The Rogovoy Report 6.3.24

From around the corner to around the globe...

Jun 02, 2024

The Loneliness of the American Worker

(WSJ) - More Americans are profoundly lonely, and the way they work — more digitally linked but less personally connected—is deepening that sense of isolation. Employers and researchers are just beginning to understand how workplace shifts over the past four years are contributing to what the U.S. surgeon general declared a loneliness health epidemic last year. The alienation affects remote and in-person workers alike. The disconnection is driving up staff turnover and worker absences, making it a business issue for more employers, executives and researchers say. Cigna, the health-insurance company, estimates that loneliness is costing companies $154 billion a year in absenteeism alone.

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A Nation of Potheads? Cannabis tops alcohol as Americans’ daily drug of choice (NYT)

The Life Sabbatical: Is doing absolutely nothing the secret of happiness? (The Guardian)

How to be less busy and more happy (The Atlantic)

FASCIST TAKEOVER WATCH:

Is Trumpism a movement or a cult? (TNR)

How the hell can people be nostalgic for Donald Trump? Yet — they are (TNR)

The Word That Shall Not Be Uttered: Why liberals struggle to defend liberalism (New Yorker)

Mahaiwe to Be Long-Term Home of Berkshire Opera

(WAMC) GREAT BARRINGTON, Mass. - Two Berkshire County cultural entities – the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center and Berkshire Opera Festival – have announced a new long-term partnership. The historic Great Barrington theater will serve as the new home for the Pittsfield-based opera group through a multi-year residency plan. Previously the Berkshire Opera's home base was at Pittsfield’s Colonial Theatre.

An Abandoned School in Claverack Becomes a Canvas for Art Galleries

(NYT) CLAVERACK, N.Y. - In a spirit of cooperation, six midsize art galleries are extending their reach beyond Manhattan with the purchase of a sprawling abandoned school in Columbia County, N.Y., that will be inaugurated as a new exhibition platform called the Campus on June 29. The galleries Bortolami, James Cohan, Kaufmann Repetto, Anton Kern, Andrew Kreps and Kurimanzutto pooled their resources to buy the low-slung 78,000-square-foot Ockawamick School and its surrounding 22 acres in Claverack. “This is writ large of something that’s happening in the art world: a new way of working,” said Kreps, who initiated the real estate hunt. He called it a move “toward collaboration” and away from working in one’s “own little silo.” The property is outside Hudson, which has become a mini-Mecca for art and design, and joins a host of homegrown galleries and other contemporary art institutions in the region. The School, a museum-size extension of Jack Shainman’s gallery spaces in Manhattan, and the nonprofit Art Omi center are both in Columbia County.

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Alison Larkin previews one-woman show ‘Grief ... A Comedy’ at Barrington Stage Company before heading to Edinburgh Festival Fringe (Berkshire Eagle)

In ‘Days of Memory,’ author Judith Monachina shares stories of Jewish Italians who survived fascism and the Holocaust (B Eagle)

Berkshire Theatre Group to host ‘Festival of New Jewish Plays’ at the Colonial in Pittsfield (B Eagle)

Great Barrington Public Theater jokingly promises ‘season of family dysfunction’ (Berkshire Edge)

Plans for new Williams College Museum of Art incorporate relationship to surrounding landscape (Building Design + Construction)

Broadway star Joshua Henry plans on letting audience lean in at Mr. Finn’s Cabaret (B Eagle)

Music Mountain Festival starts 95th season (Berkshire Edge)

Clarion Concerts presents Canellakis-Brown Duo in benefit performance (B Edge)

Indigenous artists make themselves seen at Thomas Cole Site (Hyperallergic)

Joe Donahue’s history with books, life interviewing world’s authors (ATU)

Aaron Lansky, Yiddish Book Center founder, talks past and future of book rescue mission as he preps for retirement (WAMC)

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NEWS FROM THE BERKSHIRES

Top FTX Executive Ryan Salame of Lenox Sentenced to 7½ Years in Prison

(NYT) - Ryan Salame, a top executive at the collapsed cryptocurrency exchange FTX, was sentenced to seven and a half years in prison on Tuesday, making him the first of Sam Bankman-Fried’s circle of advisers at FTX to receive prison time. Salame, 30, a trusted lieutenant of Bankman-Fried, the exchange’s founder, pleaded guilty last year to a campaign finance law violation and a charge of operating an unlicensed money transmitting business. He is one of four top deputies in the FTX empire who have pleaded guilty to crimes since the company imploded in November 2022. Salame’s sentence exceeded the five to seven years that prosecutors had recommended. Before FTX failed, Salame was a key figure at the exchange, overseeing its subsidiary in the Bahamas, where the company was based. As FTX grew into a $32 billion business, Salame spent lavishly. He enjoyed expensive cars and private jets, and bought restaurants in the Berkshires in Massachusetts. He was also a prolific political donor, giving more than $24 million in the 2022 midterm elections, mostly to Republicans. Read also, FTX’s Ryan Salame, one of Sam Bankman-Fried’s associates, is sentenced to 7½ years (WSJ)

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Williams College refuses to cave to student demands to divest from Israel (Berkshire Eagle)

National furniture chain Raymour & Flanigan set to open in former Pittsfield Bed Bath & Beyond storefront (B Edge)

Haitian migrant families living in Great Barrington and Pittsfield hotels must find new housing (B Eagle)

Wheatleigh, Berkshires Gilded Age mansion-hotel, hits market for $15m (Boston.com)

Wahconah Park project seems to have run off the tracks or gotten bogged down (B Eagle)

Former Pittsfield GE plant engineer successfully argued in court that materials he worked with contained asbestos and caused his fatal cancer (B Eagle)

NEWS FROM THE HUDSON VALLEY

Didi Barrett, left, is fighting off a primary run from the left from Claire Cousin

Longtime Assembly Incumbent Didi Barrett Facing Challenger

(ATU) HUDSON, N.Y. - Claire Cousin, a Democrat backed by the Working Families Party and tenants rights groups, is challenging incumbent Democrat Didi Barrett from the left in a primary race to represent a swath of Columbia and Dutchess counties. Cousin, 31, is running on housing and environmental issues, while Barrett is relying on her record of delivering for her district for the past 12 years and enjoys the backing of establishment Democrats in the district. Barrett, 72, has represented the 106th District in the Assembly since 2012 after a career as a journalist, magazine editor, and in the publicity department for the American Folk Art Museum in New York City. In the Assembly, she has championed LGBTQ+ rights — she authored a 2019 law that restores state benefits to service members who were discharged because of their sexual orientation — reproductive rights, and local issues such as Lyme disease.

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Abandoned school in Claverack to open as collective arts space (ATU)

Hours after receiving Master of Music in Instrumental Studies degree, Bard College graduate killed by speeding driver in Red Hook (ATU)

Kingston gets over $14M for housing projects (DF)

New Paltz deputy mayor called on to resign after spreading antisemitic tropes on social media (DF)

National Grid proposing large increases to residential energy bills (ATU)

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