By the time this column reaches you, reader, the 88th Academy Awards will have come and gone, and you’ll barely be able to remember what happened. But as I write this, the Oscars are still a couple of days away, and both the professional and amateur spheres of movie criticism are abuzz with predictions and…

The Witch By Dom Cioffi It’s customary for me to come home after work and immediately wash dishes. This is something I’ve done for years. I don’t know why; it’s just an activity I have to complete before I relax in to the evening’s activities. This past week, I came home, dropped my bag by…

By Robin Alberti

Courtesy of Devious Planet RUSTED ROOT Rusted Root makes it’s triumphant return to the Pickle Barrel in the midst of its 25th Anniversary Tour on Thursday, Feb. 25 at 9 p.m. I had the pleasure of having a phone interview with Michael Glabicki who founded Rusted Root. He is looking forward to this show and…

Jan. 27: In response to tweets by rapper Wiz Khalifa alleging that Kanye’s new proposed album title (“Waves”) plagiarizes the catchphrase (“wavy”) of rapper Max B, Kanye unleashes a Twitter rant proclaiming that he is “the greatest artist of all time” and that Khalifa has “distracted from my creative process.” He will later change the…

By Meghan McCarthy McPhaul At this time of year, many a gardener’s daydreams turn to the springtime promise of sprouting plants. Seed catalogs start arriving in the mail months before the soil will be thawed and drained enough for planting, and we use this downtime to plan for the coming season. At Green Fire Farm…

By Dom Cioffi Other than the chants of racism in the weeks leading up to this year’s Academy Awards broadcast, it’s still shaping up to be an enthralling night for movie buffs. There’s little doubt that host Chris Rock will address the elephant in the room within minutes of the show’s start, but hopefully, after…

By Cal Garrison, a.k.a. Mother of the Skye This week’s Horoscopes are coming out under the light of a full, Virgo Moon, with the Sun newly ensconced in the early degrees of the sign Pisces. This is the point in the yearly cycle when the snake meets its tail and new beginnings emerge out of…

DEADPOOL By Dom Cioffi I’ve been known to curse from time to time, and to be honest, I’m not ashamed of the fact. Like most adults, I’ll swear when I’m upset, but personally, I’ll probably resort to profanity more often when I’m telling a story – particularly a funny one. I’ve always viewed vulgarities, when…

Photo courtesy of Mike Thut

By Cal Garrison, a.k.a. Mother of the Skye This week’s Horoscopes are coming out under the light of a Gemini Moon, with aspects that make me wonder how the human race might be coping with things. The current story looks pretty interesting, but all of it is subject to change and none of it is…

I think I am at 93 days of skiing now for the season; 88 lift service, five uphill.  All in all, with a season as occasionally dismal as this one, I have to say, once again, that the skiing has been great. So we haven’t had powder, but the corduroy has been delightful. At least…

In my last column I reminisced about the various dances that were popular in my youth. That trip down Memory Lane made me think of the various ways we listened to music over the years. When I was a youngster back in the 1950s there was a large floor-model radio in the hallway of our…

Throughout its 41-year history, “Saturday Night Live” has sought to incorporate the location of its filming (Manhattan) as a “setting” for the show even as the actual contents of the show—its comedy sketches—have been more likely to take place elsewhere. In this sense, every “SNL” sketch has two settings: the setting of the fictional comic…

By Joe Rankin On cold winter days, while feeding sticks of firewood into my woodstove, I sometimes pause, my eye caught by lichens. Splotchy circles, lacy tendrils. Soft gray, muted gray-green, black. They mottle the bark. When I look out the window next to my desk, I see splashes of lichen on the roof of…