August 2002

When I was a kid, I remember being really annoyed by how adults were always whining about how time flew. They’d go on and on about how time seemed to go faster every year, and I swore to myself that when I was grown up, I wouldn’t say such silly things.

So it’s with chagrin that I acknowledge that, yes, time is flying. (If I must make such an inane observation, I’ll at least make it with all the panache I can muster, by quoting the ever-classy Dorothy Parker: “Time doth flit./ Oh shit.”) Hard to believe that it’s August already; the summer is more than half over, and a few evil trees are already showing red leaves. And we’re still in the whirl of summer activity, so I’ll stop dwelling on the march of time and talk about all we’ve got going on.

Tomorrow evening (Friday, August 2), we’ll take over the streets of North Adams, weather permitting, and from there we’ll move on to world domination. Well, okay, we don’t actually have any designs on the rest of the world, and we’re just taking one street — borrowing it, really, and we promise to give it back. (Can you tell I’ve been working hard lately?) On Friday evening and Saturday morning, Inkberry, along with Kidspace and the supercool Greg Scheckler, will be on the sidewalks of Main Street with easels, paper, chalk, and good ideas. It’s Sidewalk Chalk! And it’s free, and it’s for the whole family — everyone is invited to write and draw with us. (If it rains, look for us one week later.) We’re very excited about this, our first outdoor participatory event, and hope as many as possible of you will come down and lend us your creative genius. Participants are welcome to take their work away with them, or to leave it behind, in which case it may be displayed in the windows of Main Street.

We’ve got three workshops in August, starting with Introduction to Screenwriting, taught by Alix Ohlin. That’s a two-week class, meeting Mondays, the 5th and 12th of this month. Then, on the 14th and 28th, we’re delighted to present a special workshop by Joe Manning, North Adams’s best-known chronicler. Joe will lead a class on taking down oral histories, sharing the methods he’s used to create his books, Steeples and Disappearing Into North Adams. The class is called Preserve Your Family History, but that’s just one of the many things you can do with the skills Joe will teach, which include tips on conducting an interview and how to transcribe the results in a clear and readable format. And lastly on the workshops front, artist and calligrapher Ann Kremers will teach a one-day workshop on Sunday, August 25 called Words In Space. This class will look at different ways of presenting text on a page and the effect that presentation (layout, color, print style, etc.) has on meaning. This promises to be a fascinating afternoon situated in the overlap between image and text — another first for Inkberry! As always, information about all these classes (and our readings and events) can be found at our website, http://www.inkberry.org, where you can also download a registration form.

Our reading this month is a special collaboration with Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival — which, aside from being a great thing in its own right, warms the hearts of us Inkberry founders, since it suggests that our baby is on the map. Norton Owen, Director of Preservation at the Pillow, will be reading from the new edition of A Certain Place: The Jacob’s Pillow Story. Owen, a well-respected dance historian, wrote this book, which tells the story and gives a behind-the-scenes glimpse of the Berkshires’ renowned dance institute — now in its 70th year. This reading will be on Saturday, August 17, at 7:30pm at Inkberry, so we hope to see you there.

And what am I doing while time is flying? Working on my writing, mostly, and drawing inspiration from an assortment of excellent novels. I recently read the newest book by David Huddle, La Tour Dreams of the Wolf Girl, and was so impressed that I’m pleased to report David has joined our readings lineup for the fall. (There are some perks to being artistic director of a literary org.) La Tour Dreams… tells two stories from three perspectives; in present-day Vermont, it moves back and forth between the tales of Suzanne, an art historian, and her estranged husband, Jack. As their marriage unravels, Suzanne escapes in daydreams about the subject of her research: the 17th-century French painter, Georges de La Tour. She imagines him through the eyes of one of his models, the “wolf girl” of the title, seeking solace for her own loneliness in the machinations and visions of the elderly artist. Huddle writes clean, efficient prose, giving just enough detail to let his readers get absorbed in the inner life of his characters. He also seems to have a fascination for the way visual art fuels our imaginations. I recommend his work highly.

And that’s quite enough for me. We’ve got so much going on this month, there’s a good chance I’ll be seeing most of you soon. Meanwhile, happy summer.

— Emily