For this overcast Saturday morning, let’s welcome the return of Adam Harrison Levy’s “Ride Along” column.
Levy is a writer and podcaster of note who has made Salem his home. You may have read about the efforts to separate out The Salem Press from The Greenwich Journal, so that both will essentially be separate papers. Original writing from that town, including from Levy, will be a cornerstone of that paper.
The Journal & Press is unlike any other paper in the region because we have really good columnists and publish many columns per issue. Do other papers around here even have a single column? (Bowling columns don’t count.)
“Ride Along” appears monthly in our pages. Subscribe here to get it sent to your mailbox along with everything else!
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“Ride Along” is an interview conducted in a vehicle, as Levy meets local people of note. Here is the latest:
Anthony Cafritz, founding director of SAW
Adam Harrison Levy
Journal & Press
ADAM: What road are we on?
ANTHONY: We’re on our way to Salem Art Works, an art colony and sculpture park. It’s the place with the most memories for me. We’re on Stanton Hill Road, we’re going to turn into the parking lot, drive past the water treatment plant, and then we are at the gates.
ADAM: When you look up at the hill, what do you think of?
ANTHONY: Many years of amazing people coming together in collaboration to make things happen, and to make art. Also, I’m always looking at the genetic diversity of what is growing here. We’ve planted fields that are cut after August 15 so that the flowers and the grasses can go through their whole growing cycle. It’s good for the monarch butterflies and the insects and the birds.
ADAM: Were you always interested in agriculture?
ANTHONY: As a kid I worked on a tobacco farm, bailing hay.
ADAM: What about these pieces of sculpture?
ANTHONY: There are about 100 pieces of sculpture dotted around here on 119 acres. 69 of these acres are open fields and the rest is forested.
ADAM: Which piece of sculpture fits here the best?
ANTHONY: They all have an identity here, they are all well-sited, and each one has something to say that is different.
ADAM: What road are we on now?
ANTHONY: We’re on the road to the top of the hill. It hasn’t been graded yet. We’re in a kind of a hand-to-mouth situation here but we always seem to make it each year.
ADAM: Do you have specific memories of this road?
ANTHONY: When I need to talk to someone and we need confidentiality we just drive around in the truck, it’s the best way to talk.
ADAM: So driving for you is about privacy and connection with employees?
ANTHONY: You got it! It’s about having a conversation between two people, sometimes three, and sometimes bringing a notepad and taking notes as you meander through the landscape.
ADAM: It’s your mobile office?
ANTHONY: It’s more like a sofa, a moving sofa, as you are moving through the landscape.
ADAM: We are at the top of the hill. What are we looking at?
ANTHONY: You can see the Green Mountains and that’s Mt. Equinox shrouded in clouds. We are also looking at a Mark di Suvero sculpture. I worked for him for a year. When I moved up here he moved up two sculptures. He did it specifically to help start the art colony but at the same time it was a challenge: if I do this, what are you going to do? I was already trepidatious about the future but when he said that it was like a line in the sand. It made me work harder to get this place up and running.
ADAM How many artist-in-residents come to SAW every summer?
ANTHONY: We have about 15-18 people on campus now and we have another group coming in so we will have about 34 people by the end of next month.
ADAM: And where are we now?
ANTHONY: We’re going back down the hill and if you turn left we have about 5.4 miles of trails going through the woods. They are old logging trails that we opened up for biking, horseback riding, and walking. And in the winter, snow-shoeing or cross-country skiing. This road goes all the way to the back 40. It’s open to the public 356 days of the year.
ADAM: And what are we looking at now?
ANTHONY: This is the horseshoe pit. Every Friday night around 5 o’clock people come to play horseshoes, have some beers, and talk. You never know who is going to turn up. It’s a mixture of people from town and some of the artists.
ADAM: How do you feel when you are out here?
ANTHONY: I feel connected to the landscape, secure. It wraps around you a little bit. I feel at home. We try hard to maintain it, and respect it. It’s a good park for the town, people come from all over, and I think it does help local businesses.
ADAM: Does this road inspire you?
ANTHONY: I use this road to write songs and to draw things out. Sometimes I’ll back my truck up and park off to the side and sit for hours. I’ve written a lot of songs up here.
ADAM: So this truck is special - it’s both a mobile office as well as a place for inspiration?
ANTHONY: Yeah, I grew up in trucks, it’s part of my culture.
ADAM: Is there anything else that you would like to add?
ANTHONY: Every road has a story. It might be a highway that is part of your daily routine. For me, this is a road where you can be alone and no one knows where you are which is great. Having detachment for a while is always good for you, I think.
