a fair price. But it’s really tough because you get a developer in there who says,” I’ll give you, I’ll give you $5 million right now.” It’s tougher, tough for people to say no.

Adam Hinds: So out that…

Greylock Glass: Maybe the trick is to find a way to work with the colleges so that when students become interns and interns are looking to start firms of their own, there’s money available to grab some of this land that’s available so that the so that the succession so that the state is part of the succession plan. Just a thought, right? Right. Because I know you’ve got a lot of time to just mull this stuff over. Yeah. What else? What else is going on in your campaign? What are some of the next milestones then? I know, I know you’ve probably trying to get to the next one and you just got to get off this call. But what are some of the next milestones that you’ve got coming up?

Adam Hinds: Well, we are in caucus season, so essentially almost every town and certainly wards have a Democratic Town committee or city committee, and they are meeting during this five six week period to elect delegates to go to the state convention. That’s going to be in June, and you need to get 15 percent of the vote at the convention to get on the ballot as a statewide candidate for the party. And so that means literally 350 caucuses have been added to my already busy schedule during this six week period. So you can imagine it’s amazing this Saturday. I will have, I think, 35 caucuses to attend and tonight well, tonight, not one, but typically during the weekdays, I would have five or six every night. I will say this — you wouldn’t be at a very high percentage of those. You would just pick and choose. But with 85 percent of these now remote, I can sit at my desk with three devices up and jump between caucuses. So it’s a different type of campaigning this year, for sure. And that’s where our focus is right now. And then we’ll have to get on the ballot by collecting signatures. And so we’re kind of in full swing.

Greylock Glass: Yeah, it sounds like it sounds like it sounds like the digital campaigning is good and bad. It doesn’t give quite the same sort of in the same room feeling, but it does let you really get your get your face out there, too. That’s right. So I mean,  take the good with the bad, I suppose. Well, Senator, it has been great talking with you. As always, looking forward to, as I said earlier, keeping an eye on some of these issues that you’ve brought up here and just, I guess, stay healthy and we’ll talk to you again.

Adam Hinds: Great. Thanks for having me and talk soon, for sure.

Greylock Glass: Thanks. Have a good weekend. Bye..

Adam Hinds: You, too. Bye.

Senator Hinds Calls for Spending Remaining $2.3 Billion in ARPA Funds on Racial Equity

Boston – The Senate Chair of the Joint Committee on Revenue, Senator Adam Hinds, today called for the remaining $2.3 billion in ARPA funds to be spent on closing gaps by race in housing, education, wealth and business capital investment.

“The smartest investment for a strong recovery is racial equity. Using this money to move towards racial equity is not only just, it contributes to our economic recovery, investments to close gaps by race reduce vulnerabilities ahead of future pandemics and economic downturns, and results in a boost to our Gateway Cities,” Hinds said.

Recent analysis, including by the Massachusetts Taxpayer Foundation, show that closing racial gaps in key areas results in increasing Massachusetts’ gross state product by $25 billion over five years. According to the same report, leveling college graduation rates of Black and Latinx students to that of white students in Massachusetts would result in an additional $22 billion in state revenues over ten years.

“Massachusetts is in search of strategic one-time investments for ARPA dollars, especially allocations that put the economy on stable footing and pay dividends for years to come. Closing the racial divide in wages, housing, investments, and wealth does just that,” Hinds continued.

The MA legislature is continuing the process of allocating ARPA funds, the Bilateral Infrastructure Law, state surpluses, and more related to recovery funds. 

For updates on this and more, please follow Senator Hinds’ social media pages at:  

Facebook: @SenAdamHinds 

 Twitter: @SenAdamHinds 

The post 🎧 Top Left Corner #151 appeared first on The Greylock Glass.

LENOX, Mass. — I may be biased, but I’m pretty firmly in favor of screen actors getting strong training in a stage setting. There’s just something about the skills they absorb that makes their performances in front of the camera more vivid. And after seeing Netflix’s crazy popular dark satire/disaster film, Don’t Look Up, those biases are justified.

Oh, sure, you might say, “Yeah, but you recognized Shakespeare & Company’s Artistic Director Allyn Burrows and steadfast pillar of many a season, Company member Annette Miller, so that’s no proof.”

True, but I have not have the pleasure of seeing Aimee Doherty or Bill Mootos in a Shake & Co. production, and yet, when their characters in Don’t Look Up made appearances, however brief, I felt sure that I’d seen them somewhere, so salient is their presence.

Of course, not every actor who appears in the Tina Packer Playhouse Or Elayne P. Bernstein Theatre is steeped in Company DNA and training the way Miller and Burrows are. Still, I suspect that most performers take something special away with them after a sojourn to the Kemble Street campus in Lenox, Mass. Even the much beloved Keanu Reeves did a stint of intensive actor training under the tutelage of the late, great Dennis Krausnick in the early ’90s. Certainly didn’t seem to hurt his career.

Unless you’ve been living at the bottom of the Chicxulub crater, you probably know that Don’t Look Up, which released on Christmas Eve, 2021, and stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Lawrence, Meryl Streep, Cate Blanchett, Rob Morgan, Jonah Hill, and many others, posits that a meteor of “planet-killer” proportions is heading straight for Earth. The two scientists associated with its discovery find themselves on a quest to make the right people understand the importance of the extraterrestrial trajectory.

