December 27, 2006
"Gift this music"
Back to the real world, on iTunes. "Gift this music," says the button.
Is something wrong with, "Give this music"? Isn't this the season of giving? Perhaps this is a sign of the times, a transition from verb to noun, from action to object.
It reminds me of something Marvin Mudrick, my adviser at UCSB, said, "I'm not interested in thoughts, I'm interested in thinking."
Posted by Karen Christensen at 4:27 AM | Comments (0)
December 12, 2006
Berkshire holiday party snaps
It was a bright day, in a room just off Laurel Lake in Lee, MA, and our photos have suffered as a result. But even with the glare, you'll see what a festive occasion our holiday party on Saturday was. This is one of the rare times when our far flung freelance colleagues gather with the staff they work with constantly. I suppose you might say that they have online relationships, and it's amusing to see people who have worked together intensely for months meeting for the first time. 
We do have photos of ourselves in Skype and Basecamp (well, some of us do--there are a few hold-outs), but there are always surprises.
It's a very cohesive group, with a great sense of humor. Liz had just returned on a red-eye flight from the west coast and was definitely suffering from jetlag after her 24-hour round-trip. "Karen, have you heard of Sky Mall?" she asked, and told us that she had done all her Christmas shopping on the plane. I think this may actually be true.
It was good to find that everyone was glad to have Indian food, and after we got the room warmed up, mostly by body heat, it was a perfect place for a group this size. You might think that we should be eating Chinese food, given our predilection for things Chinese, but none of the local restaurants come up to our standard. On the other hand, the food at the Bombay Grill is superb--easily as good as anywhere I've eaten in New York and as most places in London. This discovery has made 
life in the Berkshires possible. Here's a photo of Jenn Frederick and her boyfriend Chris enjoying the meal, and the sunshine. And here's Joe DiStefano with Monika, who went to school with Joe and Jenn in Columbia County, just over the state line in New York. Joe's about to leave us, setting off for the big city to make a career in animation, but we're still counting on seeing him at next year's party. Oddly enough, after two years with us and working closely with Francesca Forrest on every issue of Guanxi: The China Letter, the two have never met. Next year!
Posted by Karen Christensen at 5:34 AM | Comments (0)
December 5, 2006
First snow in Great Barrington
I'm working on another article on social media, and trying to make sense of the whole thing. This makes blogging a different experience: it becomes what anthropologists call "participant observation." I'm a blogger, but I'm also thinking about the phenomenon of blogging and asking what it does, why it matters, and in fact whether it matters. Or it sheer self-indulgence? Another kind of social media is content-sharing software, such as Flickr (which creates the "badge" of photos you'll see in the margin of this blog). But I like to put photos here, where I can tell you a bit about them. Here's one of the first snowfall in the Berkshires
.
And here's a rather blurry one, taken without a flash, on the full moon over the town of Great Barrington. If you double-click the photo you'll get a better view. Not great, I know, but perhaps it'll give you a sense of this particular place on earth, and let you imagine walking down into those lighted buildings to have supper at Helsinki, a charming little restaurant where David and I where went last night and ate Scandinavian food while listening the the staff in the kitchen speak Spanish.
On a practical note, it's a real nuisance to get photos into the blog. It's easy enough using Zoundry BlogWriter, but to use Zoundry I have to disable and reconfigure different things. No wonder many people are put off using these technologies. And it isn't just older people, either. I come across plenty of younger people who have no interest in the fiddling with codes and security settings. This is one of the great downfalls of things like social tagging and Wikipedia: the people who are most likely to contribute are those with the most time, not the most knowledge or acuteness.
Posted by Karen Christensen at 12:27 PM | Comments (0)
December 4, 2006
Home to Yoga5
It's time to write something about one of the things that keeps me sane and healthy: astanga yoga at a new studio in Great Barrington, Yoga5. I stumbled into this kind of yoga when I got back from the London Book Fair in March, and through a series of coincidences found myself at Yoga5 just as it got started. Jonas Zev Amberger had moved here from Vermont and set up shop in a big building on "The Flats" south of town, gathering a group of rather obsessed yoga practioners who'd been waiting for an astange studio as well as a few bemused newcomers like me.
My daughter Rachel used to call it my cult because I was so enthusiastic. Now it's become more routine: I can do my hour or hour and a half's practice in the morning and arrive at the office feeling good instead of like I'd been put through a wringer, and I don't talk about it all the time.
The yoga community is very different from where I spend the rest of my life, and I don't suppose I'll ever feel that I really fit in there. But it's been a good lesson about community: you don't have to fit in entirely to feel part of a group. Being in London made me even more appreciative. I went to Astanga Yoga London on Drummond Street, an 18-minute walk from the Goodenough Club so perfect, I thought. But it was crowded to a degree that really wasn't fun. I had less room than in any hotel room I've ever been in, had to practice almost nose up to a wall (and the walls gave off that interesting rising damp smell you get in many English buildings), and no one looked very cheerful. That's city yoga, I know, but how lovely to come back to the warm atmosphere of Yoga5 and the hugs (and help in headstand) of my pals there.
Posted by Karen Christensen at 4:32 PM | Comments (0)
October 31, 2006
David's new book about the Clinton AME Zion Church
David's new book, Sewing Circles, Dime Suppers, and W.E.B. Du Bois: A History of the Clinton AME Zion Church, was launched o
n Saturday at the church's 136th anniversary. Last year the church celebrated its 124th anniversary, and the leap in years was the result of David's research. Apparently it could gain another two years if something other fact David's unearthed turns out to be true, so that 140th anniversary gets closer and closer.
The book is the moving story of a small, brave community inspired by mutual commitment and by a great love of God. Pastor Esther Dozier is an amazing leader and someone whose faith is palpable. I think she must have liked the way David closed his talk, by reading part of a statement written at the annual meeting of the Sunday Schools Convention of the AME Zion New England Conference, held at the church in Great Barrington in September 1895:
The committee on the state of the nation issued a report expressing grave concern about the treatment of Black people and about lynching. There were nearly 5,000 lynchings in the United States from 1882 to 1968. About 80 percent took place in the South, and 73 percent of those lynched were Black. Whites who were lynched were typically accused of helping Blacks or of opposing lynching. The committee noted:
Although there is reported to be a revival of industry throughout the land, and this year’s grain crop is tremendous in its proportions, the condition of the Negro citizen in this nation continues to be one of anxious solitude. The deplorable spirit of lawlessness, as manifested in lynchings, seems no longer to continue itself within its former well understood limits, but, while still controlling action in its old familiar haunts, is spreading itself over the land, entering even that splendid commonwealth, which gave to our nation the immortal president, Abraham Lincoln. What we need in this critical condition of public affairs is just what we needed in the dark days of slavery—men to “stand on the wall.” As did Garrison, Phillips, Sumner and Douglas, hurling their thunderbolts at the citadel of injustice, and swaying the rulers and people of the American nation into a recognition and practice of the principles of the constitution of the United States. God’s blessing cannot long continue with a nation whose people are indifferent to, or careless of the claims of justice to each and all of its citizens. The future of our country depends upon our activity along the lines laid down in the great command, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart; and thy neighbor as thyself.”