Adam Harrison Levy is a freelance author and journalist (The Guardian, BBC). He teaches writing at the School of Visual Arts and offers workshops and private lessons in Salem. Contact him at adamharrisonlevy@gmail.com.
And now for the comics — a political cartoon by Drew Sheneman
And here’s a survey infographic provided by Tribune Content:
Gen X finally wins something!
Let’s conclude today’s newsletter with a fun column by Greenwich Library director Sarah Murphy on how to pick a good summer read:
‘Rules’ for summer reading
By Sarah Murphy
Special to Journal & Press
It’s finally summertime, time to join the library’s annual challenge, and time to enjoy the perfect book. But, what is the perfect book? What makes a good summer read? With my librarian authority, I present to you the definitive answer.
A good summer read…
● Should obviously have the word beach in the title. Like On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan.
● Or should have a specific beach town in the title, like Sag Harbor by Colson Whitehead.
● Should just have a beachy vibe. Anything by Emily Henry will do.
● Must better reflect our local geography. It’s got to be Daniel Mason’s North Woods.
● Should obviously be titled summer, like Summer by Edith Wharton.
● Could perhaps be Autumn by Ali Smith.
● Should be something as short and fleeting as summer itself, like Foster by Claire Keegan.
● Or something really long to last all season, like Paul Murray’s The Bee Sting.
● Should be brand new popular fiction that everybody else is reading, perhaps Kristin Hannah’s The Women?
● Unless there are too many holds on the brand new popular book of your choice, in which case, choose something a few years old that everybody else has already read. How about The Night Watchman by Louise Erdrich?
● Should probably be a biography of a baseball player like Willie Mays: the Life, the Legend by James L. Hirsch.
● Or could be a novel about baseball like The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach.
● Might be a book in translation. It’s time for Elena Ferrante’s My Brilliant Friend.
● Should be something none of your friends have read, but really ought to because you need to discuss it with somebody: No One Is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood.
● Must be the biggest thing on your years-old To-Be-Read pile, probably The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton.
● Must be pure joy like Anne of Green Gables by L.M Montgomery.
● Needs to be full of anguish; why else do we read but to weep? A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara.
● Should get you to think, rethink, unthink, and think some more like Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates.
● Should make you laugh outloud like The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole by Sue Townsend.
● Needs to embrace the summer theme, but in a dystopic way, like A Children’s Bible by Lydia Millet.
● Should be a family saga like Min Jin Lee’s Pachinko.
● Should focus on a barely functioning friend group like Our Country Friends by Gary Shteyngart.
● Should be an American classic that reminds us why reading matters like A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.
● Probably ought to be romantic like Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility.
● Must be exquisitely crafted like Alice Munro’s Runaway.
● Should be extraordinarily readable like Andy Weir’s The Martian.
● Might be excruciatingly tense like Donna Tartt’s The Secret.
● Should probably be a contemporary take on the zombie apocalypse featuring commemorative bibles and an abandoned shopping mall like Severance by Ling Ma.
● Must keep you up all night like Tana French’s In the Woods.
● Should be something to look forward to in the morning like Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann.
● Might be a fantasy trilogy you skipped because it’s “for children,” but oh my goodness, is it complex, like His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman.
● Ought to be fiction that explores human-octopus connections like Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt.
● Ought to be nonfiction that explores human-octopus connections like The Soul of the Octopus by Sy Montgomery.
● Must build on sea creatures and marine biology, but also include freedom from slavery and adventures in the arctic and the desert like Washington Black by Esi Edugyan.
● Needs to include a portrayal of early 20th-century deep sea diving like Manhattan Beach by Jennifer Egan.
● Really should get back to that whole beach vibe like Boy-Crazy Stacey by Ann M. Martin.
● Must not overlook rivers and canals as suitable settings, as in Daisy Johnson’s Everything Under.
● Might head to the skies like The Great Circle by Maggie Shipstead.
● Should make you want to change the world like Bryan Stevenson’s Just Mercy.
● Might be challenged and censored around the country like Toni Morrison’s Beloved.
● Could be a graphic novel like Fun Home by Alison Bechdel.
● Or a comic strip like Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson.
● Isn’t a book at all, it’s a magazine.
● Should be an all-timer like Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder.
● Might reflect our past and present at once like Paul Auster’s 4 3 2 1.
● Ought to be magical realism like The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami,
● Or just plain magic like Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll.
● Could be something that you love,
● Or something that you love to hate,
● Or just something that’s okay for now.
● Is something you’re allowed to stop reading at any time for any reason.
● Is something that feels right.
● Is whatever you say it is.
Sarah Murphy is director of the Greenwich Free Library.