And although we aren’t likely to see the stage version of the film here in the Berkshires any time soon, disaster plot-lines actually are in Shakespeare & Company’s recent wheelhouse.

Naturally I had to get Burrows on the horn to ask him about his experiences with, and thoughts on, Don’t Look Up, the brainchild of Adam McKay and David Sirota, which is stoking the fires of America’s culture wars over things that should be solidly in realm of measurable scientific inquiry.

In addition to my conversation with Shakespeare & Company’s artistic top dog, the three other Company members who have scenes in the film generously provided some thoughtful answers to questions that came to mind as a product of that discussion. Enjoy!

GG: Perfect, couldn’t ask for better. So yeah, it’s it’s New Year’s Day and it’s it’s it’s does it feel like? Does it feel like a new year to you today?

Allyn Burrows: Yeah, it does. Because unfortunately, this weather is, you know, very foreboding, especially after doing a film like Don’t look up, right? Like. And then I read this article recently where our average temperature in the wintertime in New England is going to be seven degrees hotter as a norm. And so but two years ago, it was zero on this day. So yeah, yeah, does feel like the new day to me because, you know, it’s a sad thing as Omicron is. I mean, it’s just, you know, it’s burning through fast. And I think by March, we won’t be talking about it as much and we can get on with business and, you know, open our doors and, you know, get back to the new normal.

GG: I’m really hoping so. I’m I’m really hoping that every, every variant is a little bit diluted in strength. You know, I mean, I suppose you could go the other way, but I think really at this point, we cannot allow ourselves to to think that negatively. We’ve got to stay positive here. Oh yeah, which is, you know, not over yet. Yeah, we get pissed and get pissed at some very specific people and certain kinds of people. And that, to me, that to me is what don’t look up, you know, has has managed to achieve now. First of all, I want to get this out of the way up front because this was I didn’t know that you were in the film until I saw the film. Oh, okay. And then I saw your face through the screen door. Yeah. You know of the family home? Does the PhD student Kate? She goes home. She’s hoping for some, some sanctuary and her parents don’t unlock the screen door and there’s your face. Alan, I want to say I didn’t know you could glower that well.

Allyn Burrows: Oh man. Oh yeah, that’s that’s my that’s my best look right there.

GG: Oh my gosh. Yeah. Well, you know, you’ve got such a nice smile that I just didn’t just didn’t think it was possible. But no, gosh, if I came to the door as your kid and that’s the look you gave me, I’d be like, Oh shit, I’m just, I’m going to go get a motel.

Allyn Burrows: All I’m thinking is, Thank God I, I fixed that lock on the screen door. Yeah, yeah, right. You know, we had to have our little we had to have our little family contract before I opened it. Yeah, there was an extra bit where they shot. They shot me after she came in the house, right, and I looked up and down the street to make sure that no neighbors had seen her go into our house, right? And Adam McKay, the director, is like, Oh, I love that. That’s fantastic. But you know, there was a lot in that film had to cut it back. I heard, Yeah, he’s probably pretty liberal in shooting. You know, he does a lot of improvising, totally chill guy. I mean, we were shooting before vaccinations, right? I mean, right. It was crazy time. I mean, they had me quarantined in a hotel for eight days in Boston and, you know, getting tested every other day. That was even before showing up on set, you know, so right? It was. And so it was a real credit to Adam and you know, and Netflix for keeping the wheels turning because there were a lot of people on that set who who managed to be working and they were psyched, you know, and yeah, everyone’s just real pleasant. But and she was great, you know, Jennifer Lawrence just really super pleasant person and, you know, very easygoing, very laid back. You know, I I’ve been picking up these parts for years out of Boston.

Allyn Burrows: I’m from Boston originally, right? And so I’m, you know, I’m I’m on the on the radar of people like, you know, Caroline Pikmin at CP Casting and and Kyle, you know, at CP. And so and and you know, thank goodness we’ve got this mass film tax credit because that means that, you know, we’re going to keep the film industry here. And the fact that it passed permanently in the Legislature is such a bonus. I don’t know why Baker, he’s such a smart guy and I don’t know why he resisted it. It’s such a simple equation. Every dollar spent the film in the film, you know that that that production gets 25 cents back, but they have to spend a dollar to get 25 cents back. Right, right, right. I mean, for years, it’s like, Oh, it’s costing its money. There’s so many jobs created because of the film industry in Massachusetts. And, you know, I and my cohorts because I was in New York for 20 years, but I and my cohorts in Boston who grew up there, you know, we were all, you know, I don’t have any pride. You know, someone throws me a bone like that that, you know, I know I’m going to get a good paycheck for the day and I’m going to get residuals. So sure, I don’t, you know, well, I do

GG: It, you know, of course. And you know, in terms of Boston versus New York, look, I think New York gets enough screen time. I write, I mean, come on, do we have to play? Do we have to play like little sister to to the Big Apple all the time? No, Massachusetts has well, Massachusetts has some really amazing shooting locations and you know, and no location scouts really should should, you know, should take a drive around a little bit more often. So let me ask this there were actually quite a few Shakespeare and company members, you know, not the least of which was Annette Miller, who also joined you in that film. How did that happen?

