SALISBURY — Salisbury expanded its affordable housing stock in 2025 with the addition of four new three-bedroom homes developed by the Salisbury Housing Trust. Two of the homes were built at 26 and 28 Undermountain Rd, with another two constructed at the top of Perry Street in Lakeville.
Motorists and students from The Hotchkiss School will soon benefit from a new sidewalk along Sharon Road (Route 41) connecting the school to Lakeville village. In November, Salisbury was awarded $800,000 in state funding to construct the sidewalk along the southbound side of the road, linking it to the existing sidewalk between Main Street and Wells Hill Road.
Residents of Salisbury and Sharon will also see changes to how household waste is handled. On Oct. 29, the governor’s office announced that the Salisbury/Sharon Transfer Station had received a state grant to implement a unit-based pricing system — commonly known as “pay as you throw” — and to expand composting operations.
The state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (DEEP) awarded the transfer station $266,692 through its Sustainable Materials Management grant program. The funds will support a gradual, three-phase transition to a pay-per-bag model to replace the current $150 flat fee paid by households. Both the Salisbury and Sharon selectmen endorsed the application when it was submitted in June.
After a sustained three-year effort, the highly invasive hydrilla plant appears to be gone from East Twin Lake. “The good news is, the hydrilla is pretty much gone. We have not found anything,” George Knoecklein of Northeast Aquatic Research (NEAR), the Twin Lakes Association’s limnologist, reported during an Oct. 8 meeting of local, state and federal scientists, environmentalists and stakeholders at O’Hara’s Landing Marina.
But the town and the Lake Wononscopomuc Association will keep a ban on outside boats in effect at Lake Wononscopomuc, also known as Lakeville Lake, for the third year.
The lake has not been affected by hydrilla, and to keep it that way the boat launch is closed to watercraft from anywhere else. To make up for this, the town Grove boat launch has paddle boards, kayaks, canoes and row boats, plus trolling motors for anglers, available for rent.
Water also featured prominently in local achievements, as Salisbury’s Phoebe Conklin, 14, competed at the YMCA National Long Course Swimming Championships in Ocala, Florida. Conklin qualified for nationals in the 50-meter freestyle, 100-meter freestyle and 100-meter butterfly.
New around town: The Grassland Dessert Cafe and Lakeville Books and Stationery opened for business in Lakeville.
Meanwhile, Craig Davis and Keavy Bedell opened East Mountain House in Lakeville, an end-of-life care facility designed to accommodate up to two guests at a time. The facility welcomed its first guest in mid-September.
The Rev. Heidi Truax retired after 16 years at the helm of Trinity Episcopal Church in Lime Rock.By Patrick L. Sullivan
In August, Rev. Johan Johnson assumed leadership at St. John’s Episcopal Church in Salisbury. Johnson is also the chaplain at Salisbury School.
And in June, Rev. Heidi Truax retired from Trinity Episcopal Church in Lime Rock at the end of June after 16 years.
Before saying farewell, Truax gave the pre-race invocation June 29 when NASCAR returned to Lime Rock Park for the first time since 2011. It was billed as the largest event in modern track history with an estimated 20,000 fans attending for the weekend of pro racing.
A few months later, on Saturday, Sept. 20, a small aircraft carrying two people crashed at Lime Rock Park after making an emergency landing due to a reported mechanical failure. The area was closed while officials investigated the incident and contained a small fuel leak.
Lime Rock’s Emergency Services team was the first to respond, and director Keith Byrne said the pilot was uninjured while the passenger may have sustained minor injuries.
“It was a huge relief once we saw them getting out the plane with nothing on fire,” Byrne said of arriving on the scene.
Saturday mornings on the town Green near the White Hart have long been the time and place for political activism. This has become supercharged since the start of the second Trump administration, with “No Kings” protesters turning out in significant numbers.
The summer reading program at the Scoville Memorial Library wrapped up Aug. 23 with an emphasis on bubbles. Lots of bubbles.By Patrick L. Sullivan
The Scoville Memorial Library maintained a busy schedule of programs throughout the year, often in partnership with organizations such as the Salisbury Association. A brief and necessarily selective sampling included a June 12 presentation by Michael LaScaleia, a scientist with the Arnold Arboretum in Boston, who guided audiences through the strange and often surprising world of caterpillars and invasive plants.
Ornithologist George E. Wallace highlighted recent conservation efforts directed at bird species in Hawaii during a presentation on March 13.
And leading up to the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, the library bought multiple copies of Russell Shorto’s “Revolution Song: The Story of America’s Founding in Six Remarkable Lives” and gave them out to complement a series of Revolution-centered activities and events.
Meanwhile, the normally placid confines of the Salisbury post office were briefly disrupted when patrons arrived to find the building closed on Monday, March 17, with a notice on the locked door warning of asbestos abatement.
Postal customers were directed to the Lakeville post office for their mail.
Salisbury Postmaster Lisa Hoage said the floor of the Salisbury facility had been in poor condition for some time. The matter was dealt with quickly and the post office was back up and running in a matter of days.
