Anno 2010 Begins @ Your Library

On behalf of the staff, library volunteers, and Board of Trustees, we wish you a happy, healthy, and book-filled New Year. If your resolution is to read more good books, the library can help you meet your goal.

Below are some of the events you can attend at the Library during the month of January. See you there!

Wednesday, January 6, 7 PM, Main Room, Dartmouth professor and art historian Jane Carroll will consider how political power has been projected through art in a talk in her talk, "Projecting Leadership: Art Used for Political Ends."

Smart rulers have long known that art can create myths more powerful than reality. Carroll will examine such art, from Rome to recent American examples.

Carroll is Adjunct Assistant Professor of History at Dartmouth College, specializing in Medieval and Renaissance art. She is editor with Alison Stewart of Saints, Sinners and Sisters:Gender and Northern Art in Medieval and Early Modern Europe published in 2003. It is a collection of original essays, which showcases the diverse questions currently being asked by gender scholars dealing with Netherlandish and German art from the medieval and early modern periods.

The Vermont Humanities Council's First Wednesdays series is held on the first Wednesday of every month from October through May, featuring speakers of national and regional renown. Talks are held at Brooks Memorial Library.

For more information, contact us at 802.254.5290 or contact the Vermont Humanities Council at 802.262.2626 or info@vermonthumanities.org, or visit www.vermonthumanities.org.

Media Mentoring Project:

Writing Poetry.

On Wednesday, January 13 , 5-6:30PM, in the Brooks Memorial Library meeting room, Clara Rose Thornton will lead a workshop on Writing Poetry.

The innovative InkBlot Complex Poetry Workshop aims to lift poetry from the page and reveal how it is a living force in daily life. Originally taught at the University of Illinois at Chicago to great acclaim, its interactive nature and inclusion of multiple artforms leaves dry, academic notions of poetry behind.

The InkBlot Complex Poetry Workshop is taught by internationally published arts journalist, cultural critic and poet Clara Rose Thornton.

Open to the public- no previous experience or class attendance is required. Participants are invited to bring a project and an open mind.

For more information about the Media Mentoring Project or to register, please contact Betsy Arney at her email or (802) 246-6397.

Telling it Like it Is:

The Underground Railroad at the Rokeby Museum.

On Saturday, January 16, 2:00 PM, in the Brooks Memorial Library meeting room, Rokeby Museum director Jane Williams will speak on, Telling it Like it Is: The Underground Railroad at the Rokeby Museum.

Williams will describe how our understanding of the Underground Railroad at Rokeby evolved - from the stories told by the third and fourth generations of the family to the history discovered when family letters were studied for the first time. CD recordings of abolitionist speeches will also be played.

Located in Ferrisburgh, Vermont, the Rokeby Museum is one of the best-documented Underground Railroad sites in the country. It was designated a National Historic Landmark by the National Park Service in recognition of its outstanding history in 1997.

Rowland Thomas and Rachel Gilpin Robinson were devout Quakers and radical abolitionists, and they harbored many fugitive slaves at their family home and farm during the decades of the 1830s and 1840s. Among the thousands of letters in the family's correspondence collection are several that mention fugitive slaves by name and in some detail.

Travel to Tibet:

Overland from Yunnan to Lhasa: A Slide Presentation

On Wednesday, January 20, at 7 PM, in the library's meeting room, Overland from Yunnan to Lhasa: A Slide Presentation by Gene Parulis.

Join Landmark College professor and photographer Gene Parulis who will take us from Kunming, bustling capital of Yunnan, north and west up into the dizzying gorges of four of Asia's great rivers: the Yangtze, Mekong, Salween and Brahmaputra to Lhasa, Tibet's fabled but troubled capital.

Along the way we'll visit monasteries, high passes, glaciers, sacred lakes, old villages, new towns and cities. The presentation considers people and culture, geography, history, Buddhism, and the crucial role of hydropower in current Chinese-Tibetan affairs.

Conferences That Work:

Creating Events That People Love

On Wednesday, January 27 , at 7 PM, in the library's meeting room, Conferences That Work - a presentation and discussion with local author Adrian Segar

Please join Marlboro author Adrian Segar who will discuss his new book Conferences That Work: Creating Events That People Love. His talk will be of interest to anyone who wants to find out about a better way to bring together a group of people with a common interest to share and learn from each other.

Every year, over a hundred million people go to conferences, spending more than one hundred billion dollars in the process (not including the value of their time.) Despite this massive expenditure of time and money, they experience a traditional conference process that has changed very little since the 17th century.

Segar rarely enjoyed traditional conferences when he was an academic in the 70's and 80's, and has explored alternative conference formats for more than twenty years. Since 1992 he has been organizing peer conferences: small, attendee-driven, structured, highly interactive, safe, reflective, and community-building events that thousands of people have enjoyed.

In his presentation, Segar will explain how peer conferences work and why they are so successful in meeting participants' needs. There will be plenty of time for questions and discussion.

Adrian Segar has organized and facilitated conferences for over 20 years.

He is a former elementary particle physicist, information technology consultant, professor of computer science, and co-owner of a solar manufacturing company. He lives with his wife Celia in Marlboro, Vermont, is active in the non-profit world, and loves to sing and dance.

First Wednedays return on April 2 with Marjorie Ryerson, Companions for the Passage: Stories of the Intimate Privilege of Accompanying the Dying

Being present through the final days, and then through the moment of death of a beloved friend, spouse, or child is possibly the most profound journey we ever take. Marjorie Ryerson, author of Companions for the Passage: Stories of the Intimate Privilege of Accompanying the Dying, will share stories she collected for her book in a talk at Brooks Memorial Library in Brattleboro on April 2 at 7:00 PM. and is part of the Vermont Humanities Council’s First Wednesdays lecture series and takes place at 7:00 p.m.



Ryerson is an award-winning professor, photographer, poet and journalist. She taught writing and photography at Castleton State College from 1991 until 2005, and was selected as the Vermont State Colleges Faculty Fellow for the academic year 2000-2001—the highest honor awarded to a professor in the Vermont State College system. Ryerson currently teaches nonfiction writing for Johnson State College, poetry and creative non-fiction for Middlebury College at the annual New England Young Writers' Conference at Bread Loaf, and creative nonfiction at the Young Vermonters' Writing Conference at Champlain College.



She is the executive director of the Vermont-based nonprofit Water Music, Inc. Her books include Water Music and Companions for the Passage: Stories of the Intimate Privilege of Accompanying the Dying. Her nonfiction articles and photographs have been published widely throughout New England. She is currently at work on two more books.



The Vermont Humanities Council’s First Wednesdays Brattleboro series is held on the first Wednesday of every month from October through May, featuring speakers of national and regional renown. Talks are held at Brooks Memorial Library, and the 2007-8 Brattleboro series concludes with “Don Quixote: The Greatest Novel Ever,” with Amherst College Professor Ilan Stavans on May 7.



First Wednesdays is supported in part by the Institute of Museum & Library Services through the Vermont Department of Libraries. Brooks Memorial Library is sponsored by Brattleboro Savings & Loan, Entergy-Vermont, Friends of Brooks Memorial Library, Merrill Lynch & Co., Inc., and Trustees of Brooks Memorial Library.



For more information, contact Brooks Memorial Library at 802.254.5290 or brattlib@brooks.lib.vt.us. For all library events, see the library’s calendar at www.brooks.lib.vt.us.

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