Allyn Burrows: And that’s from Boston. She also knows the casting directors, you know, in Boston and they think of her, and Annette has, you know, she’s inimitable, you know? Oh yeah, that is a net. You know, she and I were also cast in a film with Ben Affleck and Chris Cooper called the company men and. And Tommy Lee Jones and. And I had to. I had some. I had a I had one just, you know, a really fun scene that I shot. It was just me and Tommy Lee Jones couple scenes and and that was in that, too. And then she played, I think, Ben Affleck’s secretary or something. But she always does a great turn in things. My wife, Mary Hickey, was also cast in this, and I was psyched because, you know, Tim gets, you know, books, a lot of stuff she used. She had a couple of her own series in Canada before moving to the state. So she is a real awesome film technician and actor. You know, she really knows how to hit her mark and her scene, unfortunately, with Meryl Streep got cut and that made me kind of sad because it would have been the first time we both appeared in a feature before. But the thing about, you know what they can depend on when these with us day players and and this is what Carolyn Pittman says of CP casting is she knows that when they roll camera and all the money that’s being spent, but per second that Boston actors, they’re going to hit their mark, you know, because four years in the 80s and the night, especially in the 80s, we were all churning out industrial films right before I went to New York.

Allyn Burrows: And and so we got we cut our teeth on, you know, make sure you hit, you know, get it on the first take baby Charlie, you’re out of there. And that makes the director happy. You know, you get one for the can. If you can get a safety on the first take, then they’re like, OK, we’re good, OK? You know, I was in a film called Manchester by the Sea that my big theme got cut out of. But Kenneth Lonergan, the director on that, he you know, there was a scene where I’m supposed to break down as this priest over these the children’s coffins. I don’t know if you’ve seen the film with Casey Affleck. It’s a great film with Michelle and and so I. You know, he came out, he goes, Oh, I got what I need. Okay, now you do whatever you need to do. Like, I’m just going to let the camera run. I thought, Oh, okay, well, then obviously I’ll, you know. And but unfortunately, my biggest scene in that got cut. So I’m pretty. I’m in that. I think it was too much to have a priest crying over three children scoffing. Maybe, you know.

GG: Well, let me ask you this. Let me ask you this about the stage actors on screen. You know, this isn’t just a blow smoke or sunshine here, but you know both you and Annette, you’re really pop on screen. What is it about your stage training that translates so effectively to the screen?

Allyn Burrows: Express, you got because, you know, you know, it’s funny. My wife and I are, she is like, she is like, cool as a cucumber when the cameras roll, but me, I’m going on stage and I, you know, I know that I’m going to feel comfortable out there, right? But when you have two cameras just inches from your face, your heart is pounding in your chest, right? Because you know that there’s so much money at stake, right? And so you don’t want to blow it. You don’t want to be that guy where they’re like, Okay, let’s try another one. Where did we get this guy right? You know what I mean? And you want to be that guy where they’re like, Whoa, okay, all right. Thank you. You know, and that comes from like like what the crossover is is making sure you’re just you’re in control of your breath because then you know that then the neck, whatever the next couple of moments are that they’re yours, right? Like I always say to actors who come in and audition for me. You know, you’ve got two minutes. They’re your two minutes. They’re not my two minutes. So, you know, take your time and just settle in and you know, you just want to make sure that you hit your mark and bring that little whatever that if it’s glowering, you know, if you read the script and you’re like, I think I think I think this is a time where I pull out my glowering look, you know what I mean? Yeah. Well, you know, those are those are the arrows in your quiver.

GG: Those are those are definitely pearls of wisdom there. I think he could go a long way by remembering to to get control of your breath. I want to talk a little bit about the the film briefly and then what it means to the arts. I mean, most people know by now that this is a film starring Leonardo Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence primarily, of course, Meryl Streep, Cate Blanchett and Jonah Hill, and a lot of great, great folks in there. Even, you know, Ariana Grande. I have a new appreciation for her, but I think that, you know, the idea that there’s a meteor coming, it is definitely going to impact with Earth. Everything is going to be wiped out, and you would think that that would be the easiest pitch to the news networks. You know, listen, we need you to understand this is a crisis. It’s happening in six months. And yet they can’t get people to take it seriously enough to actually, you know, to realize it for what it is. This is an extinction level event. Yeah. And it’s it’s an allegory. It’s satire. It’s it’s basically a I mean, most people make the connection to climate change, which is, you know, the obvious one and the one that you know, David Sirota and has talked about. But I think that there are probably other connections, you know, certainly the the the state of democracy in the United States. It does feel like there’s a meteor coming for that, too. Talk to me about when you heard the the premise of the film. Obviously, you know, it’s great to get, you know, gigs especially, you know, you know, short things that you can do that you don’t have to, you know, leave Lennox for for too long. But what about this message, did you think was worth telling?

Allyn Burrows: Oh, well, you know, you hear very, very little of the story oftentimes, right, like they I don’t know if I got a whole script in advance. I just heard, you know, you get the storyline and you get a chunk of change pages and you get your your daily sides and then and it’s like, OK. And then you have to draw your own conclusions, right? And that’s kind of where I went. I was like, Oh, OK, so it’s the destruction of the Earth. You know, it’s not the first time we’ve seen a destruction of the Earth movie, right? It’s the way he tells it. That is so on. So ground level and so kind of folksy, you know, and the way that the actors were having so much fun and so much of that is just kind of he puts an ironic spin on it. I mean, the fact that Cate Blanchett plays that role, I mean, like, he really fills out the characters and brings this level of humanity. And and then and then you’re like, Oh, I see it’s not just a meteorite heading towards the Earth, it’s humanity. All this fun we’re having is also going to get wiped out, right? I don’t know if you’ve seen the show station 11. Yeah, I’m watching it now. It is. It’s basically when a pandemic wipes out most of the population on Earth, and it’s the survivors. And, you know, and it tells the moment that it’s happening when people are like, when all the flights are being cancelled and it bounces back and forth in time.

