Brooks Memorial Library - Brattleboro VT

Friends of the Library Summer Garden Party
2021-08-28 14:00 - 17:00 (America/New_York) | 224 Main Street, Brattleboro, VT, 05301, United States
The Friends invite you to a catered fundraiser at the spacious gardens and lily pool of Sharon Myers. The party will be held on Saturday, August 28th, 2-5 PM. Rain date: Sunday, August 29th.
There will be tea, cucumber sandwiches, and home-baked cake and cookies.
Come enjoy a lovely afternoon of food and and conversation in a splendid setting: 744 Meadowbrook Rd. Brattleboro.
Tickets are $20 in advance (call the library at (802) 254-5290 to RSVP) and $25 on the day.

Scrabble
2021-09-01 17:00 - 19:00, 2021-09-08 17:00 - 19:00, 2021-09-15 17:00 - 19:00, 2021-09-22 17:00 - 19:00, 2021-09-29 17:00 - 19:00, 2021-10-06 17:00 - 19:00, 2021-10-13 17:00 - 19:00, 2021-10-20 17:00 - 19:00 and 2 more dates | 224 Main Street, Brattleboro, VT, 05301, United States
Come join the fun! Everybody welcome. Wednesdays, 5:00-7:00 on the mezzanine.

Friends of the Library Ice Cream Social 09/02
2021-09-02 16:00 - 18:00 | 224 Main Street, Brattleboro, VT, 05301, United States
RESCHEDULED to 09/02 DUE TO RAIN
The Friends of Brooks Memorial Library invite you to an old fashioned ice cream social with a whimsical twist.
On Thursday, September 2nd from 4-6 PM the Friends will be hosting an ice cream social at the Kiwanis Shelter at the top of Living Memorial Park. Circus Minimus will be on hand with an array of outdoor toys and games.
Suggested donation is $4 a cone.

A 21st Century Plague: Virtual Poetry Reading
2021-09-08 19:00 | Online, VT
Pour a cup of tea, or a glass of wine, or just sit back and reflect on experiences from the last two years as local contributors to this rich anthology read from their work at an online event sponsored by Brooks Memorial Library at 7 pm on Wednesday, September 8.
Throughout history and across all cultures, stories have helped people cope during challenging times. “A 21st Century Plague: Poetry from a Pandemic,” just published by University Professors Press, is a collection of 70 poems by 52 diverse poets who capture the global experience of the pandemic as well as the individual emotions and struggles that are unique and at the same time universal.
“Editor Elayne Clift has gathered a community of poets whose words are haunting, moving, charming, surprising and, finally, comforting. Reading this anthology, you might find yourself saying, ‘Yes, yes, I understand – I’ve felt that way too. I am not alone’,” says nurse-poet Cortney Davis. “Open this anthology and browse these poems. There is balm here.”
“The Covid-19 pandemic will be dissected by epidemiologists, sociologists, politicians, and historians. Now it is time for the poets. The pandemic struck every sliver of society, so it’s only fitting that Elayne Clift has gathered poems from all walks of life. These writings will make you stop and think, which is perhaps the very prescription we need to help move us forward,” adds physician writer Danielle Ofri
Contributors to the anthology, many of whom are award-winning writers, are wide-ranging. From well-known writer Marge Piercy to Brother Richard Hendricks, an Irish Franciscan brother, to a prison inmate, a nurse, artists and educators, the poetry in this anthology speaks to a time in which people have had to find their strengths and forgive their foibles.
“It falls to poets and writers to capture the life, and death, experiences of a wide range of humanity, reflecting in words well-chosen, what others feel but cannot express,” says Editor Elayne Clift. “This anthology offers a sanctuary of carefully crafted language that provides comfort and solidarity with others. The works bear witness and give universal meaning to shared experience. In that way these stories in verse create word monuments that quiet and comfort us. They become quietly healing while recording for future generations what it was like during the 21st century pandemic.”
Join the event via Zoom at
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86797355964?pwd=[REDACTED]
Meeting ID: 867 9735 5964. Passcode: [REDACTED]
For more information, contact Brooks Memorial Library at 802.254.5290

