nov. 23rd berkshire beacon

November 23, 2011Volume II, Issue 27

www.berkshirebeacon.comLenox, MA 01240

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1 Local News 6 Editorial6 From the Tower5 College Sports Report9 Fast Picks12 Fun & Games10 Calendar15 Movies 15 Girl-2-Girl

Giving Thanks

- 4

The Berkshire Beacon

Index

Bera DunauBeacon Staff Writer

LENOX - The Kennedy Park Bel-vedere controversy has returned to the forefront of Lenox politics with a vengeance.

Attorney Robert Meltzer of the Mountain States Law Group in Worcester, the lawyer for the com-munity group Citizens Advocacy for All, has written a letter to the Lenox Board of Selectmen.

The letter asserts that if they don’t order the removal of the Kennedy Park Belvedere by May 1, 2012, a group of ten citizens will sue the town.

The letter contends that the con-struction of the Belvedere violated the Scenic Mountain Act, and that the lawsuit could result in the Select

Janel HarrisonBeacon Staff Writer

ADAMS - The parishioners of St. Stanislaus Kostka Church of Adams believe in miracles, but even more so they believe in their magnificent church which houses their history, their families, their devotion, their faith, and their love.

Recently the Vatican’s highest court upheld the decision of the Ro-man Catholic Diocese of Springfield to close three Western mass Church-es including St. Stanislaus. However it was found by the Apostolic Signa-tura that Bishop Timothy A. Mc-Donnell did not provide sufficient reasons to justify deconsecrating the churches and making them secular buildings.

Consequently the Vatican is not re-quiring the diocese to reopen the 3

Local parish hopes for Thanksgiving miracle

Belvedere could lead to imprisonment?Long debated monument could face a town meeting after ultimatum

Kameron Z. SpauldingBeacon Staff Writer

LENOX - Berkshire Bank has opened its new full-service branch in the Center at Lenox, better know as Price Chopper Plaza, located at 495 Pittsfield Road.

The bank has also announced that Karen Sargent will be the manager of the Lenox branch.

This new branch is the second in Berkshire County to feature Berk-shire Bank’s new state-of-the- art en-hanced teller technology. Rather than traditional teller lines, Berkshire Bank claims that the new design al-lows for more personalized service,

Bank opens in Lenox

Photo Credit / Kameron Z. SPaulding

Selectman John J. McNinch, Dia Trancynger, and W. David Roche at last weeks meeting of the Select Board. Citizens Advocacy for All has now threatened the board with a costly lawsuit over the Belvedere.see MELTZER page 16

see VIGIL page 8 see BANK page 9

Photo Credit / Janel harriSon

Parishioners have posted this sign at St. Stanislaus Kostka in Adams to mark the length of their protest over the closure.

2 The Berkshire Beacon November 23, 2011

Bera Dunau Beacon Staff Writer

LENOX - Kimberly R. Flynn has been elected chairman of the Lenox Marketing and Events Committee while Carl Pratt has been elected its vice chair.

Mrs. Flynn was elected to the chairmanship over Carl Pratt in an election that was conducted by secret ballot. Mrs. Flynn was nominated by committee mem-ber Bob Romeo and seconded by Tony Simotes while Mr. Pratt was nominated by Richard Wise and seconded by Simotes.

Each candidate made a speech highlighting why they wanted to be chairman before the vote was taken.

“The main reason that I want and think that I should be chair of this committee is the past ex-perience that I have with it,” said Mrs. Flynn, highlighting her ex-perience on the Economic Devel-opment Action Plan Steering Committee, and as a Select Board Member who helped to lay the groundwork for the group’s work.

The EDAPSC was the precur-sor to the Marketing and Events Committee.

“What it comes down to is we just need to bring more people to

Lenox,” said Mr. Pratt.The Cranwell Resort general

manager emphasized social me-dia, and promoting Lenox’s brand as a four-season destination in his remarks.

After Mrs. Flynn won the elec-tion, the committee then elected its vice chair.

Mr. Pratt ran for the vice chair-manship position and was nomi-nated by Mr. Simotes and sec-onded by Bob Romeo. Committee member Richard Wise also ex-pressed interest in being vice chairman, but was unable to get anyone on the committee to nominate him.

He was, however, allowed to give a speech about why he want-ed to be vice chairman, at the suggestion of Selectman David Roche, liaison between the board of Selectmen and the Marketing and Events Committee.

“The Caroling Festival is a good example of exactly what you guys are charged to do, and I’m doing it, I’m chairing it,” said Mr. Wise, highlighting his efforts or-ganizing the Lenox Caroling Fes-tival and his experience as a com-munity organizer as elements that qualified him for the position.

Still, even after his speech, none of the other four committee

members were willing to nomi-nate him, although alternates Ei-ran Gazit and Dick Hodak said that they would nominate Mr. Wise if they were able to.

Without nominations from the committee members, however, Mr. Wise could not run in the election, and Mr. Pratt was elect-ed to the Vice Chairmanship unanimously and unopposed in a voice vote.

Mr. Pratt was also voted as the committee’s secretary, after being the only member to volunteer for the position.

These elections didn’t seem to create any hard feelings, however, and after the vote for vice chair-man occurred, committee mem-ber Mr. Simotes pointed out that oftentimes the members of the committee who aren’t appointed to positions often do the most work.

Much of the rest of the meeting involved discussing the Lenoxol-ogy website, how it would be managed, and why it had yet to be launched.

Committee member Richard Wise asked whether the website would have a back-end tool that would allow people who didn’t know code to alter it, and was in-sured by Mr. Gazit and Mr. Ro-

meo that it did have such a function.

Mr. Gazit, Mr. Romeo and Chairwoman Flynn, all worked with Bodden and Hamilton, the company charged with creating the Lenoxology campaign and website, when they were mem-bers of the EDAPSC.

Marketing committee alternate Eiran Gazit, revealed that he had heard that Bodden and Hamilton was going through some turmoil due to losing a promising client, and suspected that this might be behind the companies slowness in rolling out the website, which Mr. Gazit believed should have been ready weeks ago.

The goal of the Lenoxology website will be to not only pro-mote the Lenoxology campaign, but to seamlessly direct visitors to the websites of the Town of Lenox and the Lenox Chamber of Commerce.

Much of the discussion on the Lenoxology website involved how future efforts would involve smoothly integrating these three websites together.

There was also a conversation about who the town would em-ploy to maintain the Lenoxology website, as well as who would be employed to engage in Lenoxolo-

gy related social networking efforts.

Mr. Pratt asserted that modern social networking efforts required daily attention in order to be suc-cessful, and the other committee members agreed with this assessment.

He also inquired as to why an effort wasn’t being made to merge the Chamber of Commerce and Lenoxology websites together.

Mr. Gazit asserted that such an endeavor would be too expensive for the town, but Selectman Roche acknowledged that it would serve to reduce redundancy.

The issue that such a merger would be using town funds to di-rectly promote the businesses of Chamber of Commerce members was also raised.

It was also suggested that one of committee member Tony Si-motes’ colleagues at Shakespeare and Company might be available to maintain the site, and Mr. Si-motes agreed to look into it.

The committee agreed to meet on the first and third Thursdays of every month at 9 AM,

The group also decided that they will continue to make a monthly report to the Board of Selectmen.

BOSTON - State Senator Ben-jamin B. Downing (D- Pittsfield) has announced that his legisla-tion, S. 2032 - an act relative to renewable energy generation on closed landfills received the unan-imous approval of the Massachu-setts Senate this past week, with a decisive vote of 36-0.

Downing, who serves as the Senate Chairman of the Joint Committee on Telecommunica-tions, Utilities and Energy, spon-sored this legislation after speak-ing with the state Secretary of Energy and Environmental Af-fairs and the Commissioner of Environmental Protection.

The officials advised that the enabling legislation (section 9H of Chapter 723 of the Acts of 1983) of the Department of En-vironmental Protection’s (DEP) now inactive Landfill Capping Grant Program limited future use

of a capped site solely to active or passive recreational purposes.

In the 1980s and 1990s the DEP Landfill Capping Grant Program awarded financial assis-tance to more than twenty cities, towns and solid waste disposal districts, including William-stown, located in Downing’s dis-trict, for the purpose of planning, design and construction of proj-ects for the closure, in an envi-ronmental sound manner, of publicly-owned landfills.

Downing’s bill amends the statue by adding the term “re-newable energy projects” as an ac-ceptable future use for any closed landfills that received grant mon-ies under the Program. Such proj-ects must still receive all necessary and appropriate permits.

