
Rowman and Littlefield Publishers
CORNWALL — Should potential parents fear the future? Yes and no.
A new book released this February from Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, “The Conceivable Future: Planning Families and Taking Action in the Age of Climate Change,” tackles reproductive planning from the point of view of millennial couples — ages 28 to 43 — contemplating bringing new life into an environmentally uncertain world. Written by Meghan Elizabeth Kallman, a member of the Rhode Island Senate from the 15th district, and Josephine Ferorelli, a writer and climate activist, the two met ten years ago at a concert. There they bonded over their views on how inequality, heat, fossil fuel pollution and other eco-concerns intersect with reproduction.
At Cornwall Library on Friday night, Feb. 9, Kallman and Ferorelli celebrated the launch of their book and discussed challenging rhetoric on population control as a remedy for climate change and messaging that burdens those with the least power with the responsibility of solving the Earth’s problems.
So what are millennials’ significant concerns regarding family planning and climate change, and is anxiety around global warming actually halting childbirth for this generation in their prime childbearing years?
As Business Insider, among several other publications, reported recently, “Since 1950, the worldwide fertility rate dropped from an average of 4.7 children to 2.4 children. U.S. fertility rates peaked in 2007 before declining in 2008 during the Great Recession, and they accelerated their slump when the pandemic hit. Last year, a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report found that the U.S. birth rate fell by 4% from 2019 to 2020, the sharpest single-year decline in almost 50 years, and the lowest number of births since 1979.”
It’s harder to pinpoint this data to one specific cause — recent decades have seen more significant access to birth control, increased student debt in the face of an exuberant child care affordability crisis — studies show numbers ranging from $20,000 to $50,000 for the child’s first year of life — and more career and workforce opportunities for women which might be hindered by maternity leave. As the U.S. Census Bureau reported, more women are delaying marriage, with the median age for an American woman’s first wedding increasing from age 20 in 1950 to age 28 in 2023.
“So much of the discourse around the climate crisis says we must avert disaster for the children,” said Ferorelli. “When we love our children, our students, our siblings, our [nieces and nephews], our young friends, we understand it’s visceral. But in an equally true way, we are the children. [Millennials] were all born into this crisis.”
She addressed that the focus on reproductive planning in the book was a way to open a broader conversation on eco-activism, specifically geared toward women, whose bodies are centered in conversations around population control or decline. “For us, reproduction isn’t the whole story, but it reveals the story’s heart. Focusing on reproduction in the context of climate change exposes the same unjust core that motivates many other social movements. It shows what’s at issue for all of us. As the climate changes, all stakes are raised. Some non-parents feel that their commitment to climate work would foreclose the possibility of parenting. At the same time, parents have described feeling locked out of activism or struggling to stay involved because time and money are short, activist spaces do not often accommodate children, or they find themselves dismissed as mere mothers, not meeting the conventions of radicalism.”
As Bryan Walsh wrote for Vox last year, “While it’s true that a child born today will be responsible for adding more carbon into the atmosphere…In a rich country like the U.S., a baby born today will emit less CO2 on average over their lifetime than their parents did; according to the International Energy Agency, if the world achieves carbon neutrality by 2050, the carbon footprint of those New Year’s babies could be ten times smaller than that of their grandparents.”
Using an extreme angle, Kallman pointed out that forgoing childbirth for the sole sake of reducing harm to the planet is as radical and unnecessary as suicide: “Rather than identifying the bigger forces acting on our lives, the innate climate problem of scale, that we’re tiny and helpless, is aggregated by isolation. But this cognitive dissonance is paralyzing and demoralizing. So, if you follow the personal footprint reduction strategy to its logical end, the most effective action you can take for the planet alone is to kill yourself now. And we don’t say this to be callous or macabre. The tragic reality is that some people who are no longer able to bear this devastation have ended their lives. But the example proves the point. Suicide doesn’t solve the climate crisis. One person fewer on the planet does not fix systemic injustices. So we can move beyond the view that our individual consumer or reproductive choices are the most meaningful contribution to the fight against climate consequences.”
Jazz and classical ensembles from Salisbury School and Indian Mountain School, and solo pianists and a cellist, will perform for the 43rd annual student recital at the United Congregational Church in Salisbury on Sunday, Feb. 23.