Windham County Genealogy Interest Group presents the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands
2021-09-25 10:00 - 12:00 | Online, VT
What recently released FREE collection on Ancestry.com is bigger than the 1880 United States Census?
It’s the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, commonly known as the Freedman’s Bureau, which “was established in 1865 as a means to provide aid to newly emancipated people transitioning from slavery to freedom. It supported more than 4 million people, which included some impoverished white people and veterans of the U.S. Colored Troops.”
The Bureau was the earliest expression of the Federal government taking responsibility for assisting indigent citizens, over 60 years before FDR’s New Deal. The Bureau used the full weight and resources of the Federal government to help its citizens.
After the four year struggle of the Civil War much of the economy was in shambles. The Freedman’s Bureau was a huge effort, especially directed to the former slave states, to construct a new economy. The most lasting legacy of the Freedman’s Bureau were the schools established to educate the children of former enslaved people. It also offered hospitals, employment, work transportation, and food, to those in need.
Jerry and Wayne will give an introduction to this incredible resource, which is free to all even if you do not have a Ancestry.com subscription. Whether or not you have enslaved people as ancestors or family who were touched by the assistance of the Freedman’s Bureau, you will get an insight to what these records can provide.
We will explore pensions, letters, labor contracts, marriages, and other record sets. Part of the session will be devoted to sharing our genealogical research questions and planning topics for the next meeting.
Register for the meeting (https://bit.ly/WindhamGen6)
The Brooks Memorial Library, our partner (along with the Rockingham Public Library), has graciously “loaned” us their Zoom account to offer this meeting. Please do not sign-in until a few minutes before 10 AM.
If you have not yet done so, please complete the survey about possible topics to cover in future meetings.
For more information please contact windhamcountygig@gmail.com.
Hope to see you there.

Wayne Blanchard & Jerry Carbone
Windham County Genealogy Interest Group
windhamcountygig@gmail.com

40th Annual (Take Home) Design-a-Plate Workshop Begins
2021-10-01 | Children’s Room, 224 Main Street, Brattleboro, VT, 05301, United States
Welcome to the 40th Annual (Take Home) Design-a-Plate Workshop!
You can pick up your packet any time between Friday, October 1st and Wednesday October 13th. You can return your packet and payment to the library at any point up to 8pm on Wednesday, October 13th.
Design-A-Plate is a Pay-What-You-Can event; Suggested cost is $6 per item.
See our FAQ for details

Meet and Greet with Archer Mayor
2021-10-02 11:00 - 13:00 | Brooks Memorial Library, 224 Main Street, Brattleboro, VT, 05301, United States
Find Out What’s New from Archer Mayor at Brooks Memorial Library!
Brattleboro, VT ~ Get the lowdown on Marked Man, the latest novel featuring Brattleboro’s famous fictional detective Joe Gunther on Saturday, October 2nd at Brooks Memorial Library, 224 Main St. Join us for an outdoor opportunity to meet and greet acclaimed author Archer Mayor, from 11:00 am -1:00 pm on the plaza in front of the library. Copies of Marked Man will be available for sale and signing from Everyone’s Books.
Readers will revel in the masterful storytelling as bestseller Mayor expertly juggles four plotlines, which may or may not be related, in his 32nd mystery. A year after the death of affluent Nathan Lyon from natural causes while under hospice care, a medical student dissecting his corpse determines that Lyon was strangled, prompting Gunther to launch a murder inquiry. The eccentric Lyon had most of his family, and thus most of those with an obvious motive to kill him, living together in a huge home that also housed several stores. As Gunther tries to find clues so long after the murder, a second member of the Lyon clan dies, this time from an apparently accidental fall. Meanwhile, PI Sally Kravitz is retained by the wife of one of Lyon’s sons, who suspects an employee is stealing from her business. Finally, two Mafia hit men are trying to identify the person who ordered a killing that one of them admitted to and did time for, but now claims not to have committed.
Gunther’s case-solving prowess has appeared in books annually since 1988. The series routinely gathers high praise from such sources as The New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and The New Yorker, with books often appearing on annual ten best lists, and is popular with fellow mystery writers. Louise Penny says, “As a longtime fan of Archer Mayor, and Gunther, I say Bravo, and keep them coming!”

Described by the Chicago Tribune as “the best police procedurals being written in America,” Archer Mayor loosely bases his novels on his actual experience in the field. He has served as a firefighter/EMT and a police officer, and continues to work as a death investigator for Vermont’s Office of the Chief Medical Examiner.

The program is free and open to the public and is accessible to people in wheelchairs.

First Wednesdays: Daisy Turner's Kin -via Zoom
2021-10-06 19:00 | Online, VT
Folklorist Jane Beck shares the story of the Turner family, a saga that spans four generations and two centuries. This rare account of the Black experience in New England covers capture in Africa, the middle passage, two generations of enslavement, escape from bondage, and eventually a family farm on a Vermont hilltop.
About Jane Beck
Jane Beck is the founder of the Vermont Folklife Center and is the author of Daisy Turner’s Kin, an African American Family Saga, which is based on sixty interviews with Turner, the daughter of enslaved people.
Registration is required for this free event. To find out more and to register visit:
https://www.vermonthumanities.org/event/digital-daisy-turners-kin/

Teen Writing Workshop Returns!
2021-10-07 18:30 - 20:30 | Spicy Lime Room, 224 Main Street, Brattleboro, VT, 05301, United States
The Teen Advisory Board invites you to join us on Thursday October 7th from 6:30-8:30pm for a (in person!) writing workshop. Teen Writing Workshops will occur every other month (for the time being). We’ll conduct a rotating selection of writing games and exercises (both collaborative and solo). Sharing is encouraged but not mandatory. Beginners welcome!
Keep an eye on the Teen page or the Events page for future events.
Hosted by the Teen Advisory Board. “Teens Only” events are open to people in grades 7-12.

