Bits & Bytes: ‘Yoga for Our Lives’; Live Out Loud conference; orchard-pruning workshop; OLLI open house

‘Yoga for Our Lives’ to benefit March for Our Lives

North Adams — On Saturday, March 24, from 9 to 11 a.m., Smalltown Yoga and North Adams Yoga will partner with Greylock Works to open its event space to Yoga for Our Lives, an event in solidarity with the students and families of the March for Our Lives gun safety event in Washington, D.C.

Organized by the students of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, March for our Lives will take to the streets of Washington, D.C., Saturday, March 24, to demand an end to gun violence and mass shootings. The organizers of Yoga for Our Lives hope it will be the largest single indoor yoga gathering in the history of Berkshire County. The event will feature 90 minutes of all-level yoga, four teachers and room for at least 1,000 yoga mats.

All profits will be donated to Everytown for Gun Safety. For more information, contact Ashley Weekes Cart at ashley.w.cart@gmail.com.

–E.E.

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Live Out Loud community conference

Jahaira DeAlto. Photo courtesy liveoutloudberkshires.org

Pittsfield — The sixth annual LGBTQAI+ Live Out Loud community conference will take place Saturday, March 24, from 9 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. at Berkshire Community College.

Breakfast and registration will begin at 8:30 a.m. At 9 a.m., after a welcome from BCC President Ellen Kennedy, the keynote address will be given by social justice advocate Jahaira DeAlto, who organizes through a Latina/Middle Eastern radical womanist praxis. Workshops will begin at 10 a.m. and will include “Misogyny and the Roots of Homophobia/Transphobia,” a two-part “Safe Zone” training, a discussion of domestic violence in the LGBTQ community, the intergenerational discussion “My Life as a Teen, 50 Years Ago and Today,” a “Coming Out: Not Once in a Lifetime” panel presentation, and a look at the LGBTQ community and communities of faith.

Breakfast and lunch are included and free of charge. Free transportation will be provided from the BRTA Intermodal Center in Pittsfield at 8 a.m. and 8:30 a.m., and from BCC to the Intermodal Center at 3 and 3:30 p.m. The conference is free and open to the public. Registration is requested. For more information or to register, see the Berkshire Edge calendar.

–E.E.

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Mass Aggie seminar to cover basics of orchard pruning

Great Barrington — The UMass Amherst Center for Food, Agriculture and the Environment’s Mass Aggie Seminars series will present a workshop on home-orchard pruning Saturday, March 24, from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. at Windy Hill Farm. Led by Jon Clements and Liz Garofalo, the workshop will focus on the basic principles of pruning fruit trees in the home garden. The hands-on workshop will take place outside and participants are advised to dress appropriately for potentially wet, cold and muddy conditions. The cost of the workshop is $50. For more information or to register, see the Berkshire Edge calendar or contact UMass Extension at (413) 545-4800.

–E.E.

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OLLI at BCC to host spring open house

Pittsfield — The Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Berkshire Community College will host an open house Thursday, March 22, from 10 to 11:30 a.m. in Berkshire Community College’s new Connector Lounge.

OLLI’s spring semester of classes features 23 classes on a variety of subjects from the short stories of Jorge Luis Borges and Renaissance women of note to wide raging surveys of the upcoming performing arts season in the Berkshires and the future of health care in America. The open house is open to OLLI members and non-members alike and will offer general information about OLLI as well as previews from instructors of upcoming classes such as “Reading the Quran” with Rabbi Ivan Caine, “The Fight to Vote” with Kit Dobelle and “Shakespeare’s Unruly Plays” with Richard Matturro.

For more information, see the Berkshire Edge calendar or contact OLLI at (413) 236-2190 or olli@berkshirecc.edu.

–E.E.