Cities and towns statewide are looking to capped landfill sites to host renewable energy projects:

the communities of Amherst, Braintree, Canton, Plymouth and Sharon are currently taking steps to install solar arrays on their former municipal landfills that were closed with the assis-tance of the DEP Landfill Cap-ping Grant Program.

The bill now goes to the House of Representatives for consideration.

Sen. Downing announces bill passage

Flynn named chair of marketing committee Committee questions late arrival of Lenoxology website and plans additional meetings

PITTSFIELD - The Berkshire Museum kicked off the 27th an-nual Festival of Trees with the cir-cus-inspired "Under the Big Top" with a gala opening party on Fri-day, Nov. 18.

The event features more than 100 decorated Christmas trees filling the galleries from Friday through Monday, Jan. 2, 2012. Exhibitions of vintage circus memorabilia and photography add to the Big Top atmosphere.

More than 100 community or-ganizations, businesses and schools sponsor the creatively decorated holiday trees, inspired by this year's circus theme.

The annual Festival of Trees is an important fundraiser for Berk-shire Museum; proceeds benefit its education programs, serving more than 15,000 students every year.

Donna Krenicki and Elizabeth Sherman are the co-chairmen of this year's Festival of Trees Com-mittee and "Under the Big Top: Festival of Trees 2011" is spon-sored by Greylock Federal Credit Union.

The museum is open Monday through Saturday, 10 to 5, and Sunday, noon to 5.

During the Festival of Trees, the museum will be open for ex-tended evening hours on Fridays from 5 to 8 p.m., from Nov. 25 to Dec. 30. Berkshire Museum will close at 2 on Saturday, Dec. 24, and Saturday, Dec. 31, and be closed on Thanksgiving, Christ-mas and New Year's Day.

Festival of Trees pricing is $15 adult; $7 child; museum mem-bers, $5 adult, $3 child; children under 3 free. Admission includes all museum galleries.

Festival of Trees is back again for the holidays

November 23, 2011 The Berkshire Beacon 3

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The Berkshire Tobacco-Free Community Partnership of Berk-shire AHEC joined colleagues from around the state to partici-pate in the 2011 Great American Smokeout on Nov. 17 at the State House.

The event, organized by the state Department of Public Health’s Massachusetts Tobacco Cessation and Prevention Pro-gram, is part of a nationwide ef-fort to raise awareness of the dan-gers of tobacco use and motivate smokers to make a quit attempt.

At this year’s event, the Depart-ment of Public Health presented the Massachusetts Hospital Asso-ciation with its annual Make Smoking History award.

The award, presented each

year, honors an organization in Massachusetts committed to making the state tobacco-free. MHA has been working with and recognizing hospital campuses across the state that are commit-ted to being tobacco-free.

Berkshire Medical Center in Pittsfield, Fairview Hospital in Great Barrington and North Ad-ams Regional Hospital are among the 48 hospitals listed on MHA’s Tobacco-Free Hospitals Honor Roll.

The Berkshire Tobacco-Free Community Partnership also toured the State House and visit-ed with legislators and their staff members to educate them on ces-sation benefits, such as the patch and stop-smoking medicines, which when used together, more than double a smoker’s chance to quit for good.

“It’s important for everyone to know that smoking still remains the number one cause of prevent-able death and disability in Mas-sachusetts,” said Joan Rubel, pro-gram coordinator. “However, the good news is 77 percent of adult smokers in Massachusetts want to quit smoking and if we can pro-vide them with the support nec-essary to quit for good, we will have made a difference.”

The Berkshire Tobacco-Free Community Partnership at Berk-shire AHEC is funded by the De-partment of Public Health to support communities’ efforts to lower smoking prevalence and ex-posure to secondhand smoke.

The Partnership is a resource to agencies, coalitions, municipali-ties and workplaces on tobacco intervention efforts.

Berkshire Tobacco-Free heads to State House


Inductees at the recent Ex-Smokers hall of fame induction, a major event for the Berkshire Tobacco-Free Partnership


GREAT BARRINGTON - Berkshire South Regional Com-munity Center will be hosting a A Community Thanksgiving Dinner with all the trimmings on Tuesday, November 25th,

Come share the true meaning of Thanksgiving with friends and neighbors.

The community center says that it’s their way of expressing how grateful they are for the sense of community and com-

mon purpose that has been felt throughout the region.

“At Berkshire South, we are al-ways planting seeds to promote the social well being of local resi-dents and we wish to harvest the bounty and share the gifts of friendship, warmth, good food and community with you.”

There will be two seating’s; the first is at 4pm and the second at 5:30pm. This is a free dinner, though donations will be gladly accepted.

Reservations are required for each seating. To ensure a seat for

everyone at the table dinner guests must call in advance. Please call the Center at 413-528-2810.

Another way you can come and connect is to help in the preparation and serving of the meal.

“Bring your children or a friend and share the experience together! There are many aspects of service when we gather and we are always looking for volun-teers” – please call Don Crine at 528-2810 x18 to participate.

A local community Thanksgiving dinner


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Dick SyriacBeacon Sports Columnist

We probably don’t want to ad-mit it but there is a good chance that there will be a winter season coming soon. Will it be mild or will it be harsh, that is the question.

Could it possibly be like a win-ter that I recall in the 80s where the Springfield area golf courses remained open year around?

That year a group of diehard linksters returned from a week in Myrtle Beach and on en route back to Berkshire County stopped to play a quick round at Oak Ridge Golf Club in Feeding Hills, it was the middle of March.

In the event that this part of history does not repeat itself the sports fan may have to resort to plan B. How can we fill this void until pitchers and catchers report

and the “they are letting carts out” word gets around?

Checking out the local talent is always an appealing option.

Williams College and MCLA are both looking forward to an exciting winter season and the last time I checked it is always warmer in the gyms and rinks than it is outside.

The local high schools will, as always, generate interest and get their typical support.

What about NCAA hoops on the tube? Is it just me or have we been over saturated with too many games on too many nights. After a while I find it hard to watch a “mean nothing game” where I’ve never heard of any of the players.

It seems if it isn’t Duke, UConn, Kansas or UNC playing, my in-terest just is not there.

How about the NBA? Let’s not

even go there. I wonder if Kemba Walker regrets his decision to ma-triculate to the next level after watching Jeremy Lamb and 6’-10” 270 lb freshman Andre Drummond perform for UConn. If Walker stayed, the Huskies would be able to beat the Knicks, without him, they could still handle the Clippers.

So fire up the wood stoves, make sure the generator has fuel and your cable bill is paid because it could be a long winter... or maybe not.

Just some thoughts and observations:

• Heidi Watney has left NESN and is taking a gig with the LA Lakers. So I guess we have heard Don Orsillo say “all right Heidi thank you very much” for the last time. If what she was telling us from the grandstand was so enlight-ening why wouldn’t Orsillo ever comment on her reports?

• Watching Curt Schilling report on the clubhouse activities of the Red Sox, I could not help but think that he was on the same condition-ing program as Josh Beckett.

• Memo to AIC hoop coach Art Luptowski: Uconn has won 35 straight exhibition games. You should have known that before you signed up for that 78-35 beat down. Taconic grad Freshman Chris Bush is a member of the Yellow Jacket squad. AIC grad Jim Calhoun is no longer welcome in the Charm Cafe on State Street in Springfield.

• UMass 79 NJIT 58. For those of us who don’t live in Newark, that would be New Jersey Institute of Technology. NJIT was surely fi-nancially rewarded for the trip to Amherst.

“What about NCAA hoops on the tube? Is it just me or have we been over saturated with too many games on too many nights. After a while I find it hard to watch a “mean nothing game” where I’ve never heard of any of the players.”

—Syriac’s take on college hoops as the season kicks off.

Berkshire’s Sports Guy:

Winter sports are on their way, no matter what you say about it

Kameron Z. Spaulding Beacon Staff Writer

WILLIAMSTOWN - The Williams College men's and women's cross country teams re-cently donated $1,000 to the Community Fund for The Spruc-es Mobile Home Park.

The Spruces was badly flooded by Hurricane Irene in late August.

All of the 273 residents were forced to evacuate their homes and many of the residences were designated permanently unin-habitable due to the damage, meaning occupants had to relo-cate in addition to the losses of personal property sustained in the storm.

The Eph teams raised the mon-ey by conducting a twelve-hour Run-a-Thon on the college's Tony Plansky Track Oct. 1 from 7 a.m. until 7 p.m.

Pairs of runners ran 20-minute segments before tagging a team-mate to continue the relay. Sup-porters pledged donations based on the total number of miles cov-ered and the final tally was 223 miles.

Captains Mark Springel and

Natalie Davis as well as Head Coach Pete Farwell and Assistant Coach Lance Harden, traveled to The Spruces to meet some of the residents still living in the park and to present the check to help them manage the necessities of life.