Allyn Burrows: I’m watching because there’s no more gas, of course. So the Shakespeare troupe is having their their ARVs pulled around this tour circuit by horses, and they do Shakespeare plays to all the Bedouins who remain right. And so, you know, I mean, why they would choose, you know, like Shakespeare survives. That’s funny. It’s really it’s really morose. Like friends of mine watches like, yeah, I watch 15 minutes of it. I couldn’t. I couldn’t do it. I’ll never think about it. It’s Station 11. Yeah, there’s nothing grotesque about it. It’s just so like, it’s like, Yeah, you know, there’s no more humanity. So I mean, at the end of the day, I don’t want to sound too existential or anything. But yeah, meteorite hits the Earth and the Earth gets blown up. Boo hoo for us, right? You know, and I think humanity always makes the mistake of thinking that, you know, that we’re the most important thing on Earth or were the most important thing to existence in general right now, we’re the most important thing to ourselves. Sure. But in the meantime, you know, why not try to convince people that at least something is happening like a meteorite? I mean, the fact that he couldn’t even, you know, Leonardo, to his credit, you know, and he’s not the improviser that you know, someone like Meryl Streep is or Jonas Hill, you know, so they’d be on set improvising.

Allyn Burrows: And you know, he he’s he’s a long time film actor on this is a warm up through the comedy starring Meryl Streep as a stage actor. They’re used to being like, Yeah, roll camera. I don’t care. I’m a star. I can burn as much film as I want, so they’re going to like, you know, and they’re encouraged by the director. But Leonardo, he has his process, and he’s had his process since Gilbert Grape. Right, right. Very defined. And he’s a very serious artist. But it, you know, it’s I don’t know, has he ever done a stage play? I don’t, you know? So, yeah, so interesting. The message is. Huh? The message is, you know, you can kind of take it or leave it and other people. I mean, I have friends who, you know, don’t have the same politics that I do. You can probably guess what mine are. But, you know, but they still are like, Wow, that was quite a message on the pandemic. And I’m like, What’s really about the pandemic, dude? You know what I mean? It wasn’t about this wasn’t about the country being divided. Exactly. It was about the extinction of all humanity. Unless we get our shit together, you know, like, Oh yeah, I guess so.

GG: Well, you know, what’s the parallelism? The parallelism between, you know, you know, DiCaprio is is playing Dr. Randall Mindy and Lawrence is playing PhD candidate Kate DiBiase, and they are trying to convince everybody of how important this is. There is a desperation in their characters behavior that mimics or parallels the desperation in this film’s attempt to get people to understand the seriousness of the situation. It almost seems like it is. It is a one to one ratio between the characters really fevered a fevered pitch. And Adam McKay’s fevered pitch to get people to understand because, you know, you know, there are all of these. We have 12 years not to to cross this, this temperature threshold. Well, fuck it, we missed it. Oh shit. Yeah. Now what? Yeah. So I think that, you know, the the producers of this film have taken some grief, at least in the online, you know, intelligentsia on the right and even some in the middle about how it’s it’s such

Allyn Burrows: It’s so true. You just say intelligentsia on the right.

GG: And I know it’s a contradiction in terms.

Allyn Burrows: Sorry.

GG: Yeah. You know, but what passes? What passes for that? Ok. Right? Yeah. So the the best they can, the best they can bring anyway. But the the idea here is that you’ve you’ve got people responding to this film in the same way that the characters respond to the news of the media. And they are. They’re saying this is melodramatic. You get people all worked up, and, you know, it’s it’s not it’s just not something that that she should be, you know, getting the public wound up about. But this is the arts. Is this not what the arts does? I mean, whether it’s, you know, visual art, you know, such as, you know, Picasso’s various sort of anti-war paintings or whether it’s yeah, or whether it’s Shakespeare who, you know, used his own literally his own theater to to poke and jab where he felt it was due.

Allyn Burrows: Yeah, well, he was also on the, you know, he was on the payroll of the king, right, too, right?

GG: So, so he poked gently. Yes.

Allyn Burrows: Yeah. You know, and everyone likes to think that they know knew what Shakespeare was thinking. And and and I mean, I argue about it with people all the time, you know, it’s like, Well, that’s even people say, Well, that’s not what the text says. And I’m like, Wow, that’s that’s what you says. You know, that’s where you like the text to say, so everything is subjective. I thought Adam McKay or. And the producers were really brilliant in how strategic they were. I mean, I’ve heard from, you know, I’ve had I’ve had small roles in feature films before. I’ve never gotten the kind of surprise from friends of mine all over the place where, like I, I spit my beer out when I saw you the other night, you know, and it’s like, Yeah, I know. You know, this is what it’s kind of what I’ve been doing for all these years, off and on and and the way they presented it right from the get go, that kind of visual assault with the titles, really, you know, bright orange, you know, and and they they timed it at a time that everyone would be kind of they did they know that Omicron would shut everyone in? Did we know? But they timed it for the right at the holidays when they might have speculated that a lot of people would see it? I think that it also is a pretty easy pill to swallow for people who may or may not want to subscribe to what the film is saying, right? It’s like they can. It’s like, Oh yeah, it’s a satire. It’s it’s satire that you know, actually, you know, could really land in the realm of reality. I mean, meteor meteorites are flying around all the time. This one was, what, five six kilometres wide. And that was a I didn’t, you know, that may be a fact. I didn’t know that I was like, really? If a if a if a meteor hits the Earth at six kilometres wide, that’s an Earth ending event. Oh yeah.

