Prioritizing Infrastructure Decisions in a Time of Growth In-Person

The 4th Annual Community State of the Valley, presented by the Wood River’s Women Foundation, will be hosted by The Community Library on Tuesday, February 28, 2023. This year’s theme is “Prioritizing infrastructure decisions in a time of growth.” We have panelists representing areas we felt have seen the biggest impact by our growing community, which includes the following:

• Muffy Davis, Blaine County Board of Commissioners Chair
• Brian Yeager, City of Hailey Public Works Director
• Ron Bateman, Wood River Fire & Rescue Chief

The panel will be moderated by Mike McKenna, Valley Chamber of Commerce Executive Director. The program will be livestreamed and available to view later. Click here to watch online.

More/register here.

TV Discussion Group: with Mimi Avins

Ever wish you were in a book club, and whether you might be if you weren’t spending so much time watching addictive TV shows? The TV Discussion Group is a place where television obsessives and skeptics gather to dissect and debate one season of a prestige series, analyzing it much in the way a book club critiques a novel.

Beginning February 21st the focus will be on the Apple TV+ series Bad Sisters. Set in a deceptively charming Dublin suburb on the Irish coast, its 10 episodes deliver a murder mystery wrapped in a witty black comedy wrapped in a family story. It is ingeniously constructed, well paced and brilliantly performed by a peerless ensemble of British and Irish actors.

Ketchum resident Mimi Avins, who covered pop culture in her years as a staff writer for The Los Angeles Times, will lead the discussion. The group will meet weekly at the Library at 5:00 p.m., February 21st through March 21st and explore two episodes at each session.  Advanced registration is requested.

with Rachel Louise Snyder

Rachel Louise Snyder, Writer-In-Residence at the Hemingway House, will discuss her upcoming book, Women We Buried, Women We Burned: A Memoir. The book will be released on May 23, 2023, from Bloomsbury.

For decades, Rachel Louise Snyder has been a fierce advocate reporting on the darkest social issues that impact women’s lives. Women We Buried, Women We Burned is her own story.

Snyder was eight years old when her mother died, and her distraught father thrust the family into an evangelical, cult-like existence halfway across the country. Furiously rebellious, she was expelled from school and home at age 16. Living out of her car and relying on strangers, Rachel found herself masquerading as an adult, talking her way into college, and eventually travelling the globe.

Survival became her reporter’s beat. In places like India, Tibet, and Niger, she interviewed those who had been through the unimaginable. In Cambodia, where she lived for six years, she watched a country reckon with the horrors of its own recent history. When she returned to the States with a family of her own, it was with a new perspective on old family wounds, and a chance for healing from the most unexpected place.

A piercing account of Snyder’s journey from teenage runaway to reporter on the global epidemic of domestic violence, Women We Buried, Women We Burned is a memoir that embodies the transformative power of resilience.

Registration is recommended to save your save.

More/register here.

while Elevating Latino Environmental Activism

with Olivia Juarez 

Who comes to mind when you think about environmental activism? Do you think back to John Muir, or to present day activists like Greta Thunberg? The organization Green Latinos is working to include the Latino/a/x voice and story to the forefront.   

“Environmental stewardship is part of our cultural heritage. Outdoor activities like fishing, gardening, camping, and celebrating in nature bring us joy and connect us to our deeply rooted traditions. We honor and celebrate our rich culture and our crucial role in the global social fabric through our stories and spirit. We continue the work of movements that came before us, defending our autonomy, building upon our cultural assets, and celebrating our identity.” – Green Latinos

The Wood River Land Trust and The Community Library are excited to bring Green Latinos’ Public Land Director, Olivia Juarez to talk with the community about Latinx leadership in conservation. A lifelong Utahn based in Salt Lake City, and through their work with Latino Outdoors, Utah Coalition of La Raza, and the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, Olivia has nurtured Latinx joy and leadership in conserving nuestra tierra pública. Olivia was recognized as one of “10 Under 40” in 2021 by the National Parks Conservation Association for their commitment to creating safe, equitable access to public lands for Latino community health.  