The annual student recital is returning for its 43rd year at Salisbury Congregational Church at 30 Main St.
This year’s performance is set for Sunday, Feb. 23, at 3 p.m.
Jazz and classical ensembles from Sailsbury school and Indian Mountain School as well as solo pianists and a cellist will grace the stage at the United Congregational Church.
Admission is free and donations to the church’s special music fund are encouraged.
After the performance, viewers are invited to stick around for a reception with sandwiches, chili and dessert.
Indoor track BL champs
Housatonic Valley Regional High School senior Kyle McCarron’s 1600-meter time of 4:30.31 earned him second place in this year’s indoor state meet. He was within two seconds of first-place finisher Matthew Kraszewski from Nathan Hale-Ray High School.
McCarron was one of eight runners to represent HVRHS in the 2025 Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference Class S indoor track meet at Floyd Little Athletic Center in New Haven Feb. 15. In addition to his 1600-meter silver medal, McCarron placed sixth in the 3200-meter run.
For the HVRHS girls, Mia Dodge placed fifth in the 55-meter hurdles. Dodge also placed fifth in the sprint medley relay with teammates Gabi Titone, Harper Howe and Kenzie Lotz. Howe placed eighth in the 600-meter race. Titone placed 10th in the 1600-meter race.
Patrick Money placed 10th in the boys 55-meter hurdles and 25th in the long jump. Money, Kyle McCarron, Silas Tripp and Peter Austin placed 12th as a team in the sprint medley relay.
Joy Brown installing work for her show at the Tremaine Art Gallery at Hotchkiss.
This year, The Hotchkiss School is marking 50 years of co-education with a series of special events, including an exhibition by renowned sculptor Joy Brown. “The Art of Joy Brown,” opening Saturday, Feb. 22, in the Tremaine Art Gallery, offers a rare retrospective of Brown’s work, spanning five decades from her early pottery to her large-scale bronze sculptures.
“It’s an honor to show my work in celebration of fifty years of women at Hotchkiss,” Brown shared. “This exhibition traces my journey—from my roots in pottery to the figures and murals that have evolved over time.”
Co-curated by Christine Owen, Hotchkiss ceramics instructor, and Joan Baldwin, curator of special collections, the scale and scope of the exhibition was inspired by a recent Ed Ruscha retrospective in Los Angeles. “I thought it would be incredible to showcase all these different aspects of Joy’s work,” said Owen, who has known Brown for over 30 years.
Brown’s father, a Presbyterian missionary and medical doctor, opened a hospital in Japan where Brown grew up and cultivated her love of clay. Her first apprenticeship was in Tomba, a region in Hyogo Prefecture known for its ancient pottery kilns and Tambayaki pottery. “There are thousands of years of continuous history of clay there and I was working with a 13th generation potter.” Brown recalled that as part of her early training, her teacher handed her a sake cup and said, “make these.” With no extra instruction given, Brown proceeded to make thousands of copies of the cup. Never fired, she realized that the pieces were an exercise. She explained, “You’re not really making something, you’re participating in a process that these things emerge from.” From there, she embarked on an apprenticeship with master potter Shigeyoshi Morioka. As part of the process she learned from Morioka, Brown has built a 30-foot-long wood-firing tunnel kiln on her property in Kent, Connecticut, where she fires her work once a year in an intensive month-long process. The fire’s natural interaction with the clay creates unique earth tones and ash patterns, highlighting the raw beauty of the material.
Natalia Zukerman
“I learned not just pottery but a whole way of life,” she recalled. “The work is a continuous process—like practicing a signature until it evolves into something uniquely yours.” Her figures, initially emerging as playful puppets, have since evolved into large-scale sculptures now found in public spaces from Shanghai to Broadway to Hotchkiss’s own campus.
Brown’s seven-foot “Sitter with Head in Hands” was installed near Ford Food Court in October, followed by “Recliner with Head in Hands” near Hotchkiss’s Main Building in November. She welcomes interaction with her sculptures, encouraging visitors to touch them and even dress them with scarves or hats. “These figures transcend gender, age, and culture,” Brown noted. “They’re kind of like when you’re 4 years old and you didn’t know or care what you were, you know? All of us meet in that field and I think people resonate with that.”
