Brattleboro in Stitches
2025-04-26 13:00 - 16:00, 2025-05-03 13:00 - 16:00, 2025-05-10 13:00 - 16:00, 2025-05-17 13:00 - 16:00, 2025-05-24 13:00 - 16:00, 2025-05-31 13:00 - 16:00, 2025-06-07 13:00 - 16:00, 2025-06-14 13:00 - 16:00 (America/New_York) and 1 more date | Meeting Room A – Community Meeting Room, 224 Main Street, Brattleboro, VT, 05301, United States
Bring a work in progress to sew, knit, crochet, embroider, or mend. Sewing machines, irons, and companionship will be provided.

Multigenerational Civics Class
2025-04-28 10:15 - 11:30, 2025-05-05 10:15 - 11:30, 2025-05-12 10:15 - 11:30, 2025-05-19 10:15 - 11:30, 2025-06-02 10:15 - 11:30, 2025-06-09 10:15 - 11:30 | Meeting Room A – Community Meeting Room, 224 Main Street, Brattleboro, VT, 05301, United States
Who has power over us? What power do we have to create the world around us? The Vermont Village School welcomes villagers of all ages to participate in a people’s Civics class with us this spring at Brooks Memorial Library. We will be untangling the different institutions that exert power over us, past and present, official and unofficial, and brainstorming how we move forward together.

Join us Monday at 10:15am @ Brooks Memorial Library, Brattleboro. This will be the first of a series–we will plan future gatherings based on collective interest and energy.

Green Carnation Reading Group
2025-04-28 19:00 - 20:30 | Meeting Room D – Quiet Reading Room, 224 Main Street, Brattleboro, VT, 05301, United States
Discussions of books by and for queer people. For more information, please visit the Green Carnation Reading Group Facebook page.

Lifelong Learning - Families First
2025-04-30 13:30 - 14:30 | Meeting Room A – Community Meeting Room, 224 Main Street, Brattleboro, VT, 05301, United States
Lifelong Learning provides ongoing educational opportunities for adults with developmental disabilities. Participants become experts in areas of interest and share their knowledge with peers!

Mineralogical Society
2025-05-06 18:00 - 20:45, 2025-06-03 18:00 - 20:45 | Meeting Room A – Community Meeting Room, 224 Main Street, Brattleboro, VT, 05301, United States
Join the Brattleboro Mineralogical Society to discuss Minerals and other Geological topics!

Lifelong Learning - Families First
2025-05-07 13:30 - 14:30 | Mezzanine Conference Room, 224 Main Street, Brattleboro, VT, 05301, United States

Alzheimer's Action Plan - Community Education & Input Session
2025-05-13 10:30 - 12:15 | Meeting Room A – Community Meeting Room, 224 Main Street, Brattleboro, VT, 05301, United States
The Vermont Department of Health and the Alzheimer’s Association need your help to develop strategies that support the needs of those living with dementia, their caregivers, and families. This session will begin with a presentation from the Alzheimer’s Association; afterward, there will be a guided discussion during which folks may share their experiences about navigating healthcare, finding community supports, the stress of being a family caregiver and more.

Brattleboro Planning Commission's Town Plan 2026 Community Conversation
2025-05-17 12:00 - 12:45 | VT
Immediately after the morning’s District 8 Informational Meeting, RTM members – and any interested community members – are invited to remain in the room to join and participate in this 30-45 minute Community Conversation.
The Brattleboro Planning Commission is updating the Town Plan. This plan will lay out a vision for Brattleboro’s future. There will be opportunities to get involved, including open monthly meetings of the Planning Commission, community surveys, community conversations, and workshops.
See https://brattleboro.gov/town-plan-2026 for more info and other ways to be involved.
If you are part of another group that would like to have their own Town Plan Community Conversation conducted by a Planning Commissioner, please contact the Planning Services Department (802-251-8154, planning@brattleboro.gov).