That's where he stopped, and there were tears in his eyes.
Posted by Karen Christensen at 12:29 PM | Comments (0)
October 23, 2006
Vermont scenery en route home from the New England Library Association conference
David and I are just back from a whirlwind trip to Burlington, Vermont, where the New England Library Association was meeting. We had a lively and enjoyable dinner with our New England sales team, led by Paul Davis. More about them to come, but I wanted to post these photos from the drive home, to give distant readers a sense of the exuberant decorations one sees from time to time in otherwise sedate New England.
The first photo (doubleclick to enlarge) is of Halloween decorations, our version of demon gods. The second is a mobile home (trailer; caravan) painted to look like the black and white Vermont cows made famous by Ben & Jerry's.
Posted by Karen Christensen at 2:03 PM | Comments (0)
October 19, 2006
Berkshire's other lives
Halloween's approaching, a wonderful occasion in New England. The tradition of harvest season decoration is alive and well, and in our neighborhood trick-or-treating retains a traditional feeling--though a lot of the kids seem to have been driven in from the surrounding hills, and we are always in a panic about having enough candy.
With that dressing up in prospect, it occurred to me that I never posted this photo from a Berkshire Publishing "Our Other Lives" day a few weeks ago. We dress so casually that there has also been talk about having a dress-up Friday, as offices in the city have casual Friday, and I'm sure we'll be doing something for Halloween (with pumpkin doughnuts included, I hope).
I'm going to mix up names and let you figure out who's who (double-click the photo for a larger view): Liz is a cyclist (and squash player), Marcy recently participated in a national fitness program in Washington DC, Scott is an Eagle Scout and assistant troop master, David loves to paint (walls), Karen gardens, Jenn is plays Ultimate Frisbee, and Rachel runs a fantasy role-playing website. Joe is wearing a racing jacket but the fact is he just happened to be wearing that. A party hat might have been the right attire for him!
We're missing a few regulars here, and will try to get some more photos up for Halloween. Our website's about to have new features, more RSS feeds, more about staff and associates, and a lot more about our contributing authors and editors. There will be photos, but probably not as colorful (or silly) as the ones from the team here in Great Barrington.
Posted by Karen Christensen at 4:43 AM | Comments (0)
October 16, 2006
Mao in bed
There's nothing like having the right book to hand in a moment of need, but I'd not have imagined that a biography of Mao would be perfect for a weekend wrapped in blankets, sneezing and wheezing with the head cold that kindly waited to blossom till I got home from London.
Whille Mao's face is as familiar to me as it is to most people interested in China, and while I'd read about him in many articles and books, Jonathan Spence's short biography, in the Penguin Lives series, is the first account of his life I've read. I had read reviews of the recent biographies that focused on his sex life, and just recently, before interviewing James MacGregor Burns for the January issue of Guanxi: The China Letter, I was fascinated by Burns's account of Mao as a leader who never did things the way other great leaders of history had--creating something of a challenge for those trying to build grand theories of leadership.
A few years ago, I bought photos from the Cultural Revolution at a market stall and heard about the Cultural Revolution restaurants that had become trendy. China coming to terms with its past, I thought, minimizing the Mao decades. But in Shanghai last month, visiting CELAP, I learned something about how Mao matters today. In fact, the central government has chosen to build two leadership schools at places where Mao lived before coming to power in 1949. Spence's biography is an ideal introduction, concise and balanced.
Libraries were terribly important in Mao's early life: he studied daily at a public library in Hunam, the province where he was born and educated, and he worked at the Beijing University library (Spence calls it Beijing University, but all the Chinese people I know say Peking--it is their one use of the Wade-Giles transliteration of 'northern city'). He also ran a substantial book business in Hunan in the 1920s. I had always heard about his reverence for the peasantry and abhorrence of intellectuals, but he was obviously a far more complex person than that suggests, operating (and surviving) in circumstances of grave risk and difficulty. Some of the challenges he and his colleagues faced, in early days as well as later, echo the challenges faced by China today: a huge rural population, industralized Western countries seeking economic advantage, and provincial officials resistant to change.
After finishing the biography, I spent the rest of the day sleeping and listening to Pride and Prejudice on tape: something of a cultural contrast!
Posted by Karen Christensen at 8:05 AM | Comments (0)
October 13, 2006
The upside of jetlag
I'll the traveling I’ve done of late (Beijing, Guangzhou, Hong Kong, Shanghai, home. Amsterdam, London, home. London, Frankfurt, London, and finally HOME) has an upside for some friends and family. I’ve discovered that they prefer me a little jetlagged.
Trevor wrote, in response to work enquiries and to the promise of English goodies for lunch today, “I’ll try to get in the morning as I know you'll probably be fading a bit by afternoon (then again that MIGHT be a good thing for me).” This reminded me of Rachel’s comment a few days after I got home last time, as I sat on her bed talking. I’d brought her morning tea and instead of just leaving the tray I stayed to ask her about a few things. “Mummy, you’re getting over your jetlag,” she said, “and it’s driving me crazy. Do you think we could talk later?”
But I have returned with a cold. That should keep me low key for at least a couple days.
Posted by Karen Christensen at 3:05 PM | Comments (0)
September 23, 2006
Rituals of homecoming
It’s offputting to be a “CEO blogger.” When I was interviewed by Rachel Konrad for the AP article on "Chiefs who blog," she was startled when I said I post my posts myself. “Don’t you run them by Legal or R&D?” she asked. Not exactly.
It’s self-censorship that I’m most affected by. Should I admit that one of the first things I do when I get home from a business trip is bake bread? It’s true, but is it CEO behavior? Maybe in that new and better world we need to build! Anyhow, the fact is that having homemade bread in the bread box is something my familiy is used to, and making it is one of the ways I reground myself. It’s also garden clean-up season, and my autumn bulbs have started to arrive. Before going back to the office yesterday, I planted a patch of saffron crocuses, near a sunken boulder that I hope will provide some extra warmth (absorbed from the sun, of course) during the winter. Dirt under my fingernails: a good way to know that I am home.
Posted by Karen Christensen at 5:12 AM | Comments (0)
August 7, 2006
I didn't make it to Wikimania
It was a glorious weekend in the Berkshires--bright blue skies, cool breezes, and clean green scents. But it was a mixed-up weekend, too. I was almost ready to set off for Boston on Saturday morning, to speak on a panel at Wikimania, when I realized that I haven't driven more than a short distance since early May, before I sprained my ankle the first day of the SIIA Summit in San Francisco. A three-hour drive each way did not seem prudent, with my ankle still sore after almost any special pressure. I am nursing it carefully, and doing a special yoga routine as therapy, because I leave for China in three weeks and must be in good shape for that. But I guess I'm still not adapted to the situation, since I really didn't think about the long drive until it was almost time to leave.
My adventure outing on Sunday, mentioned last week, was also a mix-up. David was able to drive me to Charlemont, a village north of Amherst, about an hour and a half away. Julie was well aware of the ankle situation and had been very reassuring about the river trip and said I could wear my air cast or a brace. But I never got a chance to find out if this water sports are okay for someone with a recovering sprain, because David and I went to one place to meet, based on a web link Jules had sent, and she went to another, thinking we must surely know where the Zoar Gap parking lot was. It was apparently a "pushy" day on the river and the friend she was with flipped and had to be rescued by three kayakers, so maybe I had a lucky escape. I don't need that kind of adventure just yet!
