Western Massachusetts is such a hotbed for fine artisans and varied crafters, and this time of year, the region is flooded with new talent, familiar faces, and much excitement. This weekend, July 4-5, is set for Great Barrington's Berkshires Arts Festival where over 175 juried artists gather to show and sell their wares.

The Festival is geared for families too with live demonstrations and workshops for both adults and children, great food, and plenty of live music. The opportunity to meet and speak with so many talented artists and craftspeople is an inspiring experience. The show is held under large outdoor tents, and in Ski Butternut's lodge. Held rain or shine, the festival is worth the drive out to the Berkshires.

Adults pay $10, seniors $9, and students $5. Children under 10 are free and a weekend pass is available for $13 if you plan on seeing all the festival has to offer - and it will take 2 days! Hours are Friday, July 4, from 10 a.m.-6 p.m.; Saturday 10 a.m.-6 p.m.; and Sunday 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Want to stay a while? Visit the Berkshire Visitors Bureau for lodging information. And take a peek at last year's show here.

April showers bring May flowers, of course, but up higher, the greenest of leaves. These shades inadequately captured by a point and shoot camera the other day on a drive from Amherst to Athol. The palette was deeper and sharper, crawling up into distant hills, when seen with the naked eye. Looks like a bumper crop coming this fall...

If you haven't been training, then it may be a little late for this weekend's 7 Sisters Trail Race in Amherst. As the race website promises:

"Very scenic overlooks of the Pioneer Valley with views of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst College, Hampshire College and the Town of Amherst, as well as a beautiful view of the Connecticut River and Northampton to the west."

Only problem is, those views come while humping up and down very rocky terrain for 12 miles.

If you need a bit more time to get in shape, there're always the races at the Pineland Farms Trail Challenge, in New Gloucester, Maine.

Those races are bit longer, at 25 kilometers, 50 kilometers, and 50 miles. And as the web site warns: "The trails are wide and non-technical, but very hilly. Although there are no major climbs the rolling terrain is unrelenting."

Happy trails...

Passengers flying out of Bradley International Airport will be able to fly directly to Memphis this summer.

Bradley and Northwest Airlines are announcing that daily nonstop seasonal service to Memphis International Airport will begin on June 16.

The chairman of the airport's board of governors says the value of this new service will be further multiplied because passengers can use it to connect to other flights offered by Northwest Airlines at Bradley.

Northwest says the daily flights to Memphis, complement daily service to Detroit, Minneapolis/St. Paul, Indianapolis and Amsterdam.

The service will be operated by Northwest Airlink partner Pinnacle Airlines using 50 seat jets. (AP)

A friend of mine once pointed out how vulnerable people seem to be when watching movies in an airplane. Big beefy guys tearing up during romantic comedies. Giddy laughter at suspect jokes. Something about sitting 35,000 feet above the earth, my friend suspects, changes how you see things.

So maybe it's not quite as dramatic to sit in a theater on the other side of the state, or then wander unfamiliar streets afterward, but something about that also makes you consider films differently. Far from home and stripped of the daily distractions of life's routines, you connect more directly to what is being said and shown. You incorporate more - if even only for a few moments - the film's ideas into your own.

That's what I found, anyway, on a recent roadtrip through western New England in search of independent cinemas. You can learn about the adventures of this one-person rolling film festival and the theaters where it played out this weekend in The Boston Globe and online at boston.com's travel site.

But you won't read about what happened on a dark and cold Thursday evening after I sat through a late-afternoon showing of "No Country for Old Men." The film features plenty of violence. Afterward, alone in streets and shops, I had the unsettling sensation of how committing a murder might feel. I wrote in vivid detail about that moment in an early draft of the cinema story. That scene, understandably, ended up on the editing room floor.

Not looking forward to braving long lift lines at some of the busier ski areas in New Hampshire and Vermont? Been there, done that. So head west instead: Hawk Mountain Lodge in Charlemont is offering a ski-and-stay package, with the skiing at nearby Berkshire East Ski Resort. The lodge is a renovated 1800s farmhouse with five rooms, and prices range from $55–$125 per room per night. You get a $5 discount off a daily lift pass and 10 percent off a meal at Stillwaters Restaurant. Family-friendly Berkshire East offers plenty of terrain with more than 45 trails and five lifts. And it recently added a snow tubing park, which opened Dec. 26. Wheee!

You're stuck in Rutland and it's Cold. And Dark. You're thinking about gnawing off your right paw (make that the left; you write with your right one).
The only thing that's getting you through is a dim and distant dream that some day when the sun returns you'll be able to snag a cheap JetBlue flight to see the A's in the East Bay. Well, today your dream has come true, and it didn't involve Publisher's Clearinghouse, dudes with video cameras, or a big fake check with your name misspelled in cursive.
The good folks at the Rutland Herald say that thanks to partnership agreements with Cape Air, folks in Rutland can book flights between there and the 15 domestic JetBlue destinations that connect with Cape Air at Logan.
So oil that glove and sing: "The future's so bright, I gotta wear shades....''