Sci-Fi Reading Group
2025-05-19 19:00 - 20:30 | Meeting Room D – Quiet Reading Room, 224 Main Street, Brattleboro, VT, 05301, United States
The Sci-Fi Reading Group will meet in the Quiet Reading Room from 7:00pm – 8:30pm to discuss To Be Taught, If Fortunate by Becky Chambers:
At the turn of the twenty-second century, scientists make a breakthrough in human spaceflight. Through a revolutionary method known as somaforming, astronauts can survive in hostile environments off Earth using synthetic biological supplementations. They can produce antifreeze in subzero temperatures, absorb radiation and convert it for food, and conveniently adjust to the pull of different gravitational forces. With the fragility of the body no longer a limiting factor, human beings are at last able to journey to neighboring exoplanets long known to harbor life.
A team of these explorers, Ariadne O’Neill and her three crewmates, are hard at work in a planetary system fifteen light-years from Sol, on a mission to ecologically survey four habitable worlds. But as Ariadne shifts through both form and time, the culture back on Earth has also been transformed. Faced with the possibility of returning to a planet that has forgotten those who have left, Ariadne begins to chronicle the story of the wonders and dangers of her mission, in the hope that someone back home might still be listening.
The Sci-Fi Reading Group meets the third Monday of every month and is open to curious minds, whether or not they’ve read this month’s selection.

The Resplendent Quetzal: Tourism and Land Use in Costa Rica - with Dr. Alan Poole
2025-05-20 19:00 - 20:30 | Main Reading Room
This joint program, co-sponsored by Brooks Memorial Library and Southeastern Vermont Audubon Society (SVAS), provides an accessible, well-illustrated look at the life history of the Resplendent Quetzal — a dazzling, legendary bird of the highland forests of Central America. Aztec and Mayan cultures revered this quetzal, and today’s bird-watchers, thousands of whom visit quetzal forests each year, are only slightly less in awe.
Dr. Alan Poole, the author of a recently published book on Resplendent Quetzals (Cornell Univ. Press, 2023), will describe through the nesting ecology of this bird, its role in Mayan and Aztec religions, and how it fits into the increasingly threatened cloud forests that sustain it. The talk will also take a look at what lies ahead for this (and other) quetzals — how conservation efforts are giving them a boost, and what threats Mesoamerican cloud forests are facing.
Above all this talk will examine land use in Central America, especially Costa Rica, through a quetzal lens — no species does more to bring current land use trends in this region into focus. Understanding these trends is key to maintaining the viability of highland tropical forests in the Americas, and the quetzals that depend on them.
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ALAN POOLE, an Associate of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, was editor of the Birds of North America life history series (18 volumes, 18,000 pages) for 22 years. He lives along the coast of southeastern Massachusetts, and spends winters in the highlands of Costa Rica, where quetzals are a highlight.
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Note: This program will be at 7PM on Tuesday, May 20 in the Main Reading Room, and will take place instead of the monthly SVAS meeting.

Brattleboro 250 Planning Sessions
2025-05-28 18:00 - 20:00 | Meeting Room A – Community Meeting Room, 224 Main Street, Brattleboro, VT, 05301, United States
Come and connect with others who are interested in working on plans to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States in 2026.
This monthly meeting space on the 4th Wednesdays is dedicated for those who would like the opportunity to connect, collaborate, and work on projects that align with Vermont’s 250th Anniversary Commission’s mission to “…inspire all Vermonters to learn from the history, legacy, and context of the past to build strong Vermont communities for the future.”
The space is being hosted by Brooks Memorial Library, Vermont Independent Media (The Commons) and Windham World Affairs Council, with support from the Vermont Humanities Council. We are already working together on a collaboration entitled, ‘Examining American Identity and Leadership in a Changing World – and have joined America 250, a national initiative asking communities to plan for how to commemorate the 250th year of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Its mission is to provide opportunities for all Americans to pause and reflect on our nation’s past & present, honor the contributions of all Americans, and look to the future we want to create for the next generation and beyond.

