SHARON — About 40 people filled the Sharon Audubon Center on Wednesday, Dec. 3, to discuss black bears — and most attendees made clear that they welcome the animals’ presence. Even as they traded practical advice on how to keep bears out of garages, porches and trash cans, residents repeatedly emphasized that they want the bears to stay and that the real problem lies with people, not wildlife.
The Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (DEEP) convened the meeting as the first in a series of regional Bear Management Listening Sessions, held at a time when Connecticut is increasingly divided over whether the state should authorize a limited bear hunt. Anticipating the potential for heated exchanges, DEEP opened the evening with strict ground rules designed to prevent confrontations: speakers were limited to three minutes, directed to address only the panel of DEEP officials, and warned that interruptions or personal attacks would not be tolerated.
“We really want to hear from you,” said Justin Davis, DEEP’s bureau chief for natural resources, at the meeting. He said that DEEP is preparing a bear management report in early 2026 that evaluates the challenges the state is facing and the strategies going forward dealing with them. He said the report will include feedback from the public generated at the listening sessions. He urged attendees, however, not to turn the meeting into a discussion about whether there should be a hunt or not.
Davis called the return of black bears to Connecticut a “conservation success story,” but one that now comes with challenges. "They're large animals, they're powerful and they can become comfortable being around people--and they're opportunistic, and they love to eat."
DEEP shared data showing that black bears have been reported in nearly every Connecticut town and that conflicts involving trash, bird feeders, livestock and home entries have increased sharply in recent years. The state’s bear population was last estimated at roughly 1,100 to 1,200 animals, a number that DEEP recognizes has grown since the study was conducted in 2012.
Eric Hammering, the office director of Environmental Review & Strategic Initiatives at DEEP, told the attendees that since 2020 there have been 264 reported home entries in 38 municipalities in northwest Connecticut, citing data from the state's State of the Bears report released in March.
A home entry, he said, is defined as an event when a bear actually goes inside a resident's living space.
Attendees at the DEEP meeting in Sharon on Dec. 3By Christian Murray
DEEP officials stressed that bird feeders and unsecured household trash are the two biggest drivers of bear conflicts. They advise residents to remove feeders entirely and keep their garbage inside or in bear-resistant containers. DEEP representatives noted that once a bear discovers food, it is likely to develop habits and return.
Many attendees said they see widespread noncompliance in their neighborhoods — particularly among part-time residents and short-term rental guests who leave trash out for days. Several said they were frustrated that the people causing the problem are often not the ones who attend sessions like this.
As a result, a number of residents called for stronger statewide enforcement, including fines for leaving trash unsecured and penalties for repeated violations. Without consequences, they said, the same households will continue to attract bears and put neighbors at risk. Others described practical steps to reduce bear activity--including the use of secure dumpsters, food composting stations, and the placement of electric fencing around livestock and beehives.
Again and again, residents emphasized that the underlying issue is human behavior. One attendee summarized it succinctly: “There are 3.6 million people in Connecticut and far fewer bears. Human behavior is the problem.”
Lynn Levine, a Litchfield resident who enjoys seeing bears, said common sense steps are the answer. She said that when she first moved to the area, she mistakenly left her garage down open with a 15-pound bag of shelled peanuts inside. "A bear dragged the bag around the side of the garage, sat down and had a teddy bear picnic." She said she learned not to leave the garage door open, especially with food inside.
Not all the stories were lighthearted. An 82-year-old Sharon woman recounted repeated break-ins that left her shaken and facing thousands of dollars in repairs, including a bear walking into her kitchen while she was washing dishes. A veterinarian described livestock attacks, including an alpaca that was mauled and dragged. A farmer said bears caused about $160,000 in crop losses in one year and that cornfields across the region face similar damage.
Several speakers added that DEEP’s limited staffing means local police often end up responding when bears are struck by cars or behaving aggressively.
From the State of the Bears Report released March 2025CT DEEP
Cornwall First Selectman Gordon Ridgway, who attended the session, said afterward that he was troubled by how outdated the state’s population data is.
