Berkshires

Fascinating or Fraud? – Part II

~ MaryG ~ 14 Comments

Fascinating or Fraud? – Part I

As we walked back through the first floor of The Red Lion Inn to the elevator, I finally could speak to my friend Gail openly. “Do we believe this lady or what?” I should have known that a 251-year old hotel has only one elevator and that our new friend was headed to the exact same place we were. Although she had taken a slightly different route, she ended up right behind us. Hopefully she didn’t hear me say that!

She got into the elevator with us and we all smiled broadly and said how much we’d enjoyed our time together on the porch. The elevator stopped on the second floor and we said goodnight again as she got out. Gail and I rode up to the third floor and opened our antique door with the old key.

Before we were even inside our double room, we began plotting our Google searches. We figured it would take us about 60 seconds (2 minutes tops) to figure out if this woman was truly fascinating or full of shit. You see, Gail and I are advanced sleuths. She has a Master’s Degree in Journalism and I spent 30+ years in fundraising. Figuring out who people are, who they know, and how much money they have was all part of the job. (Private trusts and family foundations were my specialty.)

We jumped into our side-by-side beds and began checking her out. This was going to be fun! Well, two minutes went by and we hadn’t made much progress. We found one woman who looked a bit like her on Instagram and Gail sent a friend request.

We finally found the antique store owning daughter. She looked just like her mom in the photo. There was a bio of the daughter that said she’d been raised in western Massachusetts and Belgium by a British mother and German father. So all that was true!

We still couldn’t find anything on our new friend herself. What the heck? Were we spelling her last name wrong? It was a common-sounding last name, but spelled “the German way” she had said. (Neither of us studied German.) Finally, I found the daughter on Facebook. She had her maiden name in parentheses. A HA! We had been missing an S.

Then we found her. LinkedIn, Instagram and Facebook. There were videos of her on the land where she’s building her solar farm, on the Miami condo balcony, on her recent trip to Lake Como. It was all checking out. I even found the 990 (tax return) of her pediatric cancer foundation. It’s a legitimate charity.

Her bio on her Instagram profile says, “Entrepreneur, Life Coach, Neuroencoding Specialist, Sport Fanatik 🏀🔥🏈, Cruising 🛳️ addicted, Childhood Cancer Advocate 🎗️” and includes links to her foundation and her life coaching website.

So, it was all true. What a fascinating woman!

One mystery remained. The out-of-the-picture German engineer husband. Who was he and what happened to him? The next day Gail figured out his name and I learned that he had died four years ago. He was clearly older than her and a very big deal in plastics. One LinkedIn commenter described him as the “alpha one” of the industry. So…that explains where the money comes from, although we think they split up before he died.

We both followed our new friend on Instagram and Gail sent her a private message to which she responded, “It was such wonderful surprise and highlight of my trip meeting you and Mary too!! I hope we get to meet again!!”

So maybe we’ll see her again someday. Who knows? Life is short and fascinating people are hard to come by.

Famous quote from the 1967 film The Graduate

Watch the scene: One Word: Plastics

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Fascinating or Fraud? – Part I

From Stockbridge to Boston

Bucket List Progress: Tanglewood

Fascinating or Fraud? – Part I

~ MaryG ~ 18 Comments

We met a woman on the porch of The Red Lion Inn.

“How’s the chicken pot pie?”

“It’s good!” she said.

I detected a British accent, but she said she was from Miami. Polite smiles. Back to our menus.

Later, while we were discussing the meaning of “agender” vs “non-binary” with some delightfully open GenZs, she jumped back in.

Here’s what we learned:

She’s building a solar farm business in western Massachusetts for which she had to undertake complex government permitting and state house lobbying.

She owns a home in Miami, but had been raised in the UK where she went to “college.” (Oxford was mentioned.)

She lived in western Massachusetts for many years, had two daughters, but then moved to Belgium with her German engineer husband (no longer in the picture) who was a high-level executive with General Electric.

She had a home in Newport, Rhode Island for many years.

She was a realtor and avid home renovator.

She just returned from a trip to Northern Italy where she met George Clooney’s driver.

One of the daughters left marketing and opened a successful antique store in northeastern Massachusetts. The other daughter lives in Austin, Texas, where she’s considering moving to from Miami.

She is a fan/follower of a certain self-help guru which led her to her passion for neuroencoding.

She is a grandmother.

She is a professional life coach.

At this point, I needed to vape a little weed…I mean, it was a lot.

Now, slightly high, I listened to more things being relayed.

She’s a BIG sports fan, especially basketball and football, and her Miami condo overlooks the Miami Heat home arena.

At one point, she purchased and successfully overhauled some sort of professional American football club.

In the past, she worked at the Miami port herding passengers onto various cruise ships, including swinger cruises for which “codes of conduct” contracts were required from passengers.

And this is the one that finally put me over the edge into doubting everything:

She founded and runs of charity dedicated to improving the lives of pediatric cancer patients.

I mean, very admirable, but how on earth does she find time! Does this woman ever just watch TV?

I made a joke about her having a multiple personality disorder. She did not seem offended. We said goodnight, after getting her name so we could connect online.

Related post:

From Stockbridge to Boston

From Stockbridge to Boston

~ MaryG ~ 9 Comments

All James Taylor fans know this verse from Sweet Baby James:

Now, the first of December was covered with snow
So was the turnpike from Stockbridge to Boston
Though the Berkshires seemed dreamlike on account of that frostin’
With ten miles behind me and ten thousand more to go

Last night after my amazing Tanglewood experience, we stayed overnight at the historic (and possibly haunted) Red Lion Inn in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, which was built in 1773.

That’s right. The Red Lion Inn is three years older than the United States. It was built the same year colonists were starting to get super annoyed with King George and dumped a bunch of tea in Boston Harbor.*

The Red Lion Inn in Stockbridge, Massachusetts is one of the oldest hotels in the USA. It started as a tavern in 1773.
We had dinner on the famous front porch of The Red Lion Inn last night and met some very interesting people, including two non-binary GenZ artists and a woman our age who is launching a solar farm business.
Interior view of the Red Lion tavern
Our room at The Red Lion Inn had to be locked and unlocked with an actual key 🔑
The Lost Lamb is a wonderful French patisserie in tiny, quaint downtown Stockbridge. I got both a chocolate croissant and a plain croissant with my café au lait.
A pretty stained glass window in St. Paul’s Episcopal Church (est. 1834), which is directly across the street from Red Lion.

After a swim in the outdoor pool at Red Lion, we stopped for a delicious lunch at the Starving Artist Café in nearby Lee. We chatted with a woman from nearby Pittsfield, where I was born and spent the first three years of my life. Back then, everyone in Pittsfield (including my dad) worked for General Electric.

I don’t know why I hadn’t been back to this area in decades, but I will not wait so long to return. After lunch, we put on some James Taylor in the car and hopped on the turnpike back to Boston. The traffic gods were with me and I got home before 4pm.

A mural in downtown Lee

*The Boston Tea Party was a political protest by American colonists against British taxation policies. It occurred on December 16, 1773, in Boston, Massachusetts. Colonists, frustrated by the Tea Act—which allowed the British East India Company to sell tea directly to the colonies, effectively lowering the cost but undercutting colonial merchants—disguised themselves as Mohawk Indians and boarded British ships. They proceeded to dump 342 chests of tea into Boston Harbor. This act of defiance became a pivotal event leading up to the American Revolution.

Related post:

Bucket list progress: Tanglewood

Stained Glass Window