Proclaimed eggs, leaky waders and lost boots
Gary Dodson worked the East Branch of The Delaware River in late October.
Patrick L. Sullivan
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A protester holds a sign at Fountain Square in Amenia on March 28, where more than 200 people gathered as part of the nationwide âNo Kingsâ demonstrations.
Photo by Aly Morrissey
Kim Travis of Amenia â who organized the rally at Fountain Square â said the demonstration reflected a dramatic shift from her early days protesting alone, when she faced threats while standing by herself.
âThis started with just me, alone in June â day after day, getting threats,â Travis said. âTo see it grow into more than 200 people today for this âNo Kingsâ rally in our little-bitty town of Amenia is incredible.â
She said the turnout reflected broader support across rural communities. There were several rallies in towns across Dutchess County and in neighboring Connecticut.
Travis described the mood of the Amenia crowd as both emotional and energizing.
âOur hearts are filled with joy â itâs just incredible that so many people turned out today,â she said.
She added that the message of the protest was rooted in democratic values.
âWe want our country back, and we want democracy,â Travis said. âWe the people serve no kings. Thatâs what the Constitution is all about.â
Protesters display an upside down American flag in Amenia on March 28, where more than 200 people gathered as part of the nationwide âNo Kingsâ demonstrations.Photo by Aly Morrissey
Ellie Myers, a senior boarding student at Millbrook School who lives in Brooklyn, attended the Fountain Square protests and said she has been protesting since Donald Trump was first elected in 2016.
âShowing up is really important to me, and Iâm grateful to be in a community where I can support others,â Myers said. âRight now, ICE is the biggest issue. I have friends and family who have been affected â hardworking immigrants who came here for freedom and havenât found it. Thatâs heartbreaking. It goes against what âwe the peopleâ is supposed to mean, and itâs painful to see, both in the news and in real life.â
Myers added that she witnessed ICE in the airports during recent travel back to school and it was âheartbreaking.â
Dutchess County Legislator Eric Alexander, who represents Amenia and surrounding communities, also attended the rally, noting it followed a unanimous county resolution opposing a proposed ICE facility in the Hudson Valley.
âThat wasnât just Democrats,â Alexander said. âThat was the entire legislature unanimously saying no to ICE, and a lot of that came from the voice of the people â the people we represent.â
Alexander said the size of the rally stood out, noting its growth from a single protester to a dozen regular participants and ultimately more than 200 attendees.
âI see a great sense of community, and I see a great sense of optimism,â he said. âBut I also see high frustration. People are very concerned, and I think that concern is only growing as we see more and more of whatâs going on in our country.â
He said the country is in a war that hasnât sufficiently been explained to the American people, dysfunction is rampant at airports, and prices of everything from gas to groceries are soaring.
âAnd we donât see an end in sight â we donât see a plan,â he said. âThese are people standing out here today saying we, as citizens, deserve to have our voices heard and to try to get some things to change.â
Protesters at Fountain Square in Amenia on March 28.Photo by Aly Morrissey
Several other local protests took place in Dutchess County, including in Rhinebeck, Poughkeepsie and Beacon.
Meanwhile, similar demonstrations took place across the border in Connecticut.
In Salisbury, several hundred people gathered along Route 44, where organizers set up signs and encouraged participants to share messages. In Cornwall, organizers estimated more than 300 attendees at the intersection of Route 7 and Route 4. Meanwhile, in Kent, both sides of Main Street were lined with protesters, with turnout estimated at more than 250.
As the rallies wound down, organizers such as Travis said the protests would not stop.
âA lot of the surrounding small towns showed up, too, because we want to show the rest of the country that small towns can be strong, loud and resist just as much as anyone,â she said. âAnd we intend to, and weâre not stopping.â
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Dan Baker, left, and Daniel Latzman at Barrington Hall in Great Barrington.
Provided
The partnership behind Barrington Hall began long before the building itself. Both Baker and Latzman grew up on Long Island, spent more than a decade in New York City, and eventually found their way to the Berkshires, drawn by the desire for something different. What they didnât realize at first was just how closely their lives had already mirrored one another.
They were born in the same hospital, a year apart. Their families had distant connections. They even played on the same soccer team â never meeting, but moving through the same spaces. It wasnât until they became neighbors in Egremont about five years ago that those parallels came into focus.
âIn hindsight, it feels inevitable,â Latzman said. âBut it was actually extremely random that we ended up here.â
From the beginning, Barrington Hall was meant to be a place people return to, not for any one event, but for the experience of being there. On any given week, the space might host a jazz performance, a dance party, a songwriter circle or a childrenâs event. Some nights bring in touring acts. Others highlight local creatives. The variety is intentional and so is the atmosphere.
âItâs about people,â Baker said. âItâs about being present.â
Inside Barrington Hall.Provided
Baker and Latzman are keenly aware of the world outside with its constant barrage of information, political conflicts, a culture that pulls people deeper into their screens. Barrington Hall offers a way out of that noise.
âA little bit of a bubble,â Latzman said. âA place to step away from everything else.â
During a recent event, they noticed something telling: a full room of people dancing, talking, engaged â and almost no one on their phone.
âThatâs when you know something is working,â Baker said.
Taking over a beloved local space comes with responsibility, one Baker and Latzman have met by honoring the buildingâs traditions while also expanding them.
âWe didnât feel obligated,â Latzman said. âWe felt honored.â
Part of what makes the space distinct is its versatility. Large enough to host more than 250 people, yet intimate enough to feel personal, it fills a gap in the local landscape, serving a wide range of people and bringing different groups together in the same space.
âWe want people to feel like, if somethingâs happening here, itâs worth checking out,â Latzman said.
