A Virtual Conversation with Martyna Majok

Thursday, February 15, 2024
5:30pm – 6:30pm
John A. and Carole O. Moran Lecture Hall

As part of the 2024 Winter Read of The Great Gatsby, Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Martyna Majok joins us from her home in New York to discuss the book in relation to her upcoming Broadway musical, Gatsby: An American Myth, debuting in Spring 2024 at the American Repertory Theater at Harvard University in Boston. Majok wrote the libretto for the new musical based on The Great Gatsby, in collaboration with international rock star Florence Welch (Florence + The Machine) and Oscar and Grammy Award nominee Thomas Bartlett. We’ll discuss the joys and challenges of adaptation and why Fitzgerald’s novel continues to dazzle and entertain a hundred years after its creation.

Majok will join us over Zoom, but all are welcome to join us in the Library’s John A. and Carole O. Moran Lecture Hall. This program will be available to watch live online, but a recording with not be available. Click here to watch live online. Register to save your in-person seat.

Martyna Majok was born in Bytom, Poland and raised in New Jersey and Chicago. She was awarded the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for her Broadway debut play, Cost of Living, which was also nominated for the Tony Award for Best Play. Other plays include Sanctuary City, Queens, and Ironbound, which have been produced across American and international stages. Majok was also the 2022 Sun Valley Playwrights’ Resident and visited the valley again in 2023 to workshop a new play-in-progress at The Argyros.

More/register here.

Tuesday, February 13, 2024
5:30pm – 7:30pmT
John A. and Carole O. Moran Lecture Hall

Acclaimed Japanese American musician Kishi Bashi visits The Community Library as part of a multi-event trip to Idaho organized by Friends of Minidoka and the Minidoka National Historic Site. The event is in honor of the annual Day of Remembrance, which commemorates the signing of Executive Order 9066 that led to the exclusion, forced removal, and unjust incarceration of over 125,000 Japanese Americans during WWII.

Kishi Bashi will present his award winning A Song Film by Kishi Bashi: “Omoiyari” followed by a discussion and live musical performance. “Omoiyari” is a Japanese word that means to have sympathy and compassion towards another person.

In A Song Film by Kishi Bashi: “Omoiyari”, Kishi Bashi embarks on a transformative journey to confront his heritage and reconcile the painful history of Japanese American incarceration during World War II. Inspired by the rising tide of discrimination against marginalized communities, Kishi Bashi delved into the untold stories of incarceration survivors and composed an album titled Omoiyari that captures their experiences.

This program is in person only.

Kishi Bashi is the pseudonym of singer, multi-instrumentalist, and songwriter Kaoru Ishibashi. Born in Seattle, Washington, Ishibashi grew up in Norfolk, Virginia where both of his parents were professors at Old Dominion University. As a 1994 graduate of Matthew Fontaine Maury High School, he went on to study film scoring at Berklee College of Music before becoming a renowned violinist. Ishibashi has recorded and toured internationally as a violinist with diverse artists such as Regina Spektor, Sondre Lerche, and most recently, the Athens, Georgia-based indie rock band, of Montreal. He remains based in Athens.

Omoiyari is Kishi Bashi’s fourth album following the acclaimed 151a (2012), Lighght (2014), and Sonderlust (2016), which have garnered serious acclaim from outlets including NPR Music, The Wall Street Journal and The Guardian.

More/register here.

with Evan Thomas 

Thursday, February 8, 2024
5:30pm – 6:30pm
John A. and Carole O. Moran Lecture Hall

Evan Thomas, Director of the Mortenson Center in Global Engineering & Resilience, the Global Engineering Residential Academic Program, and the CU Boulder Climate Innovation Collaboratory, joins us to discuss valuing water to survive climate change.

Evan Thomas holds the Mortenson Endowed Chair in Global Engineering at the University of Colorado at Boulder. He is jointly appointed in the Civil, Environmental and Architectural Engineering and the Aerospace Engineering Sciences Departments, and an affiliate faculty in Environmental and Occupational Health at the Colorado School of Public Health. Evan is also currently a member of the NASA and USAID SERVIR Applied Sciences Team, a member of the board of the Millennium Water Alliance, and Co-Chair of the ASME Engineering for Global Development Research Committee. His technical background is in water and air testing and treatment applied in a range of contexts, from low-resource settings to operational spacecraft.

This program will be livestreamed and available to watch later. 