The team has been good on the course this season too.

After traveling 780 miles to

Winneconne, Wisconsin, the Ephs earned 6th place in the NCAA Division III National Championship this past weekend.

Together, the top-5 Williams scorers totaled 278 points, just 1 point behind 5th place Wiscon-sin Oshkosh.

Sophomore Chris Lee lead the Ephs finishing in 24:57.41.

Eph’s XC lends a helping hand and keeps winning too

Left to Right: Captain Mark Springel ’12, Dave Rebello, Peggy Roth, Cynthia Clermont-Rebello, Captain Natalie Da-vis ’12, and Head Coach Pete Farwell pose at the recent run the team held to raise money for Hurricane Irene victims.


College Sports Report

WILLIAMSTOWN - How the mighty can fall. Number 3 in the nation Williams dropped a tough early season game to Salem State 83-69 in the final game of the Williams Invitational.

Williams fell to 1-1 on the sea-son, while Salem State improved its record to 3-0.

The loss came after Williams won the first game of the tourna-ment 87-58 over Southern Vermont.

Williams played its second consecutive game without in-jured guards Nate Robertson and Hayden Rooke-Ley.

Point guard Justin Nieves led the way for the Vikings, pouring in 29 points on 10-17 shooting, including seven threes.

Nieves also pulled down six re-bounds and had three assists. Bri-an Clark added 20 points and six rebounds for Salem State, and Nate Simpson had 11 points and nine rebounds.

James Wang led the Ephs with 11 points and eight rebounds, but the pre-season All-American went only 3-12 from the field.

Wang is still coming back from off-season surgery.

Michael Mayer and Taylor Ep-ley added 10 points apiece for the Ephs.

"Give a lot of credit to Salem State - They played awfully well," Williams Head Coach Mike Maker said. "We lost to a good basketball team today. I think once we understand our identity as a team, we're going to be good. And until then we're going to have nights like the one we had today. I have a lot of confidence in our players and in our pro-gram. Right now we're just going through some growing pains."

The game was a battle in the first half. The Vikings started the game on a 17-7 run; John Wein-heimer managed to stem the tide for the Ephs, however, scoring five straight points to make the score 17-12, first with a bank-

shot, then an and-one driving la-yup on the left side with 13:23 to play in the half.

The Ephs slowly closed the Vi-kings' lead from there, and took a 29-28 lead with 5:36 remaining on a hook shot from Mayer.

Williams slowly extended the margin from there, taking its big-gest lead for the game with 3:21 to play on a three from James Kl-emm that made the score 37-32.

After buckets from Nieves and Tavone Wynder, a jumper from the left corner from Matt Mc-Creary in the left corner at the buzzer gave Williams a 39-36 lead headed into the half.

Both teams were solid offen-sively in the first half, with Wil-liams shooting 53 percent from the field and Salem shooting 51 percent.

The second half was a different story. Salem State came out of the gate hard, retaking the lead less than two minutes into the half 43-41 on a jumper from Daniel Clark.

The Ephs drew even twice in the next five minutes, but after a Jordan Mickens lay-up made the

score 52-52 with 14:34 to play, the Vikings went on an 8-0 run capped by a Daniel Clark lay-up with 13:41 to go.

They did not look back, shut-ting the down the Ephs offense almost completely the rest of the way, as Williams scored only 17 points for the remainder of the game on 3-20 shooting from the field. Salem State continued put-ting the ball in the hoop, and Williams could not stem the tide; the Vikings walked away with the 83-69 victory.

Williams shot only 23.5 per-cent from the field in the half, while Salem shot 50 percent. Williams notably went 2-14 from three in the second 20 minutes, while Salem went 6-9.

"I am proud of our team and how we competed," Maker said. "We weren't as patient as I would like, and we missed a lot of chip-pies around the basket. Obvious-ly from three I think we're a bet-ter team than we showed today."

Williams will next face Wesley-an at home on Tuesday at 7:30 p.m. Salem will face Gordon Col-lege on Tuesday at home at 7 p.m.

MCLA's Tyriq Rochester tal-lied a team high 22 points, but MCLA fell to tournament host Endicott College 77-75 in the championship game of the North Shore Collegiate Tip-Off Classic.

The Trailblazers are now 1-2 on the season, while Endicott moves to 2-1.

Endicott's Lance Greene con-verted a layup with two seconds left to give the Gulls the win. Endicott led 41-34 at the half and extended to the largest lead of 51-40 following an Andre Makris layup. Greene was also named the tournament's most outstanding player.

MCLA would begin to claw their way back into the game, trimming the deficit to just five points at 55-50 after a Richard Johnson dunk. The Gulls an-swered with a Makris triple, but then the Trailblazers kept chip-ping away.

They finally pulled even at 73 apiece after a Rochester layup. After trading scores, the latter of which was a Chris Harris drive to

the basket, the host Gulls set up a play and Greene converted with just two seconds remaining.

Harris was the only other Trail-blazer in double figures, finishing with 11 points. For Endicott, five players scored in double fig-ures, led by Makris with 15. John Henault scored 15 off the bench, while Tyler Burkhart added 12. Greene finished with 11 and Lachlan McGee added 10.

MCLA's Rochester and Chris Harris were named to the All Tournament Team.

Tyriq Rochester made the All Tournament Team

MCLA splits tournament games

No. 3 Williams gets shocked at home, 83-69

Preseason All-American James Wang struggled to get his shot to fall against Salem State. It was the first non-NESCAC loss for Williams in 3 years.

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Editorial:

A pause to give thanksToday, I pause to give

thanks and prayer to the community-at-large for be-ing patient as our dedicated staff and I have weekly over the past six months put the pages of The Berkshire Bea-con and on occasion The Berkshire Sonata to bed.

The results of our efforts have been rewarding to each member of our staff. While I pause to acknowledge friends and family, I am also reminded that it is our staff of young people with college degrees who have come here to hone their skills in writing and layout and some have taken up the cause to call on you the local busi-ness person seeking your advertising dollars.

It is your advertising dol-lars that pay our bills from staff, to printing to distribu-tion. It is our readers, who not only buy your products and services but also give us feedback on our content from writing to pictures to layout to the quality of the printed page.

Soon we’ll have an impor-tant announcement to make that will separate our publi-cation from others in Berk-shire County.

As we acknowledge and celebrate this Thanksgiving, I would like to share my own good fortune of acknowledg-ing my parents, G. Carlton Jordan, Jr. who died in Dec. 5 1981 at the age of 72, and my mother, Dorothy P. Jor-dan, who at the age of 98 died this past Mar. 17. They provided seed money for the re-start of The Berkshire Beacon’s enterprise.

The common thought on the street is that newspapers are dying then along comes George C. Jordan III. Either he is a fool or he has a cause.

My cause is to provide both the reader and the ad-vertiser a medium in the con-text of news and features

from around the county and a forum to display one’s ad-vertisement at a reasonable rate.

The other goal is to create a brand name for The Berk-shire Beacon.

In so doing, it takes many hands, a dedicated staff and a goal to become the best as judged by one’s peers name-ly the New England Newspa-per & Press Association (NENPA).

Our young staff will grow, others with age and experi-ence will join, and the results will be a community inde-pendent newspaper that the reader can be proud of and look to its brand.

For the record, I give thanks to Donna Thomas, business manager of LenoxDale; Su-san (Wicker) Guerrero, staff writer and profiler, of Pitts-field; Susan (Unsworth) Rob-inson, my niece and graphic designer from Pittsfield; Ka-meron Z. Spaulding, editorial assistant, who is the utility person of Lee: Janel Harri-son, writer, columnist from Becket; Jacqueline J. Wendling, our sales rep. out of Pittsfield; Bera Dunau, local reporter from Pittsfield; Fred Speyrer of Lee and Martha Chirono of Pittsfield, delivery personnel; and our soon to be staffer Catherine Krum-mey of Black Jack, MO, edu-cation and obituary writer, and head of classified ads.

Thus I, as editor and pub-lisher, of The Berkshire Bea-con and Berkshire Sonata give thanks to the staff and community-at-large and of-fer to you and your family a Thanksgiving blessing of hope and kindness as we re-flect on this year and look to the future with an “eye” of making our community a better place.

In the months ahead, we look forward to expanding our coverage and our tourist pub-lication through Beaconology.

“Any ordinance or by-law creating an his-toric district may, from time to time, be amended in any manner not inconsistent with the provisions of this chapter by a two-thirds vote of the city council in a city or by a two-thirds vote of a town meeting in a town, provided that the substance of such amend-ment has first been submitted to the historic district commission having jurisdiction over such district for its recommendation and its recommendation has been received or sixty days have elapsed without such recommen-dation,” according to Christopher C. Skelly, Director of Local Government Programs Massachusetts Historical Commission.