I now know a lot more about the water sports available in western Massachusetts, though, and am amazing at how much is practically on our doorstep. There's apparently some good bouldering and climbing in Great Barrington itself, but I'll save that for later in the year. I'm in training for China now.
Posted by Karen Christensen at 8:33 AM | Comments (0)
July 10, 2006
Berkshire Publishing is "Wacky, wild, and welcoming"
We're reorganizing our website because we have so much new stuff going on, including a growing block of blogs on different subjects (mostly written by me, but that too is changing), and I was sorting through a folder of "Website ideas" on the train to DC yesterday. I came across this, from a 2002 email:
Subject: Wacky, wild, and welcoming
Karen,
Here are a few more things you might add for the Against the Grain article:
* Flexible schedules for working parents
* A welcoming environment for kids who need to accompany parents to work
*Power meetings to air issues and to come up with visions for the future
* Massages
* Company canoe and scooter
* Dumpling partyMarcy [Ross]
I can see that there are a few things in that list that readers might wonder about, and I'll be glad to explain, some rainy day, about the massages (by long-time Berkshire pal Tom Pemberton of Back To Life) and the provenance of "power meeting" to describe our planning sessions. I'll bet Marcy, too, would be happy to explain. Her note was written when I was doing a Q&A with Tom Gilson, reference editor at Against the Grain. Coincidentally, I've just agreed to guest-edit an issue of the journal, the December/January ALA Midwinter Issue, and our focus, in short form, is simply innovation. In publishing and librarianship. Please write to me if you have questions we should be addressing!
And even though all the things Marcy mentions are true, I wouldn't want anyone to think that things have been always been perfectly harmonious at Berkshire Publishing. Sometimes people haven't seen eye to eye, or had the same values or priorities. But as the company has evolved, things get better and better--and we do manage to have a lot of fun, even between chair massage days.
Posted by Karen Christensen at 3:42 PM | Comments (0)
July 5, 2006
Summer on the Hill
There are two Hills in my life. One is the urban ghetto called "The Hill" in the 1980s TV program Hill Street Blues , which David and I have been indulging in, now that it's on DVD. David has even started to end staff meetings with Sergeant Esterhouse's usual warning, "Let's be careful out there." Now that it's on DVD, staffers like Joe DiStefano are willing to give Hill Street Blues a try. We had offered him the video tape highlights collection a while back and he had to decline, "I think when I was a kid we had one of those machines, but I don't know what happened to it." Now we have a technology Joe recognizes, and Liz too wants to take a look. We may just make it a requirement, watching this show. The police captain who is one of the main characters is a wonderful leadership model, always ready to listen, clear and principled, and quick witted. I look forward to the day when we do our "leadership in popular culture" database; I claim the entry on Hill Street Blues.
And I live on "The Hill" in Great Barrington. It's really Castle Hill, I suppose, but locals just call it The Hill. We're lucky to be here, and marvel over the way a five-minute walk (well, a 10-minute walk, if you're Rachel and read a book the whole way) from Main Street, which is jammed with tourists tense about finding a parking spot, to birdsong and cool peacefulness. I wrote about my garden a few days ago and here's a photo of the stream bed I mentioned.
Posted by Karen Christensen at 7:28 PM | Comments (0)
June 30, 2006
This year's summer interns
About this time every year the papers run articles about the pros and cons the cultural manifestation called "the internship." In theory, having some extra help in the summer makes sense because regular employees want to take vacations then. But the articles I've read are filled with complaints from employers and interns alike: the interns don't know how to dress or how to work; the bosses give the interns nothing but photocopying.
Every year we wonder if we're really going to hear from suitable interns. We don't have photocopying and coffee fetching for them to do, but much higher level of work that requires attention and intelligence and a some genuine understanding of what we're trying to accomplish, and the quality we're aiming for. That sounds good, but on the downside we also expect them to be incredibly flexible--ready to jump on a new project at a moment's notice. And we're a tiny group, without the kind of hierarchy that bigger companies have. That often sounds attractive, but the reality is that it can be confusing, and frustrating.
We've had wonderful luck with interns in the past--Julie Bourbeau from last summer has a job open here any time (sadly for us, she wants to work in DC!). This summer's looking even better because we have a total of four interns. Tom and Rachel are old hands, but this year we have Jake Makler back, too. He's a high school student who has a remarkable capacity to plough through huge amounts of manuscript, doing clean-up work but also paying attention to what it's about, and figuring out how to use macros and such to speed up tedious editorial chores. Last year he worked on Patterns of Global Terrorism; I hope we'll have more uplifting topics for him this year!
Ashley Winseck is a college student who was put straight to work on a task known at Berkshire Publishing as ARFing: the entering of changes from Author Response Forms for our Global Perspectives project. This is not a job for the faint of heart. It requires meticulous care, and this project is especially difficult because our authors come from around the world and the subject of the work is controversial. She has excellent guides in editors Marcy Ross and Cassie Lynch, but it's still quite a challenge. The great thing about having interns and other staff recently out of college is that they help us shape our publications to respond to their questions, their concerns about the future, and their desire for straight talk, humor, and even a little style. (Yes, sometimes I feel I've walked into a student center. But not, fortunately, like I've walked into a dorm, at least not yet, though there is something odd going on on the whiteboard in one of the offices.)
In bloom in Great Barrington: Flanders poppies. Read about them.
Posted by Karen Christensen at 6:09 AM | Comments (0)
June 19, 2006
Reading between the lines of the Tanglewood program
Summer's finally arrived in the Berkshires, with a temperature of 90 degrees Fahrenheit yesterday. I finally opened the Tanglewood brochure that's been lying on my desk for several days. Tanglewood is the summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra and probably the most famous of Berkshire summer venues. It gets tremendous crowds--over 20,000 people on some nights--but it's only a 20-minute drive so we try to get there once or twice a year.
Tanglewood's a bit like Glyndebourne, in England, in that people have elaborate picnics on the lawn, and because it's so crowded you have to get there early for a prime spot. People bring folding tables and even candelabra, but reading the program I see that open flames are forbidden, and attendees are warned that, "No areas of the lawn may be staked or cordoned off for any reason." Staked or cordoned off? Not exactly the community spirit that makes open air concerts so appealing. Unfortunately, this warning rings all too true: it does seem that the people who visit the Berkshires are wealthier and more frantic every year, and many seem to lack any sense of community or civic responsibility. They're hostile drivers and even more hostile (and inept) when parking their cars. I'm not so sure I want to face the lawn at Tanglewood this year!
Posted by Karen Christensen at 1:03 PM | Comments (0)
May 26, 2006
Norman Rockwell and the African American Trail Guide
Norman Rockwell, the iconic American painter, is a local figure round here. In one of his paintings, Norman Rockwell's "The Golden Rule", which can be seen on the page linked here, had local people as models. Two of the models in this painting are the children of Elaine Gunn, with whom David has been working on the African American Trail Guide to the Berkshires. This book captures the stories of an amazing array of people who have been part of this community, and I'm sure we'll see it widely read and used. It'll be available in September.
