Mountainside treatment center participates in Release Recovery scholarship fund
CANAAN, Conn. — During National Substance Abuse Prevention Month, Mountainside treatment center is partnering with Release Recovery Foundation to provide scholarships to women battling substance use disorders. The aim of these scholarships is to offer life-saving inpatient treatment services to individuals struggling with alcohol and drug addiction who are not able to afford medical and clinical care otherwise.
Release Recovery Foundation, co-founded by “Bachelorette Season 16” winner Zac Clark and Justin Gurland, is a nonprofit dedicated to ensuring all who are ready and willing to seek professional treatment are able, despite the financial barriers they may face.
Women face additional barriers, both emotional and societal, when seeking treatment. Childcare challenges, the high cultural standards placed on women as caregivers, and the stigma of addiction can all contribute to a perfect storm in which women feel they cannot leave home to address their disorder. This Release Recovery Foundation Scholarship was created to help women overcome these obstacles and embrace their own healing.
“Everyone has been impacted by COVID-19, but shortly after the pandemic began, we saw a noticeable decrease in women enrolling in detox and residential treatment,” said Andre Basso, CEO at Mountainside. “No one should have to sacrifice their own healing, for financial reasons or otherwise.”
For many women without an alcohol use disorder, COVID-19 stressors have intensified their drinking during the pandemic. A September 2020 study by RAND Corporation showed that heavy alcohol consumption among female drinkers increased 41 percent from 2019 to 2020. Couple this with the 30 percent surge in drug overdose deaths last year, and widespread support has never been more urgently needed.
The Release Recovery Scholarship will cover inpatient stays in Mountainside’s Detox and Residential programs. The treatment center will provide a 24-hour, medically monitored detox, plus a 35-day treatment program focused on holistic wellness, to help women better understand the roots of their addiction and develop healthy coping strategies. To receive a scholarship, individuals must demonstrate a medical and financial need, along with a desire to take the next step in their recovery.
For more information about the Release Recovery Foundation Scholarship, email connect@releaserecovery.com.
—A.K.
* * *
Storyteller Matthew Dicks to deliver Simon’s Rock symposium keynote address
GREAT BARRINGTON — Best-selling author, teacher, blogger, storyteller, and life coach Matthew Dicks will deliver the keynote address at this year’s Symposium on Social Justice and Inclusion at Bard College at Simon’s Rock. The event will take place in-person for the campus community, in the McConnell Theater, Tuesday, Oct. 19 at 6 p.m. The event will also be livestreamed via Zoom, free of charge, for the general public.
Dicks’ address, Finding and Telling Your Best Stories, will expound on the use of personal storytelling in one’s professional and personal life, along with strategies for telling great stories.
Dicks is the founder and artistic director of Speak Up, a Hartford-based storytelling organization that produces shows throughout New England, as well the Speak Up Storytelling podcast. He teaches storytelling and public speaking to individuals, corporations, school districts, universities, and more. He is also the internationally bestselling author of several novels, including “Memoirs of an Imaginary Friend” and “Something Missing,” as well as the nonfiction book “Storyworthy: Engage, Teach, Persuade, and Change Your Life Through the Art of Storytelling.” He is an advice columnist for Slate and the humor columnist for Seasons magazine. He also has written comic books for DoubleTake Comics.
This year, the Symposium focuses on new ways to explore and understand the powers of joy as individuals and communities, with a focus on how everyone can use their voices to find solidarity, build coalitions, and cultivate joy. The events, presentations, and workshops scheduled for Symposium Week will also encourage participants to continue to seek ways to thrive and empower their communities while addressing systemic racism and oppression.
—A.K.
* * *
Downtown Pittsfield’s First Fridays Artswalk to be held November 5
PITTSFIELD — Downtown Pittsfield’s next First Friday Artswalk, on Friday, Nov. 5 from 5–8 p.m., will include brand-new indoor art shows, and most of the participating artists will be on hand to discuss their work.
Hotel on North, 297 North Street, will feature “When Worlds Collide” by Scott Taylor. The exhibit is a sampling of the work Taylor created during the pandemic. Many of the paintings speak of containment, some visually looking outward, some inward, and some returning to a simpler time. There will be a reception with the artist during the Artswalk from 5–8 p.m.
The Brothership Building Window at 141 North Street, curated by IS183 Art School of the Berkshires, will feature “Little Kids, Big Issues” by Stephanie VanBramer, who creates little characters with big personalities and even bigger ideas.