“It partly depends on what the change is. A change to the size of the LHD requires a multi step process including the submittal of a study report to MHC.

“For other kinds of changes, herein is the relevant section of MGL Chapter 40C Sec-tion 3,” Skelly said.

The Lenox Planning Board may in two in-stances be on a “fools errand” noting that it is the duty of the Lenox Historic District Commission to provide the guidelines for any signage by-law change-not vice versa.

According to Sec. 3: “In the proposed his-toric district or districts shall be made by an historic district study committee or by an his-toric district commission, as provided in this section and in section four, who shall trans-mit copies of the report to the planning board.”

Currently, the planning board has been charged by the selectmen with looking into advocating changes in the sign by-laws. This is bass.ack.wards!

SecondarilyThe Massachusetts Historical Commis-

sion, Boston, may consult with the director

of economic development, the director of housing and community development and the commissioner of environmental manage-ment with respect to such reports, and may make guidelines for such reports, and, after public hearing, establish rules as to their form and manner of transmission. Hum.

Thirdly “Not less than sixty days after such trans-

mittal the study committee shall hold a pub-lic hearing on the report after due notice giv-en at least fourteen days prior to the date thereof, which shall include a written notice mailed postage prepaid, to the owners as they appear on the most recent real estate tax list of the board of assessors of all prop-erties to be included in such district or dis-tricts. The committee shall submit a final re-port with its recommendations, a map of the proposed district or districts and a draft of a proposed ordinance or by-law, to the city council or town meeting.”

As to whether the law would be applicable to a change in the sign by-law, Skelly said, “Yes, if the wording is within the LHD bylaw.”

And the second part of the “fools errand” is the point that those most effective want to change the by-laws for their own self-inter-est, not in protecting the core Historic District.

As we have said in the past, non-conformi-ty has resulted in a “Junk-yard of signs” and thus the goal should not be change, but enforcement.

Meanwhile, the planning board has con-ducted two meetings into the proposed changes to the sign by-laws.

Editors Note: See page 7 for comments from many of those that appeared before the Planning Board.

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Back-ass-words


Joseph A. Kellogg, chair-man of Lenox Planning Board at the Public Participation Session on Historic Sign Reg-ulation Review said the board understands the need for a re-vision of the sign regulations and noted that the purpose of these sessions are to listen to comments and concerns.

Mr. Kellogg said the board’s goal is to improve the sign reg-ulations, however cautioned that they will never be perfect.

“The current plan is to re-move the existing regulations in their entirety and replace them with a completely new document,” said Mr. Kellogg who asked that participants tell the board both what is pos-itive about the existing regula-tions as well as the negatives.

Mr. Kellogg explained that within the village, both the Zoning Bylaws and the Histor-ic District Commission (LHDC) Guidelines apply.

Thomas T. Werman of un-der Mountain Road in a pre-pared statement stressed that an important distinction must first be made noting that Lenox’s downtown area is a historic commercial district – not a commercial historic district.

Mr. Werman said the bylaws are outdated and the strict ap-plication of the bylaws has lead to an ongoing struggle between merchants and town traditionalists noting there has been an honest attempt to cre-ate a “business-friendly” envi-ronment but added there has been reluctance to support businesses in town regarding their operational needs.

He said that in this painful economy, Lenox needs a strong and vital commercial environment and its resulting tax revenues.

“Our elected and appointed boards should find ways to promote commerce noting the need for zoning regulations but stressed there are procedures in place for amending and up-dating the bylaws that no lon-ger work,” Mr. Werman said.

He noted that a few sand-wich boards for two months a year wouldn’t destroy the his-toric integrity of Lenox.

Jenn Nacht of The Scoop understands the need to maintain the historic district but noted the two-week per-mit for a sandwich board sign does not work. She would like the permit to be issued for the season. Ms. Nacht suggested her sandwich sign could be a template for other signs and stressed the success of Apple Squeeze noting its festival at-mosphere and that merchants have sidewalk displays.

Ruth Wheeler of Clearwater Natural Foods supports the ef-forts to rewrite the sign regula-tions noting the board should review the number of allowed signs. She thinks many busi-nesses need more than one sign and called for window dis-plays. She would like to see provisions for merchandise on the sidewalks noting that when she displayed vegetables on a cart outside her door – the vegetables sold-out quickly. When she was told to remove the cart, her vegetable sales dropped. She suggested rea-sonable regulations such as a limit of one cart or one table per business.

Kenneth Fowler, president of the Lenox Chamber of Commerce, said he served on the Planning Board and the LHDC prior to becoming a Se-lectman noting that signs are always an issue.

Mr. Fowler noted that the village merchants have layers of regulations to navigate and noted the creation of outdoor dining regulations helped make businesses appear friendlier and that has been successful.

Mr. Fowler said he feels the same will hold true for the sign regulations and stressed that the time has come to change the sign regulations.

Thomas A Hoadley of the Hoadley Gallery said that he is in the middle of the variance process to allow additional signage and called for ban-ners and flags noting that reg-ulations should reflect the changes that were made re-cently to the sidewalks. Mr. Hoadley said he has come to learn that variances (The Zon-ing Board of Appeals process) is very difficult to obtain and suggested that the process be less restrictive and allow for exceptions for individual circumstances. (Editor’s Note: The ZBA refused to rule initial-ly on his variance application for a sign modification.)

Ralph L Petillo, director of the Lenox Chamber of Com-merce, noted that he is a for-mer village business owner and said that the shops and the restaurants are why peo-ple visit Lenox noting that temporary signs should be al-lowed all year not just during the busy summer season.

Mr. Petillo said, “Signs should reflect the character of the Historic District. Tempo-rary signs could be two styles either free standing or hang-ing signs. The size should be uniform. He suggested that non-permanent signs be half the size of allowed permanent signs.

Also, Mr. Petillo said that we must recognize the needs for signs because we are a tourist community and believes busi-ness owners will do the right thing thus can be granted greater discretion.

Tina Tartaglia of Prime & Berkshire Yogurt, asked spe-cific questions regarding the existing bylaws and noted that she likes flags and ban-ners. She emphasized the need to allow signs that can be changed such as a white board sign noting the problem is not the number of perma-nent signs that are allowed, but the lack of provisions for temporary and/or accessory signs. She suggested greater flexibility for window signs. She stressed the need to allow for signs that let businesses adver-tise changing information.

William F. Thornton, Build-ing Commissioner, suggested that the board be careful re-garding sidewalk displays and should review liability issues. He also stressed the impor-tance of accessibility and the Americans with Disabilities re-quirements. He asked that the board to clarify if neon signs are prohibited and suggested that the American flag be ex-empt for any regulations. This is not clear in the existing by-laws, he noted.

Kate McNulty-Vaughan, a board member, noted the need for fairness. Everyone agreed they did not want a kiosk. Mr. Sample said he has talked with Jeff Vincent, DPW Director, who confirmed that those directional signs removed during the village reconstruction project would be replaced.

Stephen I. Sample, mem-ber of the planning board and former member and liaison to LHDC, said that he has served on the LHDC for many years, including in the 1990s and not-ed that signs take an enormous amount of the LHDC’s time. He thinks signs can be better man-aged through zoning.

Discussion ensued regard-ing the need for temporary signs. Some suggested that each business be allowed to have one permanent sign and one temporary sign. Others suggested the need for busi-ness directory signs.

Jean Ives Bougouin of Pa-tisserie Bakery said he had problems with the sign regula-tions noting that sandwich board signs are very important to his business. He noticed a drop in business when he could not put out his sign. The enforcement process should be more business friendly.

Joan Cornell of Jewelz said her business is located on Walker Street, which is sepa-rated from the core village and sees a need for sandwich signs. Prior to opening her business, she sublet space at Shooz and Casablanca. Walk-er Street is a drive-by location and temporary signs are im-portant. She noted that when the Town reconstructed the vil-lage they should have made provisions for directional signs.

Jim Terry of Villager Gifts, would like to make Mr. Thorn-ton’s job simpler by making the rules easier to understand and less subjective. He sees a need for allowing additional signs for business owners that have multiple businesses in one storefront.

Mr. Terry said when he ap-proached sign companies about replacing his worn-out signs; he was advised that you don’t want to open that can of worms in Lenox. In not-ing the creation of the Historic District he said that when the Historic District was adopted, it was to position the Town for potential grant funding and questioned the need for the Historic District and the ability to coordinate the bylaws and the guidelines.

