Traffic was tied up a couple days ago because the TV program Good Morning America started a whistle-stop train tour here in the Berkshires, first with a visit to the famous political coffee stop, Joe’s Diner in Lee, Massachusetts, and then at the Red Lion Inn in Stockbridge. They didn’t come to Great Barrington. We lack a good site for photo opps, perhaps, but if Barack Obama is elected president I think there should be plenty of attention here, because Great Barrington is the hometown of W.E.B. Du Bois, who wrote in 1902 about the “color line” in the United States, and went from our local high school first to a college in the south and on to Harvard (a trajectory not unlike that of Obama, in fact).

You can see these local scenes in a video clip at Brightcove.tv, or watch the actual TV segment, with James Taylor and Yo-yo Ma, if you don’t mind waiting through an over-long ad. In any case, welcome to the Berkshires!