GG: Oh yeah, they yeah, you know, they’re coming in so fast. The impact is so hard. What I only found out recently there was a fellow who was actually an astrophysicist who wrote about what actually would happen if this this occurred and the the effects are surprising in that one of the things that happens is that lots of debris from Earth shoots up into space. It bounces, basically bounces. And then you have a couple of days of of of hot, molten lava raining down through the atmosphere. I’m like, Wow. So this is it’s even worse than the movies portray.

Allyn Burrows: Yeah. Yeah. So that was the Big Bang, right? I mean, right? We have no dinosaurs because something hit the Earth and then the sun was over cloud and all the vegetation died. So, you know. Well, let

GG: Me talk

Allyn Burrows: About, I think, what will happen to people. Yeah. No. Go ahead. No, I was going to say, what? You know what really gets? You know it all the all the destruction happened in an instant in this film, so that made it kind of palatable to what what’s really going to happen is, you know, if something you know, an earth shattering event is the way people will ultimately go into survival mode, and then that’s going to get really, you know, it could get really drawn out and gross, you

GG: Know, yeah, you know, people will survive. And what kind of a world could they possibly inherit? Let me ask you this. I mean, this is kind of and this is really sort of the. The jewel in the crown of this conversation for me, because I know that there’s a lot of convincing that needs to happen about a number of topics. Certainly, climate is a big one, but you know, there are other other, you know, some dire situations out there in this world. You have an immense amount of power as the artistic director of Shakespeare and company to affect what people are thinking about, who come to the who come to sit and take in the shows that you you produce. What kind of decisions do you think you can make going forward to? To be a part of the conversation, to be somebody who moves the needle. You know, however much you can in the time that you’ve got them, whether it’s 90 minutes or whatnot, what kind of thought goes into your decisions on what you put on those stages?

Allyn Burrows: Well, I mean, you really have to navigate everything, right? You know, right now we are also at an inflection point when when it comes to society. And so, you know, we the last several years have been looking at everything through an inclusion, diversity, equity and accessibility lens. And we and and that is kind of where we start. How do we access these stories and how do we, you know, have them reach the people who are going to come and take them in? And what are we going to say? I used to say. You know, people have to feel shifted when they leave. One of our productions, they have to feel they have to feel a measure of diversion. They have to feel a measure of, you know, satisfaction. But they also have to feel slightly different. That’s what a good story does. It draws you in. And once you draw someone in, you have the responsibility, as you know, a member of society to do the right thing by the material and the people who have come and rented those seats. So I’m not into kind of I used to say I don’t want someone to leave the theater. And then just first thing they say is, where’s my car? Right? I want them to say, I want them to come out and be like, Wow, whoa, whoa.

Allyn Burrows: I got a I got to sit for a minute, you know, or whatever. And you know, we have to do it in a way. If people are coming that we, we that we really we do it in a way that people kind of get drawn in. And then once we have them, we’re having larger conversations. We’re having conversations of import, we’re having conversations that, you know, they may be funny. A lot of you know, because there’s nothing like comedy to cut through the bullshit, you know, but but they also, you know, they have to they have to be meaningful because people are spending good money, they’re spending good time time. It’s just as valuable as money. We’re spending a hell of a lot of time putting them on. So at the end of the day, they have to be substantive. They have to be something that counts and has impact and import. So, you know, people will pitch a show and I’ll be like, OK, great. Do you think it’s a good play? Yeah. Well, we should do it for this reason. I’m like, Well, let’s just find out. Let’s just start with whether it’s good play. Sure. You know, and a good play is whether people are really kind of moved by it in any number of ways, whether they’re, you know, they’re really have a good time or they really are, you know, kind of turned upside down by it or whether they they they they go away and they have to think about, you know, the larger issues that confront them in life.

Allyn Burrows: And so, you know, that’s kind of what I’ve always I mean, this is my I’m going into my 15th year as an artistic director, right? So I mean, I’ve been here for five, but I was in Boston at another company for nearly 10. So this all comes out of conversation before we do a show. And then it’s all about the education. Four of the kids, you know, how are we, how are we having them experience Shakespeare and his his great poetry? And you know, you know, again, he was a white male playwright. So you have to take all these considerations in and we train people and how to tell these stories as well. So it’s a really long winded answer to saying you’ve got to do the right thing. No, I hear you and your audience and your artists and and and. And it can’t suck.