Rapid Reviews - Adult Summer Reading Program Kick-Off
2025-06-04 18:30 - 20:00 | Main Reading Room
We are kicking off the Adult Summer Reading Program with Rapid Reviews of 50 books in 50 minutes! Experience a wide range of book recommendations from our well-read library staff to get ready for a spectacular summer of reading.
Ellen Martyn (Circulation), Jeanne Walsh (Information Services), Lindsay Bellville (Children’s Room), Anna Monders (Accounts), and Max Newirth (Teen Services) will review some of their all-time favorites.
Each reviewer will give 60-second reviews of each book and you will have the opportunity to check out these books right away! Cookies and milk will be served. All ages are welcome.
Check out the list of books reviewed here: Rapid Reviews – June 4, 2025.

What's Cooking at Brooks?
2025-06-12 18:00 - 20:00 | Brooks Memorial Library, 224 Main Street, Brattleboro, VT, 05301, United States
The Friends of Brooks Memorial Library invite you to join us for a special after hours spring party where guests will explore the Library of Things collection by experiencing live cooking demonstrations and enjoying a grand selection of sweet and savory treats and refreshments.
The Library of Things is a collection of non-traditional items which can be borrowed from the library, such as kitchen and gardening tools, technology and electronics, memory kits, and even a telescope!
Take home some seeds for the garden and vote on new items to purchase for the Library of Things!
Admission is by donation. Everyone is welcome.

Sci-Fi Reading Group
2025-06-16 19:00 - 20:30 | Meeting Room D – Quiet Reading Room, 224 Main Street, Brattleboro, VT, 05301, United States
The Sci-Fi Reading Group will meet in the Quiet Reading Room from 7:00pm – 8:30pm to discuss The Resisters by Gish Jen!
The time: not so long from now. The place: AutoAmerica, a country surveilled by one “Aunt Nettie,” a Big Brother that is part artificial intelligence, part internet, and oddly human—even funny. The people: divided. The “angelfair” Netted have jobs and, what with the country half under water, literally occupy the high ground. The Surplus live on swampland if they’re lucky, on water if they’re not.
The story: To a Surplus couple—he once a professor, she still a lawyer—is born a girl, Gwen, with a golden arm. Her teens find her happily playing in an underground baseball league, but when AutoAmerica faces ChinRussia in the Olympics, Gwen finds herself in dangerous territory, playing ball with the Netted even as her mother battles this apartheid-like society in court.
The Sci-Fi Reading Group meets the third Monday of every month and is open to curious minds, whether or not they’ve read this month’s selection.

Exploring the Afterlife: Learning from Experts and Personal Experiences
2025-06-17 18:00 - 19:15 | Meeting Room D – Quiet Reading Room, 224 Main Street, Brattleboro, VT, 05301, United States
Have you had a near-death experience or communicated with a deceased loved one through a medium? Have you contemplated the possibility of reincarnation or had an experience about a past life? Do you wonder what awaits us in the afterlife? Western culture tends to dismiss or even disparage paranormal phenomena. But evidence is available to answer many questions about the afterlife.
In this five-part evening series on Tuesdays from June 17th to July 15th, we will do three things: 1) read books by experts on near-death experiences, scientific instruments and experiments in paranormal research, out-of-body experiences, and the work of reputable mediums; 2) raise questions and concerns about the evening’s topic; and 3) share personal experiences of paranormal phenomena in a safe environment. Each participant will choose a book from a provided list to report on. Participants are strongly encouraged to attend all sessions.
The group will be led by hospice chaplain and former social worker Diane Southard and Valerie Abrahamsen, author of Paranormal: A New Testament Scholar Looks at the Afterlife (2015).
Participants are encouraged to contact Valerie at www.wisdomwordsppf.org/contact/ as soon as possible to obtain the book list and additional information. Adults over 18 are invited!

Healthy Living for Brain & Body: Tips from the Latest Research
2025-06-18 18:30 - 19:30 | Meeting Room A – Community Meeting Room, 224 Main Street, Brattleboro, VT, 05301, United States
June is Brain Health History Month! Join us for a presentation on lifestyle choices and their impact on the aging process. learn the latest research in the areas of diet and nutrition, exercise, cognitive activity and social engagement to bolster brain health, stay connected, and age well.
This event is part of a collaborative program with the Vermont Chapter of the Alzheimer’s Association and Brooks Memorial Library – and all are welcome.
