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

Put on a happy face

I looked in the mirror the other day and was startled to see that I was frowning. It seems to be my default expression. I tried smiling, but the best I could manage was a horizontal line. How did this happen? It’s not like I grew up in a tough neighborhood. A friend of mine did and he said that you had to walk around with either a scowl or one of those kind of vacant, but threatening, expressions like Sylvester Stallone. The idea was to give muggers the impression that it would only take one more thing to set you off and that they should look elsewhere for an easier mark. After a while it became permanent.

Look around. I find that most people do not look very happy. At best they project a kind of bored neutrality. There are a very few that are smiling, but they are immediately suspect. Are they members of one of those blissed-out cults? I would never make it there. With my inability to form a really good smile they would always be asking me what’s wrong and bringing me up before the review board for insufficient bubbliness. I would be drummed out of the cult, albeit to a happy beat.

    u    u    u

I do have a sort of remedy for my condition. Charlton Heston, for whatever you may think of his gun affiliation, mastered the reverse smile. Watch the movie Ben Hur closely sometime. If you can stay awake until the part where he meets his boyhood friend, Messala, he gives a first-class demonstration of his technique. He frowns, but makes it into a smile somehow. I have been working on this. The trick seems to be in the eyes.

Maybe the key is your state of mind. Peter Pan teaches Wendy, Michael and John to fly by thinking happy thoughts. Often what you are thinking shows on your face. This has been the ruination of more than one budding relationship. This is where we get the saying, “If looks could kill.�

Plastic surgery is a possibility. The only catch is you could wind up looking like Dr. Sardonicus in the horror movie of the same name. His smile is surgically fixed, permanently, in place. I need something that I can erase if I don’t get it right the first time, so I guess tattooing is out, too.

Clowns cheat. They paint a smile on their face. In fact, they paint a face on their face. Anybody can do that.

Ooooooooh, right.

Makeup!

Bill Abrams resides (and practices his smile) in Pine Plains.

Lakeville Journal

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.