Here’s a little stocking stuffer for kids with a geographic bent: ‘‘Nicholas: A Massachusetts Tale’’ by Peter Arenstam (Mitten Press, $14.95). The chapter book tells the story of a field mouse on a family quest across the Bay State. Along the way, he befriends a chipmunk and other creatures who not only do not eat him but also teach him something about the area he’s exploring (the Berkshires, Quabbin Reservation, Wachusett Mountain, Gloucester, Boston, Plymouth, and Martha’s Vineyard). The illustrations by Karen Busch Holman are elegant and sweet without being overly precious. (As non-precious as a book about a talking mouse can be, anyway.) It’s the first in a 4-part series of ‘‘Nicholas’’ books starring Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont. (Sorry Rhode Island and Connecticut!)

At Crane Beach, the property managed by The Trustees of Reservations at the eastern edge of Massachusetts, there are sand and sea and darting plovers. A run through summer dunes brings slipping, slogging steps up and down open slopes.

A world away and yet only at the western side of the state, there is Field Farm, another Trustees property, home to hay fields and, in summer, strong-winged bobolinks, yellow-capped birds that travel across the equator to avoid winter winds.

At the ocean's edge, wind gusts flat and strong. In the Berkshire valley tucked beneath Mount Greylock, the state's highest peak, it does that too. But it also breaks, suddenly, into chaotic twists and turns shaped by contours of the land.

It is a striking place to go after spending time in the settled world. Over the past three days, I've driven crowded highways, passing in and out of bustling towns, stopping to watch films set in the music-filled streets of New York, the dust-blown desert of India, and the corn-fed fields of Iowa.

This morning, 12 degrees and bright sun, bobolinks long gone from Field Farm and Greylock's summit looming clearly, not the sea, I set out on a run. Snow, not sand, gave way beneath each step, as mid-morning warmth softened the surface. The "South Trail" traced a frozen pond, an open field, then ducked into woods. Tiny tracks crossed my path.

I ran another mile deeper among the leafless trees and, as at the ocean's edge, found solitude, and strength.

Admit it. Your nerves take a beating when you live in Boston. To fight the stress levels, a personal suggestion is to chill out occasionally at the Kripalu Yoga Retreat in the Berkshires, located on the Stockbridge line right across from Tanglewood. I’ve been going once or twice a year for many years and while the prices have gone up (not on a par with nearby Canyon Ranch, but certainly more than they used to be), the quality has gone up as well.
I stopped by for a recent massage at the site’s health center (you don’t have to stay at Kripalu to book their services) and was immediately transported by a masseur named Umesh, a true character who has also run Kripalu’s off-and-on, chartered hikes to the Himalayas. We discovered that we were born five days apart, but the main thing was that I left with a refreshed outlook, ready to tackle the city again.
Oh, and the food is great there, too. And they even serve coffee in the cafe. That’s a long way from when I first went to Kripalu when they were based in rural Pennsylvania 25 years ago and the men had to stay in a huge barn with an outhouse, and no caffeine was allowed.
File under: Yoga retreats adapt to the times.

Posted by Steve Morse, Globe correspondent

Spencer Finch's "What Time Is It On the Sun?" at MassMOCA has drawn a buzz from the contemporary arts crowd. But any dedicated traveler would benefit from a trip to North Adams before the show closes on March 31, 2008.

Finch's cerebral meditations on environments actually offer some down-to-earth hints on how to really pay attention and more fully experience a place. I'd never thought much about the breezes at Walden Pond, for example, until I stood in Finch's semicircular installation of box fans programmed to approximate the wind speed and direction during a particular two-hour period.
A framed pastel rendering of the color of the ceiling above Sigmund Freud's couch is a quirky reminder to look for the offbeat detail that defines a place.
In a burst of simple genius, Finch placed colored panels in the panes of the wall of glass in the Duncan Brown Family Gallery. When the sun shines through, it's like walking into a candle flame. I always light a candle when I visit a church (it just makes me feel good and it's a way to make a small donation). Next time I'm in a dimly lit cathedral, I'll remember Finch's pure enveloping light.
MassMOCA is open Wednesday through Monday 11-5.

Posted by Patricia Harris, Globe correspondent

Life is pretty laid-back in the Berkshires, but the region also boasts one of the most cutting-edge museums in the world. It's Mass MoCa in North Adams and it is located in old, renovated, industrial-brick buildings that provide huge amounts of space for some of the most intriguing installations you'll ever see.
On display for the next two years is Anselm Kiefer's bewildering concrete sculpture, "Etrois sont les Vaisseaux,'' which basically looks likes curled-up chunks of urban sidewalk, running in a long row that makes it seem like buckled parts of a bridge. I've certainly never seen anything like it.
There's also Spencer Finch's mix of colored glass panels that filter light into a kind of psychedelic kaleidoscope. Very trippy and you can sit on benches in front of it and start hallucinating, if you like. No need for LSD.
Overall, this is a fabulously surreal museum. It also offers concerts, some of them in the B-10 Lounge (complete with couches), where the Jazz Passengers perform on Nov. 17. The galleries are open every day except Tuesday, and admission is $12.50 for adults.
In addition, the museum has a cool cafe (called the Lickety Split Cafe) in one of its industrial buildings; and there's a more stylish restaurant, Cafe Latino, right next door.

Posted by Steve Morse, Globe Correspondent