A One-Woman Performance by Mary Mott 

Mary Mott observes. Reflects. Questions.

She writes about things we don’t usually talk about or consider. But she does. She peels away the layers  revealing a self that is vulnerable. Unsure. But willing to be the brunt of any issue she stumbles into. And there are many.

What does it feel like to be female now? After 60? What will our children remember of us? Why living in the middle can get us stuck. What an empty house tells us. Grief.

Mary Mott has performed four one-woman shows covering various aspects of her life. Her shows, writings and podcasts can be found on her website: marymottwrites.com. She started writing in college and quickly moved into the advertising business in New York and San Francisco for over twenty-five years. After moving to the Wood River Valley she wrote a column for the local paper originally called “Mindsoup,” and co-hosted a weekly radio show. 

This show, “As I see it”, will be a concoction of observations, musings, stories and readings. Please join us. Bring a friend. Run time is one hour. The performance will be livestreamed and recorded.

More/register here.

with Kali Fajardo-Anstine

Join your local libraries for the closing of the 2023 Winter Read, featuring keynote speaker Kali Fajardo-Anstine, author and National Book Award Finalist. Her debut story collection, and this year’s community read, “Sabrina & Corina,” made waves in the literary community for its honest, provocative look at life in the American West for women of Latina and Indigenous descent.

Drawing from her Southern Colorado heritage and life experiences living across the American West, Fajardo-Anstine’s writing and lectures reflect her own heritage as a Colorado Chicana with roots in Indigenous, Latina, and Filipino cultures. In rousing talks that challenge the status quo, Fajardo-Anstine speaks about her racial and familial identity, the systems in our society that hold back marginalized people, and the craft of writing about and researching one’s cultural roots. 

In Sabrina & Corina, Fajardo-Anstine puts Latinas of Indigenous descent living in the American West at the center of each story. Her words serve as a powerful meditation on friendships, identity, mothers and daughters, and the deep-rooted truths of our homelands. Against the remarkable backdrop of Denver, Colorado, the women in these stories navigate the land the way they navigate their lives: with caution, grace, and quiet force. 

In addition to being a finalist for the National Book Award, Sabrina & Corina was also a finalist for the Story Prize, a finalist for the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Short Story Collection, and the winner of the American Book Award. The collection was named one of the best books of the year by the New York Public Library, Kirkus Reviews, and Library Journal, and the American Library Association named it a 2020 Notable Book. 

The program will be livestreamed and available to view later. Link forthcoming.

Fajardo-Anstine is also the author of the novel Woman of Light (June 2022), a dazzling epic of betrayal, love, and fate that spans five generations of an Indigenous Chicano family in the American West. Her stories and essays have appeared in GAY Magazine, The American Scholar, Boston Review, Bellevue Literary Review, Southwestern American Literature, Electric Literature, and more. Fajardo-Anstine has attended residencies at Yaddo, where she was the 2017 recipient of The LeSage-Fullilove Residency, Hedgebrook, and MacDowell Colony. 

Kali Fajardo-Anstine earned her MFA from the University of Wyoming and has lived across the country, from Durango, Colorado, to Key West, Florida. She is the 2022/23 Endowed Chair of Creative Writing at Texas State University.

More/register here.

with Dr. Richard Hammond 

Have you ever had trouble remembering people’s names? Do you ever come out of the grocery store and not remember where your car is? Have you ever missed an appointment? If you, or a loved one, have experienced any of these types of situations, this presentation is for you.

On March 6, neurologist Dr. Richard Hammond of St. Luke’s Magic Valley Medical Center in Twin Falls will discuss the importance of our executive function skills in living a productive life, in particular how our memory serves us and how we can keep our memory healthy for an enhanced quality of life.

Following Dr. Hammond 30-minute talk, attendees will have an opportunity to ask questions and explore topics related to brain health, such as caring for our brains through nutrition, sleep, and exercise.

The Miracle of the Mind programs at The Community Library are presented in partnership with Anita Dromey, Speech-Language Pathologist at St. Luke’s Rehabilitation in Ketchum. 

Dr. Richard Hammond earned his bachelor’s degree from Oakland University. He performed his medical internship and neurology residency at Emory Affiliated Hospitals and completed his EEG/EMG fellowship at Emory University. He attended medical school at Wayne State University School of Medicine. He has practiced neurology in Twin Fall for the past 32 years. In his spare time, he raises bison and is working to reintroduce the American chestnut.

More/register here.

…as our Valley Changes
with Dr. Jaap Vos

What happens to a community as it faces the changes that come with growth and change? As we’ve all felt the effects of Idaho being the fastest growing state in the nation, many of us have wondered what lies ahead for our community. Will wildlife still wander down Main Street? Will recreation still be as memorable? Will this valley still be the kind of place we all love to live, work, and play in? 

