■On an average day, there are just about 100 inmates in the Hampshire County House of Correction, according to its deputy master, Merton Burt. Fully 60 of them are there for drug related offenses. There are, however, different levels of drug abuse, he was eager to point out. A drug user can move from experimenter to habitual user to addict.
■Ricki Kantrowitz has been appointed a student adviser for the coming year at Simmons College in Boston. Ms. Kantrowitz is a 1970 graduate of Northampton High School. At Simmons she has served on the dining hall council and as treasurer of Hillel.
■The number of Atlantic salmon and American shad returning to the Connecticut River this year has biologists feeling encouraged. Both species are part of a 30-year restoration program that has cost more than $100 million.
■More than 600 aspiring young actors showed up for a casting call this weekend with their hearts set on Hollywood. Auditions were held at the Inn at Northampton for acting roles in the movie “In Dreams,” a psychological thriller that will star Annette Bening and is slated to be filmed in Northampton later this summer.
■First lady Michelle Obama drew upon her past to outline a vision of the future during a fundraiser at the Basketball Hall of Fame Friday, in an event that drew a star-studded lineup of Valley politicos and raised over $250,000 for President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign.
■The Episcopal Diocese of New Hampshire is preparing to swear in a new leader to replace Gene Robinson, who made international headlines when he was ordained in 2003 as the first openly gay bishop in the Anglican church. Bishop-elect A. Robert Hirschfeld is married to a woman, but he made gay marriage news of his own in 2006, when he stopped performing weddings at his church in Amherst to protest the Episcopal prohibition of same-sex unions.