Yes, Shrove Tuesday is known as Pancake Day here at Berkshire Publishing and we’ll be gathering for the English variety later on. But in the tiny town of Sheffield to the south (a town so small I drove straight through it on my first visit, never dreaming that its small collection of buildings could be a whole town) there is a Pancake Supper tonight, with New England or American pancakes, I suppose, and maple syrup. The English Mardi Gras pancake is a crepe, served with lemon and sugar, or with jam, or, says Trevor Young, with orange and brown sugar.

Two retrospectives today: one of a February snowstorm past, about this time of year. The view from my former office in the Mahaiwe Block down on Main Street, in 2007. It’s snowing today, too. A”mood snow,” someone called it, a steady gentle fall that makes all the brown tree branches beautiful.

The second look to a past blog post is the result of a phone call this morning from George Beebe, a Great Barrington farmer and staunt conservative whose family has lived here for nearly 200 years.