The second lecture in the annual Thinking Globally, Acting Locally Speaker Series, in partnership with the Wood River Land Trust. Join us for more speakers on January 18 and March 14.

Featuring Maureen Corrigan and “So We Read On” 

Wednesday, January 31, 2024
5:30pm – 6:30pm
John A. and Carol O. Lecture Hall
Registration is REQUIRED; Available on Livestream

To kick off the 2024 Winter Read of The Great Gatsby, join us for an evening with Maureen Corrigan, NPR Fresh Air book critic and author of So We Read On: How the Great Gatsby Came to Be and Why It Endures. 

Conceived nearly a century ago by a man who died believing himself a failure, The Great Gatsby is now a revered classic and a rite of passage in the reading lives of millions. But how well do we really know Gatsby? As Maureen Corrigan, Gatsby lover extraordinaire, points out, while Fitzgerald’s masterpiece may be one of the most popular novels in America, many of us first read it when we were too young to fully comprehend its power.

Offering a fresh perspective on what makes Gatsby great — and utterly unusual — So We Read On takes us into archives, high school classrooms, and even out onto the Long Island Sound to explore the novel’s hidden depths, a journey whose revelations include Gatsby‘s surprising debt to hard-boiled crime fiction, its rocky path to recognition as a “classic,” and its profound commentaries on the national themes of race, class, and gender.

With rigor, wit, and infectious enthusiasm, Corrigan inspires us to re-experience the greatness of Gatsby and cuts to the heart of why we are, as a culture, “borne back ceaselessly” into its thrall. Along the way, she spins a new and fascinating story of her own.

Registration is required. A book signing with Chapter One will follow. This event will also be livestreamed, and a recording will be available to view through March 15. 

Maureen Corrigan is America’s most trusted and beloved book critic. Her distinctive voice is at once incisive and accessible, like a well-read friend who always sends you home with a good book to read. For more than twenty years Maureen has been the book critic for NPR’s Fresh Air. She is also a columnist for The Washington Post and The Nicky and Jamie Grant Distinguished Professor of the Practice in Literary Criticism at Georgetown University. She is the author of two books of her own: Leave me Alone I’m Reading and So We Read On: How the Great Gatsby Came to Be and Why it Endures, which was named one of the ten best books of the year by Library Journal. Aside from her writings for The Washington Post and The Village Voice, Maureen has also written reviews for The New York Times, The Boston Globe and The Nation among others. She serves on the advisory panel of The American Heritage Dictionary, is an associate editor of and contributor to Mystery and Suspense Writers, as well as the winner of the 1999 Edgar Award for Criticism. She has served as a juror for the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction and has also been on the judges’ panel for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize.

More/register/livestream link here.

The Mental Well-Being Initiative seeks to leverage and amplify diverse community efforts in support of a shared, integrated, and comprehensive vision for the future. We seek to drive lasting, systemic solutions that help meet some of life’s basic needs, prevent a crisis before it happens and provide connections and mental health care to all who need it. For example, we are working with Communities for Youth, which has launched a five-year effort with the Blaine County School District to support “upstream” crisis prevention strategies for youth.

We need everyone to help us shape the future of mental well-being in Blaine County, one that reflects the input, needs, and desires of our diverse community. Attend one of six Community Engagement Sessions to refine initial recommendations for action. All are welcome – success requires input from everyone in our community.

This session will be held at The Community Library on Wednesday, January 24 from 12:00-1:30 p.m. No registration required. Light refreshments will be served.

Contact project coordinator Jenna Vagias at vagiasgirl@gmail.com with questions or to learn about other event dates.

Wednesday, January 24, 2024
12:00pm – 1:30pm
John A. and Carole O. Moran Lecture Hall

More here.

Join the Friends of the Sawtooth Avalanche Center for a 2-hour presentation based on the Know Before You Go platform, introducing basic concepts about snow, avalanches, and traveling safely in and near avalanche terrain. Learn from the Friends of SAC instructor team of snow experts, mountain guides, and experienced avalanche educators. We invite everyone to join if you’re learning about avalanches for the first time or are a seasoned backcountry user ready for a yearly refresher. 

For more information on the Friends of the Sawtooth Avalanche Center or to sign up for an avalanche field day following the lecture, please visit sawtoothavalanche.com.

Thursday, January 25, 2024
5:30pm – 7:30pm
John A. and Carole O. Moran Lecture Hall

More/register here.