Remembering and Reckoning with Eugenics: Then and Now, a talk and Q+A with Abenaki elder Judy Dow
2021-10-09 14:00 | 224 Main Street, Brattleboro, VT, 05301, United States
Throughout her 35-year career as an educator, Judy Dow has braided in to her work the core concepts of the Wabanaki people of New England: Respect, Reciprocity, Relationships, Responsibility, and Reverence. Judy was the recipient of Vermont Governor’s Heritage Award for Outstanding Educator in 2004. She has taught students from pre-k to university and worked in community settings, reservations, prisons, and assisted living centers. Over the past few years she has taught in Hawaii, Maine, Massachusetts, Vermont, Quebec, California, Illinois and many other places. Her, current focus is reclaiming historical Indigenous stories, and mapping these stories to provide youth with another perspective of history, science and math. These tools will assist them in making meaning of their own lives.
Learn more about the Witness Tree tapestry created by Judy Dow, the subject of her recent presentation for Dismantling Eugenics, in which she joined with an interdisciplinary network of scholars, organizers, cultural workers and to understand and bring awareness to the continuing legacies and harm of eugenicist ideologies.

40th Annual (Take Home) Design-a-Plate Workshop Final Day
2021-10-13 | Children’s Room, 224 Main Street, Brattleboro, VT, 05301, United States
The 40th Annual (Take Home) Design-a-Plate Workshop ends TODAY!
Please return your packet and payment to the library at any point up to 8pm TODAY Wednesday, October 13th.
Design-A-Plate is a Pay-What-You-Can event; Suggested cost is $6 per item.
See our FAQ for details

An Examination of The Ninth Amendment with Meg Mott
2021-10-13 19:00 | 224 Main Street, Brattleboro, VT, 05301, United States
Meg Mott, professor of politics, will lead a discussion on the 9th Amendment on October 13th at 7PM at Brooks Memorial Library, 224 Main St in Brattleboro. Unlike the first eight Amendments, which lay out specific protections such as free speech, free press, and the right to remain silent, the Ninth Amendment protects rights that the Constitution has not enumerated. The Ninth Amendment reminds us that the People’s Rights are bigger than anything the Constitution has said.
“When it comes to constitutional issues, citizens leave the Big Questions to the experts on the Supreme Court,” explains Mott. “The Ninth Amendment throws the Biggest Question back to the people. There are no well-worn judicial decisions, no established parameters of the debate. That’s liberating and terrifying. But that doesn’t mean the Court has been silent on what those unenumerated rights are. The one place where the Court carved out some definition is with the Roe v. Wade decision. Part of the work of this presentation is to think through the ambiguities of the Ninth Amendment in a way that lets different moral frameworks co-exist.”
The program is free, open to the public and accessible to people in wheelchairs. Because it will be held indoors, all attendees, including the presenter, are required to wear masks by order of the Town. For more information call (802) 254-5290.

Brattleboro Literary Festival Day 1
2021-10-14 | Online, VT
Day one: plan your online itinerary for the
20th Anniversary Festival
October 14-17, 2021

Brattleboro Literary Festival Day 2
2021-10-15 | Online, VT
Day two: Poetry Fiction, Non-fiction, and special panels. For details and a full schedule of free online events, visit the site:
20th Anniversary Festival

Brattleboro Literary Festival Day 3
2021-10-16 | Online, VT
Day three: Poetry Fiction, Non-fiction, and special panels. For details and a full schedule of free online events, visit the site:
20th Anniversary Festival

Brattleboro Literary Festival Day 4
2021-10-17 | Online, VT
Day four: Poetry Fiction, Non-fiction, Print Town, Why Black Books Matter, Are we Having a Moment?
For details and a full schedule of free online events, visit the site:
20th Anniversary Festival

Brattleboro Literary Festival Special Event
2021-10-19 11:00 | Online, VT
The Brattleboro Words Trail is collaborating with community partners to host an official unveiling of a state historic marker recognizing the achievements of Lucy Terry Prince, considered the nation’s first African American poet, and her husband Abijah Prince, early Black Vermont landowners in Guilford and Sunderland and advocates for civil rights.
A drummer and special speakers will commemorate the placement of the sign in the parking lot of the Guilford Welcome Center (Interstate 91 near Exit 1) Tuesday, October 19, 2021 at 11:00 am.

