Interlude, Part 2: Saturday, June 7, 2025
- Mark Carl Rom
- Jun 10
- 4 min read
Updated: Jun 10
Days sober: 716
The forecast was for showers, with a 100 percent chance of libraries.
First stop, at 7.30 a.m., was the Tilton Library in Deerfield, which has a Carnegie lookalike built in 1915. I remember the 1704 “Deerfield Massacre” – one of the many conflicts in one of the several “French and Indian” wars – when a pre-dawn raid led to the burning of the town, the killing of 47 English colonists, and the abduction of 112. I remember this because my father Ace read these stories to me when I was a child. Yes, that was my bedtime reading.
The 1901 Field Memorial Library in Conway could also pass as a Carnegie, as would the 1913 Belding Memorial Library in Ashfield. In contrast, the Shaw Memorial Library in Plainfield was, appropriately, a plain white on white frame structure. I’m sorry it wasn’t open, as if it was I could have studied the twelve dog portraits on display by local artist Linda Pilgrim. The Cheshire Public Library was, like many small town libraries, located inside a larger town hall.
I arrived in Pittsfield at 9.30 a.m., before its Berkshire Athenaeum library opened at 10 a.m.. It was drizzling, and no doubt the apparently homeless people under its awnings were eager for its doors to unlock for them and all others who sought intellectual, spiritual, or physical relief from the day.
The Wander, “the Berkshires' pioneering trans-owned café, event space, and future analog darkroom,” was open and it looked like the place to be. It was, and it was cool. My latte was excellent, and skillfully poured, and I was glad to see a large shelf of non-alcoholic bottles and cans on display.
Non-alcoholic beers, wines, and spirits are expanding rapidly in scale and quality. IWSR, “the leading global drinks data and insight provider” (according to its website), reports that sales of these beverages increased by 29 percent in 2023 while the sale of alcoholic spirits was essentially flat. At the high end, non-alcoholic spirits (say, bourbon or tequila) are made with the same ingredients as the traditional ones, and they taste great. No one anymore needs to use the reasoning “but I like the taste!” as an excuse to drink.
I wrote in Wander until showtime. “Eisenhower” the one-man play, with Tony Award winning actor John Rubenstein assuming the persona of Ike, was sensational. The show mainly consisted of Ike talking into a voice recorder as he was dictating his memoirs. And he was pissed because a survey of presidents conducted by historians had ranked him 22nd of out of 34 (at the time), unjustifiably in his mind. He reminded the audience of his life and accomplishments. He spoke on the importance of integrity in politicians, a speech that it seems most Americans have not heeded. He concludes with the reflection that historical memories would be revised, and they have been. The closing credits showed that his ranking has gradually and steadily improved, and that he had moved into the top half dozen or so by the 2020s.
It seems that many in the audience had personal memories of Eisenhower, as at 67, I think I lowered its average age. The couple sitting next to me raved about the other play in town, NA, and on the spur of the moment, and from my seat, booked a ticket for it later this evening. Returning to my car, I remembered that I fit the audience’s demographic: four other Subarus were parked next to mine.
The Lakewood Creamery, and its cheerfully served peppermint bark ice cream, served my post show needs, as I drove a loop north to Williamstown, located in the farthest northwest corner of Massachusetts, and then back to Pittsfield. I stopped at libraries in Lanesborough, Williamstown, Clarksburg, North Adams, Adams, and Windsor, before I arrived at the library in Peru, which seemed one puff from the big, bad, wolf away from being blown down. The Hinsdale Public Library looked like the one in Shutesbury, if that one had been lifted up and placed on a lower wall of stones. (I surmised that the librarians there chained book scofflaws in the dungeon below.) The Free Public Libraries in Dalton and Florida rounded out my afternoon sojourn.
NA is a two-woman show, with the two women channeling Nancy Pelosi and Alexandria Ocasio-Ortez (AOC), and the distance between them was much wider than the channel separating England from France: age, class, privilege, ethnicity, strategies, goals. Pelosi asks AOC what her favorite number is. AOC is clueless. (It’s 218, the number of votes one needs to get a bill through the House of Representatives.) AOC wonders why it's important to have those votes, if they are used for nothing more than prop up a corrupt regime. AOC demands that Pelosi conduct a vote to abolish ICE, the Immigrations and Custom Enforcement agency. Pelosi is incredulous: why call for a vote that will not produce a law (as the Senate would never pass it and, if it did, then President Trump would surely veto it) and will lead to Democratic losses in the midterm? The reason, AOC insists, is to show that Democrats will not tolerate ICE’s inhuman treatment of immigrants. AOC wants to fund progressive challengers to moderate Democratic incumbents; Pelosi thinks that any money spent doing that could be better spent on beating Republicans. Back and forth, forth and back, it goes. I cannot help but admire the deep commitment of those political leaders to their principles. These are two impressive individuals.
I have lots to contemplate regarding progress, commitments, and legacies, as I slide Goldfinger into the darkest corner of the Howard Johnson by Wyndham Lenox hotel on the south side of town.
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