August in Western Massachusetts
Those are perhaps my favorite four words together when presented in that order. Destination in mind is Chesterwood, home studio of Daniel Chester French for a two-week residency. During those two weeks I will be working on a new orientation film for the home-museum and working on the script of a feature documentary film about the life and works of Daniel Chester French which is to be completed before Memorial Day 2022 for the rededication of the Lincoln Memorial.
While at Chesterwood I will have the opportunity to visit the Concord Museum and meet with experts Tom Putman a David Wood. On that same day I will be guided on a visit Sleepy Hollow, by Dan Preston and Michael Richman, curators of the Daniel Chester French papers. While at the cemetery, I’m planning to pay my respects to Washington Irving, Andrew Carnegie, Walter Chrysler, Samuel Gompers, Elizabeth Arden, Leona Helmsley, Brooke Astor, and William Rockefeller to name just a few.
If all goes well, on the way back to Chesterwood I’ll have a chance to stop at Alice’s Restaurant in Stockbridge, “just a half a mile from the railroad tracks” where “you can get anything you want”, excepting Alice of course.