Claudia Case, new busi-ness owner, said she operates a tutoring business and re-cently signed a lease for an office space in the village. She said that some warned her that Lenox is not business friendly but she wanted to have her business here.

Lynn West of Glad Rags, said she would like to see new businesses succeed and thinks temporary signs such as sandwich boards should be allowed all year.

Ms. West said that the Town erected banners on the street-lights for organizations out-side the village such as Shake-speare and Company and Ventfort Hall.

“Let the business creativity come through in signs but is opposed to neon signs. She also thinks the permitting pro-cess should be reduced.

She said that sandwich signs are common in New York City and do not seem to create safety concerns.

W. David Roche, business owner and selectman, said re-vised sign regulations will help local businesses and sug-gested that the board review the sign regulations for New-buryport and Concord and urged the board to make signs by-right versus special permit.

Local comments on the issue of Lenox Historic District signage


churches. According to Monsi-gnor Bonzagni of the Parish Plan-ning Council, it’s now the deci-sion of the pastor of Pope John Paul the Great, Father Daniel Boyle in consultation with the parish council and the financial council of what will be done with the building using it in some reli-gious use.

The story of the Roman Cath-olic church of St. Stanislaus be-gins when it opened its doors over 100 years ago. Construction began in 1903 upon the designs of Erhard Brielmaier of Milwau-kee, a designer of over 800 churches in The United States and Canada. Just 2 years later the church was consecrated on Octo-ber 22, 1905.

Since then the church, along with its parish members, many of Polish decent have brought it to the present day.

In 2007 a document the “Mul-lin Report” displayed a detailed analysis of parishes in the Diocese.

It recommended parishes that should be consolidated and churches that should be closed.

St. Stanislaus was not on the list to be closed. But on August 10, 2008 upon the decision of Bishop Timothy A. McDonnell and the Roman Catholic Diocese of Springfield, it was announced St. Stanislaus will merge with Notre Dame Des Sept Dolores and St. Thomas Aquinas to form the new parish of Pope John Paul the Great. Also announced was the closure of St. Stanislaus.

In the last mass given on De-cember 28, 2008 at St. Stanislaus the Bishop stated it was his inten-sion to “revitalize” the communi-ty of Adams in merging the three churches.

Monsignor Bonzagni spoke of the decision, “They looked at in-frastructure no longer sustainable going forward, dwindling partici-pation, and a number of priests entering into retirement.”

He added, “The community is only in need of one parish.”

Upon receiving the news the saddened parishioners of St. Stanislaus often referred to as St. Stans; like an old friend, knew it was within their rights to appeal, which they did with the Diocese of Springfield in August, and in September with the Congrega-tion of Clergy: the lowest Vatican appeals court in Rome.

At which time they procured the help of Peter Borre: Chair-man of the Council of Parishes in

Boston, a council formed to fight the closing of parishes.

While waiting for a response, and in effort to prevent vandal-ism, and keep the church open, 200 parishioners began an around the clock vigil.

Upon the bulletin board in the corner of the church is the phrase written in bold letters,

These people are strong, deter-mined, and full of passion and devotion to their historic church.

“We are not going anywhere,” said Ms. Joan Pause of Adams while serving chocolate cake to visitors on the 1056 vigil day. “I’ve lived here all my life; we are like a happy family here.”

On February 15, 2011 the pa-rishioners rejoiced in celebration, song, and the bells of St. Stans rang in the air, when The Con-gregation of Clergy: the lowest Vatican appeals court in Rome handed down a two part

decision. The Vatican rules in favor of

the Diocese’s decision to suppress and merge the parish of St. Stanislaus.

The Vatican rules that St. Stan-islaus should be opened as a place of worship.

Ms. Laurie Haas parishioner and spokes person for the appeal said in a recent interview in refer-ence to the vigilers, “They love this church, and some things in life are worth fighting for.”

But later in June The Diocese of Springfield filed an appeal of the decree with the Supreme Court Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura: the Vatican’s highest court of appeal.

The vigil members themselves filed their own appeal with the court and last Friday perhaps as a Thanksgiving blessing the Vati-can ruled that their church could not be sold.


LENOX - The Wind Energy Research Panel has tentatively ar-ranged for a site visit to the Berk-shire Wind Power Project atop Brodie Mountain in Hancock Massachusetts on November 26th.

Before reaching their decision, the committee discussed what they hoped to gain from a site vis-it to an existing wind power proj-ect, when the most appropriate time for a site visit would be, and what site visits would best serve the committee’s needs.

Most committee members wanted to visit a site in the near future, and a site favored by a number of them were the two municipally owned Wind Tur-bines in Princeton, MA.

One of the chief reasons for this was the similarity between the Princeton project and the two wind turbines being considered for Lenox Mountain.

“Princeton I think is a great model for what we are talking about,” said panel member Jaime Cahillane.

Panel member JoAnne Magee, however, was of the opinion that the committee should hold off on site visits until they knew exactly what they wished to learn from them.

“What do you expect to get from a site visit? What do you ex-pect to learn and what do you hope to come away with?” said Mrs. Magee, who also informed Mr. Cahillane that one of the Princeton turbines was currently out of commission, although this didn’t appear to lessen Mr. Ca-hillane’s desire to investigate the site.

Mrs. Magee’s questions prompted her fellow Panel mem-bers to more firmly define what they wanted to get out of these expeditions.

Panel member Eric Vincelete said that, having never visited a turbine before, he wanted to get a sense of the physical scale and scope of a project, and to talk to some of the people who lived nearby. He also said that these goals could be met either at Princ-eton, which is in central Massachu-setts, or at a more local project.

Jaime Cahillane, however, hav-

ing visited turbines before, was more interested in visiting the Princeton site to get a better idea of what the public officials in the town thought of the project and the challenges they’d faced install-ing the new turbines.

He also wanted to learn more about the noise and visual impact of the site

Channing Gibson also liked the idea of consulting with public officials in Princeton, and ex-pressed the hope that public meeting law postings would also bring out a decent chunk of the town’s populace for the site visit, who could then express their pleasure or displeasure at the project.

Dr. Michael Kaplan, however, asserted that all one could get from a site visit was a general feel for the site, that visiting a nearby turbine like the Brodie project would be more than sufficient for their purposes, and that visiting Brodie would give the panel a better idea of what turbines on a ridgeline in the Berkshires would look like.

Dr. Kaplan then proposed a site visit to Brodie Mountain the Saturday after Thanksgiving, and was seconded by Eric Vincelete.

Facilitator Adele Gravitz sug-gested that an alternate date might be better, pointing out that many people would be away Thanksgiving weekend, the panel decided to arrange for a site visit to Brodie Mountain on Saturday, November 26 at 1:00 PM if possible.

The meeting also saw Lenox resident Richard Taylor address the committee. Mr. Taylor criti-cized the financial viability of the project, asserting that the profit-ability margin for Wind Turbines on Lenox Mountain was wafer thin, and that the town risked losing a great deal of money from the project, and stood to gain only marginal rewards, even if all went well.

Mr. Taylor based these calcula-tions off figures for a single mu-nicipally owned turbine based off numbers in the Weston and Black and Veatch reports, although he did not believe that adding a sec-ond turbine would make much of a difference in the projects viability.

Wind Committee to take another visit

VIGIL from page 1

Last Friday The Vatican’s highest court upheld the decision of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Springfield to close three Western mass Churches including St. Stanislaus in Adams. The parishioners have been fighting to keep the church open since 2008.


Imagine a gigantic cactopus (part cactus and part octopus) named Pat that yearns for nothing simpler than friendship. Pat lives in a potted pet store, where year in, year out, the smaller, cuter plantimals are whisked away to attractive suburban homes. But no one wants Pat.

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faster transactions and improved accuracy – all of which translate to less wait time and a better ex-perience for the customer.

“We are excited to expand our banking services into Lenox with this new state-of-the-art branch that will offer customers a full ar-ray of financial services,” said Sean Gray, executive vice presi-dent of retail banking.

“We are coupling this branch opening with the relocation of the Legacy Banks Holmes Road office, so we look forward to wel-coming both Legacy customers and new customers to this full-service branch office.”

“The branch features the cus-tomer-friendly design that we are incorporating into all of our new locations, which includes our personalized teller areas as well as our AMEB Café.”

“We welcome anyone to stop in and experience this new bank-ing atmosphere.”

Berkshire Bank’s new Lenox branch will feature personal and commercial business banking, re-tail and business lending, insur-ance and wealth management services.

