We continued our rather active lifestyle for another week. After a lovely cocktail hour with Berch and Roselyn on Monday we set out Tuesday to drive to the Berkshires to meet Toby and David, classmates from Brown, for a couple of nights in a VRBO in Washington MA. It’s a good thing we are used to backwoods/backroads isolation. This place was was back in the Berkshire Hills, the last 1/4 mile was a dirt road. The house was built by the owner who maintains a wood working shop over the garage – accessible from the second floor of the house. It is clear he is still working on improvements. All the wood was sourced from his lot. 

Although we had come to enjoy the solitude and quiet of the woods, we also were committed to sampling the cultural offerings available within a 30 minute drive. We started with a lovely dinner in Lenox , Zinc Bistro, followed by a classical guitar performance by Milos.

A selfie to give a sense of the distance to the stage, we were halfway back on the lawnWe had lawn seats at Ozawa Hall and were able to see him (just as well as the blurry picture shows) as well as hear quite clearly. Wednesday morning it appeared that rain was likely so we set out for Williamstown MA to the Clark Museum which Carol and I had not visited in many years. Oh my! What a change. We started with Ida O’Keefe, Georgia’s sister, and learned a lot about sibling rivalry. We took the trail up from there to another venue to explore the  history of the Venice Biennial. It would have meant much more had we been been following it for the years. 

As we left that venue it started to pour, but as luck would have it a shuttle bus appeared at the door to return us to the other buildings where we ate in the Cafe and viewed the Permanent collection before moving on to the Renoir Exhibit. At some point we entered a gallery featuring  a sound installation with 40 speakers ranked around the room, each cluster of 5 representing part of a choir. The 40 Part Motet was quite an experience with the ability to move from voice to voice and experience the sound from within the choir rather than as an external audience. 

Back to the house where we refreshed before heading off to Jacobs Pillow Dance where we attended the free performance which on this particular day was Ice Dance, yes you read that right Ice Dance in July at Jacobs Pillow. It was a rain day so they moved it indoors! The ice rink was a special plastic and the performers did indeed dance on the rink

We went from there to Dream Away Lodge closer to the house for dinner. This old roadhouse has a rather limited menu, but we all found good food to eat and adjourned to a side room where a casual group of guitarists were playing as much to amuse themselves as the audience which was mostly us. Carol and I did get up and dance to one of the numbers.

We retired to the house and slept soundly until morning when we started to pack and reminisce over breakfast. We had one more stop planned, Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge MA. Somehow the house kept calling us back and each of us had to return to pick up something forgotten. We arrived in time to attend a talk on the history of the Saturday Evening Post covers for which he was most famous. The museum is celebrating its 50th anniversary with an exhibit “Woodstock to the Moon 50 Years of Illustration” to do it justice view the website in the link. 

We parted at the museum Toby and David eventually headed East, back to Rhode Island, and we headed West to unpack, clean up and go out to dinner with Freddy and Marvin. We planned on a relaxing Friday to recover for our next round of activity starting Saturday morning with breakfast at the Public Market with Rohma and Josh and cocktails and dinner with more friends. I think Carol said we have another day of rest on Monday. Oh right, breakfast with Rudin counsins.