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Voices for Recovery: Strengthen Families and Communities
Rally, walk and vigil to raise awareness of opioid addiction and recovery

NORTH ADAMS, MA – On Saturday, September 23, the North Berkshire Community will gather to remember those lost, learn about resources, and celebrate recovery from addiction. The Rx Heroin Work group of the Northern Berkshire Community Coalition along with the City of North Adams are holding the Voices for Recovery Rally, Walk and Vigil from 1-3:30PM. The rally and vigil will be centered at Colegrove Park, with a Recovery Walk through downtown North Adams.

The event will include informational tables representing the recovery services community such as Spectrum Health, the Brien Center, Tapestry, Clean Slate, Narcotics Anonymous, the Berkshire Opioid Abuse Prevention Collaborative, Al Anon, and Josh Bressette Commit to Save a Life. Children’s activities will be on hand from The Family Place and the north Berkshire Systems of Care Committee, along with live music provided by Common Folk Artists Collective. Common Folk will also have a display of art inspired by the topic of addiction and recovery, from the exhibit “To Bless the Space Between Us”.

The theme of the event, “Strengthen Families and Communities” acknowledges that families and the North Berkshire community play a major role in recovery. The impact of addiction on families will be evident at the vigil, in remarks by Pastor Dave Anderson from the North Adams First Baptist Church, and Dawn Windover who will speak about the loss of her son Derek.

The walk, led by Mayor Alcombright, will take place at 2PM through downtown North Adams. The route of the walk will be lined with signs posting information about substance use disorder, recovery services, and celebrating recovery. Walkers will pause for a standout at the intersection of Main Street and Route 8 by City Hall. T-shirts will be available for purchase.

Following the walk, participants will hear from speakers including Collin Woods, former North Adams resident now in recovery and working as a Recovery Coach at Berkshire Transition Network. Dave Risch, North Adams resident and active member of Al Anon as well as the Rx Heroin work group will speak about the role of families in recovery. Mayor Alcombright will conclude the event with words about recovery, and building a recovery community.

A highlight of the event will be the Wall of Remembrance and Recovery created by the volunteer recovery organization, Josh Bressette Commit to Save a Life. The wall will include pictures, images, poems and other statements to remember those lost to addiction. Waterman says she hopes the Wall “creates a compassion for those suffering with loss and for those struggling to recover within the community. Heroin/opioid addiction is not a moral failing, these people featured on the wall had full lives ahead of them, they were loved, cherished and needed.” The wall will also include images to celebrate people in the community in recovery from substance use disorders.

For more information, including how to order a t-shirt for the event, visit www.nbccoalition.org.

Kimball Farms Life Care hosts talk on identity theft, computer fraud on Thursday, Sept. 28

LENOX, MASS. (Sept. 20, 2017) –Kimball Farms Life Care in Lenox will host a presentation on identity theft, the Equifax security breach, computer fraud, and other scams on Thursday, Sept. 28 at 2 p.m. Presenters will include Ann Lynch from the office of the Attorney General of Massachusetts, and Kate Alexander from Berkshire Consumer Services. Refreshments will be served. Those wishing to attend are asked to RSVP to Kimball Farms at 413-637-7000.

Hinds lauds MASSDOT for convening kick-off” meeting of the NYC/Berkshire Rail Working Group

PITTSFIELD – State Senator Adam G. Hinds (D- Pittsfield) announces that MassDOT will convene an organizational, “kick-off” meeting of the NYC/Berkshire Passenger Rail Working Group tomorrow, Thursday, September 21st at 1:00pm at the MassDOT Region 1 Headquarters in Lenox.

The NYC/Berkshire Passenger Rail Working Group, established by Outside Section 137 of the Fiscal Year 2018 budget (Chapter 137 of the Acts of 2017), is an initiative sponsored by Hinds during the Senate budget debate. The proposal was unanimously passed by the Senate, endorsed by the budget conference committee and was signed into law by the Governor.

NORTH ADAMS—Representatives of North Adams Ambulance and Village Ambulance announce agreement for Village Ambulance to merge with North Adams Ambulance pending due diligence.

It is well known that Village Ambulance Service, like many small EMS providers, has been facing increasing financial challenges. In light of this, a working group consisting of representatives of Williams College, the Town of Williamstown, the Williamstown Fire Department and Village Ambulance was formed to evaluate and recommend the best solution that would ensure continued, sustainable emergency medical services to the communities Village serves.

Sameer Gupta comes to MASS MoCA

NORTH ADAMS, MASSACHUSETTS – Sameer Gupta is a “kinetic, bass-heavy, and tender” percussionist (The Jazz Observer), with roots in the Indian Classical tradition. He’s at MASS MoCA on Saturday, September 30, at 8pm, with a propulsive band featuring Marc Cary (keyboards), Jay Gandhi (bansuri), and Rashaan Carter (bass), for a magical evening of tracks from his new album, A Circle Has No Beginning. Bang on a Can favorite and North Adams resident Todd Reynolds opens the show.