GG: Yeah, yeah, no, obviously you can have you can be telling a great message. But if the if the material is is, you know, subpar, that message is never going to get anywhere. I mean, I think you’re you’re your your note about comedy being a great way to sort of cut through. I guess it was. I think it was Annette Miller a couple of years ago when the Waverly Gallery, it was a story about dementia or Alzheimer’s. And you know, if you have somebody in your family, as I do with Alzheimer’s, you can laugh because you have to. And there’s some genuinely funny things that happened. But it’s also, you know, it’s also, you know, just gut wrenching every step of the way. So that was that was a really a good a good story, a good, good, you know, theme. Hey, Alan, what what do we have?

Allyn Burrows: My dad had Alzheimer’s, and I used to joke that, you know, I’d love. I used to love to run lines with him because he never got bored of it. By the time we got to the last page he was, he would turn it over and be like, What are we here? Writing We have here? All right, let’s do it again. No one really wants to run lines with you.

GG: Yeah, but let’s talk about let’s talk about twenty twenty two since we are officially in 2020. I’m going to be writing, you know, sending my checks twenty two and one for a while. But still, yeah, yeah. It’s it’s usually a little too early on on January 1st to know what’s coming up. Do you have anything picked out for this season yet?

Allyn Burrows: Yeah, yeah, no. We’ve announced our Shakespeares and and one and another classic piece, which is an Iliad and Makani, a chesser who’s a company man who’s gonna play Lear with Christopher Lloyd last summer. She did it over at the Anchorage Opera House in the fall, and she only got to do eight performances of it. It’s a one person play. And, you know, it’s about the Trojan War. Yeah, and he plays a poet. It’s just a very impactful piece, and she’s just awesome in it, and I went and saw her in it. And, you know, I want to revive that. Have the director who directed it over there, Jeff Russo directed for us, and that will be in the Packer Playhouse and then also measure for measure, which is a play we haven’t done really ever on our main stage. They call it a problem play. It’s a great play. We get it in the stables in 1996. Last, as one of our big productions, we took it to Boston and and we did a workshop production of it last summer kind of ran it up the flagpole and I thought, You know what? This deserves a fuller production and really to be fleshed out, and Alice Regan will direct that. And then, you know, we were slated to do Lear in rep with much ado about nothing on the new spruce, but it got really complicated to do to with all the COVID restrictions. So we’re going to bring that out under the new Spruce Much Ado for the summer. And Kelly Galvin, who’s directed a bunch for us, will direct that and we haven’t done that since. On the main stage since 2003, when I played Benedict. So, yeah, so 18 years, that’s long enough to wait to do much ado about nothing.

GG: I would say so. No, this sounds like you’re really exciting season shaping up there.

Allyn Burrows: When? Yeah, and then and then we’ll we’ll pick some modern titles again to exactly kind of what you were talking about, how can they have, how can they have punch and and and really leave someone with something?

GG: All right. Well, as as always, we we asked folks where they can find out more information, and the answer is always really simple with you because it’s just Shakespeare, dawg. Some smart individual back in the beginning of the internet decided to snag that URL and by gum, that was the smart thing. So Shakespeare Dawg keep and of course, you’ve got a newsletter that people can sign up for so they can find out all the information as soon as it becomes available. Alan, I want to say thanks so much for speaking with the top left corner again.

Allyn Burrows: It’s great to hear you, Jason, and happy New Year to you.

GG: Thanks. Thanks. You too.

Allyn Burrows: Let’s all get together and make it a good one.

GG: Amen to that. Talk to you soon.

Allyn Burrows: Take care. All right. Take care. Bye bye.

GG ~ Do you personally feel that “Don’t Look Up” hits the mark as far as getting its message out?

Annette Miller ~ I was thrilled to be cast in Don’t Look Up, and have the opportunity of working with Adam McKay and his entire team on this very relevant film — a satire on our society that refuses to “look up.”

Adam McKay has used satire as the means of telling this important story of Don’t Look Up. We are a world burying our heads in the sand.

GG ~ What do you try to bring from your stage training to work in film, and can you feel it when that training is serving you well?

Annette Miller ~ In terms of your questions, what my stage training brought to my film acting: Playing a role on stage or film, you ask yourself the same questions about your character in the scene:

• “What are you doing?”
• “Why are you doing it?”
• “What do you need from the other people in the scene?”

Annette Miller ~ I always say — the simple formula 4w/how. That is, who you are, what you want, when you want it, why you want it. All of that determines how you go about it. All of those are the same intellectual questions you ask yourself on stage or film. The actor, though, has to use those questions to ignite their emotional and sensory receptors to the particular moment in time and space.

The main difference is that the actor doesn’t have to project his voice to the 3rd balcony on film so in that sense it is a more intimate art form.

GG: Is the world of the Arts doing enough these days to fulfill its traditional role of societal/cultural mirror and critic? How might the Arts better take on some of the challenges and crises humanity faces today? 

Annette Miller ~ YES, THE ARTS continue to mirror society. An artist always expresses today’s world in his/her art form Hopefully, not Didactically.

Become a patron of (and subscribe to) the show on your favorite platform!

GG: What do you try to bring from your stage training to work in film, and can you feel it when that training is serving you well?

Aimee Doherty: I think the part of my stage training that served me best was preparedness. Learning all the lines for Rosalind in As You Like It takes months of preparedness ahead of time so you can hit the ground running when the cast begins rehearsals. When shooting a movie, there are hundreds of people on set. You need to know what you are doing and have your lines down before you show up to set because the director usually doesn’t have time to work with you individually. You are a small part of a very large and expensive machine and you want to jump in and keep it moving.

