Weekday
Bantering is Balanced by Quiet New England Weekends
by Eric Goldscheider
WEST
CUMMINGTON - Fridays at noon, when she's completed another week's political
battles on the national airwaves and ceded the microphone to Al Franken,
Rachel Maddow retreats to her black Subaru Forester
and heads, with her partner, Susan Mikula, from
Manhattan to the Merritt Parkway, past Hartford, to Northampton, where she
stops for groceries, and eventually lands in the West Cummington
house she has called home for the past four years.
A co-host of Unfiltered, Air America Radio's morning
show, Maddow has been leading a dual urban/rural
lifestyle since the liberal talk-radio network launched last March.Mikula, a diehard gardener, artsy photographer, and
part-time accountant, closed on the vintage (1865) rectangular box of a house
in December 1998 as part of her bid to leave apartment life in Northampton
for the isolation of a small village. Four months later, Maddow
walked into her life after Mikula told mutual
friends she needed a "yard boy" to help her manage the demands of a
creaky old structure that had stood empty for almost a year as well as the 2
acres of vegetation that were threatening to take over.
"Zing went the heartstrings," according to both of them, when Maddow, 31, a Rhodes Scholar and gay activist, arrived
for the job. Maddow had moved to the area to write
her doctoral dissertation comparing AIDS policies in the California and British prison systems, but
also needed to earn some money. A year-and-a-half later, on Halloween, she
moved in.
Banter, rather then scholarly research, is now Maddow's
stock in trade, and home life includes plenty. "It's a high-maintenance
house, but we love maintaining it," Mikula
earnestly intoned. "Just like you," Maddow
snapped back with a smile.
In the winter, faucets need to be left dripping when the temperature dips.
"There's a very thin membrane between the outside and the inside,"
said Maddow. Summers provide a constant battle to
keep the vines, grass, weeds, and hedges in check. If you leave the grounds
alone, "the earth will take them back," she said.y
under the slanted roof, so you can stand up straight only near the middle.
They have a clutter-free philosophy toward furnishings and knickknacks. They
eschew curtains, and "If something comes in, something has to go
out," said Maddow. They limit art acquisitions
to living local artists.
Just beyond the yard is the Westfield
River, one of only a
few waterways in the state designated as both scenic and wild. Summer days
will often find Maddow and Mikula
lolling on inner tubes with cocktails in hand.
As isolated as they are at home on weekends, Mikula
and Maddow are in the thick of things during the
work week. Maddow takes the train to their
apartment in Manhattan's West Village
on Sunday afternoons. Mikula and their 10-year-old
chocolate Labrador retriever, Brewster, follow by car on Wednesdays. Their
rent in New York is three times their
mortgage in Massachusetts, their entire
dwelling is half the size of their living room in the country, and more
people live in their five-story walkup tenement than in all of West Cummington.
"We can psychologically afford to live in a broom closet because we have
this beautiful house to come back to," said Maddow.
"Unfiltered," which broadcasts weekdays
from 9 a.m. to noon, is available over the air in seven New
England locales, as well as on satellite radio and at www.airamericaradio.com.
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