Posted by Karen Christensen at 8:21 AM | Comments (0)
May 5, 2006
The most beautiful walk in the world
That title is not meant to be a truth: there are thousands, millions, of other beautiful walks. But when I walked to work yesterday down Castle Hill, I felt that there could be nothing more beautiful. Great Barrington is a small town nestled in a river valley with East Mountain rising on one side. I live on the other side, and as I walk to the office on Main Street I enjoy lovely New England clapboard houses, some Victorian and a few earlier, painted in pale eggshell colors, white and beige and just barely green. There are rosy tulips and lingering daffodils, and the white and pink crabapples are just beginning to blossom. Two mossy, lichened-covered flights of stone steps led to houses on a steep bank, and then the view opens to East Mountain and its sisters sweeping to the north. The church steeples and red brick commercial buildings of the town are garlanded with pear blossom, the sun is shining, and there's a sense of excitement and pleasure on people's faces. (After all, as a man I overheard yesterday said, "It's nice and warm and there's not even blackflies yet.")
Posted by Karen Christensen at 5:48 AM | Comments (0)
April 11, 2006
Spring is sprung
Well, maybe. Fingers crossed. After thinking nothing but China China China, it occurs to me to look out my window at Town Hall and remember just where on the planet I am. Readers of this blog (it pleases me to hear from people who check in here regularly, by the way, so do drop me a line) might like to know that daffodils are starting to bloom in Great Barrington, and though the trees will be bare for more than a month, the grass is green and the nubby violet plants are starting to put out leaves. When I see them, I think of the first year I was here. I was invited to a birthday party in April, just about now, for a older and wealthy woman whom I barely knew. What to bring? Coming from California, and not knowing the flora of this area at all, I somehow thought of spring violets as an appropriate gift. I went to a nursery and asked if they had any potted violets. The nurseryman looked at me as if I were mad, but he explained kindly that although he had no violets there were some attractive hyacinths.... Within a couple of weeks, the lawns everywhere around were covered in violets. How foolish I felt!
This year, with a sustainability project in progress, I've taken to gathering spring weeds. We had a wonderful salad of garlic mustard and dandelions the other day. Now that I think about it, violets are edible, too: I could have tossed in a few leaves.
Posted by Karen Christensen at 4:32 PM | Comments (0)
March 31, 2006
A taste of spring
I've heard a joke about the seasons in Vermont, that there's winter and the Fourth of July. But the end of March has been balmy and everyone's enjoying it (global warming or no). I've been making some visits in Vermont and New Hampshire, but hear that Jenn organized a frisbee game on the lawn behind Town Hall yesterday, and that there were nude male sunbathers on another building in town. An exciting day at Berkshire Publishing, and an interesting day for me, visiting YBP, the major academic library supplier based in a small town in New Hampshire. They were the first supplier we started working with, and they've always been helpful and collegial. The company's full name is Yankee Book Peddler, and it's fun to think of their tremendous reach today, distributing nationally and internationally, from a start in a town even smaller than Great Barrington.
The students in Hanover (Dartmouth College) were wearing shorts and sandals, though they may be back in ski jackets tomorrow (I talked to a woman Wednesday who had been skiing in Great Barrington). It's going to be six weeks or more till the trees are in leaf, and we may well see another snowstorm or two. But this is a time when everyone agrees that we should seize the day.
Posted by Karen Christensen at 6:24 AM | Comments (0)
March 12, 2006
What cellphones and IM tell us about evolution
I can tell what projects David is working on by the things he notices. He came back from getting the Sunday paper and mentioned that everyone who drove past seemed to be on their cellphones. At first he saw this as a sign of the encroachment of urban life, but realized,he said, that until recently humans have spent almost all their time in close contact with lots of other people. Hunting and gathering in groups, farming and cooking and sewing together, and even sleeping in the same rooms. So the teenage compulsion to IM with a dozen people at once and talk to one friend after another is natural in terms of our cultural evolution. What's unnatural is living in isolation.
It's no surprise that one of our next big projects is the Berkshire Encyclopedia of World Cultures, "A roadmap to the cultural landscape of the contemporary world." But we'll still be trying to drag Rachel away from computer and phone to go for a walk. That's natural, too.
Posted by Karen Christensen at 7:59 PM | Comments (0)
February 27, 2006
Du Bois in Great Barrington
Tonight we watched a documentary about the life of W.E.B. Du Bois, the famous scholar-activist, in a cinema only a few steps from where Du Bois and his mother lived at the top of Railroad Street. The cinema was sold out—unbelievable for a documentary here—because suddenly Du Bois is hot. The carpetbaggers were there, but there were also the stalwart people who have worked for decades to give Du Bois proper acknowledgement in this hometown he loved.
I felt gratified, because it was my wanting to see the documentary that brought it to town. Back in December I went to the History Producers Congress in Rome. I thought of a documentary of Du Bois as a possible project, because of David’s work, and asked David if there was something already. He called Rachel Fletcher, who called Barbara Zheutlin who runs the film series, and who found the film and brought it to us tonight.
It was a good film, too, and helped me understand the complexities of Du Bois’s life choices. I was fascinated to see clips of his meeting Mao and speaking in China, and I don’t think Du Bois will be at the top of my film projects list, though it would be interesting to try something different. Some day. In the meantime, there are a couple of books on the African American community to bring out, and a website to set up.
We had another small town moment, going to Castle Street Café because Pearl’s was closed. The lovely waitress there remembered exactly what both of us drink, though we haven’t been there in a year or more.
Posted by Karen Christensen at 9:14 PM | Comments (0)
February 22, 2006
Community at the Coffee Shop
The most disconcerting part of my day is when I step outside, onto Main Street. In the office, which is on the second floor of a big brick building, I'm surrounded by staffers talking about China (and curling), about a sale to India (and curling), about the catalogue for the London Book Fair (and curling).
Then I step outside into small town New England, where I'm not a global publisher but Tom and Rachel's mom, and a former School Committee member whom some people will never forgive for not toeing the line. Nonetheless, I'm a proponent of the tired but still worthy phrase, "think globally but act locally." Now that we're starting work on a Community Building Handbook (Ray Oldenburg, an author I have never met but have admired for over a decade, has agreed to edit it with me) it seemed that I should try to do something locally. Something other than walk to Pearl’s for a drink after work, that is.
So I’ve started going to a knitting group at the Coffee Shop every other Wednesday night. These are the new cool knitters--knitters who blog as we chat and look up patterns online.(Yes, Great Barrington now has wifi.) It’s a wonderful break, a chance to be with a completely different group of people, and has been just the encouragement I needed to pick up a daunting project I started last winter: an afghan that’s a map of the whole wide world. Now that I think about it, maybe my knitting and my publishing aren’t so different after all.
