Williamstown 'Roof Group' Endorses Spruces Acquisition

By Stephen DravisWilliamstown Correspondent
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The Spruces Roof Group does not plan to meet again unless its services are required.
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — The Spruces Roof Group voted unanimously Monday evening to recommend passage of three articles on the warrant for a Tuesday, Dec. 10, special town meeting.
 
The committee briefly considered and then endorsed the articles, which deal with the town's operation and acquisition of the Spruces Mobile Home Park, which the town will then close and dismantle under the terms of a federal Hazard Mitigation Grant.
 
The warrant for the town's latest special town meeting were approved last week by the Selectmen.
 
The Spruces Roof Group is a "super committee" made up of the chairs or former chairs of several town boards. It was formed this spring after a contentious special town meeting over the use of conserved land in an effort to open the lines of communication in town government.
 
The group, sanctioned by the Selectmen and lead by its chairwoman, originally was called the Long-Term Coordinating Committee. It evolved into the Spruces Roof Group as it sharpened its focus on finding replacement housing for the soon-to-be-displaced residents of the park.
 
In other business on Monday evening, Catherine Yamamoto, the chairman of the town's Affordable Housing Committee and a member of the board of the non-profit Higher Ground, told the committee the non-profit and its partners plan a public listening session for Wednesday, Dec. 11, to discuss details of the housing project planned for a parcel of land being donated by Williams College.
 
Some 40 units of affordable senior housing, including for those being displaced at the Spruces, will be built on the property. The town has pledged $2.6 million toward the project, to be taken from the Federal Emergency Management agency hazard grant (pending approval of the Spruces' acquisition at next week's special town meeting).
 
Yamamoto told the group that wetlands delineation work has been completed at the site at the end of Southworth Street near the Proprietor's Field senior housing project. The just less than 4-acre property has about two acres of buildable land, Yamamoto told the committee.
 
The Roof Group, which has no current issues before it, decided not to disband, but does not have any plans to meet again. At Chairwoman Jane Allen's suggestion, the panel decided to remain intact and available to coordinate efforts with housing developers if the committee's services are needed at a later date.

Tags: affordable housing,   FEMA,   senior housing,   Spruces,   

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WCMA: 'Cracking the Code on Numerology'

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — The Williams College Museum of Art (WCMA) opens a new exhibition, "Cracking the Cosmic Code: Numerology in Medieval Art."
 
The exhibit opened on March 22.
 
According to a press release: 
 
The idea that numbers emanate sacred significance, and connect the past with the future, is prehistoric and global. Rooted in the Babylonian science of astrology, medieval Christian numerology taught that God created a well-ordered universe. Deciphering the universe's numerical patterns would reveal the Creator's grand plan for humanity, including individual fates. 
 
This unquestioned concept deeply pervaded European cultures through centuries. Theologians and lay people alike fervently interpreted the Bible literally and figuratively via number theory, because as King Solomon told God, "Thou hast ordered all things in measure, and number, and weight" (Wisdom 11:22). 
 
"Cracking the Cosmic Code" explores medieval relationships among numbers, events, and works of art. The medieval and Renaissance art on display in this exhibition from the 5th to 17th centuries—including a 15th-century birth platter by Lippo d'Andrea from Florence; a 14th-century panel fragment with courtly scenes from Palace Curiel de los Ajos, Valladolid, Spain; and a 12th-century wall capital from the Monastery at Moutiers-Saint-Jean—reveal numerical patterns as they relate to architecture, literature, gender, and timekeeping. 
 
"There was no realm of thought that was not influenced by the all-consuming belief that all things were celestially ordered, from human life to stones, herbs, and metals," said WCMA Assistant Curator Elizabeth Sandoval, who curated the exhibition. "As Vincent Foster Hopper expounds, numbers were 'fundamental realities, alive with memories and eloquent with meaning.' These artworks tease out numerical patterns and their multiple possible meanings, in relation to gender, literature, and the celestial sphere. 
 
"The exhibition looks back while moving forward: It relies on the collection's strengths in Western medieval Christianity, but points to the future with goals of acquiring works from the global Middle Ages. It also nods to the history of the gallery as a medieval period room at this pivotal time in WCMA's history before the momentous move to a new building," Sandoval said.
 
Cracking the Cosmic Code runs through Dec. 22.
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