We are embarking on a region-wide look at work, through oral history and related projects.
We have head start on this region wide project: Essential Workers, Paper Making, and Farming in Sheffield, Voices from the Fields – Projects that we are engaging with now. Berkshire Memoirs of Work, with the Monterey Library, is a new project that we are supporting. But we will help partners initiate other working related projects.
TALKING SHOP
We are collaborating with Community Television for the Southern Berkshires (CTSB) on a series called Talking Shop.
Technical Theater
Our first interview, 2024, Alzie Mercado, Technical Theater Director Berkshire Community College. She does everything from building sets, to managing a production, which includes lighting and sound, to teaching students to do the same.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HCqRwXGUZSI
Pathways to the Trades
Then, below, is a photo of Pete Gray, who work at Greenagers to introduce young people to work in the trades. We interviewed him in February, 2025, and soon his interview will be available to watch, both at CTSB and here on this site. Below, Pete is shown in a gazebo built by the young people in the trades program.
Piano Technician, Cristina Markham, told us about her studies in piano, and then her special training as a piano technician, tuning pianos everywhere, from places like Kimball Farms to Rensselaer Polytechnic Insitute (RPI), to this church, in Lee, to many peoples’ homes. A piano tech is often trained to take apart a piano and put it back together.
Forest Fire Fighters
This is a map of the Butternut Fire, December, 2024. Margaret Carnevale and Brenden Trela told us about their work as Massachusetts State Forest Firefighters, and we met soon after the Butternut Fire, which had our attention for several weeks. They were there, working to contain and control it, and so they told us about that experience too. How do they do it?
WORK IN THE Working the Forest project, with Mary O’Neill and Great Mountain Forest. Mary conducted oral histories and made podcasts. See this page linked for more information.
We will start with these small, diverse projects and build a collection so that others may listen, enjoy, and learn about the work of our neighbors in the Berkshires of Massachusetts and Northwest Corner of Connecticut.
Paper Making
In 2024-2025, we are helping Crane Museum of Papermaking with their oral history project, conducting interviews and talking with Museum Director about various oral hsitory workflow and related issues; and we are working with documentary filmmaker Ben Willis, who will help us tell the story of Lee paper making, through the lens of the story of Onyx Specialty Papers.
A view inside a meeting at Hurlbut Paper, Mead, Mead Westvaco, now Onyx, in Lee, MA.