One of the key ways to make a more inclusive outdoors is to elevate the voices and stories of Latino/a/x activists. In their talk, Olivia will talk about their work with nurturing leadership in outdoor spaces, and how creating a more inclusive outdoors can encourage a dialogue rich in culture, identity, and joy.  

If you are currently participating in The Community Library’s Winter Read of Sabrina & Corina: Stories by Kali Fajardo-Anstine, this is a great opportunity to take the idea of story out of the pages and into the very real outdoor spaces that so define our Valley. 

The program will be livestreamed and available to view later. Click here to watch online.

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.

with tai simpson

Storytelling is the most direct connection between people. The way we live our lives tells a story, including how we treat one another and how we engage in the world. Storytelling is also the pathway toward healing and building a world of thriving & liberation. tai’s keynote will explore how storytelling helps us to nurture the best versions of ourselves to change the world.

Part of the 2023 Winter Read. This program will be livestreamed and available to watch later. Click here to watch online.

tai simpson (she/her)  is also named “The Storyteller” in the Indigenous language of the Nimiipuu, commonly known as the Nez Perce Tribe. As a direct descendant of Chief Redheart, tai takes great pride in serving her community as an organizer and advocate. tai catalyzed her racial and social justice organizing while studying Sociology and Political Philosophy & Public Law at Boise State University. 

tai is an organizer for the Indigenous Idaho Alliance. In 2018 and 2019, the Indigenous Idaho Alliance drafted the proclamations for Indigenous Peoples Day for the State of Idaho and the City of Boise. In 2020, the Alliance helped to draft a Concurrent Resolution acknowledging Missing & Murdered Indigenous Peoples Day in the Idaho Legislature.

As an co-Director with the Idaho Coalition Against Sexual & Domestic Violence, tai focuses on violence prevention and response within Idaho’s tribal communities. In 2019, tai gave a TEDxBoise talk exploring the belief that Indigenous “old ways” need to come back in style rejuvenated to interrupt harmful social norms. As an antiracism educator and community organizer, she uses Indigenous storytelling to depict the lens of “old ways” and how they protect the sacred, build strength in the community, and keep nature in balance; these principles support her work to champion radical inclusion, equity, and liberation.

More/register here.

Listening and Silence in Sabrina & Corina
with Dr. Dora Ramírez 

The Latinx/Indigenous community’s experiences and stories in Kali Fajardo-Anstine’s short story collection Sabrina & Corina are often told through silence, of what is left unsaid. In “Ghost Sickness,” Ana’s mom reminds her that memory “doesn’t have to be story-memory […] It can be a picture, a feeling” (202). This text draws out intergenerational trauma by letting us enter the experiences of two generations struggling to take ownership and define the community’s historical memory. The older generation in this text carry an incredible burden of pain and disappointment, of the racism the community has experienced including environmental degradation, the missing and murdered women, and the effects of colonization on the family structure. The younger generation slowly learns to understand what is left unsaid in their community as they learn to read the silences.     

Dr. Dora Ramírez is a Professor of Ethnic Studies and the Director of the Anti-Racism Collective at Boise State University in the Department of Sociology. She holds a doctorate in English, with a focus on Ethnic Literature, from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Her research focuses on ideas of nation-building while examining the internalization of socio-political global effects and the influence of colonization among Latinx and Indigenous populations in the United States and the U.S./Mexico border. Her work appears in various journals and she is the author of Medical Fragmentation: Literary Modernism, Scientific Discourse, and the Mexican, Indigenous Body, 1870-1940s which analyzes the medical industry’s colonial influences on indigenous peoples at the turn of the 19th century. She is currently working on a book titled, Victim: Another Meaning, which analyzes the rhetorical uses of the concept “victim” and seeks to disentangle the varied definitions from the reality of what it means to be a victim in a polarized and racialized society in contemporary United State culture.

This event is part of the 2023 Winter Read of Sabrina & Corina. Read more about the Winter Read here.

The program will be livestreamed and available to watch later. Click here to watch online.