Midwinter is a definite mood. You look up at the night sky and there are hairline fissures between dense cirrus clouds that look like cracks in the ice of a pond. (Not like in summer when those cumulus puffballs go sailing by in fluffy flotillas. Not like that at all.) Ice cracking beneath you, splintering out in all directions from beneath you, the center of the cracking. The shore seems so far very from where you are.
On the early morning radio, the sports report—were there always this many injuries?—followed by the weather. "Pockets of freezing rain" are expected. You check your pockets. Pockets full of cough drops, more like. You've been sick, but everyone's been sick. Suck it up, buttercup. Remember that pain is inevitable; suffering is optional. Rehearsing your sorrows isn't helping.
Is it really only February?
Don't Be SAD
Perhaps what you need is a strategy for weathering the winter doldrums. This magazine is itself a roadmap of sorts for navigating your way through the month, but I'll point you in two specific directions. Anne Pyburn Craig asks local doctors, therapists, and fitness experts for tips on surviving this cold and punishing season in "Beating the Winter Blues: Strategies for Surviving the Season." The advice may be along expected lines, but self-awareness is key. Get ahead of the curve of your own symptoms and treat yourself before a doctor needs to attend to you.
One treatment option for depression that might soon be available in New York is psychedelic therapy. This year, two different bills are before the legislature that seek to enable training and treatment with psychedelics. If you don't think it can happen here, know that Oregon and Colorado has already legalized psilocybin and psilocin, the psychedelic compounds in magic mushrooms. These states were ahead of New York on cannabis legalization—are psychedelics next? Noah Eckstein reports on the movement to decriminalize and legalize in "The Healing Mushroom" (High Society, page 32).
Hudson Can Take It
This month, Seth Rogovoy reviews Jen Beagin's new novel, Big Swiss, a hilarious romp in and around everyone's favorite hipster punching bag of a town, Hudson (Books, page 55). I'll leave the book review to Seth, but I want to express appreciation to Beagin for adding to the growing compendium of delightfully cracked descriptions of the city. A couple I have heard recently: "Mayberry with an edge" and "a college town—without a college—for old people." This one, from Big Swiss, sounds like a rejected slogan from a tourism campaign targeting elderly swingers: "Hudson is where the horny go to die." I encourage you to read Beagin's comic tour de force, a fictional companion that belongs on the shelf next to another recent novel that dissects the city—albeit in a much darker vein, Sam Miller's The Blade Between.
Department of Corrections
Last month, in a feature on Great Barrington, "Mind(ing) the Gap," we erroneously reported that Byzantium, a four-decades-old clothing boutique on Railroad Avenue, was closing due to the rise of online sales. While Byzantium did close on January 31, the store's owner, Annie Minifie, reached out to explain why she was shutting her business. Byzantium may be gone, but Minifie's indomitable spirit feels like the beating heart of small business entrepreneurship itself. I'm sharing what she wrote as it transcends the narrow boundaries of shopkeeping and offers a wise and hard-won perspective on the power of perseverance and the necessity of cherishing our shared humanity.
Byzantium has weathered five recessions, the opening of the Berkshire Mall, the opening of the Lee Outlets, internet competition, COVID, and the supply chain crisis. It still is a successful business after 43 years. I want fellow retailers of the newer generations to know that with hard work, focus, and a positive outlook, it is more than possible to surmount difficulties and thrive. I chose to retire to pursue my art work, volunteer, and spend time with my family.
I do not want fellow merchants to think that they cannot compete with online sales. They indeed can. People want customer service. People want to see and feel things. People want to experience shopping. In the process of storefront shopping, we experience other people. Interacting with humans rather than plastic and metal certainly has its upside. Interaction is crucial in maintaining our humanity.
—Annie Minifie
I've never set foot in Byzantium, but I miss it already.