“My biggest personal take-away was surprise — that DEEP doesn’t have a handle on how many bears are here,” he said. “They said they haven’t surveyed them since 2012. How do you make a plan or policy without doing a survey?”
Ridgway said Cornwall has received about 40 bear-related reports this year, including home and vehicle entries and injuries to pets. “People are frightened by intrusions onto their property,” he said. “These are not happy stories.”
He noted that in 2012 -- when the state said it last did its population count -- “a bear was a novelty,” but sightings today are very common. “Today, most people see a bear every week. It’s no longer a novelty — it’s a real issue.”
Ridgway said he supports developing a statewide management plan and wants Connecticut to examine approaches used in other states, including reducing their numbers.
While most attendees at the Dec. 3 session indicated they opposed a hunt, Ridgway said that is not a true reflection of how his constituents in Cornwall view the issue. “If we had a vote, it would be close as to whether there should be a hunting season.”
Only one attendee — a longtime hunter from West Cornwall — advocated for a controlled bear hunt. He argued that the population is “exploding” and that education and bear-proof containers are “a band-aid.” In keeping with DEEP’s rules, other residents did not respond, and the session took place without conflict.
Much of the remaining discussion centered on unsecured trash, short-term rentals, and outdated dumpsters at state parks that residents say train bears to expect human food. Some questioned why the listening session was not better publicized, and Ridgway echoed that concern, saying it should have also been held at the high school to allow more residents to attend.
DEEP collected comment cards at the end of the session. Staff said all feedback will be reviewed as the agency drafts its statewide bear management report.
Rudavsky, who lives in New York City and has a home in Lakeville, has been screening films at The Moviehouse for nearly three decades. “I was the first independent filmmaker to show a film there back in 1997 or ’98,” he recalled, with “A Life Apart: Hasidism in America.” “I think I’ve shown four or five films there over the years.”
Best known for his searing 1958 memoir, “Night,” Elie Wiesel forever altered how the Holocaust would be written about and remembered. A teenage survivor of Auschwitz and Buchenwald, the Romanian-born author became an international spokesperson for memory, conscience and moral responsibility. Yet Rudavsky’s documentary looks beyond Wiesel’s public role, revealing a man who was, in the director’s words, “intensely private and profoundly public.”
Rudavsky’s connection to Wiesel is also personal. “I grew up in Boston,” he said, “and Elie started teaching there in ’77 or ’78, and my mother took a class with him.” His father was a Reform rabbi, and the family’s shelves were filled with Jewish books, including Wiesel’s, such as “Night,” “Jews of Silence,” and the volume that would later lend its name to the film: “Souls on Fire.”
“His mystical storytelling is where he’s at his best,” Rudavsky said of the book. “So eloquent and beautiful — you could pick up any page and be transported into this other world, this other realm. ‘Night’ does that too, in a horrifying way, but it achieves that same sort of consciousness change.”
Wiesel, who died in 2016 at the age of 87, would go on to establish what is now the Elie Wiesel Center for Jewish Studies at Boston University, an institution devoted to ethical inquiry, dialogue and human rights, principles that shaped both his teaching and his writing.
“One of the things that is most striking to me in living with Elie Wiesel’s work for the past four years,” said Rudavsky, “is how civilized, cultured, eloquent, soft-spoken and gentle a person he was, how loving in general a person he was.” That gentleness and quiet insistence on civility becomes one of the film’s most moving revelations.
The documentary does not present Wiesel as a saint or a monument. It lingers instead on the human questions. “How do you overcome trauma?” Rudavsky asked. “How do you live with it? Do you ever overcome it? I don’t think Elie did overcome it, but I think he learned to live with it and learned to enjoy life — sleeplessly perhaps — but he enjoyed the world.”
To evoke the inner life of memory, the film incorporates hand-painted animation by Joel Orloff, inspired in part by the illustrator Mark Podwal, who collaborated with Wiesel on several projects. “A few of the animations are inspired by his brilliant work,” Rudavsky said. “Everything else is from Joel Orloff’s imagination.”
