Simon's Rock Annual Pride Week Lecture

08:01AM / Monday, March 25, 2024Print Story | Email Story

GREAT BARRINGTON, Mass. —Simon's Rock will host their annual Pride Week Lecture with guest speaker Dr. Kyle Velte (she/her) on Friday, March 29 at 3:30 p.m.

Simon's Rock observes Pride Week every year in late March and early April to honor International Transgender Day of Visibility and to allow students time to celebrate during the academic year.

In Dr. Velte's lecture "The Legal Minefield for LGBTQ+ People and How You Can Make a Difference," Dr. Velte will cover the current legal and political landscape of LGBTQ civil rights, talk about allyship, and talk about how to resist without giving up joy in these dark legal and political times.

Kyle Velte is the Associate Dean for Faculty, Professor, and Karelitz Chair in Evidence Law at the University of Kansas School of Law where she teaches Evidence, Torts, Employment Discrimination, and Sexual Orientation & Gender Identity Law. She is a nationally recognized expert on sexual orientation and gender identity law and has taught her Sexual Orientation & Gender Identity Law class as a Visiting Professor at Northwestern Pritzker School of Law and the University of Denver Sturm College of Law. Professor Velte's scholarship examines the intersection of sexuality, gender, and race to provide insight into contemporary legal debates and current normative questions surrounding LGBTQ, gender, and racial civil rights issues. Her articles have appeared in many top law journals, including the Minnesota Law Review, Yale Law & Policy Review, Cardozo Law Review, and Connecticut Law Review. She filed amicus briefs in the United States Supreme Court cases of United States v. Windsor, Obergefell v. Hodges, Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, R.G. & G.R. Harris Funeral Homes, Inc. v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and Fulton v. City of Philadelphia. She has appeared in the media such as USA Today and NPR.

The Pride Week Lecture will be held at 3:30 p.m. on Friday, March 29, in the McConnell Theater at the Daniel Arts Center on the Bard College at Simon's Rock campus. The event is free and open to the public.

A live stream is also available at: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/88973375856

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South County Celebrates 250th Anniversary of the Knox Trail

By Tammy Daniels iBerkshires Staff
06:18PM / Sunday, January 11, 2026

State Sen. Paul Mark carries the ceremonial linstock, a device used to light artillery. With him are New York state Sen. Michelle Hinchey and state Sen. Nick Collins of Suffolk County.

GREAT BARRINGTON, Mass. —The 250th celebration of American independence began in the tiny town of Alford on Saturday morning.

Later that afternoon, a small contingent of re-enactors, community members and officials marched from the Great Barrington Historical Society to the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center to recognize the Berkshire towns that were part of that significant event in the nation's history.

State Sen. Paul Mark, as the highest ranking Massachusetts governmental official at the Alford crossing, was presented a ceremonial linstock flying the ribbons representing every New York State county that Henry Knox and his team passed through on their 300-mile journey from Fort Ticonderoga to Boston in the winter of 1775-76.

"The New York contingent came to the border. We had a speaking program, and they officially handed over the linstock, transferring control of the train to Massachusetts," said Mark, co-chair of Massachusetts' special commission for the semiquincentennial. "It was a great melding of both states, a kind of coming together."

State Rep. Leigh Davis called Knox "an unlikely hero, he was someone that rose up to the occasion. ... this is really honoring someone that stepped into a role because he was called to serve, and that is something that resonates."

Gen. George Washington charged 25-year-old bookseller Knox with bringing artillery from the recently captured fort on Lake Champlain to the beleaugured and occupied by Boston. It took 80 teams of horses and oxen to carry the nearly 60 tons of cannon through snow and over mountains.

Knox wrote to Washington that "the difficulties were inconceivable yet surmountable" and left the fort in December. He crossed the Hudson River in early January near Albany, crossing into Massachusetts on what is now Route 71 on Jan. 10, 1776. By late January, he was in Framingham and in the weeks to follow the artillery was positioned on Dorchester Heights.

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