Known as one of the few percussionists simultaneously representing the traditions of American jazz on drum-set and Indian classical music on tabla, musician and composer Gupta did not begin mastering the tabla until well into his jazz career in the early ‘00s. First studying under the guidance of Ustad Zakir Hussain, over the last two decades Gupta has become an accomplished, innovative tabla player and a dedicated disciple of the great tabla maestro Pandit Anindo Chatterjee.

Children’s book author to visit Clark Art Institute

Williamstown, Massachusetts—Join author Maria-Christina Sayn-Wittgenstein Nottebohm (also known as “Puppa”) at the Clark Art Institute on Saturday, October 7 at 11 am as she explores ways to engage children with art. Nottebohm talks about the fun, magical world of exploring Old Master pictures and the methods she discovered in researching her book Old Masters Rock: How to Look at Art with Children. The free talk, held in the Michael Conforti Pavilion, includes a question-and-answer session followed by a book signing.

Empowering children with the skills to look at art enables them to stimulate their imagination and interpret the pictures in their own ways, often seeing things adults don’t notice. According to Nottebohm, enjoying art is all about responding to what the viewer is seeing. Old Masters Rock stimulates children in a playful way so that, together with an adult, they can decode fifty masterpieces of Western art from the last 700 years. The book demonstrates that art is accessible to all—adults and children alike.

600 bicyclists ride through Berkshires at Farm to Fork Fondo

What: Farm to Fork Fondo – Berkshires bicycle event.
600 riders from more than 25 states riding from farm to farm in Berkshire County, MA sampling chef-prepared bites at each farm
When: September 23-24, 2017 weekend

Where: Hancock Shaker Village, 1843 W Housatonic Rd, Pittsfield, MA

Photo/video/media opportunities at Hancock Shaker Village*:
9/23, 5pm: Bicycle Skills Clinic for riders of all abilities on the Brick Dwelling green, taught by the Colavita – Bianchi Professional Women’s Cycling Team
9/23, 7pm: Meet the Farmers Dinner in the historic Shaker dining hall in the Brick Dwelling
9/24, 9am: Farm to Fork Fondo Mass Start – 600 cyclists departing en masse from Hancock Shaker Village at the Brick Dwelling green
9/24, 1 pm: Live Music from Whiskey Treaty Road Show
9/24, 5pm: Volunteer Competition winners announced – More than $5,000 donated to local non-profit organizations

WAM Theatre announces attendees for October’s Berkshire Leadership Summit

LEE, MA – Organizers of the pilot Berkshire Leadership Summit, an event for women aspiring to, or already in, leadership positions in the non-profit theatre, and hosted by WAM Theatre, are excited to announce that the attendees of this event have been selected.

Of the 163 women theatre professionals who applied to participate in the Berkshire Leadership Summit, 75 have been accepted, hailing from 22 U.S. states and four Canadian provinces. This cohort reflects an emphasis the Steering Committee members placed on diversity, accessibility, and intentionality early in the process. Towards this goal, the steering committee members, comprised of Kristen van Ginhoven, Artistic Director of WAM Theatre (Steering Committee Chair); Akiba Abaka, Audience Development Manager at ArtsEmerson; Rachel Fink, Managing Director of Theatre Bay Area; and Shafer Mazow, who currently works at the Exploratorium in San Francisco, went through a rigorous selection process that focused on creating a cohort that balanced career (early/late/mid-career), background (race, sexual identity, geography), and level of leadership experience. The process resulted in an intentional balance of these criteria in an effort to provide the greatest opportunity for personal growth and community-building for each attendee at the summit.

MCLA Gallery 51 to exhibit “Yellow Bowl Project”

NORTH ADAMS, MASS. — Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts’ (MCLA) Gallery 51 announces “Freedom from Fear/Yellow Bowl Project,” a solo exhibition by Setsuko Winchester, will open on Thursday, Sept. 28. This exhibition at MCLA Gallery 51 marks the first show of the entire series of photographs created for the project, which documents site-based installations of 120 yellow tea bowls made by Winchester to represent the forced removal of 120,000 Japanese-Americans to 10 internment camps in the American West during World War II.

The public is invited to attend a free reception from 5 to 8 p.m. in the 51 Main St. gallery on Thursday, Sept. 28, to celebrate the opening of the “Yellow Bowl Project,” which also was designed to bring attention to a history of Asian and Asian-American racism in the United States.

MCLA offers free global film series this Fall

NORTH ADAMS, MASS. — Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts (MCLA) announces the campus will present a Global Film Series this fall, which will feature three documentary films. The first film will be presented on Tuesday, Sept. 26, with a second film to screen in October. The third and final film of the series will be offered in November.

All of the screenings will take place at 6:30 p.m. in Murdock Hall room 218, on the MCLA campus. Each event is free and open to the public.

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