Bear of a Time in Barrington

Western Mass - Great Barrington

Yesterday (Tuesday) was a long intensive day of office work at the library. We took a brief break to complete an interview on the library steps and take a picture for the Berkshire Eagle newspaper. It will come out all over the county on Thursday (we're hoping for front page coverage!). Now people in Pittsfield, Lenox, Great Barrington, and several other towns we plan on visiting in the coming weeks will know about Climate Summer and the Symposium.

In the afternoon, we headed over to the Berkshire Community College South campus here on Main street to run our first Awakening the Dreamer Symposium. Before we started, we had a radio interview with Judy Eddy who stayed for the rest of the Symposium and was a very appreciative audience member. She plans to come to our symposium on Saturday as well in hopes of getting more material. She want to meet up with us again in Boston in the end so that she can create a series about us and pitch it to NPR - Naitonal Public Radio, here we come!

Sam and Antoine presented while I, Leila, ran the audio/visual components and Steph and Jane joined the audience. Everything ran smoothly but we discussed breifly as a team afterwords what we could imporove on for Saturday's symposium in Lenox (which may prove to be a very large group due to some wonderful connections we've made with local activists and environmental groups through the Massachusetts Climate Action Network (MCAN).

Before and after the symposium we feasted on Antoine's birthday cake, made specially for his 22nd birthday, by our very own pastry-chef-in-training, Steph. It tasted absolutely wonderful and we enjoyed our dinner outside in the little grassy cloister behind the church.

Today we slept in and then did our laundry down the street. We all shared ice cream and smoothies while we waited. Then, we had our first real down time of the trip when we went swimming in Lake Mansfield. Though Jane complained that it was not a "real" lake due to her Lake Eerie standards, it was beautiful sitting outside and eating our grilled cheese sandwhiches and then going for a quick dip. Sam dove in first, followed by Jane, who then both tried to swim to the other side, but were eventually deterred by the copious amounts of aquatic plants. Leila and Antoine then followed, and Steph dipped her toes in and took pictures from the water's edge. It proved to be a highly satisfying and refreshing swim since we haven't had a chance to take real shower since Saturday (shhhh). But Antoine has perfected what he calls the "dry shower" or "bird bath" in the meantime and passed his wisdom on to us.

Tonight we go out for our second night of canvassing and Leila will then prepare a taco dinner. Tomorrow we bike from Great Barrington to Lenox (all uphill) but it will be beautiful and we have more than enough time to make the trip.

Stay Green!
--Leila