Adult Nonfiction Book Club : 1st Tuesday of the month, 7:00 PM. Tuesday, 2/7 at 7:00 p.m. We’ll meet in the downstairs Meeting Room. We’ll discuss The Library : a Fragile History by Andrew Pettegree and Arthur de Weduwen. Copies are available at Main Desk. Email Charles Schweppe at cschweppe@westfordma.gov for details!
Adult Book Club -Thursday, 2/9/23 at 7:00 p.m. – Our meetings take place upstairs in the Mary Atwood Room. Join us on Thursday 2/9 at 7:00 p.m. to discuss ,The Mystery of Mrs. Christie by Marie Benedict . Copies are available at Main Desk. The e-book and audiobook are both available to download from Overdrive . Email Kristina Leedberg at kleedberg@westfordma.gov for details!
Mystery Book Club: Wake up your week with a stimulating book club discussion! Our next meeting will be Monday, February 27 at 2:00 p.m. We’ll meet in the Mary Atwood Room to discuss Something to Hide by Elizabeth George. Print copies are available at Main Desk.
Virtual – Abolition’s Foot Soldiers: Female Anti-Slavery Societies in Antebellum Massachusetts
Wednesday, February 15 at 7:00 p.m.
For at least the past three decades, scholars have argued that slavery’s abolition would not have happened without interracial collaboration between politically-minded women. From 1830-1865, an interracial and transnational group of women insisted that the struggles for women’s liberation and abolition were linked. They rooted their activism in their shared passion for religion, writing, reading, and teaching. They defended their activism from those who called their actions unbecoming for women by saying that their efforts were part of their duty as women and mothers. The abolitionist mother did not want her child to bear witness to the atrocities of slavery and therefore would do what she could to end it. In this talk, Dr. Jaimie Crumley will show that the efforts of the anti-slavery women in Massachusetts demonstrate the distinctively feminist contours of antebellum abolitionism. Further, she will assert that learning from the successes and failures of antebellum female anti-slavery societies can inform contemporary feminist organizing. Brought to you in collaboration with the Reading Public Library. Register here.
Bio: Jaimie D. Crumley, PhD is an Assistant Professor of Gender Studies and Ethnic Studies at the University of Utah. She is the 2022-2023 Research Fellow at Old North Illuminated in Boston, MA. Jaimie studies race, gender, and religion in the eighteenth and nineteenth-century Northeastern United States. Her dissertation, “Tried as by Fire: Free African American Women’s Abolitionist Theologies,” situates eighteenth and nineteenth-century Black women as proto-Black feminist abolitionists who rooted their politics in Biblical theology. Jaimie has received research fellowships from the Center for the Study of Women at UCLA, the Institute for Citizen’s and Scholars, the Boston Athenaeum, and the American Congregational Library.
Virtual Nature of Winter with the Mass. Audubon: Thursday, February 16 at 2:00 p.m. The nature of Massachusetts is filled with seasonal mysteries waiting to be uncovered. Have you ever wondered which animal left tracks in the snow? What happens to pond animals under a layer of ice? Or what trees are lining the trails on your winter walks? This online program will introduce the seasonal dynamics of nature in winter, and provide ideas and resources for observing, appreciating, and supporting wildlife near home this winter. Led by Tia Pinney, a Biologist, Lead Naturalist, and educator at Mass Audubon’s Drumlin Farm Wildlife Sanctuary in Lincoln. Since 1994, when she first started working at the farm, Tia has overseen efforts to maintain New England’s wildlife on our 206-acre property, managing staff and volunteers in planting projects and citizen science. Registration is required. A Zoom invite will be sent via email after registering. This program is in collaboration with the Tewsksbury Public Library. Register Here.