Jeremy Boviard, General Manager at the Moviehouse in Millerton.
That passion has made him the perfect steward of The Moviehouse in Millerton, where, as general manager, he has helped transform the nonprofit theater into a vibrant community gathering place.
“I like bringing people together to share something,” he said. “People come here to enjoy themselves, to learn about the world and themselves, and we’re here to facilitate and enhance that experience as much as possible.”
His path to The Moviehouse, however, wasn’t one he could have imagined.
Raised in Newton, Massachusetts, Boviard grew up immersed in musical theater and developed an early love of cinema. Some of his first memories involve movies. As a toddler, he insisted on watching “E.T.” before deciding the opening scenes were too scary. Today, it’s one of his all-time favorites. He also wore out a VHS recording of the television broadcast of “The Wizard of Oz,” commercials and all.
Cinema was a family affair. His mother, a preschool teacher, would even mail him Siskel and Ebert’s “thumbs up” and “thumbs down” movie reviews while he was away at summer camp, to keep him in the loop.
“I’ve always loved talking about movies,” he said.
After studying communications and media at Northeastern University, Boviard explored a variety of careers. Then, in 2016, his life took an unexpected turn.
He came to northwest Connecticut seeking treatment for alcoholism at Mountainside Treatment Center in Canaan, expecting to stay for only a month or two.
Instead, he found a new beginning.
Nearly a decade later, Boviard remains sober and speaks openly about the experience that changed his life.
“It’s a big part of my identity,” he said. “It’s more than not drinking or doing drugs; it’s about having integrity and being open to others.”
After completing treatment, he stayed in the area and joined the Mountainside staff, eventually becoming a client services lead during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. The work was demanding, requiring compassion, flexibility and resilience.
“It helped me become — not the best version of myself, because I’m not perfect — but I feel stable and happy with my life in ways that 10 years ago I did not,” he said. “It’s the beginning of a lifelong journey.”
That same outlook shapes the way he approaches his work today.
When friends learned The Moviehouse was looking for a general manager after reopening in 2021, they immediately thought of Boviard. Running an independent movie theater had long been one of his dream jobs.
“It felt like a perfect fit,” he said, “and I am incredibly grateful for the opportunity that [Moviehouse Chair and Vice Chair] Chelsea Altman and David Maltby have given me.”
His days rarely look the same. He helps choose films, organizes special events, oversees fundraising and educational programs, manages staff schedules and payroll, orders supplies — and, if necessary, teaches new team members to change the soda fountain syrup, as he did in the middle of this interview: “There are plenty of moments where you’re doing a little bit of everything.”
He credits Assistant General Manager Tom Cloutier, Public Relations and Marketing Director Helen Seslowsky, and the rest of the team for creating a culture built on trust and teamwork.
“When I’m not here physically, I trust that the people who are here are handling everything well,” he said. “That’s a really good place to be.”
Jeremy Boviard and the team have expanded concessions at The Moviehouse.Annette Stover
Under Boviard’s leadership, The Moviehouse has expanded well beyond first-run films. Trivia nights, filmmaker discussions, live performances, after-school filmmaking programs and community partnerships have become part of its identity.
His goal is to offer something streaming services can’t.
“There’s something special about sharing a story in a room full of other people,” he said.
In an age when so much entertainment is experienced alone, Boviard believes the real magic of the movies is not confined to the screen. It’s found in the shared experience of watching together, lights dimming and a community discovering, for a couple of hours, that great stories are better when they’re shared.
That commitment extends beyond the theater. As co-chair of the Millerton Business Alliance, Boviard helps organize community events, including free holiday movie screenings and Festival of Lights activities.
He says he still finds himself struck by the quiet beauty of the region he unexpectedly came to call home.
Asked what advice he would give his younger self, Boviard doesn’t talk about career success or favorite films.
Instead, he offered a lesson earned through experience.
“Life’s full of surprises, and things often won’t play out how you expect,” he said. “If you put your best foot forward, stay even-keeled and remain as realistically optimistic as possible, life will lead to some unexpectedly wonderful places.”
Presenters at the 2025 Berkshire Mushroom Festival.
On Aug. 22 and 23, Tam Integration, an online psychedelic community organization, and Lee, Massachusetts-based dispensary Sweetgrass Botanicals will bring together foragers, cultivators, scientists, artists, cooks and curious humans at Dewey Hall in Sheffield, Massachusetts, for a weekend devoted to the remarkable world of mushrooms.
Stamets’ books, including “Mycelium Running: How Mushrooms Can Help Save the World,” have helped inspire a broader fascination with the fungal kingdom, from the role of mycelium in forest ecosystems to the potential of mushrooms in medicine and environmental restoration. Similarly, Michael Pollan’s “How to Change Your Mind” introduced millions of readers to the history and revival of psychedelic research, including scientific investigations into psilocybin, the psychoactive compound found in certain mushrooms. Pollan’s reporting has helped illuminate a field that had moved from the counterculture into laboratories and serious conversations about consciousness and mental health.
