Stephen Leon — Metroland

Listeners Welcome Here

by Stephen Leon March 6, 2013

A song ends, and a familiar voice enters the radio airspace. In dulcet tones and a mellow, deliberate cadence, Katie Gorham recites the names and performers of the last several songs her listeners heard, occasionally ...

2 comments

What You Ask For

by Stephen Leon January 31, 2013

When you are discussing your wedding-related service with clients, is there any one thing almost all of them ask for? To look stylish and comfortable on the dance floor on their wedding day. --Michèle Marie Paré, ...

1 comment

Acceptable Levels

by Stephen Leon December 20, 2012

For most of us, life will go on as usual after the news dies down about the mass killings in Newtown, Conn. Just as life went on after Aurora, after Tucson, after Virginia Tech, after ...

Paying It Homeward

by Stephen Leon December 6, 2012

Sharon Fenno knew that many consumers have been rethinking their shopping strategies in recent years to be more supportive of locally owned businesses, but she was still surprised by something that happened recently in Circles, ...

Don’t Bank on Her

by Stephen Leon October 17, 2012

While most political junkies have been occupied this past week with the feisty VP and presidential debates and the ensuing clash of the pundits, another presidential candidate made a campaign stop in Albany Monday with ...

Get Outta Town!

by Stephen Leon September 7, 2012

What are your plans for the weekend? There’s always plenty to do here in the Capital Region, but if you’re beginning to feel like you’re on the same old treadmill of parties and bars, late ...

Young and Valued

by Stephen Leon June 14, 2012

In 1999, Amanda Root was 19 and working as a waitress. What might have been a carefree time for her in picturesque Great Barrington, Mass., was anything but. The transformation of Great Barrington from a ...

Crazy Hate

by Stephen Leon March 15, 2012

Rick Santorum doesn’t like cities. At least, he doesn’t like New York and Los Angeles. Speaking in the Midwest and making vague appeals to voters’ Heartland values, he said, “. . . you don’t live in ...

The Poetry of Missed Connections

by Stephen Leon February 10, 2012

Surely this world will never again know the likes of the love letters between John and Abigail Adams. Prose, playfulness, wit, affection . . . and just getting warmed up in the first 140 characters. My ...

2 comments

Time to Upgrade?

by Stephen Leon January 26, 2012

The logo on the website, which went live on Monday, says, merely, “Kathy Sheehan for Albany.” And although there is considerable speculation among insiders that she is planning to run for mayor in 2013, Sheehan, ...

We Grow Our Own

by Stephen Leon June 23, 2011

When Berkshire Co-op Market opened at its current location in Great Barrington in 2002, the store sold about $100,000 in locally grown and made products in its first year. “And we thought that was the ...

Nadia Trinkala, 1966-2011

by Stephen Leon April 13, 2011

Painter, jewelry maker and sometime store and gallery owner Nadia Trinkala died suddenly last week. Trinkala was widely known and much loved in local arts circles, and is remembered not only for her boundless creative ...

1 comment

Metroland’s New Website

by Stephen Leon March 3, 2011

Late in the afternoon last Thursday, Feb. 24, we finally went live with the new Metroland website we had been working on since last summer. Although the launch itself was delayed by several hours (the ...

7 comments

16 love

by Stephen Leon February 11, 2010

If a teacher didn’t give us assigned seats, it didn’t matter: Students sat in pretty much the same place day after day. In English, Nicole sat kitty-corner behind me to my left; in chemistry, we ...