With the opening the company now has more than 60 full service branch offices in Massachusetts,

New York, and Vermont.The Lenox branch opening co-

incides with the conversion of the Legacy Banks branch offices to Berkshire Bank. As part of that process, the Legacy Holmes Road office customer relationships will be serviced out of the new Lenox Berkshire Bank branch also on November 14.

The final transition from the Legacy Banks branch offices to Berkshire Bank office took place during the weekend of November 11-13, 2011. This is the final step in the merger process of Berkshire with Legacy, which was officially completed July 21, 2011.

“We are excited to complete our merger process with Legacy Banks and fully bring together our two organizations,” said Mr. Gray.

“We share deep roots in our community as well as a strong commitment to the cities and towns that we serve, and we look forward to joining forces to strengthen that commitment even further.”

Gray added, “The conversion of the branches is the most visible and noticeable component for the customers. We have worked hard to ensure a smooth transi-tion, and can’t wait to formally welcome Legacy customers to America’s Most Exciting Bank.”

Photo Credit / Kameron SPaulding

The new branch of Berkshire Bank is now open next to Price Chopper in Lenox on Pittsfield-Lenox Road. The opening was the same weekend that Legacy Banks in the region of-ficially became Berkshire Banks after the July merger.

BANK from page 1


Community Calendar


As a guy who enjoys his brew, I often look for those that have a high ABV content.

I call these brews the “High Octane Beers.” Now when the weather starts to chill these po-tent drinks can help keep you warm, or at the very least make you forget how cold it really is.

In June 2008, Harpoon and UFO released a line of beers called Harpoon Leviathan, and in that collection is Triticus.

The Latin word for wheat, Trit-icus is an amazingly strong, dark, wheat wine-style ale, that comes in at 11.5 percent ABV. Harpoon uses a blend of 50 percent wheat malts, also including caramel and chocolate, which give the beer great color and flavor.

The beer is extremely dark in flavor, which is what is expected with a beer that is 50 percent wheat malts and brewed with chocolate. The chocolate comes out in the flavor almost instantly along with a slight malt flavor, which all ends in a sweet aftertaste.

Yes, sweet, which means one

thing: this beer is full of alcohol. That same sense of alcohol comes through even before you get the beer to your mouth. The sweet aroma warms your nose ,letting you know you’re going to be in for a joyful ride.

Another great high ABV beer is Portsmouth Wheat Wine from the guys at Portsmouth Brewery up in New Hampshire. This great New England beer is not for the faint of heart again coming in at over 11%.

Right when the rich and dark orange beer fills your glass the sweet winter smells hit you hard. It is like you just poured your grandmothers shortbread in a glass. Vanilla and caramel all those favorite sweet brew smells are in this one.

This one coats your whole mouth with it’s creamy malt fla-vor from sip numero uno. But there is still enough hop buried down in this one to give you the kick and to develop a multitude of flavors.

These are both B+ to maybe even A- beers in my book. So grab a few, well to be safe start with just one, and sit back and enjoy that turkey this week.

Beers so strong they are sure to warm you up


Leviathan beers from Harpoon can be found in 4-packs.

WeDNeSDAy, NoVeMBeR 23RD

NORTH ADAMS TREE LIGHTING & HOME-TOWN HOLIDAYS KICK OFFNorth Adams, 6 p.m. Join hundreds of festive faces as North Adams gears up for the holiday season with the annual Tree Lighting Ceremony and Hometown Holidays kick-off event on Wednesday.

HOME”MADE” FOR THE HOLIDAYSPittsfield, 11a.m. - 4 p.m. A&M Events is proud to present the 2nd Annual Home”Made” for the Holidays Spice Dragon 297 North Street, 2nd Floor, This artisan markeplace features arti-sans from the Berkshires and sur-rounding areas.

BIDWELL MUSEUM CO-LONIAL THANKSGIVING PARTYMonterey, 4 to 7 p.m. Bidwell House Museum Colonial Holiday of Thanksgiving Fund-raising Party, A celebration of the harvest in Reverend Bidwell’s 1750s parlors.

FRIDAy,NoVeMBeR 25

ARTIST RECEPTIONPittsfield, 5 - 7 p.m.Gallery 25 - solo exhibit of oil paintings by Joan Ciolfi, entitled “25”, which features a series of festive vintage dress paintings. Artist reception and runs through December 26. Gallery 25 is locat-ed across the street from Bar-rington Stage at 25 Union Street.

SATuRDAy,NoVeMBeR 26TH

OPEN HOUSEPittsfield, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.Pittsfield 250, the year-long cele-bration of the 250th Anniversary of the City of Pittsfield, will come to an exciting conclusion with an open house, a community cele-bration, and the performance of a comic opera at the Colonial The-ater, The Community Celebra-tion featuring performances and awards will be held from 11:00 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.

HOME”MADE” FOR THE HOLIDAYSPittsfield, 11a.m. - 4 p.m.A&M Events is proud to present the 2nd Annual Home”Made” for the Holidays Spice Dragon 297 North Street, 2nd Floor, This artisan markeplace features arti-sans from the Berkshires and sur-rounding areas. It’s a great way to kick off your holiday shopping! Admission is $2 for adults and children 12 and under are FREE Win Door prizes! Goodie bags for the first 100 adult attendees!

MESSIAH SING-INGreat Barrington, 4:00pmThe Berkshire Bach Society pres-ents its free Messiah Sing-In with Frank Nemhauser conducting at the First Congregational Church in Great Barrington. Included are the following: Part I #1 Over-ture, #4 And the Glory of the Lord, #7 And He Shall Purify, #8 O Thou That Tellest (aria and chorus), #12 For Unto Us A Child is Born, and more.

SHAKER SUPPERSPittsfield, 4 p.m.Hancock Shaker Village, 34 Leb-anon Mountain Road, 518-443-0188, $65 & $70, After a cider and cheese reception in the spa-cious kitchen of the historic Brick Dwelling (beer and wine avail-able for purchase), dinner is served by candle light in the Be-lievers’ Dining Room.

OPEN HOUSE, THE EAGLES BIG BAND TO PLAYPittsfield, 2 to 5 p.m.As part of an open house being held on Saturday, EPOCH As-sisted Living at Melbourne will host a performance by local fa-vorite The Eagles Big Band. The open house will include refresh-ments and tours of the commu-nity, and it will be held from 2 to 5 p.m.

A BENEFIT CONCERTPittsfield, 7 p.m.Singer-songwriter Bobby Sweet and The BSweet Band along with The Tommy Filiault Band will be performing a benefit concert for Central Berkshire Habitat for Humanity on Saturday, at The First United Methodist Church, 55 Fenn Street.

BIDWELL MUSEUM CO-LONIAL THANKSGIVING PARTYMonterey, 4 to 7 p.m.Bidwell House Museum Colonial Holiday of Thanksgiving Fund-raising Party, A celebration of the harvest in Reverend Bidwell’s 1750s parlors. Annual fund-rais-ing party to benefit the Berkshire colonial history museum, featur-ing acoustical guitarist David Reed. Wine, cider, a colonial cocktail, hors d’oeuvres, decora-tions, silent auction, $45 per per-son/$35 for members.

WeDNeSDAy, NoVeMBeR 30TH

PARTICIPATORY HOLI-DAY SINGINGNorth Adams, 4:30 or 5:30 p.m. Holiday Singing Sing Seasonal Choral Music & Carols Adults & Children ~ Beginners Welcome Wednesdays, 4:30-6:30, 215 Richview Ave. & Dec. 7th Sing at Studio Recital.

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The Williams Inn1090 Main St.,Williamstown

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Cranwell Resort, Spa & Golf Club

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served in the Mansion Ballroom from Noon – 7pm.

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Sloane’s Tavern 11:30am – 9pm

Serving the regular menu + a special turkey dinner.

The Morgan House Inn & Restaurant

33 Main St., Lee413. 243.3661

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Route 7 Grill999 South Main St.,

Great Barrington413.528.3235

www.route7grill.comSpecial Thanksgiving menu with all the fixin’s + homemade pies

for dessert. $30 per person.

The Red Lion Inn30 Main St., Stockbridge

413.298.554 www.redlioninn.com

Noon – 6:30pm Special 4 course dinner. Adults $49. Children under 12 $24.50

Aegean Breeze327 Stockbridge Rd.,

Great Barrington413.528.4001

www.aegeanbreeze.com11am – 4pm

Gateways Inn & La Terrazza Restaurant

51 Walker St., Lenox413.637.2532

www.gatewaysinn.comSpecial Thanksgiving Day menu. $52 per person + tax & gratuity.

Gala Steakhouse & Bistro222 Adams Rd., Williamstown

800.225.1517 www.galarestaurant.com

Noon – 6pm Special Thanksgiving Day menu .