This spirit fits the Berkshire festival, whose theme this year is “the mycelial web of nature, creativity, science and magic.” Over the course of the weekend, visitors can explore mushrooms from nearly every conceivable angle: guided walks and species identification, cultivation, cooking, crafts, spore-print art and conversations about medicinal and psychedelic fungi.
Among the presenters is Berkshire native John Wheeler, founder of the Berkshire Mycological Society, who has been foraging for more than 30 years and has identified roughly 1,100 mushroom species. He’ll lead a Sunday foraging workshop and join a panel on foraging and identification with Luke Sarrantonio, founder of Mycophilic. Sarrantonio, who grew up in Rosendale, has built a career around fungal education, cultivation and community projects, including the Catskills’ annual “For the Love of Fungi” mushroom and arts festival.
Daniel Shankin
The festival also goes deep into the increasingly visible world of psychedelic fungi. Daniel Shankin, founder of Tam Integration, is a psychedelic integration coach whose work focuses on helping people incorporate transformative psychedelic experiences into their lives.
“It’s so exciting to be able to bring in such wide-ranging talent,” said Shankin of the speakers and presenters at this year’s festival. “There are people that I’ve been friends with in this community for years that I haven’t gotten to work with in person because they live in Guatemala or the Netherlands or another part of the world, so this is so exciting.”
As the founder of an organization that works with the psychedelic portion of the fungi world, Shankin is also excited to bring the growing consciousness around this modality to more people and train more people to be guides. “Not everybody necessarily needs to do psychedelics,” said Shankin, “but I feel like everybody needs to be able to hold space for somebody who’s on psychedelics.”
Cassandra Purdy, founder of Sweetgrass Botanicals, has spent more than 30 years immersed in the world of plant medicine, shamanism and entheogens. Together with other presenters, they’ll explore psychedelic preparation and integration, spirituality, safety, ethics and the art of creating supportive spaces for psychedelic experiences.
And the weekend’s conversation about fungi extends well beyond psychedelics. Imani Turnbull-Brown, co-founder of the Entheogen Melanin Collective, brings a focus on ancestral healing, Black wellness and making the psychedelic conversation more accessible and inclusive. Other sessions explore soil and regeneration, functional and medicinal mushrooms, cultivation, mushroom-inspired art and the practical business of growing fungi.
“I think people are increasingly suspicious of Western medicine,” said Shankin. “They’re looking for ways to combat the effects of aging and pollution, the effects of toxins in their foods, and they’re interested in taking their health and well-being into their own hands. Learning about functional mushrooms and the healthy lifestyle that goes along with them can go a long way.”
The Berkshire Mushroom Festival offers a particularly enjoyable way to investigate these extraordinary organisms — and to consider whether fungi might even hold some answers to the human-made environmental challenges unfolding around us. As Stamets has put it, “I love a challenge and saving the Planet seems like a good one.” Come see what the fungi have to say for themselves.
The Berkshire Mushroom Festival takes place Aug. 22 and 23 at Dewey Hall, 91 Main St., Sheffield, Massachusetts. For more information and tickets, visit berkshiremushroom
.com
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(From L to R) Jakob Kerr-Lucero (Jake), Charlotte Wise (Candy), Richie Crane (Joey), Brianna Vivace (Coco), and Vivian Burnham (Stage Manager) in rehearsal for Sharon Playhouse’s “Zombie Prom.”
Set in a candy-colored 1950s high school, “Zombie Prom” has everything a vintage teen musical could want: a sweet girl, a rebellious bad boy, a terrifyingly strict principal, rock ’n’ roll, big dance numbers and enough adolescent angst to power a small town. It also has a dead boyfriend who refuses to let the grave interfere with his love life.
The show is the second annual production of the Sharon Playhouse’s Launchpad Company, a pre-professional program for theater artists ages 15 to 20. This year’s young cast comes from communities on both sides of the Connecticut-New York border, including Alex Wilbur of Lakeville as Eddie Flagrante, Carlo Desy of Fairfield as Jonny, Abby Callaway of Woodbury as Toffee and Callie Audia of Dover Plains as Miss Delilah Strict.
Rehearsals for “Zombie Prom” at the Sharon Playhouse.Lynette Shy
The musical, with music by Dana P. Rowe, lyrics by John Dempsey and a book by Dempsey and Hugh M. Murphy, premiered Off-Broadway in 1996. Sharon’s production has a particularly fun connection to that original run: Director DJ Salisbury was a member of the original Off-Broadway company. He also returns to the Sharon Playhouse, where he directed “42nd Street” in 2011. Michelle Lemon choreographs, and Eric Thomas Johnson is music director.
Expect catchy songs, big personalities, teenage melodrama, zombie shenanigans and enough high camp to make death look like a pretty good time. But underneath all the hairspray and grave dirt, “Zombie Prom” is also a coming-of-age story about love, friendship, refusing to become somebody you’re not and never letting something as minor as death get between you and true love.
“Zombie Prom” runs Aug. 21 and 22 at 7 p.m. and Aug. 23 at 3 p.m. at the Sharon Playhouse, 49 Amenia Road, Sharon. Tickets at sharonplayhouse.org
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