Posted by Karen Christensen at 9:05 PM | Comments (0)
January 29, 2006
Small town doings
After the SIIA Content Summit in New York on Tuesday and Wednesday, I'm looking forward to having most of February at home in Great Barrington. I had flu last time I attended an SIIA event and remember chatting to people in a feverish haze, so it's frustrating to be nursing a mega-cold this weekend as I prepare for two days that ought to be very helpful in moving our online publishing plans forward. The virus has been making the rounds here, and when I look back at how much everyone got done this week I'm amazed. (Here's a preview of one new projectnow in beta: Love US or Hate US? What the World Thinks about America.)
There's some bustle on the home front: a growing interest in W.E.B. Du Bois, who grew up in Great Barrington, with the inevitable efforts of some to make commercial hay. Ignoble but predictable behavior, I know, but the sad part is that it's the outsiders, the white and wealthy newcomers, who are trying to benefit personally from the legacy of an African American while ignoring the local African Americans who have worked since the '60s to keep Du Bois's memory alive here, and who continue to be disadvantaged in this increasingly affluent, second-home-owner region. I'm encouraging David to write an article about this, because it is a story of several social divides: black and white, rich and poor, local and newcomer.
Rachel and I went to Town Hall on Friday to apply for her new US passport. This required, because she's 17 and doesn't yet have a drivers licence, a copy of her birth certificate, which came from London and is for a "US Citizen Born Abroad." I've been something of a mystery as a newcomer from London 14 years ago, though I became well-known and controversial during my years on the School Committee. Now, thanks to that detailed birth certificate, the ladies at Town Hall have a lot of information about my antecedents. When we left work the lights in Town Hall were on. "They're still photocopying it," David quipped.
Posted by Karen Christensen at 8:03 AM | Comments (0)
December 27, 2005
Springsteen Live!
Talked to Jonathan Daen today, our longtime friend and advisor, and found out that the 1975 Bruce Springsteen photos on the Grinnell College website came from a box in his attic. My son Tom just finished his first semester at Grinnell, and we'd read about this early Springsteen concert in the college magazine, but we had no idea that buttoned-down Jonathan, now a financial guy in Springfield, MA, was an avid concert goer, and ace photographer, in those days! Bruce Springsteen, performing at Darby Gym, Grinnell College, 1975. The photos are quite stunning and I told Jonathan how impressed I was. "It wasn't hard, there were only 500 people there. I was in the front row."
Posted by Karen Christensen at 5:20 PM | Comments (0)
December 5, 2005
Home to western Massachusetts
I'm still en route home, after almost 24 hours (which allowed time for a meeting in London and, most important, a trip to Neal's Yard for cheese and Monmouth Street for coffee beans). Checking mail at Grand Central--I admit it, I love Starbucks--I found an email about a new program: Shop Western Mass--Local Products from Western Massachusetts--Think Outside the Box Store!. Interesting to see this endeavor to get people to shop locally, all to the good. But I don't see Great Barrington!
Posted by Karen Christensen at 8:02 PM | Comments (0)
November 22, 2005
Du Bois signs okayed
I guess we have to give 'em credit for admitting they were wrong (something that cannot, yet, be granted to the president of the United States, even though staunch supporters of the Iraq War are changing sides faster than I can count). The selectboard and School Committee of Great Barrington used to be opposed to honoring W.E.B. Du Bois, and as you'll perhaps remember, we have a new school called "Muddy Brook" as a result.
But in May, to considerable surprise it seemed, townspeople voted 850-431 to approve signs at the entrances to the town, Du Bois's birthplace, stating this fact. Last night the selectboard praised the design of the signs and approved their being ordered. (The signs, incidentally, also bear the town seal so as not to confuse people who might otherwise believe that the sign by the side of the road marks the precise spot at which Du Bois was born. This view ranks up there with the selectman who thought traffic signs saying "Slow Children" would lower the self-esteem of the kids in the neighborhood.)
And Du Bois is now "the father of the civil rights movement in America," according to the Berkshire Eagle, not the Communist locals have loved to loathe since the first attempts to honor him in the late 1960s.
Posted by Karen Christensen at 8:56 AM | Comments (0)
November 15, 2005
No apologies
The "McLibel" film last night opened with actors reading the apologies to McDonald's (I had the punctuation wrong yesterday--sorry!) made by British television statements and newspapers. Now the British do apologize beautifully, and as a result I've taught my children that profuse apologies can diffuse a situation quite remarkably. (I sometimes think I've taught this far too well.) But the apologies to the burger giant were cringing and sickening. What the film didn't convey well enough was that those who apologied did not do so without having had a very heavy hand descend. McDonald's UK made it clear that money was no object: they would spend as much as it took. (They spent over £10 million on the trial.)
Two things undid McDonald's. First, they went after, finally, two people with nothing to lose from a seven-year libel case. They were unemployed but educated and articulate--a group that existed then in Britain quite happily, on the dole and busy with theatre or activism or whatever--and they had no careers at stake. And they were wonderful, as the film shows so well. Decent, humorous, and committed. And daring, too: Dave and Helen secretly taped a private meeting with McDonald's executives at which they were offered a settlement.
Second, the Internet came along. Once McSpotlight launched, there was no way McDonald's could quash free speech in Britain, because details of the trial were immediately broadcast around the world. This is a case where information really did, I think, want to be free.
I've pulled out my McDonald's file, with the original leaflet and the lawyers' letters. Fortunately, they left me alone and did not continue to demand an apology in court; if they had, I might not be here today, at Berkshire Publishing.
Posted by Karen Christensen at 3:55 PM | Comments (0)
November 14, 2005
McDonalds and the McLibel trial
"McLibel" the film is coming to Main Street! I got heart palpitations when I read about this, because I was one of the many environmental and labor (whoops, labour) activists who were victims of McDonalds litigation in Britain. I think I am the only American to have been caught up in that drama, in fact. The fact that a film about the McLibel trial, the longest and most expensive trial in British history, is showing at the Mahaiwe Cinema in Great Barrington, where I moved from London in 1992, is very exciting. For background on this landmark case, visit McSpotlight. My story is also on the site: Home Ecology under attack.
What that piece doesn't explain is that McDonalds wrote to all the bookshop chains in Britain to say that my book was under threat of litigation. The chains, where the book had been selling strongly (it was reprinted twice before its publication date thanks to being selected one of Britain's Top 20 Green Books by the London Observer newspaper with serialization in the Daily Express), returned every copy of the book to the publisher. We never regained momentum, so although McDonalds did not pursue legal action, they did my small publisher, and me (then a single mother), considerable damage. And I guess that was the point!
Posted by Karen Christensen at 9:30 AM | Comments (0)
November 13, 2005
Coming full circle with community and libraries
On Saturday night I went to Stockbridge for an a capella concert at the Congregational Church, one of the most beautiful buildings in the area, at the prodding of my new friend David McCarthy, who was MC of the event. It was an evening when many of the things I care most about came together, in one of those providential circles that life seems to be springing on me these days.
It was a community event, the kind that are essential to sustaining social capital, and which I seldom participate in during these busy days of building a new business. I think I may have been to more evening events in London this year than at home in Great Barrington. Chagrined to admit this, I have resolved to do more to put my principles into practice!
It was a library event, a fundraiser for the Stockbridge Library, and of course libraries are the key and cornerstone for us, especially as we put together our book about America’s beloved community libraries.
