Thank you!
Your support is sustaining the future of local news in our communities.

Bike ride concludes with pig roast

Bike ride concludes with pig roast

Norfolk’s Tour de Forest Oct. 19 ended with a pig roast at the curling clubhouse.

Alec Linden

NORFOLK — The Norfolk Curling Club Pig Roast Fundraiser went down at the team’s clubhouse on Saturday, Oct. 19, capping off a day of cycling through the town’s bucolic back roads for the Tour de Forest and Icebox Gravel bike rides.

Curling Club member Bob Gilchrest said that the “first annual” designation was a little cheeky, but he does hope it happens again next year.

Gilchrest is the chair of Norfolk’s Rails to Trails Committee and organizes the yearly bike rides to fundraise for the development of the town’s rail trail that stretches down to Winchester. He first ran the event in 2018 as a way to bring awareness to the rail trail and also to “have an event that involves the whole town” and brings cyclists to Norfolk’s gorgeous roadways, he said.

The Tour de Forest course snaked its way up Wangum Road and back down through the Great Mountain Forest’s dirt roads, while the Icebox Gravel track explored the town’s northern country routes. “Having the Great Mountain Forest be a quarter of the town and having the course track through its dirt roads is really a treat,” said West Lowe, who volunteered to help set the courses.

Gilchrest and others emphasized that this event was not a race and there would no winners, a sentiment which several participants apparently took quite seriously. When a group of cyclists didn’t return after the sweeper had made it back to the finish line, an envoy was dispatched to locate the missing riders. They were found happily enjoying a pint in the sunshine at Norbrook Farm Brewery.

The pig roast, which was a new addition this year, followed the rides at the Curling Club which also served as the start and finish to the bike rides. The bike rides were the main event, Gilchrest maintained. The pig roast “piggybacked” on the cycling – “no pun intended.”

Secondary or not, the jovial atmosphere at the pig roast indicated that it was a fun way to raise money for the Club, whose season begins in a few weeks.

The pig was prepared courtesy of five-year Curling Club member Bryant Massey, who said he roasted the 120 lb. animal outside the clubhouse. His wife Gail was in the indoor kitchen and “did pretty much everything else,” Massey said. The results were delicious, this reporter assures.

Alec Linden

Latest News

A life reshaped by clay in “Matin”

A life reshaped by clay in “Matin”

Left to right: Hannah Wheeler, Matin Malikzada and Yonah Sadeh.

D.H. Callahan

On Monday, Oct. 26, a group of students, teachers and local residents gathered at the Hotchkiss School in Lakeville for a screening of the new short documentary “Matin.” The film tells the story of Matin Malikzada, a seventh-generation Afghani potter making a new life in New Milford, Connecticut. The film was made by local filmmaker Yonah Sadeh, creator of the Video Wall at the David M. Hunt Library, and Berkshires-based potter Hannah Wheeler, who were both present for the screening, along with Malikzada himself.

As a member of the seventh generation of his family to master the art of pottery, Malikzada had done things the way his family had for over a century. Istalif, the village where his family has lived for generations, was known throughout Afghanistan for its pottery, with wares sent across the country for use as everyday cups, bowls, plates and other vessels. The pottery-making families of Istalif gathered clay from the same mountain, about 30 to 45 minutes away by donkey. Every July, they would head north toward the Uzbekistan border to gather ishkar, a plant they processed by hand to make their signature glazes.

Keep ReadingShow less
film

Meg Sher finds her calling among the stacks

Meg Sher finds her calling among the stacks

Meg Sher, executive director of the David M. Hunt Library in Falls Village.

L. Tomaino

When Meg Sher came to Falls Village in 2006 from Old Lyme, Connecticut, where she grew up, she never imagined she’d someday be the executive director of the David M. Hunt Library.

Although, in hindsight, perhaps it makes sense.

Keep ReadingShow less
our community

Crescendo’s 23rd season speaks to the heart and mind

Crescendo’s 23rd season speaks to the heart and mind

Christine Gevert, founding artistic director of Crescendo, conducts the audience at a performance.

Steve Potter

For Christine Gevert, founding artistic director of Crescendo, music from centuries past is anything but a relic. It is a living, breathing art form, full of drama, emotional complexity and, occasionally, surprises. As the regional choral and period-instrument ensemble launches its 23rd season, Gevert is once again bringing forgotten masterpieces into the present.

“Early Music has been my lifelong passion and the focus of my specialization in Europe and South America,” Gevert said. “Bringing this repertoire to our audiences in a nuanced way that does justice to its incredible depth, intensity, and beauty is deeply important to me.”

Keep ReadingShow less
concerts
google preferred source

Want more of our stories on Google? Click here to make us a Preferred Source.

Close Encounters with Music celebrates 35 years of musical discovery

Close Encounters with Music celebrates 35 years of musical discovery

Close Encounters with Music’s 35th season opens with “Saluting the Clarinet” featuring clarinetist Alexander Fiterstein.

Provided

For 35 years, cellist Yehuda Hanani has been inviting audiences to experience classical music in unexpected ways. As founder and artistic director of Close Encounters with Music, Hanani has built a concert series that goes beyond the music itself, exploring connections to literature, history, politics and the human experience.

This year, Close Encounters celebrates its 35th season with “Celebration & Discovery,” a seven-concert series that opens Sunday, Nov. 1, at the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center in Great Barrington.

Keep ReadingShow less
concerts

Shinbone Alley brings spooky songs to Spencertown

Shinbone Alley brings spooky songs to Spencertown

Seeing isn’t always believing. Sometimes it’s the lack of a defined picture that can be the most compelling. And when Alex Harvey of Shinbone Alley sings his supernaturally charged sea shanties and street ballads, the unseen will be downright scary. On Oct. 30, the historically inclined storyteller and performer will create a spooky evening of forbidden tales and yarns through a carefully chosen series of songs at Spencertown Academy of Arts.

The repertoire for the performance is a bit fraught. Over the years, Shinbone Alley has explored the world of folklore through music. Though the group usually features two musicians, Harvey, a multi-instrumentalist and singer, will be performing solo. That is, of course, unless you include the spirits.

Keep ReadingShow less
concerts

Malian blues and Moroccan Gnawa meet in Sheffield

Malian blues and Moroccan Gnawa meet in Sheffield
Vieux Farka Touré
Proivded

Desert winds rarely blow into the Berkshires, but on Nov. 5, they will carry the Malian blues and Moroccan Gnawa music to Race Brook Lodge.

That evening, Malian guitarist Vieux Farka Touré, often called “the Hendrix of the Sahara,” and Moroccan musician Samir LanGus will play at the lodge’s Event Barn in Sheffield, Massachusetts, at a benefit for the foundation Touré directs.

Keep ReadingShow less
concerts
google preferred source

Want more of our stories on Google? Click here to make us a Preferred Source.