Join Holly for toddler & preschool story time and activities
March 5 ~ Turtles
March 19 ~ Ducks
April 2 ~ Dinosaurs!
April 16 ~ Rainy Days
May 14 ~ Trucks
May 28 ~ Bugs
Month: February 2016
Mapping Granville, a Community Storytelling Workshop
MARCH 8, 3PM
In continuing our effort to revitalize Main Street, our next workshop is one which all those who want to reminisce about the past will enjoy.
Memories are important even if the complexion of Main Street will never be that again. Scholar Anne Mosher will lead a program entitled “Mapping Granville Memories: A Community Storytelling Workshop” at 3 PM, March 8, at the Pember, 33 West Main Street in Granville.
Buildings, street corners, schools, churches, parks and trees; all can be “places” – sites that get woven into the fabric of daily routine and imbued with personal and public memories. Unfortunately, such places sometimes become taken for granted. If that happens, memories fade, places become endangered, and the genius loci – the general locale’s “spirit of place” – suffers.
How can we retrieve and share memories about local places before they are lost? Which ones seem to be essential to a healthy genius loci? What are the stories specific to them? We are hosting this “cognitive mapping” workshop so we can find out.
During this three hour program, participants get to draw and explain to workshop partner a personal sketch map of their neighborhood. As one speaks, the other listens, takes notes, and asks questions. Then, the roles are reversed. Each pair is then guided through tasks that culminate in the collaborative writing of stories about valued places within the community. All participants can then give readings of their stories in this small group setting, accompanied by a background Power Point slide show (that the facilitator prepares while the pairs are writing). After discussing themes and issues that seem to tie together, we will discuss what the author-artist could do next with this creative work. Is it suitable for a public reading to a larger audience, and exhibition, a website, a publication?
By the end of the workshop, participants will have identified valued places within their community, told and heard stories about them, pondered, laughed and perhaps even cried over the condition of genius loci. All this, while encountering firsthand the idea the cartography can be both mapmaking science and emotion-laden, life and place enriching art.
With participants’ permission, this may stay on display in the Pember and/or reproduced and kept in our local history section.
The group size is best kept to 15-20 people so please call the Pember 642-2525 and sign up ahead.
Book Club reading “Russian Roulette”
March 8, 1:00PM
In 1917, a band of communist revolutionaries stormed the Winter Palace of Tsar Nicholas II—a dramatic and explosive act marking that Vladimir Lenin’s communist revolution was now underway. But Lenin would not be satisfied with overthrowing the tsar. His goal was a global revolt that would topple all Western capitalist regimes — starting with the British Empire.
Russian Roulette tells the spectacular and harrowing story of the British spies in revolutionary Russia whose mission was to stop Lenin’s red tide from washing across the free world. They were an eccentric cast of characters, led by Mansfield Cumming, a one-legged, monocle-wearing former sea captain, and included novelist W. Somerset Maugham, beloved children’s author Arthur Ransome, and the dashing, ice-cool Sidney Reilly, the legendary Ace of Spies and a model for Ian Fleming’s James Bond. Cumming’s network would pioneer the field of covert action and would one day become MI6.
Living in disguise, constantly switching identities, they infiltrated Soviet commissariats, the Red Army, and Cheka (the feared secret police), and would come within a whisker of assassinating Lenin. As Giles Milton chronicles for the first time, in a sequence of bold exploits that stretched from Moscow to the central Asian city of Tashkent, this unlikely band of agents succeeded in foiling Lenin’s plot for global revolution.
T-Shirts available
As part of Robert Birbeck’s show of sketches of the authors of Modern Library’s 100 Best Novels of the 20th Century we are offering these t-shirts with some of your favorite authors!
$20 each. 50% of profits go to the Pember. Let us know if you want one.
Pember Presents: Computers for Seniors
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.
Pember Board Meeting
February 18 6PM
A meeting of the Board of Trustees of the Pember Library and Museum will be held on the third Thursday of each month at the Pember. This is a regular meeting and open to the public. See Upcoming Events Calendar for dates of meetings.
First Friday: Robert Birbeck “Great Novelist Portraits”
The Pember Library and Museum is proud to host Vermont artist Robert Birbeck for its February First Friday and month long collaborative exhibit at the Library. Opening on Friday, February 5 at 7 pm, the solo show will display hand drawn pencil portraits of all 75 authors on the Modern Library 100 Best Novels of the 20th Century List, along with their corresponding works. (Of the 100 novels, there are only 75 authors, since several writers have more than one book on the list).
All 75 author sketches will be on display at First Friday, then the display will rotate 24 portraits per week for the duration of the month of February. Circulating copies of novels will be available at the Pember for everyone to catch up on the list.
Known primarily as a painter and sculptor, Bob has exhibited at major New York shows and has received numerous awards for his sculpture. The author drawing series came to him as the result of a dry spell in which he struggled for new sculpting designs.
“I felt I was repeating myself,” said Birbeck, “and I decided to take a break, and began reading. I had come across Modern Library’s list of the 100 greatest novels of the 20th century, and decided to start reading from that list. After finishing several of the books, I began doing pencil sketches of the authors, which turned out to be the start of this series of portraits. What began as a rest period from creating new sculpture, became a wonderful, new experience in itself.”
Bob will be present at First Friday to answer any questions.
Musician Stephen Havel will be performing.
Food and refreshments will be available.
First Friday is February 5th, from 7 – 9 pm.
Valentine card class
Join us at the Pember Thursday, February 11, at 6PM when Jo-Ann shows us how to make these cards. The first one is a cute little heart pop-up. The second one slides to reveal a secret message. A third card will also be available. Bring your supplies if you have them but there should be plenty if you don’t.