MassMoCA: Nature Public Symposium, Tree Pep Rally

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NORTH ADAMS, Mass. — On March 13 and 14, Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art will host the "Contemporary Nature: Tending the Garden Symposium."
 
The public symposium features a keynote by writer and philosopher Báyò Akómoláfé that poses questions for our ecological future.
 
Artists, scholars, and students convene to share their experiences on what co-becoming means to them in their art, gardening, and land stewardship practices. 
 
It will include the upcoming "Homecoming" exhibition's Amanda Lovelee and Jessica Gersony, and Pallavi Sen and Sarah Workneh, Alejandra Salinas and Aeron Bergman, and Camila Marambio and Christy Gast.
 
Tickets to the symposium are $50 in advance; $40 students.
 
The exhibit "Homecoming" opens on June 13 as part of the museum's free day. It is an immersive, outdoor environmental art exhibition designed to remember a deeper connection between humans and nature while playfully addressing the urgency of climate change that is causing plants to migrate, stated a press release. 
 
According to a press release:
 
Gardens are choreographed sites with the most cyclically innate power to all life: to catch sunlight and transform energy into matter. Through gardening, we are able to cultivate physical and emotional energies, making us manipulators of the world. Nature is dialectic; we are one of many agents in a wide network.
Humanity continues to create gardens to ecologize, although we have blighted them through histories of apartheid, colonialism, and control, and we continue on this path. Gardening reframes choice and power, as it produces allowances and realizations to know what it means to be with others in difference, to know
unknowing, and to give humanity’s control to the ecological network that we are a part of.
 
Our intention is to dissolve boundaries of information-sharing between species and ecological processes and realize how truly interconnected we are in nature.
 
Homecoming envisions a symbolic micro field station for two trees in residence participating in assisted plant migration. Join the museum in welcoming two "trees in residence" that are part of the exhibit.

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North Adams Police Charge 7 After Drug Investigation

Staff Reports

NORTH ADAMS, Mass. — Police charged seven people after executing simultaneous search warrants on Eagle Street and Arnold Place.

On Tuesday, Nov. 10, 2026, members of the North Adams Police Department Detective Unit and Berkshire Law Enforcement Task Force executed search warrants at 212 Eagle Street Apartment 3 and 59 Arnold Place.

According to police, the search warrants were the result of a month-long investigation into a group of people from Springfield utilizing both residences as part of their heroin and cocaine distribution operation.

Police reported that during the search warrant execution at 212 Eagle Street Apartment 3, Giovanni Ramirez was taken into custody. Joanne Bentley and Chad Luczynski were also located in the apartment and will be charged as part of this investigation.

During the search warrant execution at 59 Arnold Place, Sandra Bunt, Raven Vanderburg, Jaiden Langford-Andrews and Angel Ortiz were all taken into custody.

Bunt's bail was revoked on a separate open case, and she is held without bail. Vanderburg is being held without bail for a probation violation on a separate case.

Langford-Andrews, Ortiz and Ramirez were all held without bail pending dangerousness hearings scheduled for later this week and early next week.

As a result of the investigation, the following evidence was seized:

  • Approximately 110 grams of cocaine
  • Approximately 2,323 bags of heroin (46 grams)
  • Approximately $6,817 U.S. Currency
  • Multiple functioning digital scales with residue

The following people were arrested and charged with the following:

Jaiden Langford-Andrews of Springfield:

  • Arrest Warrant
  • Trafficking Heroin 36-100 grams
  • Possessing with Intent to Distribute Cocaine
  • Conspiracy

Angel Ortiz, of Springfield:

  • Trafficking Heroin 36-100 grams
  • Possessing with Intent to Distribute Cocaine
  • Conspiracy
  • Giovanni Ramirez, of Springfield, Massachusetts:
  • Trafficking Cocaine 36-100 grams
  • Possession with Intent to Distribute Heroin
  • Conspiracy

Sandra Bunt, of North Adams:

  • Trafficking Heroin 36-100 grams
  • Possessing with Intent to Distribute Cocaine
  • Conspiracy

Raven Vanderburg, of North Adams:

  • Trafficking Heroin 36-100 grams
  • Possessing with Intent to Distribute Cocaine
  • Conspiracy

The following people were charged but not taken into custody:

Joanne Bentley of North Adams:

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