Pleasant & Main

Pleasant & Main Café

1063 Main St.

Housatonic, Great Barrington, MA 01236

(413) 274-6303

“There is no sincerer love than the love of food.” G.B. Shaw

            Go eat here.

            Better yet, bring a really delicious book or an excellent friend, and eat here.

            “Pleasant and Main is the best thing that’s happened to Housatonic.” Say many locals. 

Restaurateur Craig Berg has reclaimed Jack’s Grill, formerly known as Montana’s General Store, in the quiet artsy hamlet of Housatonic just north of Great Barrington.  The atmosphere is reminiscent of the old general store.  Berg has used old floor boards he found in the basement for tables and lined the walls with wood shelves filled with a most interesting collection of turn-of-the-previous-century memorabilia. Spacious yet familiar though still elegant, I can almost imagine wearing a gingham dress here and ordering a Latte to go with a piece of apple pie.

What I most enjoyed about my experience there, besides a fascinating conversation about living off the land, Norwegian farming practices in Wisconsin and what Berg’s mother could do with a wood stove, is the fact that I could taste each ingredient in my meals.  In other words, everything had flavor. 

The menu is simple and completely dependent upon what is appropriate to the season.  The breakfast and lunch menu remains the same Tuesday through Saturday but the dinner menu (served Thursday through Sunday–$15 for appetizer and main course, $20 with dessert) changes week to week.  Called “Community Suppers”, the dinner menu reflects what is going on in town as well as what delicious foodstuffs Berg was able to harvest from the land or to gather from small, local farmers with whom he has developed a personal relationship. He feels it is important to know everything he can about the food he serves, preferring to buy from people who love their soil, fields and animals.  I believe it is this care and passion for the whole process of eating that gives his food and restaurant its wonderful flavor.

I recommend getting dessert with lunch or dinner.  I shared a banana split and a lemon crepe with my mother over dinner. Strange combination? Not so. The lemon crepe refreshed my palate to better appreciate the chocolate fudge. I’ve no idea what he did to the bananas or walnuts, but it was the best banana split I’ve had ever.  And his croissants taste like how I remember croissants tasting in Europe.

This is not the kind of place to rush in and rush out. Other reviewers have said the service is slow. I did not find it so but perhaps that is because I went to Pleasant and Main to savor the experience and to spend time with my friends.  Indeed, the idea of being a communal feeding ground is part of Berg’s long term goal. A vision which stems from his memory of the meals his mother served migrant farm workers over a big wooden table back in Wisconsin.

So Google Housatonic and find your way to a nice little town and a good little eatery. Then take a walk down Main St. to visit some nice galleries. And tell them Renee from the Lakeville Compass sent you. I’d appreciate it.

Plans for garden seating and an old fashioned soda fountain are in the works for after Memorial Day.  Community supper menus are available every Wednesday on their website: http://www.pleasantandmain.com

Edward Hopper

Edward Hopper

At the Rockwell Museum

9 Route 183, Stockbridge, MA

            Two very disparate personalities are on display at the Rockwell Museum through October 26. One lights up the room and invites you in to play; the other asks only to be left alone in the shadows.

The Unknown Hopper: Edward Hopper as Illustrator follows Hopper’s struggle to become a “real” artist while earning his keep as an illustrator in the 1910s.  His mentors and peers have work exhibited as well so that the show represents a history of the greats in illustration during last few decades of the Golden Age of Illustration.  To cap it off, Murray Tinkleman’s show is still up and serves as a perfect example of the evolution of narrative art.

Edward Hopper (1882-1967) and Norman Rockwell (1894-1978) travelled much the same path at about the same time.  One wonders, however, if they were looking out the same window.  What stands out about Hopper’s work is his love for shadow, for introspection and for capturing what I call laundry-mat-moments: those times when one sits in a public place utterly lost in one’s own thoughts. His most iconic painting is Nighthawks (1942) in which three people sit late at night in a corner deli. Compare this to Rockwell’s Saying Grace (1951) or Freedom from Want (1943) and it is easy to see the very different way in which the two viewed the world, or at the very least, how they felt about people in general.

What is interesting about Hopper’s earlier illustrative work is the fact that he was forced to paint people “prancing about” at a time when it went against fashion to be gloomy.  Not only did this depress him, it brought a signature tension into his commercial work. This is especially apparent in his covers for the Morse Dry Dock Dial magazine and for Hotel Management Magazine.  If Rockwell saw a world full of home-cooked meals and children playing, Hopper’s world fit more into the Gilded Age of Wharton mannerism.

