$100K matching grant for your local news

Thanks to the generous support of our readers, subscribers, donors and advertisers, The Lake­ville Journal and The Millerton News remain very much alive and thriving as a nonprofit news organization. Our papers – and websites – are bucking the trend of disappearing or shrinking community news sources.

Each day, our editors and reporters bring you in-depth, nuanced coverage of your local community so that you can make informed and inspired decisions about the issues that matter most to you.

In recent weeks alone, our reporters have provided coverage on environmental issues impacting our lakes, roadways and forests; school and town budgets; youth sports from Little League to high school; education, including the retirement of several long-time educators and administrators, youth enrichment and student achievement; new businesses; healthcare, including changes at Sharon Hospital and the much anticipated opening of Community Health and Wellness Center in North Canaan (see story here); affordable housing; real estate; community events; fishing; recreation; movies; art; gardening; food – the list goes on.

We’ve invested in more reporters, a new newsletter, and – in keeping with our mission, news on our newly-launched websites (lakevillejournal.com and millertonnews.com) is now available to all without a paywall.

But, to keep serving you the news you depend on, whether online, on your phone, by email or, yes, in print, we continue to depend on your donations.

In other words, local news needs local financial support to survive.

On that note, I have some very good news. Our board members have pledged $100,000 to match donations made over the next two months. Every donation up to this match amount — whether large or small – will be doubled until June 30.

We are one of the oldest independent local newspapers in the country, and our ambition, with your help, is to remain one of the best.

Please give generously at lakevillejournal.com/donate.

Thank you.

— James H. Clark, CEO/Publisher

Latest News

Revisiting ‘The Killing Fields’ with Sam Waterston

Sam Waterston

Jennifer Almquist

On June 7 at 3 p.m., the Triplex Cinema in Great Barrington will host a benefit screening of “The Killing Fields,” Roland Joffé’s 1984 drama about the Khmer Rouge and the two journalists, Cambodian Dith Pran and New York Times correspondent Sydney Schanberg, whose story carried the weight of a nation’s tragedy.

The film, which earned three Academy Awards and seven nominations — including one for Best Actor for Sam Waterston — will be followed by a rare conversation between Waterston and his longtime collaborator and acclaimed television and theater director Matthew Penn.

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The art of place: maps by Scott Reinhard

Scott Reinhard, graphic designer, cartographer, former Graphics Editor at the New York Times, took time out from setting up his show “Here, Here, Here, Here- Maps as Art” to explain his process of working.Here he explains one of the “Heres”, the Hunt Library’s location on earth (the orange dot below his hand).

obin Roraback

Map lovers know that as well as providing the vital functions of location and guidance, maps can also be works of art.With an exhibition titled “Here, Here, Here, Here — Maps as Art,” Scott Reinhard, graphic designer and cartographer, shows this to be true. The exhibition opens on June 7 at the David M. Hunt Library at 63 Main St., Falls Village, and will be the first solo exhibition for Reinhard.

Reinhard explained how he came to be a mapmaker. “Mapping as a part of my career was somewhat unexpected.I took an introduction to geographic information systems (GIS), the technological side of mapmaking, when I was in graduate school for graphic design at North Carolina State.GIS opened up a whole new world, new tools, and data as a medium to play with.”

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Love letters from Goshen

The marquee at Goshen Players for “A Goodnight Kiss.”

Cinzi Lavin

"A Goodnight Kiss,” premiering June 6 at Goshen Players Playhouse, is a dramatization of real Civil War-era love letters. Written by award-winning playwright Cinzi Lavin and directed by regional theater veteran Kathleen Kelly — both Litchfield County residents — it serves to reminds us that while wars are waged by nations, it is the people who live through them, their lives forever changed.

At the center of “A Goodnight Kiss” is the relationship between Sarah Jane “Jennie” Wadhams, a college student in New Britain, and Sergeant Major Frederick Lucas, a young soldier stationed in Alexandria. Lavin discovered the story of the letters by the couple in a 2002 book by Ernest B. Barker called “Fred and Jennie: A Civil War Story.” Lavin, who holds a certificate in applied history from the University of London and has performed at the White House, read all 90 letters the couple exchanged between 1863 and 1867. “It was like falling into another time,” she recalled. “You hear the dialect, the moral concerns, the humor. Jennie once said someone ‘must think she’s some pumpkins.’ I had to keep that.”

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