July 5, 2016 By Mickey Friedman “All you need is love,” the Beatles sang. But sadly hate is ever-present. When I was a boy, bullies maimed but rarely killed. Of course, many whites hated blacks; some in the South enough…
Better Than Best
June 22, 1916 By Mickey Friedman With great recognition comes great responsibility. Living in Smithsonian Magazine’s The Best Small Town in America is an honor, and Great Barrington and its people have done a bang-up job serving as a sterling…
Hubbled and Humbled
By Mickey Friedman June 13, 2016 I’m finishing up my second I Ching mystery, Folly. It’s an act of faith, believing that stringing together word after word, ever so slowly, for me if not for Stephen King, paragraphs coalescing into…
A Reason To Believe
By Mickey Friedman May 12, 2016 We are once again in the midst of a war between the generations. If you missed the end of the stultifying fifties and the metaphorical and real explosions of the sixties, open your eyes.…
Hillary, Billary and Chillary
By Mickey Friedman April 28, 2016 Hillary, Billary, & Chillary. With offices in Little Rock, Chappaqua, and Panama City. And for you tweeters: hashtag ExperienceMatters. I know you Bernouts are resentful. But “corrupt” is just your mean-spirited way of re-defining…
For Landon, Alesia, and Hazel
By Mickey Friedman April 10, 2016 My friends Landon, Alesia, and Hazel live a short walk from GE’s planned PCB-dump off Van Deusenville Road in Housatonic, Massachusetts. Depending on how much or little work GE is forced to do in…
Rise Up for Rising
March 26, 2016 By Mickey Friedman Like many stories, the story about the Lenox or Lee or Housatonic PCB Dump begins and ends with money. The money Monsanto made selling PCBs to GE and Westinghouse. The massive amounts of money…
Embrace the Geese
March 8, 2016 By Mickey Friedman Before the geese, Great Barrington didn’t need public relations. When I got here in seventy-two, there were fewer antiques and more junk. Joneses, a treasure trove of used everything. Bars not bistros. Railroad Street…
Money, Honey: The Sixty-Two
By Mickey Friedman March 23, 2016 Have you ever heard or read something that blew your mind? Short-circuited it. Even though I’ve been writing about money recently, the other day I read something that just plain astounded me. Oxfam reports…
Money Honey Two
By Mickey Friedman February 13, 2016 When it comes to money, honey, two is better than one. Clyde McPhatter sang “before I say I love you so I want: Money, honey … Money, honey, if you want to get along…