It is in his book illustrations that the real Hopper starts to come out of hiding.  Achingly visceral and tangibly emotional, these charcoal drawings are breathtaking. They also serve as examples of Hopper’s creative process since he, like Rockwell, spent a lot of time making studies and analyzing his ideas before putting them to paint. It is wonderful to see how he uses charcoal to explore mood and its relationship to lights and darks.

While the paintings of his peers give you an overview of his artistic development, it is the relationship and work of his wife, Josephine Nivision Hopper, that is most descriptive of the man. An artist and performer in her own right, Jo Hopper used her skills to pull Hopper through his many serious bouts of depression and writer’s block by working alongside him and sparking his competitive streak. I found her watercolor of her favorite cat, who had a chair and plate at their dinner table, to be a nice break from the brooding mood of her husband.

What this exhibit brings to mind is the question of nostalgia.  Is the past sweeter than today as portrayed by Rockwell?  Or is it full of the romantic struggle of hidden lonely souls as is seen in Hopper’s work? After seeing this show, my answer is that it depends upon what you choose to see when you look out the window.

Baseball, Rodeos and Automobiles: The Art of Murray Tinkelman

Baseball, Rodeos and Automobiles: The Art of Murray Tinkelman

Part of the Distinguished Illustrator Series

At the Norman Rockwell Museum Stockbridge, MA.

March 29 – June 15, 2014

            If the folly of humanity has gotten you down—go to the Norman Rockwell Museum. Then spend some time with the stimulating Murray Tinkelman.

            Though not generally well-known, Tinkelman is considered a legend in the Illustrative Arts. In order to appreciate his contribution to the genre, it is important to understand a little bit about the history of illustration; a topic for which Tinkelman has considerable passion, so much so that he travels the country giving lectures on the subject.           

            Historically, art has been used to illuminate religious iconography and to glorify the wealthy. After the printing press and public education made reading a part of everyday life, art became a popular medium for selling goods as well as telling stories. Originally, all illustrations were either etchings or engravings which meant that every image depended upon the skill of the engravers and the printers to accurately transcribe the artist’s work. With the invention of the halftone process of photo-engraving, illustrators became the controlling force behind the image.  This invention sparked the Golden Age of Illustration (1880’s-1920’s). Norman Rockwell’s early popularity stemmed from the narrative styles of this era.

            Commercial and illustrative art of the 1930’s through the 1950’s was heavily influenced by Rockwell’s Populist narrative style.   Murray Tinkelman grew up in a world filled with images that sold the American Dream but which also belied the ugly underbelly of America. In contrast, most Fine Artists of the time were focusing on portraying their experience of what they saw as the real America.  When Tinkelman entered the advertising marketplace in the mid-1950’s, there was as large a divide between the imagery of the Illustrative and Fine Arts as there was between the races.

            Enter Murray Tinkelman, the artist-illustrator.

            Tinkelman’s early work has the feel of an engraving that is trying awfully hard to be a cartoon. His work earned him numerous awards but it wasn’t until he absent-mindedly doodled a rhinoceros in 1970 that he became a legend. This break-through is the focus of the exhibit.

            There is plenty of information available at the museum about his career and development as an illustrator so I want to take the time to tell you HOW he does what he does—because it is truly amazing. 

            He draws out the image as perfectly as possible in pencil and then uses a very fine technical pen, called a rapidograph, to draw tiny lines all over the sketch.  His first line always starts at 12:00 and ends at 6:00.  Working over the entire piece instead of sections, he then cross-hatches more small lines, each of which starts at 1:00 and ends at 7:00.  Then again from 2:00 to 8:00, continuing until he has filled the image with enough cross-hatches to achieve a middle-grey tone.  After this he works on the areas which will be lighter until he gets to 11:00.  If you look closely you can see this clock pattern. For a more thorough description of his process, please use the following link: http://todaysinspiration.blogspot.com/2012/10/murray-Tinkelman-describes-his-process.html

            This method gives his images a layered, sunlit, movement that is somehow incredibly still.  He ranges from whimsical “Mechanimals”, to expressive portraits of Native Americans at a Powwow and of cowboys at the rodeo. His later work involves a nostalgic look back to the ‘40s and ‘50s of his youth: details of old cars, homages to baseball heroes, movie monsters and Coney Island Kodak moments. 

Do as he recommends in the museum video: stop and listen with your eyes.  If you do you will see the colors he creates in black and white.

