Tuesday 10-5, Wednesday 1-5, Thursday 1-5, Friday 10-5 and Saturday 10-1
Barb Young will again be teaching the popular “computers for seniors” at the Pember Library. Classes will run from 10:30 AM to 12:00 noon Wednesdays and Fridays from March 23 through April 8.
Classes will cover internet and email, word processing, and using the library card catalog with databases.
You must pre-register for the series of classes. Class size is limited to eight people. Please call the library to register or for more information 518-642-2525.
Join us at the Pember Library at 6pm on Thursday, August 20, to hear David Starbuck talk about his work as an archaeologist in the Lake George area. Much 18th century military history took place in this part of New York. Starting about 1755, British and French troops along with Native Americans battled to gain control of what was to become the United States. Summertime archaeological digs by professionals and students have unearthed some interesting clues to what happened here over 200 years ago.
Starbuck, a part-time Chestertown resident, is a professor of anthropology at Plymouth State University. He has written several books about his local work including “The legacy of Fort William Henry: resurrecting the past.”
Presentation: Long Term Care – What it is and How to Access Services
Speaker: Stephanie Ball from Washington County Office for the Aging
Date: April 2, 2015, 3:00 PM
Place: Pember Library, Granville NY
At one point either you or a loved one may need long-term care services. Long-term care is a variety of services and supports to meet health or personal needs over an extended period of time. Care can be provided in the community or a facility and can be paid either privately or with public assistance. Learn how to access these services by attending this informational session.
Pember Presents: “Rescued from Slavery: The Story of Solomon Northup,” on Sunday, June 8, 2014 at 2 PM at the Pember Library in Granville. The one hour program by David Fiske will include a lecture and slide presentation about Solomon Northup, a free black man who lived in New York State. In 1841 he was lured away from home and sold as a slave. For nearly twelve years, he was a slave in Louisiana. Finally he was able to get a message to friends in New York, and returned home as a free man. After writing a book about his experiences, he traveled around the Northeast giving speeches, and even helped fugitive slaves get to Canada thanks to his work on the Underground Railroad. Mr. Fiske is co-author of Solomon Northup: The Complete Story of the Author of Twelve Years a Slave.
UPDATE: I’m sorry to report that Mr Pitkin won’t be able appear at the Pember. I’ll let you know if he’s able to reschedule.
Join us at the Pember Library Wednesday, August 1, at 6:00 PM as David J. Pitkin discusses New York State legends, folklore and ghost stories. Pitkin tells us he has recently collected a super strange story from Middle Granville, that will be featured in his next (2014) book of NYS Ghosts.
Retired teacher and author David J. Pitkin has sought solutions to mysteries throughout his life. In the 1960s he became fascinated with the workings of the unconscious mind and on the growing evidence for ghosts and hauntings: consciousness surviving body death. Since hearing a ghost (later identified as a suicide from 1940) walking in a haunted barn in 1968, and visiting the “Riley House” in Saratoga Springs, NY, in 1978, he has experienced a number of paranormal phenomena. Over the years, he has collected over 800 folktales of hauntings and apparitions, in the Caribbean, Canada, the U.S., and is now interviewing and investigating haunted houses around the world. Many of these early experiences are detailed in his haunted house books, Ghosts of the Northeast, and his recent works: Haunted Saratoga County, New York State Ghosts, Vol.1 and NY State Ghosts, Vol. 2.
Conducting ghost research for forty years at many reputedly haunted sites in New York State, New England, and Canada, he has become a philosopher lecturing on death, near-death experiences and survival of death. A resident of Chestertown, NY, in the Adirondack Mountains, Pitkin lectures widely on parapsychology and metaphysical themes, including ghost stories from his books on haunted houses. His goal is to enlighten others, but not frighten them.
Following eight years of travel and research, Pitkin published New England Ghostsin 2010. This is a collection of over 135 New England tales gathered in the six states of that area. He is currently working on a third volume of NY State stories, a single volume of stories from Warren County, NY, where he lives (scheduled for publication in autumn of 2012).