GG: Is the world of the Arts doing enough these days to fulfill its traditional role of societal/cultural mirror and critic? How might the Arts better take on some of the challenges and crises humanity faces today? 

Aimee Doherty: It’s a difficult balance. Do I think the arts can do more? Yes, definitely. The question is will anyone watch it? Funding for the arts is scarce, so many times art makers, who usually operate on razor-thin margins, choose projects that will appeal to the masses so they can stay out of the red. I think if funding was increased we would see some revolutionary work.  

GG: Do you personally feel that “Don’t Look Up” hits the mark as far as getting its message out?

Aimee Doherty: I worked for a dozen years as a Senior Scientist at an environmental engineering firm prior to acting, I think this film is right on the money. The corporate greed that is steering out environmental laws behind the scenes will be our downfall. 

GG: What do you try to bring from your stage training to work in film, and can you feel it when that training is serving you well?

Bill Mootos:  I think the essence of acting is being truthful, and that applies to both stage and film.  Good acting training involves being truthful to the character you portray and the circumstances you find yourself in, and I think keeping those things at the forefront will always make for a better performance.  There are technical differences in how you approach each medium, but being true to the moment is essential in both.

GG: Is the world of the Arts doing enough these days to fulfill its traditional role of societal/cultural mirror and critic? How might the Arts better take on some of the challenges and crises humanity faces today?

Bill Mootos:  The goal of the arts to me is to continue to hold that mirror up to the world so we can see ourselves, flaws and all, and work to make the world a better place.  People also want to be entertained, often to the point of completely forgetting about what is wrong with the country or the world.  This places “the Arts” in a tough position, because for many the need to be entertained outweighs the desire for enlightenment.  So we have to walk a line between appealing to what people think they want and our need to tackle important issues.  As to how to better take on these challenges and crises, I think that is always the dilemma.  It is finding good, relevant, worthy projects that can entertain but also make us think and feel, and inspire us to act.  For me, that is always in the writing.  We need to constantly seek out the best writing and prioritize that work as opposed to just going for what we think will offend the least or entertain the most.

GG: Do you personally feel that “Don’t Look Up” hits the mark as far as getting its message out?

Bill Mootos:  What I have noticed about “Don’t Look Up” is that it has triggered more online conversations than any project I have ever been involved in.  Audiences and critics have wildly different opinions about its content and its message, and they are very eager to voice their thoughts.  So in that regard, I think it has already hit the intended mark because it has inspired so many thoughts and conversations.  I think for many of us it really hit home in terms of how our country reacts to existential crises, and how almost every important issues devolves into a political battle.  It’s hard to really laugh at what we have already seen playing out so horrifically in our local and national governments.

— END —

The post Top Left Corner #150 appeared first on The Greylock Glass.

Welcome to today’s episode of the Top Left Corner! 

This episode Sponsored by Hancock Shaker Village, presenting:

Become a patron of, and subscribe to, the show on your favorite platform!

Today’s Featured Artist:

If you’re here for the first time, the Top Left Corner is a locally focused daily live internet radio show and podcast based in the Northern Berkshires, Mass. 

We do our best to wade through the spin and biases and bring back the important stuff that most of us really care about. Monday through Friday, we’re going to tell you what we think about local current events and the national stories that directly affect the people of Williamstown and Berkshire County. We also interview amazing guests.

You can listen live—and interact live. You’ll find a chat box you can use to comment live–anonymously if you wish. We do our best to read and address everyone’s comments on the air.

Until next time.

Stay safe. Be good to each other. And go easy on yourselves.

— Jay V.

Listen and comment LIVE on Radio Free Berkshires Monday through Friday, 6:00 a.m. – 7:00 a.m. Eastern.

Get in touch by e-mail at [email protected]

The post Top Left Corner #149 appeared first on The Greylock Glass.

Welcome to today’s episode of the Top Left Corner! 

This episode Sponsored by Hancock Shaker Village, presenting:

Become a patron of, and subscribe to, the show on your favorite platform!

Today’s Featured Artist:

If you’re here for the first time, the Top Left Corner is a locally focused daily live internet radio show and podcast based in the Northern Berkshires, Mass. 

We do our best to wade through the spin and biases and bring back the important stuff that most of us really care about. Monday through Friday, we’re going to tell you what we think about local current events and the national stories that directly affect the people of Williamstown and Berkshire County. We also interview amazing guests.

You can listen live—and interact live. You’ll find a chat box you can use to comment live–anonymously if you wish. We do our best to read and address everyone’s comments on the air.

Until next time.

Stay safe. Be good to each other. And go easy on yourselves.

— Jay V.

Listen and comment LIVE on Radio Free Berkshires Monday through Friday, 6:00 a.m. – 7:00 a.m. Eastern.

Get in touch by e-mail at [email protected]

The post Top Left Corner #148 appeared first on The Greylock Glass.

Welcome to today’s episode of the Top Left Corner! 

Listen and comment LIVE on Radio Free Berkshires Monday through Friday, 6:00 a.m. – 7:00 a.m. Eastern.

Get in touch by e-mail at [email protected]

Become a patron of, and subscribe to, the show on your favorite platform!

If you’re here for the first time, the Top Left Corner is a locally focused daily live internet radio show and podcast based in the Northern Berkshires, Mass. 