            Tinkelman describes his illustrations as “interpretive and descriptive” as compared to Rockwell’s narrative style. This is most especially shown in his illustrations for Ballantine’s re-release of H.P. Lovecraft’s stories, the originals of which are shown in this exhibit.  The profound effect of his work and teaching methods within the Illustrative Arts comes from the fact that he was asked to illustrate books not because they amplified the text, but because they added to the content of the book itself.  He made what had once been a consequence of literature into a part of literature and an art unto itself. The once “mere” illustrator was now seen as an Artist with as much standing as many of the great Fine Artists.  With respect comes power and with power comes creative control. Because of Tinkelman, author and illustrator have become equal parents in the creation of what we read: a union perfectly illustrated by the art of Wendell Minor whose work is also shown at the Rockwell Museum through May 26, 2014.

           

 

The Bird Eater

A Review by Renee Vaughn

Published Lakeville Journal Compass 4/10/14

            Do you remember your first kiss?

            Not the first, fumbling experiment but the first, real kiss that woke you to possibilities of sensation and emotion hitherto unknown?

            Reading Stephen King’s The Shining for the first time was like that first, real kiss.

            But just as it’s not fair to judge your current lover by your first sexual experience, it’s not realistic to hope that you will get that white-knuckled, stay-up-all-night, gluttonously orgiastic feeling of reading King for the first time from any current author in the horror genre. With that being said, I stayed up late into the night reading Ania Ahlborn’s The Bird Eater. It wasn’t the best kiss I’ve ever had, but it reminded me enough of Stephen King’s work to keep me going and in the end, to be not too disappointed. In fact, I may download a few of her other titles.

            The Bird Eater is the tale of a broken man who returns home to confront the family ghoul. In the process he gets a chance to revisit the first girl he ever kissed and to learn a lot about not recovering from grief. I don’t want to tell much more than this as I’d hate to ruin the suspense for you.

Like King, Ahlborn’s major characters are beset with tragic flaws to which we can all relate: cowardice, addiction, self-pity, a stubborn inability to change and an optimistic belief that good can conquer evil. Similarly, her ghoul mirrors King’s evil incarnations of that which is most terrible about humanity at its worst.     

The Bird Eater is satisfying read; especially if you are house-sitting at an old farmhouse on a dead-end road as I was when I read it. Ahlborn has some truly great, cinematic images in which the lead character, Aaron Holbrook, struggles with his doppelganger demon who has a penchant for birds. Her language is deft and though repetitive, it does the job. She shines at describing the haunted house in which the bulk of the action takes place. I was also thoroughly impressed with the number of ways she managed to describe the way a person’s heart thumps when they are scared. The biggest compliment I have for her is that her characters dietary habits made me crave an iced glass of Coca-cola. Make sure to note the many references to classic horror movies she uses.

Her work is descriptive, page-turning and will make a good little movie when it comes to that.

I felt the first chapter gave away too much of the story. I found myself reading to see how it was going to come together rather than feeling trapped by my desire to see what was going to happen. I think the ghoul would have been much more frightening and the psychological development of the main characters much more intriguing if we had been allowed to take the trip along with them. This book reads a bit more like a TV “we-know-who-done-it” mystery than a true ghost story. I suggest you skip the first chapter until you are about half-way through. But do read it as the first chapter is good enough to stand on its own as a great horror short story.

            A Polish transplant, Ania Ahlborn, self-published her first book, Seed, and rose quickly to the top of the “as-good-as Stephen King” ranks. She followed it with The Neighbors and the The Shuddering. She has a great blog accessible through her website: http://www.aniaahlborn.com/.

Bugs

Where have all the bugs gone? 

Not that I mind the lack of swishing tails and stomping feet or the drone and bite of them.

The flowers this year were astounding. Tumbling, fragrant, piles of eager stamens and fluttering pistils (or is it the other way around, I can't ever remember) sending out Tweet after Tweet of come to me pollinators.  They'd put out more the less bugs there are since that is the way of things.  The less we have the more we desire.  Lack in nature creates abundance.

Maybe they have disappeared to remind us of how important the invisible, little things are- the kiss at bedtime, proper grammar, spice, letting someone go ahead of you, a smile.

Hopefully the loss of bugs will bring out the beauty in humanity in much the same way it has brought out the bounty in nature.

Have a care where you tread.  A life lives on life.

Why I'm not here...

In case you happen to stop by my blog and find I am not at home, it's because I am out living a real life, riding real horses, farming in real dirt, enjoying my real body and loving my real girlfriend. It's what I do...

If you would like some coaching so you can do what you do for real... get in touch with me!

Where ya been?

Sorry Barnyard... I've been busy hanging with my other blog:  http://coreeqlifecoach.blogspot.com

I'm hoping to get back to you or even better, I'm planning on you being a real book someday.  Hang in there, you are close to my heart and under my feet.