Adults $29.95. Seniors $23.95. Children (5-12) $15.95

Kemble Inn2 Kemble St., Lenox

413. 637.4113 www.kembleinn.com

Special 4 course prix fixe Thanksgiving menu at $52.00

per person

Thornwood Inn & The Point Restaurant

435 Stockbridge Rd., Great Barrington

413.528.3828 www.thornewoodinn.com

Traditional buffet, $32 adults, $28 children over 3years

Crowne Plaza Hotel BerkshiresOne West Restaurant,

West St., Pittsfield413.499.2000

www.berkshirecrowne.com12:30pm – 6:30pm

Traditional Thanksgiving Dinner served Family Style + take your

leftover home!Adults $22.99; Seniors $22.99; Children 10 and under $12.99

plus tax & gratuity. Reservations required.

Not cooking this year?Thanksgiving Dinner

Restaurant ChoicesSusan Wicker Guerrero

Beacon Staff Writer

PITTSFIELD – Every year at Thanksgiving, most people stop and pause for a moment to reflect.

Besides the luscious golden baked turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce, and all the other side dish-es of the Big Day’s meal, family and friends usually top the list of things for which to be thankful.

There really are people in the world who have no family con-tacts to speak of . One can only imagine how lonely that must be. It’s enough to break one’s heart.

Those of us who have loved ones to spend the day with can be very grateful we are part of a fam-ily. For good or for bad, we know there are people there for us if we need them.

We fight but then make-up. We set boundaries and then bust through them. We can’t stand Aunt Martha but then, again, we love the old gal.

That’s what families are all about. Sometimes we thoroughly dislike the behavior but we love the person. And so it goes.

The things we acknowledge being thankful for don’t have to be earthshattering. The smallest of the small things can make our “thankful” list.

So, hoping it’s not too self-serving, I’d like to share my 2011 Thanksgiving Day thankful list with you, a Beacon reader.

1. Good health. With all my being I’m grateful not to be going through chemotherapy or facing some equally devastating disease. So my knee hurts more often than in the past. Big deal. Every day I can get up and get going is a good day.

2. The Berkshire Beacon. Yeah, that’s right. Being able to write for this little weekly newspaper is something I’m immensely grate-ful for.

After returning to New Eng-land from the southwest, writing for my hometown newspaper was something I wanted more than anything in the world.

Throughout the decades, no matter where we called home, I’ve always written for the local paper and that included small

town as well as metropolitan newspapers.

Now the joy and opportunity of writing and taking photo-graphs have been returned to me.

Writing and photography are as important to me as breathing and that’s pretty important!

So many, many thanks to the Berkshire Beacon.

3. My daughter-in-law and son-in-law. Parents everywhere want their children to do well, to contribute to society, and to be happy.

It’s natural to want them to find good soulmates with whom to walk life’s journey.

In the past three years, we’ve at-tended both of our grown up kids’ weddings and love their spouses as our own children.

We have a new daughter and a new son and for both of them, grateful overflows. They are gen-uinely good, kind, and decent people. (Plus, they love our kids so how could we not love them?)

4. My husband. Okay, okay, I know it sounds “smaltzy” but even after more decades than I care to think about, this man who has been my side is more precious to me this Thanksgiving than ever.

He faced some pretty threaten-ing health challenges and came

through them with flying colors. When I see his dark eyes looking at me and smiling, it feels like we are in love all over again.

I’m so happy he’s still alive, still able to make me laugh, to travel with, and to hug when I’m feel-ing down.

He always knows what to say when I’m in a funk or feeling bummed about something or someone. He’s a born counselor and a very faithful man.

How could my heart not be filled with gratitude for him?

Weve been through many storms together, some of which threatened to tear us to smithereens.

We have laughed and cried to-gether, planned, celebrated, hoped, fought, and made up. We’ve even lived to see many of our dreams come true! We are blessed beyond belief.

5. You, a precious reader. You’re very important to me, whether or not we’ve met face-to-face.

It’s great to know someone reads the words that writers pour out from their hearts. That vali-dates us and makes us smile from deep inside.

Okay, that’s my abbreviated Thanksgiving gratitude list for 2011. As for Tom Turkey? Let’s have at it! Yum yum yum

A Personal Touch....

Thank you for the big things and for the little things, too


Girl-2-GirlFrogsvs.

PrincesJanel HarrisonBeacon Staff

So the question on deck this week is how many frogs does a girl have to kiss to find her prince who she is ever T-H-A-N-K-F-U-L for?

10? 25? 33? 100? 500? And by kiss I mean much more than a kiss, a relationship lasting more than a one nighter, we’re talking real feelings involved and recipro-cated in some fashion here girls.

And wouldn’t that be nice if frogs really were princes and we could just take our pick and poof! Find our-selves robed in silks in a shiny castle or a ma-jestic stone mansion!

A visit to the pond would be like a night out. You hear a croak, reach over and there he is sitting on a rock flaunting his bubble waiting… ready to make your dreams come true.

The question is ultimately un-founded, but really why must some of us go through so much heartbreak? And with love being power, we are floored when we find ourselves once again alone.

Is it God making these out-comes for us? Is it meant to be when a relationship ends? Per-haps there is a higher power in-tervening? I believe so being of Catholic faith. But how do you feel? If single do you think there is someone waiting out there for you? That things are meant to be, destined? Do you believe in fate and soul-mates?

I’m tired, discouraged, and heartbroken to watch friends get hurt by non-prince frogs, but for-ever holding on to faith that their Prince Charming will come along and everything will change, there will come magic…

But like in every story there are rules that coincide and facilitate the magic, in order for it to work more effectively, and so perhaps

sometimes we need to follow a set of rules in a relationship for the magic to flow.

There are definitely lots of book on rules and do they work? Maybe? And maybe that will be my subject for next week. Maybe there is one person meant just for you?

These are just my thoughts and I’m sure you have your own, but I’d like to look a little further on how to make magic… and what gives some of us that feeling? Is it chemistry; two people with com-

mon thoughts and values? Or can it be mistaken

for raw physical attraction and lust?

So m e t i m e it’s just a look, a smile, and a sparkle.

He walks up to you on a blus-

tery autumn day completely unexpect-

edly, smiles and your eyes meet intently, he softly kisses your lips for a breath, and there it is… magic. And it’s there in that whole frame of time from the minute you see him coming to-ward you. It just gets bigger and bigger. Where ever does that come from? As Katie Perry says, “It’s Super Natural”

So for those of you who have kissed enough warty frogs, dated enough putzes, slept with enough pigs. This toast is for you to keep the faith, read books, listen to music, light candles, drink tea or whatever your flavor, go to thera-py, let your hair down, reopen your heart, do whatever it takes to bring yourself back.

Salute! You’re going to be al-right. Take it from me.

You’ll see; the universe will un-fold as it should, and if it’s what you really want, you will one day find yourself unequivocally hap-py with no warts.

Ciao Bella


It is remarkable that so many talented people could have made a film as monumentally bad as Puss In Boots.

You would think that a movie that employed the voice acting skills of Antonio Banderas, Salma Hayek, Zach Galifianakis, Billy Bob Thornton and Amy Sedaris would at least be passable.

Throw in being by executive produced by genius writer direc-tor Guillermo Del Toro and hav-ing a song in the soundtrack from Lady Gaga, and you might haz-ard a guess that the resulting movie would be fairly good.

Unfortunately, the name of that film is Puss In Boots and it is one of the worst stinkers of the year

Puss In Boots is a spin off film from the Shrek series that centers around the titular character of Puss In Boots, voiced by Antonio Banderas.

As he was in the Shrek films, Puss In Boots is a Hispanic cat outlaw. What does this mean for you the viewer of this new 3D ex-travaganza you ask? One and a half hours of lame cat and Latin jokes I am sorry to say.

Whatever charms Puss may have had in the Shrek sequels have completely vanished from the new film.

The plot revolves around Puss trying to restore his honor, and attempting to steal magic beans from the murderous thugs Jack and Jill, voiced by Billy Bob Thornton and Amy Sedaris.

To do this he ends up teaming up with his old Partner Humpty Dumpty, voiced by Zach Galifi-anakis, and feline cat burglar Kit-ty Soft Paws, voiced by Salma Hayek.

Formerly best friends, Puss and Humpty had a falling out that ended up exiling Puss from his home town and sending Humpty to prison. With the magic beans, however, they hope to be able to steal the golden goose, and with the golden eggs it produces, set things right.

Disregarding the fact that Puss In Boots has almost nothing in the way of character growth and development, its fundamental problem is that it lacks even the

slightest sense of fun, not to men-tion being utterly devoid of soul.