Provided
The technique they employed in the film was influenced by South African artist William Kentridge, whose charcoal drawings evolve through erasure and reworking. “We wanted to evoke memory through the animation,” Rudavsky explained. “Joel painted on glass, smudged it, poured water onto it.” The result is a haunting, fluid visual language, neither literal nor ornamental.
“At first, I wasn’t sure I was going to use animation,” Rudavsky explained. “But when I read portions of Elie’s autobiography, he intersperses these dreams about his family, his father, and I thought, ‘This just cries out for animation.’” The effect is striking: a fusion of conscious and subconscious, past and present.
Marion Wiesel, Elie’s wife, translator, and closest collaborator, passed away in February of last year. She was able to see the film at a screening at Lincoln Center. “She said to me, ‘I love the film, but it caused me pain because it made me fall in love with Elie all over again,’” Rudavsky recalled. “Which was heartbreaking — but for a filmmaker, what more can you really ask for?”
Marion, he added, was a remarkable figure in her own right, deeply involved in civil rights activism. A member of the NAACP in the 1950s, she encouraged Elie to look beyond the Jewish world he mostly traveled in and toward a broader global perspective.
That outward gaze was central to Wiesel’s public life. The film revisits moments when he spoke directly to political power, including his famous confrontation with President Ronald Reagan over a planned visit to a cemetery in Bitburg, Germany, where SS members were buried. “Elie lost the battle but won the war,” Rudavsky said. “Because how he spoke up was much more lasting than whatever Reagan did.” He adds that what mattered most was the tone: “It was a civil dialogue. A gentle dialogue.”
Moderating the post-screening discussion will be Ileene Smith, editor at large for Farrar, Straus and Giroux and editorial director of Jewish Lives, the prizewinning biography series published by Yale University Press. Smith worked closely with both Elie and Marion Wiesel on many books, including the new translation of “Night.” In 1986, she accompanied the Wiesels to Oslo when Elie received the Nobel Peace Prize. Her husband, Howard Sobel, served for many years on the board of the Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity.
Wiesel believed that memory was not passive; it was a moral act. Asked about the moral obligation to bear witness, Rudavsky said, “It’s an endless moral obligation. And we all take on what we can, which is always too little.”
And what would Rudavsky ask Wiesel now if he were still here to bear witness?
“People ask, post–Oct. 7, what would Elie have said? And I can’t speak for him but I know he would have spoken up from where he comes from. Some would have disagreed with him. But in the U.S. today, when immigrants are being shipped off to places unknown, when people trying to defend them are facing violence, even death, we all need to try to do whatever little bit there is to do.”
Even within disagreement, Wiesel believed in dialogue. Rudavsky, speaking about his relationship with Wiesel’s son, Elisha, said: “We have different political perspectives, but we’re united in saying we’ll keep talking, we’ll keep working together. It’s such a divisive time where people don’t talk to each other — they yell at each other and kill each other. That’s something Elie Wiesel certainly would have spoken up about.”
Because for Wiesel, bearing witness was not only about preserving the past. It was about refusing indifference in the present.
For tickets, visit: themoviehouse.net
Marietta Whittlesey
Over time, through a career that has spanned writing, emergency medical service and clinical psychology, Whittlesey has built a psychotherapy practice in the Northwest Corner focused on evidence-based treatment for trauma, chronic pain and performance anxiety. Drawing on specialized training in EMDR, a trauma-focused therapy, and clinical hypnosis, she works with clients whose symptoms have often not responded to traditional talk therapy.
Whittlesey grew up in New York City and attended Chapin, an all-girls school widely regarded as one of the best in the country. “I hated it — 12 years of total lack of agency left a mark — but I got a great classical education. Recently, I visited for the first time in more than 30 years and found a delightfully changed school — one I wish I could attend right now,” she laughed.
She studied psychology as an undergraduate at New York University, where she worked in the lab of Dr. Jay Weiss, a MacArthur Fellowship recipient at Rockefeller University and later at the New York State Psychiatric Institute.
