Charlie James, Kwakwaka'wakw: Lawitsis, House Feast Dish, 1903-1907, Canada: British Columbia, Turnour Island; Kalugwis, cedar wood, paint, metal. Collection of the University of British Columbia Museum of Anthropology. This wooden feast dish consists of three large, deeply carved bowls mounted on wheels, the whole forming a supernatural creature called a sisiutl. Large feast dishes were used to hold food served to guests at winter dance ceremonies and potlatches.

Saturday and Sunday, December 3 and 4

Merry & Bright, Salisbury Hometown Holidays

Non-Fiction

Waging a Good War:

A Military History of the Civil Rights Movement, 1954-1968

by Thomas E. Ricks  

Sunday, December 4

4 - 5 p.m.

The Reading Room, SML 

Presentation and discussion led by

Peter B. Kaufman

In person or on zoom

#1 New York Times bestselling author and Pulitzer Prize winner Thomas E. Ricks offers a new take on the Civil Rights Movement, stressing its unexpected use of military strategy and its lessons for nonviolent resistance around the world.

Peter B. Kaufman, a writer, teacher and film producer, is the author of The New Enlightenment and the Fight to Free Knowledge. A Senior Program Officer for the office of Open Learning at MIT, he previously served as Associate Director of Columbia University's Center for Teaching and Learning and as president and executive producer of Intelligent Television. Kaufman, a Salisbury resident, will introduce Waging a Good War and open the discussion. 

Registration

Anyone attending is encouraged but not required to read the book in advance. Some copies will be available for check-out or perusal at the SML circulation desk. For information about books available for purchase at Oblong Books, Millerton, please visit Oblong Books Landing Page here.

Non-Fiction

Fen, Bog, and Swamp by Annie Proulx

Thursday, December 8

5:30 - 6:45 p.m.

Wardell Community Room

Co-sponsored by the

Salisbury Association Land Trust

Presentation and discussion led by Vivian Feist Garfein and Dr. Michael W. Klemens 

In person or on Zoom

Novelist Annie Proulx, who has often focused on environmental issues in her fiction, considers wetlands in her new non-fiction book, Fen, Bog, and Swamp.

Vivian Feist Garfein and Dr. Michael W. Klemens will speak about the book and lead a discussion on wetlands, considering Proulx's book, Fen, Bog and Swamp, as a point of departure.

Vivian Feist Garfein served in various capacities during her impressive 26 year tenure with the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, most recently as Director of the Central District from 1995 until her retirement in 2012. She currently serves as an alternate member of the Salisbury Inland Wetland and Waterways Commission.

Dr. Michael W. Klemens is a distinguished conservation biologist, a member of the scientific staff at the American Museum of Natural History, and Chairman of Salisbury's Planning and Zoning Commission. He has served as a gubernatorial appointee to the CT Council on Environmental Quality and the CT Siting Council.

Registration

Anyone attending is encouraged but not required to read the book in advance. As this is a new book, a few copies will be available for check-out or perusal at the SML circulation desk. For information about books available for purchase at Oblong Books, Millerton, please visit Oblong Books Landing Page (Oblongbooks.com/scovillelibrary)

Current Fiction Book Group - Led by Claudia Cayne

Saturday, December 10

4:00 – 5:00 pm

Monthly on the second Saturday

In person or on Zoom

“What Strange Paradise” by Omar El Akkad

A beautifully written, dramatic and moving novel that brings the global refugee crisis down to the level of a child’s eyes. Amir, a 9-year-old Syrian boy who survived the sinking of the ship carrying refugees, washes up on a small island. He has the good fortune to fall into the hands not of the officials, but of Vänna: a teenage girl, who lives inside her own sense of homelessness. And though Vänna and Amir are strangers and don’t speak a common language, Vänna determines to do whatever it takes to save him. In alternating chapters, we learn the story of Amir’s life and of how he came to be on the boat; and we follow the duo as they make their way towards a vision of safety

In person in the Oak Room for those who are vaccinated and comfortable.

Registration Link - register once for all meetings

A Literary Seminar by Mark Scarbrough

Scoville Memorial Library

Salisbury Connecticut

Tuesdays, January 24 - March 14, 2023

In person in the Wardell Community Room and on Zoom

I Think, Therefore I Talk: Stein, Freud, Proust, And Modern Identity

24 January 2023 through 14 March 2023

10:30 a.m. to about 12:30 both in-person and via zoom

Who am I? It’s a psychological question, sure. But also a historical question. And a political, cultural one. Today in European and North American society, we answer that question based on the work of writers and thinkers who toiled in the looming wreckage of the nineteenth century, as the great ideals came apart and they struggled to make meaning in an increasingly fragmented world. In this literary seminar, we’ll read three “personal” narratives—or attempts to come at what a person is—by three of the formative thinkers of the beginnings of our world: Gertrude Stein, Sigmund Freud, and Marcel Proust. Prepare for lively discussions, challenging readings, great camaraderie, and mind-resetting narratives as we delve into the heart of the modernist question of exactly who we are.

Registration required

Readings will be from Stein's Three Lives (1909), Proust's Swann's Way (1913), and Signmund Freud's A Case of Hysteria (Dora) (1905).

Some copies of these books will be available through SML. For information about the specific editions recommended by Scarbrough and the books available for purchase at Oblong Books, Millerton, please visit Oblong Books Landing Page (oblongbooks.com/scovillelibrary)

Above: Portrait of Gertrude Stein by Alvin Langdon Coburn, 1913, Collection of George Eastman House.

Ongoing Weeklies with SML

Meditation Kathy Voldstad *

Sundays, 9:00 a.m

Please Note: While *Kathy Voldstadt is traveling in late November and December, Mary Therese Wright is kindly holding Zoom classes in Kathy's stead. The Zoom link for Mary Therese's class, which changes each week, is announced the day before the class on an email coming directly from Wright. If you are not on Wright's mailing list and would like to be, please write: [email protected] and we will forward your address.

Kathy Voldstad's class resumes when she returns in January.

Therapeutic Breath and Movement with Suzanne Mazzarelli

Thursdays, 10:30 AM, Zoom

Through November, 2022*

Join here

*Unfortunately, this class will not continue after November. We thank Suzanne Mazzarelli for her much appreciated classes, co-sponsored by Noble Horizons and SML over the past two years. And we thank all of Suzanne's students for their patience. While exploring options, SML will provide suggestions for online classes in early December.

Bridge with John Dippel at SML

Classes meet on Wednesdays, 2:00 - 4:00 pm

Local resident John Dippel is offering a course on “Bridge Basics," held in the main circulation room of SML. The course will cover evaluating your cards, bidding fundamentals, and playing the hand. It will run through the fall. If you want to join, send an email to [email protected]. Please include your phone and email address, as well as the level of bridge you’re interested in. Couples and singles are both welcome. Dippel, a historian, and author returned to playing bridge when he moved to Salisbury ten years ago and took a similar course. He has been playing regularly in town ever since.