Show Notes:

Some of the venues we mention in our conversation.

COMMUNITY

Great Barrington Car Show, this year on Thurs, August 6th

Guilder Pond, Mount Everett

Alford Springs, BNRC

CULTURAL

Great Barrington Public Theater

Chesterwood

Berkshire Theatre Group: BTG Plays Summer

Shakespeare and Company: Riotous Youth Summer Camp

The Mount

Bidwell House, in Monterey

FOOD

Southfield Store

Bistro Box

Yummy Kitchen

So Co Creamery

This week’s episode features local independent journalist, philatelist (you’ll have to listen to find out what that means), muckraker and editor of Reason Gone Mad, Bill Shein.

He talked to the Postmaster General at a recent stamp convention, and he gets in the weeds on his latest reporting on the complicated history of 343 Main Street in Great Barrington and its adjacent plot of land, which now looks quiet, peaceful and serene little park, but is actually a brownfield site, and has a $2 million state lien against it.

Bill notes in our interview that both Ian Rasch and Chris Rembold declined to comment for his reporting.

SHOW NOTES

This is the full MassWorks application referenced by Bill in our conversation.

This is Bill’s story that references the application, called A Tale of Two Sidewalks, from March 8, 2024.

The Village Green News is a reader-supported publication. To support hyperlocal journalism in South Berkshire County, please become a paid subscriber today.

THIS EPISODE IS BROUGHT TO YOU BY GREENAGERS

Greenagers runs employment and education programs designed to support youth, environment, and community all at once.

Conservation, Agriculture, and Trades training programs pay youth ages 14-24 to build trails, grow food, and build and repair local infrastructure. All programs are educational, by paying youth for this work we ensure young people have summer work options that feel meaningful and can lead to future opportunities. And the work done by Greenagers youth crew members is high quality - improved trails, nutritious food, fine building techniques.

Greenagers is hiring now for this summers Trails, Farm, and Build Crews. Apply here!

PLEASE RATE AND REVIEW US ON APPLE PODCASTS

SHOWNOTES:

May 19th story in the New York Times on how deportations have impacted the construction industry, and how no Americans are applying to take the available jobs.

SHEELA’S PAST WRITINGS ON THE SUBJECT OF VOCATIONAL EDUCATION AND SUCCESS

Link to Sheela’s FAQs piece on The Berkshire Edge, in 2023.

Link to Sheela’s June, 2025 piece on the Center for Educational Progress

Sheela’s letter to the Atlantic editor from 2025.

Sheela’s letter to the New Yorker from 2016

A college degree cannot be the only option that we, as a nation, value. Atul Gawande notes that the seventy per cent of Americans who lack a college degree have been forsaken. That’s because we’ve created a college-for-all culture, where alternatives to “professional” work are not respected or encouraged, instead of supporting programs that would give high schoolers vocational paths strategically aligned with both evolving and steady workforce needs. College for all has resulted in an inadequate education for most. We’ve boosted high-school-graduation rates at the expense of rigor, resulting in sixty-eight per cent of community-college students requiring remedial classes, and most of them dropping out. Meanwhile, all over the country we have aging plumbers earning a good living, with few prepared to take their places. The path to the American dream needs to be rerouted.

Sheela’s letter to the editor of the New York Times, April 6, 2019

To the Editor:

I read the story on the early days of affirmative action at Columbia mindful of the recent cheating scandal that laid bare the myth of merit as the primary factor in admission to elite higher education.

I’m left thinking that the street musician and Columbia dropout Les Goodson does not deserve to be held up as the exemplar of what went wrong with affirmative action, while his classmates the corporate lawyer, neurologist and financial officer are understood to be the successes. We should not use earning power and professional badges to judge a life.

Mr. Goodson’s neat apartment is adorned with his own artwork. Hegets to play music weekly with his own band and daily on his own terms. I know a fair number of “successful” professionals who dream of that sort of freedom.

While we’re smashing the sacred cow of elite higher education, let’s also revisit our cruelly limiting ideas about who gets to be called a success.

Sheela Clary

Sheela’s letter to the New York Times on March 10, 2018

To the Editor:

Nakesha’s story was written compellingly and with great compassion. I was especially touched by all the kind people who befriended and brought her gifts over the years.

But something disconcerted me. What if, rather than Williams College, she’d attended Berkshire Community College, an excellent but unfamous and less selective school, whose campus is about half an hour south of Williams? Was she a “bright light” by virtue of her humanity, or by virtue of her association with Williams, which accepts about one out of five applicants? If so, what does that say about us, the tiny minority of elite-educated Americans, that you need to scratch our competitive itch in order to get us to pay attention to the story of a homeless New Yorker?

SHEELA CLARYHOUSATONIC, MASS.

This week on From the Gazebo Sheela and Erik Also discuss what happened during the six + hours of Great Barrington’s 2026 town meeting, and welcome their first guest, local mycologist John Wheeler, who answers your mushroom questions.

SHOW NOTES

TOWN OF GREAT BARRINGTON’S INFORMATION ABOUT THE RESIDENTIAL TAX EXEMPTION

FACEBOOK GROUP FOR BERKSHIRE MYCOLOGICAL SOCIETY

SHEELA’S 2022 STORY FROM A MUSHROOM WALK WITH JOHN IN JULY

Just 2 episodes in, we’ve reached 900 downloads.

We’ve been having so much fun we’re taking From the Gazebo (FTG) to twice-monthly episodes, and in this, our 3rd episode, Erik and I talk amongst about ourselves about our Village Green stats, my recent story on the state of cannabis and give a preview on the subject of an upcoming episode on birds and birding.

SHOWNOTES

From the Gazebo’s mentions are impacting coverage in the world.

4/20 Village Green Story on the state of the cannabis industry in the state of Mass and town of Great Barrington

We reference Cannabinoid Hyperemesis Syndrome.

Listers (Free, charming Youtube movie about extreme birding.)

NEXT TIME!

For morel season we’ll be talking to our local mushroom expert, John Wheeler, who leads mushrooms hunts around South Berkshire County.

The Village Green News is supported by paid subscribers. Please become a paid subscriber to keep this local podcast going and please share it with your people.

Listen and subscribe on Apple Podcasts or Spotify to never miss an episode.

*

In this week’s episode Erik and Sheela discuss some bits of news from South Berkshire county and whether or not it makes sense to let ticks and bears keep you out of the woods.

(Spoiler alert: it does not.)

Resources:

Ticks

Tick Encounter at University of Rhode Island has lots of information.

Permethrin Spray - This one from Sawyer Products seems to be the best-reviewed.

Bears:

Lynn Rogers’ black bear organization in Minnesota: North American Bear Center

Kilham Bear Center, a black bear rehab center in New Hampshire.

Hiking access in Berkshire County

Berkshire Natural Resources Council

The Trustees of Reservations

In this, our first episode, Sheela Clary and Erik Bruun talk about the state of vultures, ice cream and disagreement in Great Barrington, among other things.

Referenced:

So Co Creamery https://www.sococreamery.com

Braver Angels https://braverangels.org

Railroad Street Youth Project https://www.rsyp.org