And it took place in a church (though the concert itself wasn’t religious in any way). At Berkshire Publishing, we are very much occupied with religion these days--talking about American Christian fundamentalism, discussing the variety of religious experience and belief--and I’ve gone back to work on an article, too, about apocalyptic theology and politics. This will require a great deal of conversation with believers, and my first interviews and early research have already shown me how complicated American Christianity is: it’s not all fiery fundamentalism, and fundamentalism itself takes many forms. So I caught my breath on Saturday night when I looked up and saw right in front of me a marble plaque saying that the famous American preacher and theologian Jonathan Edwards had been the minister at the Stockbridge Congregational Church in the 18th century, then a “humble parish in the wilderness.”
Posted by Karen Christensen at 7:57 PM | Comments (0)
November 11, 2005
Preparing for snow and ice
November is the only time when the weather in Great Barrington reminds me of England . . . in both places, November is a lull before winter, a time of low gray skies, when fallen leaves have blown up against walls and into corners where they soften and fade. But in New England winter looms much larger in our minds, and getting ready is much more important because once the temperature drops and snow falls, it can be difficult, even impossibl, to do certain things.
Oddly enough, it's during this quiet period that we have started a whole range of new projects. There's a springtime feeling in the office that at first had me puzzled. Why were we so suddenly energetized about starting new book series and even a film project? Some of it has to do with my recent travels, with particular synchronicity of people and ideas, and of course with long-term business strategy. But I think we're also inspired to get things going now that will require lots of sustained, shared work through the winter.
Carrie Owens joined us recently as a developmental editor, and in addition to managing Heart of the Community: The Libraries We Love nominations process, she's working with David and me on trade publishing projects. Some of these we'll publish under the Berkshire imprint but some will be packaged with trade houses. Carrie used to work in film animation and special effects, and one of the things she brings from that industry is an appreciation of humor. I have a sign over my desk that says, "It's the content, stupid," and I think I'm going to add one Carrie says they had in the film studio, "Funny is money." Not that our encyclopedias are going to become comical--though we have added what a Choice reviewer referred to as "whimsical illustrations"--but we are having fun with these smaller books, which will take our work on comparative religion, world cultures, and global perspectives to a wider audience. And maybe David will finally have a chance to do something with the jokes from around the world he's so fond of.
Posted by Karen Christensen at 7:15 AM | Comments (0)
November 1, 2005
Halloween in New England
I've called the blog category on Main Street, but we live in the country, really, and here's a photo from the farm owned by Rachel Fletcher, a friend and colleague of David's. New England has a wonderful tradition of Halloween graveyard displays, and this is one of the best I've ever seen.
Posted by Karen Christensen at 5:58 AM | Comments (0)
September 19, 2005
W.E.B. Du Bois's encyclopedia
Yesterday was the annual birthday celebration at the AME Zion Church in Great Barrington. David is finishing his history of the church, and also continuing work on the African-American Trail Guide project. There was also a meeting at the church on Monday evening, to explain the Trail Guide--which is now being circulated in draft form--and to ask for comments and additional information. It was the usual suspects, a mix of middle-aged white do-gooders and members of the church, along with a smattering of visitors who'd read about it in the paper. What I enjoy most about these meeting is Reverend Esther Dozier, who manages the events at her church with poise, humor, and patience. She's the one who will occasionally remind people of the hard truths about the lives of the black community.
I'm always intrigued by the fact that W.E.B. Du Bois, the greatest African-American intellectual of the twentieth century, and one of the greatest American intellectuals of any color, was born into this community, and grew up in this small town. He attended the AME Zion Church as a teenager, and wrote about its events for a New York paper.
Du Bois also, later in life, planned a great encyclopedia project, the Encyclopedia Africana. Du Bois himself was never able to finish it, but there is now a work with that name, and Du Bois is credited with inspiring it (as he certainly inspires us). But my favorite story about Du Bois and an encyclopedia is quite different. Here is a historical example of a dramatic, and lamentable, conflict between editors and contributors.
According to biographer David Levering Lewis, Du Bois submitted a commissioned essay, "The Negro in the United States," in May 1928, for the 14th edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica. Four other black experts had been asked to contribute, and they were apparently overjoyed to be included.
But somewhere along the line there was (as is wont to happen today) an "upheaval" in the editorial offices, and a new editor, Franklin Henry Hooper, who "blue-penciled whole paragraphs, altered the emphases of phrases, and nitpicked over words." Hooper did not trust the facts or numbers provided by Du Bois, and in fact saw no reason that Du Bois should mention the number of Negroes lynched at all.
Joel Spingarn, a well-known philanthropist, offered a compromise but in the end Du Bois’s “Otherwise excellent entry” was dropped from the Encyclopedia Britannica. I'm inspired, as I write this, to find a copy of that entry. Sometimes what isn't published is more interesting, and important, than what is.
Posted by Karen Christensen at 2:25 PM | Comments (0)
September 9, 2005
Small town experiences
I haven’t really got used to living in a small town. I grew up in anonymous suburbs and then spent my 20s in London. Great Barrington is different. People walk down Main Street looking around to see who’s out, what they’re doing, where they’re going. When I first arrived, 13 years ago, I found this disconcerting. Today, I had another kind of small town experience. A new tenant on our floor stopped by, after we’d exchanged a couple of phone messages about our possibly subletting an office. We hadn’t met, but when he came in he looked at me and said, “I know we don’t agree about the school zone violations, but I’m opposed to mega-schools, too. That was you, wasn’t it?”
He struck a tender spot, and not for the first time of late. Only a few weeks ago I was buying some books at a new shop in Stockbridge and the bookseller said, “Your name’s familiar. Weren’t you the one who tried to save the small schools?” That had me in tears for a moment, because I still deeply feel the failure. It’s been five years, and I forget how much local drama that battle created (we still don’t get coverage in the Berkshire Eagle because of the stand I took, or so some friends say). But what I don’t know is how our new neighbor found out who I was. The disagreement, you see, about what he calls the school zone violation (and I would call the drug bust) took place at Pearl’s one evening, when I started talking to a couple of people sitting next to us. He was one of them, was pleasant and sensible enough, and I recognized him when I saw him today. But I didn’t know his name, and I wonder how he knew mine.
That’s what small town life—and community—is all about. David pays much more attention these days than I, reading the local papers and chatting to people on Main Street when he goes to the post office. A small town community is formed from overlapping ties and, when we’re at our best, a recognition that we need to live together and learn to respect one another’s views. The school fight wasn’t a clean one, unfortunately, and there’s a good bit of pain underlying the final sentence of the acknowledgements to the Encyclopedia of Community, where I say something about Great Barrington, the place where I learned about both the upsides and downsides of community life. That battle hasn’t been forgotten, though, and I guess I’d better get used to that.
We've had to reset the login requirements because I was deluged with "Comments" spam--147 messages overnight--but I'd still love to tempt a reader to say something about their experience with the downsides of community, when there's a major controversy.
Posted by Karen Christensen at 9:06 PM | Comments (0)
August 5, 2005
Friday afternoon wine and cheese
A favorite member of our advisory board is Mark Danderson, until recently the marketing director at New England Journal of Medicine. Mark is about to leave for Australia where he is joining Medicine Today as a partner, an exciting move for him but sad for us--having only recently got to know him, it seems a bit soon to see him leave Massachusetts.