Filled to the brim with un-comfortable popular culture ref-erences, lame modern re-imagin-ings of fairy tale characters and cat humor (extremely unfunny, vaguely disturbing cat humor), Puss In Boots manages to incorpo-rate all the tired and stale ele-ments of the Shrek series, with-out managing to capture even a single one of its better elements.

Some may say that Puss In Boots is a kid’s movie, and should be judged less harshly because of it, but that is really no excuse.

Some of the greatest films ever made have been created for chil-dren: The Princess Bride, Beauty and the Beast and Up are just a few children’s movies that are considered classics by any measure.

Writing for kids doesn’t mean you can neglect plot, character development or a sense of scope. Indeed, if anything, basic story-telling elements are even more important in a children’s film, as kids movie needs to keep the short attention spans of the chil-dren watching it.

Nor does it mean you can dis-regard the enjoyment of the par-ents, who took their children to the theatre, and who do not de-serve to pay for the privilege of being tortured by an uninspired

monstrosity like this movie. What is really ironic about Puss

In Boots is that the original film that it is a spin off of, Shrek, un-derstood these lessons perfectly.

When Shrek came out it was a breath of fresh air. Incorporating modern music, multi layered hu-mor that both adults and kids could enjoy, and an iconoclastic approach to fairy tales, it was tru-ly revolutionary.

What really made Shrek work, however, was its heart. A love sto-ry whose core message revolved around the importance of being ones self, it was this sense of em-pathy that bound together all of Shrek’s flash and toilet humor into a truly beautiful movie.

Sadly, all Puss in boots has is flash and a few dirty jokes, and the dirty jokes aren’t even that funny.

I can honestly think of no one who I could in good conscience recommend Puss In Boots to.

It is not even worth paying a dollar to see, not to mention the high cost of a 3D ticket.

If you absolutely must show your child a movie, either rent a Pixar film or wait until The Mup-pets comes out.

I have no idea how good the new Muppets movie will be, but I am willing to 100% guarantee that it will be better than Puss In Boots.

Puss in Boots isa complete flop

A star loaded cast of Antonio Banderas, Salma Hayek, Zach Galifianakis, and Billy Bob Thornton couldn’t save this film.


Board being fined and/or impris-oned under the enforcement pro-visions of the Scenic Mountain Act.

Erected earlier this year on the Kennedy Park Overlook in honor Dr. Jordan Fieldman, a Pittsfield physician who died at the age of 38 after a long battle with cancer, the Kennedy Park Belvedere has become a flash point for contro-versy. Some find that it enhances the overlook, while others believe it is a tomb like private memorial in a public space, and wish to see it removed.

The Lenox Board of Selectmen did not react well to the letter from Attorney Meltzer at their last meeting.

After Select Board Chairman John McNinch summarized the thrust of the letter, Selectman David Roche asked to speak, and addressed the looming possibility of a legal battle with the calm fury of an old-testament prophet.

"We don't have a choice. We're going to have to go forward with litigation and spend tens of thou-sands of dollars of taxpayers' money,” said Mr. Roche.

“If we acquiesced and tore down the monument, which I would never vote for…we could be countersued by 10 other resi-dents of the town who would say, ‘Put it back! You voted for it. We voted for it. We think you didn't break any rules”

Mr. Roche did offer a compro-mise, however, and asked the members of Citizens Advocacy for All in the audience whether they would agree to hold a special town meeting, where a binding up or down vote on whether to keep or remove the Kennedy Park Belvedere would be held.

“One vote: Stays. Goes,” said Mr. Roche. "You get a chance to present your side, we get a chance to present our side, and we let the

voters and taxpayers come to an intelligent conclusion and we end this thing once and for all.”

All members of the Select Board agreed to Selectman Roche’s recommendation, and threw their support behind hav-ing the voters decide the issue, while expressing outrage that the Kennedy Park Belvedere contro-versy was threatening to cross over into the legal realm.

“I’m willing to roll the dice on that one,” said Selectman Ken-neth Fowler, remarking on the prospect of putting the fate of the Belvedere in the hands of the town’s voters.

“It’s very upsetting to receive a letter like this when this board works so hard for this town,” said Selectwoman Linda Messanna. “It makes me heartsick to think that the town would end up spending money on something like this.”

“(I) love the Park,” said Chair-man McNinch, “But we have spent way too much of our time on this one project, way too much, and this just caps it all off and it just…it disgusts me.”

\The letter also contained a re-quest from Attorney Meltzer that the hearing by the Lenox Conser-vation Commission on the Ken-nedy Park Belvedere be post-poned for a second time.

The Select Board agreed to this, but town manager Gregory Fed-erspiel suggested that, because At-torney Meltzer claimed in his let-ter that Citizens Advocacy for All could not get a fair hearing in front of the Conservation Com-mission, to let him ask the Com-mission to refer the matter direct-ly to the Massachusetts Department of Natural Resourc-es, which is the body that all ap-peals to under the Scenic Moun-tain Act go to.

This suggestion was agreed to by the Selectmen, who unani-mously voted to pursue this

course of action.After the Selectmen voted to

refer the matter to DCR, Sonya Bykofsky, a leading member of Citizens Advocacy for all and ac-tivist against the Kennedy Park Belvedere rose to address the Se-lect Board.

Ms. Bykofsky asserted that she and Citizens Advocacy for all had done all in their power to work with the Select Board towards a satisfactory solution.

“I don’t know how much you all know about how much effort I’ve gone through to work with you on this matter,” said Ms. Bykofsky.

“From the very beginning I have said I don’t think anybody hear did anything intentional in regard to this. You missed an ob-scure act (the Scenic Mountain Act), a law, but it was a law that was adopted by this town.”

Ms. Bykofsky went on to say that the town could have used the enforcement provisions of the Scenic Mountain Act, which she believes the Belvedere’s construc-tion violated, to correct their mis-take and restore the overlook.

“We have done what we felt we were boxed into a corner to do by a bunch of so called remedies be-

ing created along the way to try and cover mistakes that were made,” said Ms. Bykofsky, de-fending her groups decision to bring the controversy into the le-gal realm.

Growing impatient with Ms. Bykofsky, Chairman McNinch cut Ms. Bykosfky off and Select-man Roche asked her to go to her group and ask them if they would agree to a special town meeting.

Ms. Bykofsky replied that Citi-zens Advocacy for All had origi-nally abandoned the idea of call-ing a special town meeting to decide the issue because Town Manager Federspiel had said that a vote taken at a special town meeting on the issue would not be binding.

“If we commit to it will be,” said Selectman Roche.

The next day, Town Manager Gregory Federspiel gave his sup-port before the Conservation Commission to accommodate Attorney Meltzer’s request to de-lay the hearing on the Kennedy Park Belvedere to the next avail-able date.

He also submitted the Select-man’s request that the matter be referred directly to DCR, in re-sponse to Attorney Meltzer’s pref-

erence for a more neutral venue, although audience member So-nya Bykofsky pointed out that Attorney Meltzer had not re-quested that the issue be referred to the DCR.

Being threatened with criminal prosecution, even spuriously, might make some civic volun-teers, all members of the Lenox Select Board are unpaid and re-ceive no benefits rethink whether or not maintaining their posi-tions was worth it.

Not so for the Lenox Selectmen.Although the Berkshire Beacon

could not reach Chairman John McNinch and Selectman Ken Fowler for comment, all three of their fellow selectman answered in no uncertain terms that they were sticking to their posts.

“No one’s resigning,” said Se-lectwoman Dia Trancynger with-out any hesitation, when asked whether she was planning to stay in office.

“I have no intention of resign-ing,” echoed Selectwoman Linda Messana, when asked the same question by the Beacon.

The Conservation Commis-sion will take up the issue again on January 5, 2012 at 7:30 PM.


The Kennedy Park Belvedere has been a contentious issue all year. The next meeting on the issue will be Jan. 5th in Lenox.

In their own words:“It’s very upsetting to

receive a letter like this when this board works so hard for this town, it makes me heartsick to think that the town would end up spending money on something like this.”

Selectwomen Linda P. Messanna

“We’re going to have to go forward with liti-gation and spend tens of thousands of dollars of taxpayers’ money,if we acquiesced and tore down the monument, we could be counter-sued by 10 other resi-dents of the town who would say, put it back!”

“I love the Park, but we have spent way too much of our time on this one project, way too much, and this just caps it all off and it just…it disgusts me.”

Selectmen John J. McNinch Selectmen W. David Roche

MELTZER from page 1

nov. 23rd berkshire beacon

Documents

bank page

lenox branch

berkshire bank claims

new branch

berkshire county

meltzer page

lenox marketing

lenox board of selectmen