On Wednesday, October 26 at 6:00 PM, the Pember Library at 33 West Main St. in Granville is hosting a presentation by Marjorie and Greg Scieszka. The couple will reflect on the experiences they had as Peace Corps Response Volunteers in Swaziland during 2010-11. Both were assigned to work in the Ministry of Education in Mbabane, Swaziland, and their Peace Corps assignments involved working to implement free primary education in Swaziland as well as traveling to schools around the country, helping to set up school libraries. They also worked on several projects with UNICEF and UNESCO. While there, they attended a royal wedding and visited several big game parks.
Marjorie and Greg live in Manchester Center, VT. They served as Peace Corps Volunteers 40 years ago in Lesotho, South Africa, and in January were able to return to that country to visit the Basotho people with whom they have stayed in touch over all these years. They will talk about their many experiences, show photos they took during the year, and exhibit artifacts from Swaziland.
As part of the region’s commemoration of the 150th anniversary of the Civil War, on Sunday, October 23, at 2 PM, the Pember Library will be presenting a program on the revolutionary Union Civil War ironclad USS Monitor. The Monitor fought the Confederate ironclad CSS Virginia on March 9, 1862, in the world’s first battle between armored warships. Steve Muller, an expert on the Monitor from Troy, N.Y., will give an illustrated lecture on the Monitor, covering the design and construction challenges in building the warship, its actual performance, and its influence on the design of other ironclads during the Civil War. Mr. Muller will also be selling his book, “Troy, New York, and the Building of the USS Monitor” afterward.
Tales ‘n Tunes, a multi-award winning musical storytelling duo, will treat you to some slightly shivery tales and spooky songs! No trick! Come to the Pember Library at 6:00 p.m. on Friday, October 28 and enjoy a performance of “Spooktacular Songs and Stories” which includes tales and tunes that will provide a balance of fright and delight for a family audience.
This sing-along, clap-along high-participation program show, will feature silly spooks and elicit ghostly giggles as the performers give young listeners and their families a witchy brew of Halloween fun.
The Pember Library will host a discussion with Hallie Bond on Perspectives on Rural Life: Poverty and Plenty. Free and open to the general public, the event begins at 6:00 PM on August 19 at the Pember Library. This event is made possible through the Conversations Bureau, a new program of the New York Council for the Humanities. Conversations Bureau discussions are made possible with the support of the National Endowment for the Humanities.
This conversation focuses on two short texts that, although by the same author (Jeanne Robert Foster), give contrasting views of life in the Adirondacks a century ago. One is an intense description in the first person of a woman’s life on a poor hill farm where, she feels, she is “only hands and feet for George, / Someone to put the food on the table, / Someone to have more children for him.” The other is a tour around the author’s neighborhood in the same hills along with descriptions of the people who lived there. The two poems will be used to guide discussion of what makes “community” in sparsely-settled regions, women’s work and roles in rural America, and how our perceptions of rural life and attitudes have shaped our concepts of American identity.
For more information on this conversation click here. Many items on the resource list are available at the library. Please ask at the desk if you are interested.
Food historian Peter G. Rose explores the foodways brought to America by the Dutch more than three centuries ago, and the way these foodways were adapted to new circumstances. Slides of 17th century Dutch art works depicting various foodstuffs are part of this lecture.
Ms. Peter G. Rose is an author, columnist, lecturer, and food historian.
Ms. Rose has lectured on a variety of topics related to Dutch-American culinary history at, among others: The Smithsonian Institute, the National Gallery of Art, the Culinary Institute of America, New York University, and the New York Historical Society, as well as many other historical societies and libraries in New York State.
This Speakers in the Humanities event, which is free and open to the public, is made possible through the support of the New York Council for the Humanities, a state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities.
The Speakers in the Humanities program has linked distinguished scholars with diverse audiences since its launch in 1983, bringing the best in humanities scholarship to thousands of people at hundreds of cultural organizations in virtually every corner of New York State. This program is just one of the ways the New York Council for the Humanities helps all New Yorkers to lead vibrant intellectual lives by strengthening traditions of cultural literacy, critical inquiry, and civic participation.