They are carefully balancing community access with the realities of running a business, with an eye toward the long term.
âWe want this to be here in 20 years,â Latzman said.
Inside Barrington Hall.Provided
That vision extends beyond the building itself â future collaborations, expanded programming, a growing role in shaping the cultural life of the Berkshires. But at its core, the mission remains simple: to create a place where people can gather, a place that feels alive.
And perhaps most importantly, to create a place where, if only for a few hours, people can step away from the noise of the world and enjoy being together.
When asked who theyâre most excited to host next, their answer was immediate: The Mammals on April 10 and Lee Ross, a one-man party band from Massachusetts, scheduled to perform on May 1.
For more information and tickets, visit
barringtonhallgb.com
Gail Rothschild with her painting âDead Sea Linen III (73 x 58 inches, 2024, acrylic on canvas.
Natalia Zukerman
Her work begins, often, with something small: a scrap of linen from the Judean desert, dating âto a time before the notion of âIsraelâ or âPalestine;ââ a fragment so diminished it barely registers as an object; or a rare indigo-dyed childâs head cloth from Tutankhamenâs tomb.
âI call them portraits of ancient linen,â she said.
Rothschild grew up in Greenwich and studied drawing and painting at Yale University. âThat was kind of my first love,â she said. But she quickly veered toward something more collective, working with Peter Schumann at the Bread and Puppet Theater, building papier-mâchĂŠ puppets and participating in a kind of performance-based activism that blurred art and politics.
âAfter Yale, I got out of school and thoughtâWait a second. I donât want to paint anymore. I need to work with people in communities and make things.ââ
She moved to Brooklyn and began working in public schools, developing projects rooted in collaboration and local history. The projects were ambitious, research-driven, and often confrontational. At the University of Massachusetts, she recalled asking students: âDid you know that Amherst was named for Jeffrey Amherst, who was responsible for giving blankets infected with smallpox to Native Americans? Why donât we look into that?ââ
There were sculptures, letters to watchdog groups, installations. She worked on four such projects a year, she said, until the pace became unsustainable. âAt some point I just said, âIâm exhausted. Iâm going back to the studio.ââ
What brought her back was a book, âPrehistoric Textiles â by Elizabeth Wayland Barber. Inside, she encountered an image of a 7,000-year-old textile, unraveling.
âIt said to me, âthis could be a great big abstract paintingâ,â she said. âWhat does it mean that this textile, this thing that used to be a Cartesian grid and over time has gone back to nature?â
That question became a kind of axis for her work. âThere is this cusp between nature and culture,â she said. Early on, she avoided textiles with imagery, drawn instead to the raw language of fiber itself. But eventually, even that boundary softened. A project with the Godwin-Ternbach Museum introduced her to Egyptian textiles â Christian, pagan, Greek, Roman influences colliding in woven form.
Gail Rothschildâs âEsquina Decoradaâ (52 x 52 inches, 2022, acrylic on canvas)Gail Rothschild
What followed was a deepening relationship with museums and, crucially, with conservators. Institutions like The Metropolitan Museum of Art and collections in Berlin and Paris began sending her images of textile fragments, sometimes pieces she has still never seen in person.
âItâs almost easier for me to transform it when I havenât seen it,â she said.
Her process is both precise and intuitive. She grids the canvas and the source image, drawing freehand to âhonor what the object is.â For a time, she works closely from the photograph. Then something shifts. âAt some point Iâll say, âItâs a painting. Itâs got to talk to itself,â and then I stop looking at the photograph.â
What emerges is layered, luminous and muscular. âSometimes people say, âDo you miss making sculpture?â and I say, âI never stopped.ââ
You feel that in the surfaces: the tension of threads pulling apart, the sense that something is both forming and dissolving at once. Even the backgrounds â often ambiguous, atmospheric â are not neutral. âItâs really more about feeling the space around the object,â she said, especially as she considers how ancient fragments are mounted on modern fabrics. âI get to invent an entirely other language.â
Some of her most arresting work is on the monumental textiles of The Met Cloisters, where medieval tapestries, some towering more than a dozen feet, are slowly, painstakingly conserved. Itâs in the conservation labs that Rothschild has observed the physical reality of these works: their own weight pulling them apart, threads breaking under centuries of strain. Conservators insert new threads to stabilize them and Rothschild documents this process. âThereâs a kind of poignancy to their work,â Rothschild said, âbecause as hard as we work to conserve the objects of our past, in the greater cosmic scheme of time, itâs only temporary. Thereâs something beautiful about that.â
Time operates on multiple levels in Rothschildâs work. There is the time of the object âthousands of years, in some cases â and the time of the painting, which unfolds over months. âOnce I start working on something, I canât stop,â she said. âBut then itâll rest for a while and I may change it, add layers.â
And then there is the time of attention itself, the way looking can tip into obsession, into pattern-seeking that doesnât quite turn off. Rothschild is aware of that edge.
âI have to make myself stop or I just see patterns everywhere and I canât stop, really,â she laughed. âThatâs why Iâve built in other things I need to do in my life like take the dogs for a hike or, you know, volunteer at the Sharon Land Trust⌠otherwise I go a little nuts. And it wouldnât be good painting either.â
A painting session, for her, has its own its own arc. âThereâs kind of a trajectory for every work session. I might be repeating something and suddenly it looks linear. The language I started painting with may change by the end and I think, âOh God, Iâm gonna have to go back and repaint that.ââ
But then, she said, there is a pause.
âI kind of step back and say, âNo, this painting can hold both. Thatâs part of its history. Thereâs the history of the object but then thereâs the history of the painting.ââ
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