First Wednesdays 2010-2011

“Sharing Our Past — Shaping Our Future” Since 1974

Kellogg-Hubbard Library, 135 Main Street, Montpelier, 7:00 p.m. on the first Wednesday of every month. Library phone: 802.223.3338

 

Montpelier schedule (PDF)

 

October 6 ~ The Afghanistan Question. Former U.S. ambassador Peter Galbraith considers whether the Afghanistan War is winnable or important, and what strategies the U.S. might follow.  
Sponsor: Kimbell Sherman Ellis, LLP

 

November 3 ~ Horses Like Lightning: A Story of Passage through the Himalayas. Dartmouth anthropologist Sienna Craig recounts her years spent living in the remote Himalayan kingdom of Mustang, Nepal.

 

Tuesday, November 23 ~ The State of Hate in America. What accounts for the dramatic growth of hate groups in America? Mark Potok, of the Southern Poverty Law Center, discusses the development of organized hatred and how it might be stemmed.

       Sponsor: East Haven Windfarm

 

January 5 ~ 100 Years since Triangle: The Fire That Seared a Nation's Conscience. Dartmouth professor Annelise Orleck reflects on the 1911 fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in Greenwich Village, which killed 146 workers, mostly young immigrant women.

 

February 2 ~ Civility in a Fractured Society. Chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities Jim Leach discusses how civility requires not just good etiquette, but respectful engagement with other viewpoints and experiences. Time: 7:30 p.m. Location: House Chamber, Vermont State House. Sponsor: Cabot Creamery

 

March 2 ~ The Soul Selects Her Own Society: The Life and Work of Emily Dickinson. Reclusive poet Emily Dickinson published only a fraction of her poetry during her lifetime. Dartmouth professor Colleen Boggs looks at Dickinson’s life and at how we should consider her writings in our highly public modern age.

 

April 6 ~ The Supreme Court Argument that Saved the Union. President Lincoln justified the Emancipation Proclamation as a “necessary war measure.” But was the Civil War, in point of law, a war? Former Vermont Chief Justice Jeffrey Amestoy tells the thrilling story of Richard Henry Dana, Jr.’s oral argument before the Court in the Prize Cases. Sponsor: Vermont Bar Association

 

May 4 ~ Singer’s Typewriter . . . and Mine. Amherst College professor Ilan Stavans, editor of the Collected Stories of Isaac Bashevis Singer, examines the life and work of the controversial Yiddish writer and Nobel Prize winner. Sponsor: Bear Pond Books / Rivendell Books

 

 

Series Sponsor:

National Life of Vermont

 

Program Sponsor:

Bear Pond Books / Rivendell Books

Cabot Creamery

East Haven Windfarm

Kimbell Sherman Ellis, LLP

Vermont Bar Association

 

 

Montpelier