Took some days away from FV to do some vacationing in the Berkshires of Western Mass., but FV never seems to be very far away from anywhere. My niece Danielle Pancoast (daughter of my sister Liane, herself a long FV'er) has been spending her first non-FV summer (first time in 11 or 12 years) working for a summer stock theater company near Lenox, Mass. Naturally my wife Jane and I wanted to see Dani, so we picked her up and treated her to a few hours off from her internship/job by driving to lovely Great Barrington. I had Facebooked our ascent of a nearby mountain a day earlier, and who should pop up in response but Robin Helfand, mom of the Glicker trio (previously mentioned and photographed in this blog). Robin says she runs a candy store in downtown Great Barrington, and since candy coincided with Dani's day-off intentions, we went there, saw Robin and discovered that all the Helfands and most Glickers were converging on that very spot. So we saw Dawn Helfand (and husband Jim--they met at a camp in Michigan, by the way, after Dawn's numerous FV summers--and son Eli) and Russ Helfand, and then, the next day, Jesse Glicker too (daughter of Robin who finished her 2011 summer a week early after having been a CIT Coordinator and all-around supporter of Adventure Village). Frost Valley in the Berkshires! No wonder the mountain around there always seem to me to be much like the Catskills. It's in the bones, and in the eyes, and in the heart.
Photo above: Danielle Pancoast, left, with Robin Helfand, right. Below: Robin, Dawn and Russ.