After moving to Salisbury, Whittlesey joined the Salisbury Volunteer Ambulance as an EMT and found work writing radio and television spots at the University of Connecticut Health Center in Farmington. That led to a 30-year freelance career writing continuing medical education programs for physicians, often ghostwriting first drafts of journal articles.
“I learned a lot of medicine that way and learned how to speak and write like a doctor, which is essential.” At the same time, she continued to write and co-author nonfiction books. “But after a couple of decades, the 80-hour workweeks and the insane pressure got to me.”
Marietta WhittleseyElena Spellman
She enrolled in a master’s program in psychology at Capella University, one of the first accredited online universities. “This worked perfectly for me because I could continue to earn a living as a writer during the day.”
After graduating with a Master of Science in clinical psychology, she decided not to pursue a doctorate.
“I am a good autodidact, and I decided I’d rather learn clinical techniques like EMDR and hypnotherapy than do another round of stats and write a dissertation.”
EMDR, or Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing, is a form of psychotherapy most commonly used to help people process and heal from trauma and other distressing life experiences.
After completing a 3,000-hour internship at the former Community Mental Health Affiliates in Lakeville, she opened a private practice in Lakeville. She now works from an office near Sharon Hospital, where she has a general psychotherapy practice. She has a particular interest in treating disorders of appearance, ranging from body dysmorphic disorder to alopecia areata and severe scarring.
Whittlesey is certified by the EMDR International Association in eye movement desensitization and reprocessing.
The therapy follows a specific protocol using bilateral stimulation — through eye movements, pulsars or audio — to help process traumatic memories associated with PTSD.
“So many people have never heard of EMDR, yet it is such a powerful clinical tool — not just for treating trauma, for which it was originally employed, but now with protocols for eating disorders, phobias, anxiety and many other issues. It is considered one of the top evidence-based treatments for trauma by the World Health Organization, the American Psychiatric Association and the Department of Veterans Affairs.”
Whittlesey treats many clients with chronic pain, often stemming from medically unexplained symptoms. Unlike traditional talk therapy — which has an important place, she said — EMDR can sometimes help patients feel significantly better even after a single session.
Rarely are more than six to 10 sessions needed to process traumas such as car accidents, violence or childhood neglect that can lead to a diagnosis of complex PTSD.
“Clinical hypnosis is also very helpful in treating chronic pain, as well as anxiety and addictions. I like to teach people self-hypnosis to use on their own. It has been an extremely useful tool for me throughout my life as a writer with deadlines and as a rider facing a jump course.”
Whittlesey has also launched a performance coaching business, Partners in Performance, where she helps clients overcome performance anxiety. Recent clients have included a golfer with “the yips,” a rider recovering from a bad fall, a teacher accepting an award and a woman studying for a dental hygienist exam.
Asked about future plans, Whittlesey’s eyes lit up as she described upcoming training in Deep Brain Reorienting, a new treatment with some similarities to EMDR.
Whittlesey has a profile on Psychology Today and can be reached at 860-397-5296 or mwlpcllc@gmail.com.
Elena Spellman is a recent Northwest Corner transplant. She is a Russian native and grew up in the Midwest. In addition to writing, she teaches ESL and Russian.
Artist Peter Gerakaris in his studio in Cornwall.
‘Orchid Oculus Tondo’by Peter GerakarisProvided
At the heart of the exhibition is a four-foot-diameter hand-painted “Orchid Oculus Tondo,” surrounded by four hand-embellished prints and a shimmering cut-glass mosaic. The central painting conjures a dreamlike cosmos where endangered St. Lucian parrots glide through oversized tropical orchids and foliage. Built through a “call-and-response process” that allows drips, spills and chance encounters to remain visible, the work is alive with motion and improvisation. In the depths of winter, “Oculus Serenade” offers a kind of visual warmth, a reminder of the beauty, fragility and music of the natural world.
“Oculus Serenade: Artwork by Peter D. Gerakaris” runs Jan. 17 through Feb. 28 at the Cornwall Library. An artist’s reception will be held Saturday, Jan. 17, from 4 to 6 p.m. Registration is requested at cornwalllibrary.org/events/.