We do our best to wade through the spin and biases and bring back the important stuff that most of us really care about. Monday through Friday, we’re going to tell you what we think about local current events and the national stories that directly affect the people of Williamstown and Berkshire County. We also interview amazing guests.

You can listen live—and interact live. You’ll find a chat box you can use to comment live–anonymously if you wish. We do our best to read and address everyone’s comments on the air.

Until next time.

Stay safe. Be good to each other. And go easy on yourselves.

— Jay V.

The post Top Left Corner #147 appeared first on The Greylock Glass.

Welcome to today’s episode of the Top Left Corner! 

Listen and comment LIVE on Radio Free Berkshires Monday through Friday, 6:00 a.m. – 7:00 a.m. Eastern.

Get in touch by e-mail at [email protected]

Become a patron of, and subscribe to, the show on your favorite platform!

If you’re here for the first time, the Top Left Corner is a locally focused daily live internet radio show and podcast based in the Northern Berkshires, Mass. 

We do our best to wade through the spin and biases and bring back the important stuff that most of us really care about. Monday through Friday, we’re going to tell you what we think about local current events and the national stories that directly affect the people of Williamstown and Berkshire County. We also interview amazing guests.

You can listen live—and interact live. You’ll find a chat box you can use to comment live–anonymously if you wish. We do our best to read and address everyone’s comments on the air.

Until next time.

Stay safe. Be good to each other. And go easy on yourselves.

— Jay V.

The post Top Left Corner #146 appeared first on The Greylock Glass.

Welcome to today’s episode of the Top Left Corner! 

Listen and comment LIVE on Radio Free Berkshires Monday through Friday, 6:00 a.m. – 7:00 a.m. Eastern.

Get in touch by e-mail at [email protected]

Become a patron of, and subscribe to, the show on your favorite platform!

If you’re here for the first time, the Top Left Corner is a locally focused daily live internet radio show and podcast based in the Northern Berkshires, Mass. 

We do our best to wade through the spin and biases and bring back the important stuff that most of us really care about. Monday through Friday, we’re going to tell you what we think about local current events and the national stories that directly affect the people of Williamstown and Berkshire County. We also interview amazing guests.

You can listen live—and interact live. You’ll find a chat box you can use to comment live–anonymously if you wish. We do our best to read and address everyone’s comments on the air.

Until next time.

Stay safe. Be good to each other. And go easy on yourselves.

— Jay V.

The post Top Left Corner #145 appeared first on The Greylock Glass.

Welcome to today’s episode of the Top Left Corner! 

Listen and comment LIVE on Radio Free Berkshires Monday through Friday, 6:00 a.m. – 7:00 a.m. Eastern.

Get in touch by e-mail at [email protected]

Become a patron of, and subscribe to, the show on your favorite platform!

If you’re here for the first time, the Top Left Corner is a locally focused daily live internet radio show and podcast based in the Northern Berkshires, Mass. 

We do our best to wade through the spin and biases and bring back the important stuff that most of us really care about. Monday through Friday, we’re going to tell you what we think about local current events and the national stories that directly affect the people of Williamstown and Berkshire County. We also interview amazing guests.

You can listen live—and interact live. You’ll find a chat box you can use to comment live–anonymously if you wish. We do our best to read and address everyone’s comments on the air.

Until next time.

Stay safe. Be good to each other. And go easy on yourselves.

— Jay V.

The post Top Left Corner #144 appeared first on The Greylock Glass.

Welcome to today’s episode of the Top Left Corner! 

Listen and comment LIVE on Radio Free Berkshires Monday through Friday, 6:00 a.m. – 7:00 a.m. Eastern.

Get in touch by e-mail at [email protected]

Become a patron of, and subscribe to, the show on your favorite platform!

If you’re here for the first time, the Top Left Corner is a locally focused daily live internet radio show and podcast based in the Northern Berkshires, Mass. 

We do our best to wade through the spin and biases and bring back the important stuff that most of us really care about. Monday through Friday, we’re going to tell you what we think about local current events and the national stories that directly affect the people of Williamstown and Berkshire County. We also interview amazing guests.

You can listen live—and interact live. You’ll find a chat box you can use to comment live–anonymously if you wish. We do our best to read and address everyone’s comments on the air.

Until next time.

Stay safe. Be good to each other. And go easy on yourselves.

— Jay V.

The post Top Left Corner #143 appeared first on The Greylock Glass.

Welcome to today’s episode of the Top Left Corner! 

Listen and comment LIVE Monday through Friday, 6:00 a.m. – 7:00 a.m. Eastern.

Get in touch by e-mail at [email protected]

Become a patron of, and subscribe to, the show on your favorite platform!

If you’re here for the first time, the Top Left Corner is a locally focused daily live internet radio show and podcast based in the Northern Berkshires, Mass. 

We do our best to wade through the spin and biases and bring back the important stuff that most of us really care about. Monday through Friday, we’re going to tell you what we think about local current events and the national stories that directly affect the people of Williamstown and Berkshire County. We also interview amazing guests.

You can listen live—and interact live. You’ll find a chat box you can use to comment live–anonymously if you wish. We do our best to read and address everyone’s comments on the air.

Until next time.

Stay safe. Be good to each other. And go easy on yourselves.

— Jay V.

The post Top Left Corner #142 appeared first on The Greylock Glass.