In conjunction with the exhibition, Hotchkiss will host a screening of “The Art of Joy Brown,” a documentary by Eduardo Montes-Bradley, followed by a panel discussion with the artist and filmmaker on March 6 in Walker Auditorium. Brown will also serve as an artist-in-residence, collaborating with students on special projects.
On being part of the celebration of women at Hotchkiss Brown said, “Fifty years ago, I was deep in the mountains of Japan, immersed in clay.” With a soft spoken and almost childlike quality, Brown spoke about and interacted with her pieces with curiosity, reverence and wonder.
“The practice of working with clay for all these years is grounding and centering for me. It challenges me,” she said. “The work forces me to put myself out there. It’s not just the making of the pieces that make me more whole, the pieces themselves become more present.”
Brown reflected on the retrospective nature of the show and shared that putting it together has been like looking at a family album. “It’s kind of like I’m seeing my whole life in front of me,” she said. “It’s humbling and makes me think about why I do what I do. It comes back to the idea of those thousands of sake cups, you know? We’re just here, being as present as we can be. We’re not making things, we’re participating in a process of being more present, and all that spirit is reflected in the work.”
“The Art of Joy Brown” opens Saturday, Feb. 22, and runs through April 6. For more information, visit www.hotchkiss.org.
This story has been updated to reflect a change in the scheduled opening date due to forecast extreme weather conditions.
A special screening of “The Brutalist” was held on Feb. 2 at the Triplex Cinema in Great Barrington. Elihu Rubin, a Henry Hart Rice Associate Professor of Architecture and Urban Studies at Yale, led discussions both before and after the film.
“The Brutalist” stars Adrien Brody as fictional character, architect Laszlo Toth, a Hungarian-born Jewish architect. Toth trained at the Bauhaus and was interred at the concentration camp Buchenwald during World War II. The film tells of his struggle as an immigrant to gain back his standing and respect as an architect. Brody was winner of the Best Actor Golden Globe, while Bradley Corbet, director of the film, won best director and the film took home the Golden Globe for Best Film Drama. They have been nominated again for Academy Awards.
Laszlo Toth goes to work in his cousin’s furniture store when he arrives in New York, living in the storeroom and helping his cousin build up the business. When his cousin’s wife falsely accuses him of making a pass at her, he ends up living in a homeless shelter.
A would-be patron tracks him down, finds him working construction—the only job he can get—and asks, “Tell me, why is an accomplished foreign architect shoveling coal here in Philadelphia?”
Eventually, Toth gains a commission but faces prejudice as a foreigner and Jew, even though he and his wife, who he reunites with after she’d been in the concentration camp, Dachau, are both highly educated—she is an Oxford graduate and an established writer in their home country of Hungary.
Rubin began his discussion before the screening by saying, “I am thrilled this film has brought architecture to the forefront. There is something so fascinating and robust about the space Brutalist architecture creates.”
Brutalism is known for using “raw materials,” such as brick and concrete in ways that leave them visible. Rubin said that concrete is “incredibly expressive. It comes to the building site as mud and becomes what it is poured out as.”
“At first,” said Rubin, “optimism was associated with Brutalism.”
Brutalism came to the forefront of architecture in the 1950’s when it was used to reconstruct housing in the United Kingdom after WWII.
Some prime examples of Brutalist architecture include Boston City Hall, Rudolph Hall at Yale University, and the Temple Street Parking Garage in New Haven.
Rubin commented, “Brutalist architecture became the de-facto language of government and institutional architecture.”
Rubin said Brutalism began to fall out of favor in the 1970’s when it began to be associated with urban decay and totalitarian governments, who used it extensively.
Rubin asked the audience to consider two questions as they watched the film: “Why is the main character an architect… what does it bring to the emotional core?” and, “Who or what is the Brutalist in the film?”
After the screening, Rubin commentedtha Brutalist architecture is about “Getting an object to, ultimately, stand by itself.” Rubin explained that Brutalism “Throws off shadows of the past. No extraneous detail is left.” Audience members discussed how this could also be true of the character of Laszlo.
Rubin explained that architects face the challenge of “how to express themselves through someone else’s commission.” Discussion involved how Laszlo finds a way to achieve this.
The audience agreed that the film brought up some timely issues about immigration, class awareness, and acceptance, while asking them to consider how Brutalism applies to these subjects. The movie is at times, as rawly constructed as a brutalist building.