Artists in the Guild of Berkshire Artists will show their work in “Plein Air in the Berkshires” at TKG Real Estate, at 137 North Street. Featured artists include Sally Lebwohl, pastels; Jorie Latham, watercolors and mixed media; and Debbie Schneer, photography.
MCLA Pittsfield, at 66 Allen Street, will feature an art show of faces by Dana Schildkraut, an award-winning artist and educator who resides in Southern Vermont and works in paper mache, watercolor paint, and polymer clay.
The Berkshire Art Association will present “DISTILLATIONS, An Art Show,” with work by Peg Dotchin, Jesse Tobin McCauley, and Ilene Spiewak, at the Lichtenstein Center for the Arts, 28 Renne Avenue.
Universalist Church of Pittsfield, at 175 Wendell Avenue, will present a show by mother-daughter team Kerry and Kamille Hylton, whose artwork targets all age groups.
All art exhibits are on display in participating venues throughout the month. For more information and to view a listing and map of all participating artists and locations, visit www.FirstFridaysArtswalk.com.
—A.K.
* * *
Berkshire County Historical Society receives Mass Humanities grant
PITTSFIELD — The Berkshire County Historical Society has received an $8,750 Mass Humanities grant from the Expand Massachusetts Stories Initiative to fund completion of the Berkshire County Oral Histories project. Funds will be used for digitization, transcriptions, metadata entry, and permanent cataloguing of the archive at the W.E.B. DuBois Library at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst as well as presentation of the histories on a new section of the BCHS website. In addition, during the spring of 2022, BCHS will present three facilitated discussions with traditionally underrepresented communities to hear suggestions about what parts of their histories BCHS should collect and preserve.
“It is our hope that this project will not only preserve the oral histories currently in our archive, but also open the door to the voices of those not traditionally represented in our archive,” said Lesley Herzberg, BCHS’s Executive Director. “Berkshire County has a rich history of Latinx, African American, and Native contributions. This project will begin to shed more light on these stories and their importance to the Berkshires and guide future collection policies for the BCHS.”
The archive began in the 1980s, when approximately 25 oral history recordings were made and related ephemera gathered over time, but the project has been dormant until recently when the BCHS reviewed the material and felt the project could be restarted and broadened to better represent the current makeup of the Berkshires. In the last year, BCHS has been working with Housatonic Heritage and the director of the Berkshire Community College oral history center Judith Monachina to digitize the recordings. Mass Humanities funding will complete this work, as well as help with the cataloguing necessary for the archive to enter the UMass system.
Three forums involving members of the region’s Latinx community, the Stockbridge-Munsee Community, and Clinton AME Zion Church Restoration will gather public input as to how BCHS can increase their voices, not only in future oral history projects, but also in the broader collecting and education missions of the society.
In spring of 2022, BCHS will launch a new section of their website dedicated to the project making the material available to the public for the first time.
—A.K.
* * *
Williams College plans new museum building on former Williams Inn site
WILLIAMSTOWN — On October 8, the Williams College Board of Trustees voted to move forward with plans for a new art museum building on the former site of the Williams Inn, at the intersection of Routes 2 and 7 in Williamstown. While the potential site for a new Williams College Museum of Art (WCMA) had been determined in late 2019, college and museum leadership used the ensuing 22-month period to conduct an extensive building programming study. The delays produced by the pandemic afforded a rare opportunity to delve deeper into the potential programming opportunities, not just for a new museum building but also for Lawrence Hall — the campus building where the museum has resided since its founding in 1926.
Lawrence Hall was never intended to be an art museum; in fact, the 1846 building’s Weston Rotunda was the site of Williams College’s first library. Subsequent expansions in the 1920s and 1930s added classrooms and gallery space. In the 1980s, a major expansion was added. Currently, the museum occupies the third and fourth floors, with Art Department and WCMA offices, classrooms, and an auditorium on the first and second levels.
Plans for a new museum building are rooted in the college’s commitment to placing learning with objects at the center of a liberal arts education, and its vision for WCMA to grow and thrive as a leader and innovator among college art museums. The decision to move forward now is driven by practical and pressing needs related to the care and display of a global collection, as well as to allow for greater accessibility and other accommodations not possible in the current facilities.
The building project now moves forward to a design phase and will proceed on a timeline aligning with WCMA’s centennial year of 2026-27. The building will offer substantial gallery space for showing more of the 15,000 works in the museum’s collection, as well as facilities for easy access to collections for student, faculty, and visiting scholar requests, and more object study classrooms. Look for more information about the museum building project on the Williams College website later this fall.
—A.K.
