Lauren Dorsey

1 week ago | berkshireeagle.com | Lauren Dorsey

LEE — As vegetables and chicken thighs sizzled in the Senior Center kitchen, four regulars at the Council on Aging’s Community Chef Day breakfast began to chat. “This event — it has changed my life,” Pat Lusignan said. Sandy Park agreed. “I love it — the community, the new recipes, the friends,” she said.

1 week ago | berkshireeagle.com | Lauren Dorsey

LEE — Three years after the town voted down construction of a multimillion-dollar community center, its Youth Commission is offering an alternative — one class at a time. The Lee Youth Commission has been running a series of pilot programs, all aimed at replicating the services a physical community center would provide, “even if we don’t have a fancy new building,” said Joshua Bloom, the commission's treasurer.

1 week ago | berkshireeagle.com | Lauren Dorsey

PITTSFIELD — The start of summer in Pittsfield will be missing one sweet ritual this year: King Kone’s towering and topping-laden soft serve treats. That's because significant water damage to the beloved local business’s roof and floor has set back its opening by months. Local nonprofit Roots & Dreams and Mustard Seeds purchased the ice cream shop at 133 Fenn St. two years ago, and it opened under the nonprofit’s ownership for the first time last August.

1 week ago | berkshireeagle.com | Lauren Dorsey

ADAMS — The wind howled, the morning’s cold pierced through all but the warmest jackets, and a dense fog pushed in from every direction — but Conrad Sidway’s slow, mournful rendition of taps cut through it all. A member of the American Legion Post 160, Sidway performed the tribute as part of a near-century-old Memorial Day tradition on Sunday: honoring the region’s fallen soldiers at the Veterans War Memorial Tower atop Mount Greylock.

2 weeks ago | berkshireeagle.com | Lauren Dorsey

The state Senate is planning to commission what Dennis Powell, the president of the NAACP Berkshires, considers “the most significant bust in its history.”The bust will honor Elizabeth Freeman, whose 18th-century legal battle for freedom paved the way for the state to abolish slavery two years later. It will be installed in one of eight niches that line the walls of the Senate Chamber, alongside similar sculptures of Frederick Douglass and former Presidents George Washington and Abraham Lincoln.