He is, though, leaving Berkshire Publishing Group with a special tradition: wine and often cheese on Friday afternoons. Mark visited a couple months ago and we were talking about team building. "Well," he said, "when I worked in Australia [for Medicine Today], they had a very Australian way of doing that," and went on to describe how everyone would gather at the end of the work week. We decided to try it, here in buttoned-up New England, and so far no one has complained and wanted to get back to formatting terrorism articles.
So, time to run, the wine is waiting!
Posted by Karen Christensen at 4:07 PM | Comments (0)
July 9, 2005
Backwoods or not?
I was getting used to people expecting a publishing bumpkin when we first meet, but the Berkshires--a range of small mountains, in fact, as well as the westernmost county in Massachusetts--is starting to appear on urban mental maps. This weekend's Financial Times has an article about the Berkshires which calls it "the thinking person's Hamptons." Yesterday's Wall Street Journal reviewed "Follies," the Barrington Stage production we're seeing Tuesday. And this morning's New York Times has a review of "Rinaldo," the opera we are seeing tonight in the Mahaiwe Theater, which is in the same building as our offices. (In fact, David suggested we save $75 each by sitting in my office and putting paper cups against the wall. But the new soundproofing put paid to that idea.)
The question on my mind is how this new awareness of the Berkshires, admittedly as an alternative to the Hamptons, will affect business. Will it make it more likely that talented people will want to move here, and that companies like ours will be able to expand and form a more extensive professional job base? One of my goals has long been to create career opportunities in the region, as well as to build the intellectual and human capital of Great Barrington so we can more easily tackle the challenges that face this community.
Things could go either way, I think, to the Hamptons model (the rich and those who provide services to them), or to well-managed development ('smart growth') and diverse, engaged community life('social capital'). I'm busy planning, with some friends and colleagues, how to steer us on the latter course.
Posted by Karen Christensen at 5:01 PM | Comments (0)
June 29, 2005
Home sweet Berkshires
The haze over Chicago was clearing a bit by the time we headed toward O'Hare yesterday, but the contrast between the Dan Ryan Expressway (a frequent location in Sara Paretsky's novels) and the country roads of the Berkshires is breathtaking. I love cities, but coming home in the evening and driving along sleepy roads, not a light on anywhere all the way from the airport, breathing in damp, sweet air (as well as an occasional whiff of a country fragrance like skunk), made this a special homecoming. Our last ALA day was a rush of meetings about our new libraries book. I had a chance to sit in on my first ALA council meeting. "Democracy in action," said my dear friend Nancy Kranich, who was filmed in a debate about the Patriot Act on Monday. The Council meeting reminded me of our annual Town Meeting without the crazy characters and policemen stationed at the door. I'm already thinking about San Antonio in January, and our first Frankfurt Book Fair display in October. But I also plan to do some gardening, the best way to wind down and reconnect with this place I love.
Posted by Karen Christensen at 9:01 AM | Comments (0)
May 30, 2005
Asian vista
It’s Memorial Day in the States, and to celebrate we had a pan-Asian party yesterday for staff and some of our farflung freelancers. It was great to see Francesca, who has worked for us since the Encyclopedia of Modern Asia: her particular expertise is Japan, and her contribution was sticky rice in sweet wrappers. Margaux brought southeast Asian noodle-and-peanut-sauce spring rolls, and there was a tray of sushi, too, along with the Korean barbeque and Chinese dumplings (jiaoxi) we’d made. Tom is heading off to Shanghai soon, and his Chinese professor John Weinstein came to join us. There were a couple of librarians, too, including Dana Cummings of Simon’s Rock College, who has been a fan and advisor for nearly as long as Trevor Young has been tackling our IT challenges. A farewell to Tom, a celebration of the start of summer (and Margaux and Matt’s new house!), and also a signal that Asia is again on our horizon.
Posted by Karen Christensen at 8:24 PM | Comments (0)
May 24, 2005
Du Bois wins 2-1
W.E.B. Du Bois won by the biggest margin at yesterday's town election (which came one week after Town Meeting):
"Voters OK Du Bois signs." The vote was nonbinding, but encourages the town to place signs at the entrances to Great Barrington saying that this is the birthplace of W.E.B. Du Bois. The selectboard still hasn't managed to put up signs to direct tourists to off Main Street parking (discussion of this idea, which everyone agrees is an excellent one, has become a yearly ritual), but maybe one of these days....
And hurrah for Peter Fish, a Democrat whose father and grandfather were famous Republican congressmen. First time I've put up a lawn sign for the winning candidate.
Posted by Karen Christensen at 6:33 AM | Comments (0)
May 7, 2005
Berkshire News(letter) for May
Berkshire News May 2005 is available now. Sign up at Berkshire Publishing to receive this regularly, in HTML or plain vanilla text if you prefer.
Posted by Karen Christensen at 6:05 PM | Comments (0)
May 2, 2005
Du Bois and another view of community
I’ve written before about the controversy in Great Barrington over honoring the town’s most famous citizen, the African-American intellectual W.E.B. Du Bois, with signs at the entrance to town. Last week I got a healthy dose of contrary perspectives, and insight into how this issue shows up fundamental divides in a twentieth-first-century community.
It is so easy simply to ignore (or vilify) those on the other side of an issue like this. It seems obvious, to many people, that we should be proud that this is Du Bois's birthplace, and equally obvious that any opposition is based on racism. It's hard not to think so when you hear that there were people in town distributing leaflets opposing the signs (all rumored, by the way: no one involved in the pro-Dubois effort has seen these documents). We even heard that copies of some of his writing about communism had been distributed on Sunday at a church in town.
I find unsubstantiated rumors irritating—-I want to know what’s really going on. (Having been the target of rumors and anonymous phone calls during my three-year experience as an elected member of the School Committee, open debate is the only air I want to breathe.) Since I’d been told who was thought to be leadiing the anti-Dubois campaign, I called him.
I could do this because I knew this man from my days on the School Committee, when I was the most prominent proponent of preserving our small local schools. We stopped a centralized building project in 1999, with the support of many of the more conservative folks in town.
The conversation didn’t start well. His first response was, “I’ve never made a public statement about that.” But after I explained that my concern was the lack of open discussion and that I really wanted to understand how people felt about this issue, we talked for over an hour. I learned two vital things.
First, from the perspective of many local people, Du Bois has had plenty of honors already: two postage stamps, books about him, the UMass library named after him. He left Great Barrington and was successful in the wide world, and he belongs to that world and not to the town. (They would prefer to see locally important people honored.)
Second, they feel that newcomers are forcing Du Bois down their throats at every turn and that it'll never stop. Surely this is how they feel about lots of things we newcomers care about, whether it's sushi or yoga or the New York Times. What we need, I believe, is new ways to talk about this, and a lot of what my friends at the Saguaro Seminar at Harvard--who worked with us on the Encyclopedia of Community--call "bridging social capital." That is, connections not with those who are like us but those who are different. And we newcomers are different; surely it's up to us to give a little, and ask a few questions. I have a feeling we'll be a lot more successful when we do. (BTW, David Levinson is the editor of the forthcoming Berkshire County African-American Heritage Trail Guide, so we're in the thick of this.)