This fall, at the Sun Valley Economic Forum, Dr. Jaap Vos gave a talk about the incredibly difficult conversation and community discussions that need to happen in the face of growth and change. This moving presentation was a highlight of the Sun Valley Economic Forum, and has prompted plenty of discussion.   

In a recent “Our View” opinion from the Idaho Mountain Express, we’re reminded that we’ve had to navigate these hard questions before. 

For Blaine County and its cities in the 1970s, adapting to change was a do-it-yourself project. Unlike nearly any other communities in the nation, they adopted zoning that kept commercial development off the highway, development off its hillsides and protected downtown vitality and livability. This is why the Sun Valley area is still no ordinary place. Will it remain so? That depends on us and the choices we make. 

One of Dr. Vos’s key insights into how we can preserve our character is to think of the “green hearts” of our valley. The zoning to keep our hillsides open and highways undeveloped were key in preserving the “green heart” of the Valley in the 1970’s – what are the pieces of our valley that hold the living soul of this place today? 

As we navigate the need for more infrastructure to accommodate the current and future needs of the valley’s residents, we need to understand where to tread carefully, to ensure that we don’t unwittingly loose our own community’s “green heart” and key to its unique character. 

The program will be livestreamed and available to view later. Watch the recording on Vimeo here.

Dr. Vos is Professor of Planning and Natural Resources and Interim Director of the Environmental Science Program and Interim Department Head, Natural Resources and Society at the University of Idaho.

If you missed Dr. Vos’s talk at the Sun Valley Economic Forum, this is your chance to hear him and the talk that sparked so much community conversation. This event is part of the Thinking Globally, Acting Locally speaker series – a partnership between the Wood River Land Trust and The Community Library.  In this series we discuss how we can take local action in the face of global and regional challenges.

More/register here.

Part of the 2023 Winter Read

In the 1970s, with the swagger of unapologetic Indianness, organizers of the American Indian Movement (AIM) fought for Native liberation and survival as a community of extended families.

Warrior Women is the story of Madonna Thunder Hawk, one such AIM leader who shaped a kindred group of activists’ children – including her daughter Marcy – into the “We Will Remember” Survival School as a Native alternative to government-run education. Together, Madonna and Marcy fought for Native rights in an environment that made them more comrades than mother- daughter. Today, with Marcy now a mother herself, both are still at the forefront of Native issues, fighting against the environmental devastation of the Dakota Access Pipeline and for Indigenous cultural values.

Through a circular Indigenous style of storytelling, this film explores what it means to navigate a movement and motherhood and how activist legacies are passed down and transformed from generation to generation in the context of colonizing government that meets Native resistance with violence.

The film runs 64 minutes and will be followed by a Q&A with filmmaker Dr. Elizabeth A. Castle, who will join us remotely. This program will be streamed, but the film will only be available live. Click here to watch live online. The password to watch is TCLWarrior.

This program is part of the 2023 Winter Read. Read more about the Winter Read here.

Dr. Castle is a scholar, activist, and media maker working in collaboration with Native Nations and underrepresented communities. Warrior Women is based on the research done for her book Women were the Backbone, Men were the Jawbone: Native Women’s Activism in the Red Power Movement. She worked as a policy associate for President Clinton’s Initiative on Race and in 2001 she served as a delegate for the Indigenous World Association at the United Nations World Conference Against Racism in Durban, South Africa. She has been a professor in the Native Studies Department at the University of South Dakota and is the founder and Executive Director of The Warrior Women Oral History Project. Dr. Castle is a committed antiracist ally and descended from the Pekowi band of the Shawnee in Ohio – both shape how she engages with community-based scholarship and organizing.

More/register here.

Ornamental Yew – How to Identify and Remove It From Your Home and Neighborhood 

Over the past several years wildlife throughout the Wood River Valley has died after eating Japanese yew, an ornamental plant often found in landscaping around homes and businesses across Idaho. Over the last two years, at least 20 elk and 2 moose have died after eating yew. Even with a 2016 Blaine County ordinance, ordinance number 2016-01, that has also been adopted by the cities of Ketchum and Hailey, the plant continues to be found in many parts of the county and in Wood River Valley communities.

To help residents identify Japanese yew, Idaho Fish and Game and their Wildlife Smart Communities coalition partners will offer a 1-hour community presentation on yew identification and removal guidelines. We’ll also talk about other human-wildlife issues happening in Blaine County, such as wildlife entanglements, safety around mountain lions and moose and how to keep black bears from getting access to unsecured residential garbage and becoming food-conditioned.

Register to reserve your seat. The presentation will be livestreamed and available to view later. Click here to watch online.

More/register here.