Century-old barber pole decorates Sharon center

SHARON — About six years ago, when Linda Decker Peck became a partner in a hair salon in West Cornwall, a friend gave her an old barber pole to use as an advertising decoration. When Peck relocated her studio to Sharon two years ago, the pole came with her.Peck’s husband, Alan, did some research on the Internet and determined that the pole was manufactured in 1908. The pole didn’t work when Peck received it, but her husband was able to help with that, too, rewiring it and installing a new motor to turn the stripes.“I was curious about what the stripes on the barber pole represent so I did some Internet research,” Peck said. “Many years ago it was common for barbers to also function as dentists and surgeons. The white stripes on the poles represented bandages. The red stripes, blood.” She admitted she has not yet learned what the blue stripes mean.More Internet research by this reporter turned up a theory: The barber pole dates back to the Middle Ages. After the United States won independence from Great Britain, American barbers may have added the blue stripe as a show of patriotism.About six months ago, Peck purchased a new striped tri-color plastic helix for her barber pole because the original paper one was tearing. She said she is keeping the original paper stripes for sentimental reasons.Peck’s restored 103-year-old barber pole can be seen in front of L’s Hair Studio at 81 Main St.

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Finding ‘The Right Stuff’ for a documentary

Tom Wolfe

Film still from “Radical Wolfe” courtesy of Kino Lorber

If you’ve ever wondered how retrospective documentaries are made, with their dazzling compilation of still images and rare footage spliced between contemporary interviews, The Moviehouse in Millerton, New York, offered a behind-the-scenes peek into how “the sausage is made” with a screening of director Richard Dewey’s biographical film “Radical Wolfe” on Saturday, March 2.

Coinciding with the late Tom Wolfe’s birthday, “Radical Wolfe,” now available to view on Netflix, is the first feature-length documentary to explore the life and career of the enigmatic Southern satirist, city-dwelling sartorial icon and pioneer of New Journalism — a subjective, lyrical style of long-form nonfiction that made Wolfe a celebrity in the pages of Esquire and vaulted him to the top of the best-seller lists with his drug-culture chronicle “The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test” and his first novel, “The Bonfire of The Vanities.”

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Art on view this March

“Untitled” by Maureen Dougherty

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While there are area galleries that have closed for the season, waiting to emerge with programming when the spring truly springs up, there are still plenty of art exhibitions worth seeking out this March.

At Geary Contemporary in Millerton, founded by Jack Geary and Dolly Bross Geary, Will Hutnick’s “Satellite” is a collection of medium- and large-scale acrylic on canvas abstracts that introduce mixtures of wax pastel, sand and colored pencil to create topographical-like changes in texture. Silhouettes of leaves float across seismic vibration lines in the sand while a craterous moon emerges on the horizon, all like a desert planet seen through a glitching kaleidoscope. Hutnick, a resident of Sharon and director of artistic programming at The Wassaic Project in Amenia, New York, will discuss his work at Geary with New York Times art writer Laura van Straaten Saturday, March 9, at 5 p.m.

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Caught on Camera: Our wildlife neighbors

Clockwise from upper left: Wildlife more rarely caught by trail cameras at Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies: great blue heron, river otters, a bull moose, presenter and wildlife biologist Michael Fargione, a moose cow, and a barred owl.

Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies

‘You don’t need to go to Africa or Yellowstone to see the real-life world of nature. There are life and death struggles in your wood lot and backyard,” said Michael Fargione, wildlife biologist at Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies in Millbrook, New York, during his lecture “Caught on Camera: Our Wildlife Neighbors.”

He showed a video of two bucks recorded them displaying their antlers, then challenging each other with a clash of antlers, which ended with one buck running off. The victor stood and pawed the ground in victory.

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