One of the trilithons with another in the background, photo by permission of Pat
Greetings, henge-O-philes! Welcome to another edition of Wow, People Sure Make a Lot of Henges! also known as Clonehenge. Today for your viewing pleasure we journey to Colrain, Massachusetts, where a couple of years ago, in August of 2011, a devastating storm by the name of Irene tore through, wreaking havoc. Among many things that were damaged and destroyed was the beautiful garden of Tony Palumbo and his partner Michael Collins.
Probably everyone here can guess the rest. In an effort to link art and the earth, and to express the grandeur of the place and what had happened to it, they ended up designing a new garden worthy of Clonehenge. This creation, affectionately known as Tonehenge after its designer, Tony, is the 77th addition to our List of Large Permanent Replicas!
For those who have a few minutes to spend, here is a video tour of the new garden. We include this in the post largely because in it Mr. Palumbo says one of our favourite words: trilithon! And you thought we just made that word up, didn’t you?
At just about 3 minutes in, Mr. Palumbo says, “As we look around, we can see the second arch. There’s an actual word for it. I don’t have it right now…trilithon or something. [a few sentences, and then...] And as we look around we see the rest of the Stonehenge area. It’s getting to be known as Tonehenge, but I love Stonehenge…”
And there you have it. If any of you wags had doubts about this garden (which is 100 feet across, by the way) belonging in the Clonehenge blog, there is your proof. He loves Stonehenge, which we translate roughly as, ‘Stonehenge has used this man’s feelings and brain to reproduce itself yet again!’
The whole story is more involved and interesting than we have room for here. You can read more about it and see more pictures on the Commonweeder blog, whom we thank for photo permission, on Mike and Tony’s own Green Emporium blog, and in this article in the Massachusetts Republican, which was sent to us as an actual newspaper clipping (!!!) by Carolyn Bradley, friend and family of the bloggers here at Clonehenge. (Eventually everyone we know gets sucked in. Stonehenge is very powerful.)
Tony’s vision was brought to fruition by the work and creativity of neighbour and stone artist Paul Forth, who chose the stones with care and made some subsequent creative decisions. May we all have such neighbours when we go to rebuild our gardens!
This is not, in the strictest sense a Stonehenge replica, but, like many others before it, is sort of a Stonehenge sculpture. We don’t always give them druids, but we happen to have a few druids lying around right now, dying for a good home, so, Score: 6 druids for this use of Stonehenge as recovery from disaster and symbol of rebirth. Bravo, gentlemen!
We have more new henges to bring to the table, but all good things take time! Until next time, sweet friends, happy henging!
