Clark Art Film Screening and Poetry Event

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WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — On Saturday, May 3 at 4 pm, the Clark Art Institute presents "Walt Whitman Comes to the Clark," a combination film screening and poetry event centering around Whitman's most famous poem, "Song of Myself." 
 
This free event takes place in the Clark's Manton Research Center auditorium.
 
According to a press release: 
 
Whitman's "barbaric yawp," "Song of Myself" celebrates freedom, inclusion, and democracy. Working with this iconic piece, theater collective Compagnia de' Colombari has created seven short films with actors and musicians around the globe bringing Whitman's words to life in startling and beautiful new ways. These films are screened as part of their nationwide Whitman on Walls! (WoW!) tour. After each film, a poet published by Tupelo Press offers an original piece of work written in response to the film—conversing with, talking back to, and wrestling with Walt Whitman.
 
Compagnia de' Colombari is a New York City theater group founded in Orvieto, Italy, in 2004. Springing from the vision of director Karin Coonrod, it involves an international collective of performing artists, generating theater in surprising places.
 
Tupelo Press is an independent non-profit press discovering and publishing works of poetry, literary fiction, and creative nonfiction by emerging and established writers.

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Willinet Cameras to Capture Monday's Williamstown Select Board Session

By Stephen DravisiBerkshires Staff
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — The Select Board's third-floor meeting to complete its evaluation process for the town manager will be televised by the town's public, educational and governmental television station.
 
Willinet Executive Director Teri Yuan confirmed this week that the station will put a camera in the upstairs conference room to record a planned 8 p.m. single-item agenda meeting to do the annual review of Town Manager Robert Menicocci.
 
The board at its last meeting decided to break the evaluation out from its regular 7 p.m. meeting in the first floor Community Meeting room, which is set up with multiple cameras and audio equipment to facilitate live Willinet telecasts of most public meetings of town boards and committees.
 
The Select Board offered no real explanation for the desire to complete the evaluation in an otherwise public meeting outside of view from Willinet's cameras other than a desire to "sit around the table" rather than sit on one side of a large table along one side of the first floor meeting room.
 
The "sit around the table" talk was particularly puzzling given the fact that Willinet has a camera mounted on the wall behind the spot where Menicocci generally sits for Select Board meetings, a camera that gives a full view of both sides of the table, and an angle that Willinet frequently uses when panels like the Finance Committee invite participants to sit across the table from the committee to give testimony.
 
Perhaps the real reason is better explained by a joking comment from one Select Board member at the Sept. 28 meeting who indicated that doing the evaluation without access to things like Zoom capability was "the object" of moving that business to the third-floor meeting room.
 
The evaluation discussion on Monday evening will follow on a survey of the five board members assessing Menicocci's performance in fiscal year 2026, which ended on June 30.
 
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