The event, hosted by the Brattleboro Words Trail and the Town of Guilford, will feature reflections from author Gretchen Gerzina, poet and artist Shanta Lee Gander, and executive director of Vermont Partnership for Fairness and Diversity Curtiss Reed, Jr. The event will be called with traditional African drumming by Sayan Camara.
Brattleboro Words Trail (http://brattleborowords.org/)
Contact: brattleborowords@gmail.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BrattleboroWords
Event Link: https://fb.me/e/2Dgoiolp7

A Deep Presence: 13,000 Years of Native American History
2021-10-26 18:30 - 20:00 | Main Reading Room
Join us at Brooks Memorial Library – October 26th from 6:30-8:00 pm, 224 Main St, Brattleboro, VT 05301 – for a presentation from Dr. Robert Goodby about his life’s work affirming Indigenous relationships in this landscape. His new book will be available for purchase and you will be delighted to learn these lasting stories, all the more needed as we look toward what is ahead.
Almost 13,000 years ago, small groups of Paleoindians endured frigid winters on the edge of a river in what would become Keene, New Hampshire. This begins the remarkable story of Native Americans in the Monadnock region of southwestern New Hampshire, part of the traditional homeland of the Abenaki people.
Typically neglected or denied by conventional history, the long presence of Native people in southwestern New Hampshire is revealed by archaeological evidence for their deep, enduring connections to the land and the complex social worlds they inhabited. From the Tenant Swamp Site in Keene, with the remains of the oldest known dwellings in New England, to the 4,000-year-old Swanzey Fish Dam still visible in the Ashuelot River, A Deep Presence tells their story in a narrative fashion, drawing on the author’s thirty years of fieldwork and presenting compelling evidence from archaeology, written history, and the living traditions of today’s Abenaki people.
Robert Goodby is Professor of Anthropology at Franklin Pierce University. He earned his PhD in anthropology from Brown University and has over thirty years of experience excavating Native American archaeological sites in New England. He is a past president of the New Hampshire Archeological Society, a former Trustee of the Mt. Kearsarge Indian Museum, and served on the New Hampshire Commission on Native American Affairs. He has directed over three hundred archaeological studies authorized by the National Historic Preservation Act and his work has appeared in anthropological journals and in anthologies published by the Smithsonian Institution Press and University Press of New England. He has presented more than one hundred talks on his archaeological research for the New Hampshire “Humanities to Go” program, and every fall speaks to students at the Keene Middle School about the Paleoindian Tenant Swamp Site. Visit his website at http://www.monadarch.com.

Halloween Outdoor Movie Night: "Beetlejuice"
2021-10-29 20:00 - 22:00 | Parking Lot, 224 Main Street, Brattleboro, VT, 05301, United States
Celebrate Halloween in the library parking lot for a Teens Only outdoor movie night.
We will watch “Beetlejuice”. The movie will start at 8pm and has a 1 hour and 32 minute run time.
Bring your own seating! Spooky Snacks Provided.

Hosted by the Teen Advisory Board.
“Teens Only” events are open to people in grades 7-12.

1st Wednesdays- Philanthropy and Civil Society in Challenging Times
2021-11-03 19:00 | Online, VT
The pandemic year of 2020 challenged every aspect of modern community, including our visions of equality, civility, health, and democracy. Stuart Comstock-Gay, former president of the Vermont Community Foundation, discusses how civic engagement can help us rebuild our communities and reclaim our dreams.
About Stuart Comstock-Gay
Stuart Comstock-Gay is president of the Delaware Community Foundation, and former president of the Vermont Community Foundation (2009 to 2016). He has spent his career addressing issues of community, democracy and civil rights, in philanthropy and civil rights organizations – at national and statewide organizations in Maryland, Boston, New York and New Hampshire. While in Vermont, he was adjunct faculty in nonprofit leadership at Marlboro College. He serves on numerous boards addressing philanthropic issues. He holds a master’s degree in public administration from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and a bachelor’s degree in political science from Bucknell University.

https://www.vermonthumanities.org/event/digital-philanthropy-and-civil-society-in-challenging-times/

Teen Book Club: Dumplin'
2021-11-04 19:00 - 20:00 | Meeting Room A – Community Meeting Room, 224 Main Street, Brattleboro, VT, 05301, United States
Join us on Thursday November 4th from 7pm-8pm to discuss a YA book with the Teen Advisory Board!
The book we’ll be discussing this month is “Dumplin'” by Julie Murphy. Grab yourself a copy, read it, and come discuss it with us.
Pizza and snacks provided! We’ll be in the Community Meeting Room, masked except when eating.
Hosted by the Teen Advisory Board. “Teens Only” events are open to people in grades 7-12.
