All of the mail has been mailed, the cookies are baked, the food shopping is done, and I just need one more trip to the bookstore to be FINISHED
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Meanwhile, I shall relax with a glass of the local flavor. How is your holiday prep going?
Our Home for the Holidays adoptathon starts today! Adoption fees for all #dogs aged one and older will be waived at our shelters in #Boston, #Methuen, #Salem, and #Centerville on #CapeCod, plus Berkshire Humane, Thomas J. O’Connor Animal Control & Adoption Center, #Worcester ARL, Baypath Humane, and #Lowell Humane!
Learn more here, via Salem Patch: https://patch.com/massachusetts/salem/ghost-christmas-present-mspca-holds-fee-free-dog-adoptions
the real-life alice's restaurant, the back room in stockbridge, massachusetts, just after its april 1966 opening, the late alice brock behind the counter. #folk #berkshires
Butternut #wildfire expands to over 1000 acres, crosses #AppalachianTrail, zero percent contained.
Bard College is shutting down Simon's Rock after the spring semester, and moving the early-college program to its Hudson Valley campus. It will sell the property in Great Barrington.
Berkshires looking pretty good this weekend
#photography, #366photodgraphy2024, #potd2024, #photoaday, #everydayphotographer, #photooftheday, #pad2024-294, #thetaconics, #berkshires, #failfoliage, #colorsoffall, #scenic, #turbines
Today is Indigenous Peoples Day in the United States, by Presidential proclamation.
I make my home on the Berkshire plateau, ancestral hunting lands of the Pocumtuc and Nipmuc. These lands formed a pre-settlement tension zone between northern tree species (beech-birch-maple-spruce-fir) and central-US tree species (oak-hickory-pine). This transition zone remains today after the forest recovered from settlement clearing for sheep and cow pastures. The blue jays and others are doing their job of planting acorns in areas with few or no oak trees, enabling the northward migration of tree species as the globe warms from human carbon emissions.
Several small bands of Nipmuc peoples remain in New England today. Based mostly around the colonial-era “praying towns” in central Massachusetts, northern Connecticut, and the Connecticut River valley, the Nipmuc may have travelled as far west as the Berkshire Plateau for seasonal hunting. The Commonwealth of Massachusetts recognizes the Nipmuc tribe and requires state agencies to work with the Hassanamisco Nipmuc on matters relating to the Nipmuc peoples. Federal recognition was denied to the Nipmuc Nation in 2004.
The Pocumtuc, another Algonquian-speaking people, lived in the river valleys of the Connecticut, Deerfield, and Westfield rivers, using the adjacent highlands as hunting grounds. Many Pocumtuc people died of smallpox after the Europeans arrived and brought that disease to these shores. After the Pocumtuc joined the Wampanoag confederacy and fought to defend their lands against English settlers in King Philip’s War, the survivors moved west to Shaghticoke, where they stayed until the Seven Years’ War forced them north to join the Abenaki or further west. Neither the Commonwealth nor the USA recognizes any existing Pocumtuc polity.
A little late to the party on this one and of course lots of clouds out there, but with the magic of long exposure I was able to capture so very faint Northern Lights in Western Mass
Took the dog out and looked up in the sky.