Posted by Karen Christensen at 6:25 PM | Comments (0)
February 28, 2005
Where everyone knows your name
We talk about community a lot, online and off, and created an award-winning reference on the subject, too, the Encyclopedia of Community. One of the things we had in mind was the TV show "Cheers," many people's idea of community--a place where everybody knows your name. Well, it's really true here in Great Barrington. There's a lovely bar right under my office (the Celestial Bar at Castle Street Cafe, if you're passing through town), and Mike and Sally not only know our names but what we drink.
But there's another angle to this. What if no one can remember your name? I was embarrassed a couple weeks ago when talking to an English colleague: I didn't know who the current leader of the Conservative Party was. "Say no more," said my friend. Given my strong ties and frequent visits to the UK, he thought this a bad sign for Michael Howard.
It gets worse. David and I were in Boston last week. A young Englishman at the next table was lecturing his companion on British politics, and seemed happily confident about the possibility of the Conservatives retaking Parliament. "Well," he said in response to her question, "there's Tony Blair for Labour, and Michael -" He paused, stuttered, hemmed, and shook his head in frustration. At last I took pity. "Howard," I said. Doesn't say much for his chances, does it, if no one knows his name?
Posted by Karen Christensen at 12:33 PM | Comments (0)
February 19, 2005
Du Bois Under Fire
It's about time that I report on the conflict over whether or not to commemorate the most famous citizen in this small town's history, the African-American scholar and activist W. E. B. Du Bois.
If you were to visit Great Barrington today, on Presidents' Day Weekend when it is full of skiers and second-home owners from New York, you'd think it a sophisticated place, with dozens of sleek restaurants and shops and East Mountain providing a picturesque backdrop. I remember the shock, only a couple years' back, the first time I saw someone using a cellphone on Main Street, but it's now a common sight (watch out though, not all services work). In spite of the surface gloss, however, there are deep divisions amongst the groups that now make up the voting community.
W. E. B. Dubois sledded down the hill outside on snowy February days a hundred years ago: 
"For recreation we played games: "marbles," hi-spy," "duck on a rock," and "Indians." We went mountain climbing and explored caves. We swam, and coasted the long hill from far up Castle Street, across the railroad tracks down to Main Street. Most of the children used to skate; but not I for two reasons: skates cost too much, and mother was afraid of the water." (This photo was taken from high up Castle Street, where Du Bois would set off.)
Du Bois has been controversial here in recent months after a movement began to name a new school after him--quite reasonably, as he is the most eminent graduate of this school district, one of the leading intellectuals of the 20th century, and also someone who dearly loved the town and region. There was considerable resistance on the part of the School Committee (on which I used to serve) and no support from local officials. After a number of stormy meetings, the Committee chose instead to name the school "Muddy Brook.". Now there's an effort to get Church Street, where Du Bois was born, named after him, and David Levinson, who is writing a book about the AME Zion church Du Bois attended, hears that the police and the veterans' are organizing to fight this. The selectboard is divided on the issue. They've done something that's becoming more common when there's a truly controversial issue: they are making it a ballot question instead of an item on the warrant for town meeting in May. This means there'll be no open discussion.
Du Bois wrote that he learned about democracy as a teenager in his hometown of Great Barrington in the 1870s and 1880s, and his stories echo some of the conflicts we see today. I'm reminded of what an old-timer said to me after one of the first town meetings I attended: "In here, this is democracy," he said. Then, sweeping his arm towards the rest of the planet, he added, "Out there, that's just a republic." Here's what Du Bois had to say.
"From early years, I attended the town meeting every Spring and in the upper front room in that little red brick Town Hall, fronted by a Roman "victory" commemorating the Civil War. I listened to the citizens discuss things about which I knew and had opinions: streets and bridges and schools, and particularly the high school, an institution comparatively new. We had in the town several picturesque hermits, usually retrograde Americans of old families. There was Crosby, the gunsmith who lived in a lovely dale with brook, waterfall and water wheel. He was a frightful apparition but we boys often ventured to visit him. Particularly there was Baretown Beebe, who came from forest fastnesses which I never penetrated. He was a particularly dirty, ragged, fat old man, who used to come down regularly from his rocks and woods and denounce high school education and expense.
"I was 13 or 14 years of age and a student in the small high school with two teachers and perhaps 25 pupils. The high school was not too popular in this rural part of New England and received from the town a much too small appropriation. But the thing that exasperated me was that every Spring at Town Meeting, which I religiously attended, this huge, ragged old man came down from the hills and for an hour or more reviled the high school and demanded its discontinuance.
"I remember distinctly how furious I used to get at the stolid town folk, who sat and listened to him. He was nothing and nobody. Yet the town heard him gravely because he was a citizen and property-holder on a small scale and when he was through, they calmly voted the usual funds for the high school. Gradually as I grew up, I began to see that this was the essence of democracy: listening to the other man's opinion and then voting your own, honestly and intelligently." (Du Bois, W. E. B. (1968). The Autobiography of W. E. B. Du Bois. New York: International Publishers, pp. 91-92.)
Note: David Levinson is working on a history of the Clinton African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church in Great Barrington. The church was founded by local Black citizens and recent arrivals from the south in the 1860s. Du Bois was involved in the church as a teenager and wrote a great deal about it in newspaper columns. The church has been the center of the Black community in southern Berkshire County for nearly 150 years.
Posted by Karen Christensen at 4:23 PM | Comments (0)
January 4, 2005
Back to the city
Berkshire Publishing's offices are in a building on Main Street in a small New England town. The population of Great Barrington is only 7,700, though you'd find that hard to believe during busy holiday weeks or the summer months. Actually, it's hard to believe even on a midweek evening in the dark of winter. Things are quieter, and we can often get our favorite seats in the bar at Pearl's, but the town's still humming thanks to the restaurants and Triplex Cinema, the retirees and the second home owners who often spend much more than weekends here.
I'm off to New York in a few minutes, though, and you might find it interesting to visualize the contrast between Great Barrington and Manhattan. I'll drive through quiet streets, where the only activity is around the Dunkin Donuts on South Main, and then on unlit country roads all the way into Connecticut and over the New York line, along the Taconic range, low mountains that even in the rainy dark will be a solid presence. I'll miss the open vistas today, driving both ways in the dark.
From Wassaic I get a train straight to Grand Central Station. I feel like I've landed on the moon when I come up the platform and walk into the vast central hall. I look up at the stars in the celestial roof and feel the movement on every side. There are more people in the station than in the whole of Great Barrington. For many people in the Berkshires (only three hours' travel in total, by car and train) going to New York is a once in a decade, even once in a lifetime, experience. But for me, stepping into the city is another kind of coming home.
I'll be writing more about Great Barrington, hoping to give our farflung contacts a sense of what it's like living and growing a global publishing business here in the Berkshire Hills. I often think of W. E. B. Dubois, who was born and grew up here, sledded down the hill outside my window, and went on to be one of the most influential intellectuals and activitists of the 20th century.
Posted by Karen Christensen at 6:27 AM | Comments (0)