Main Library

LIVESTREAM – Wildfires: Past, Present, and Future with Dr. Jen Pierce

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What are the feedbacks among wildfires, climate, vegetation and geomorphic responses?  

In collaboration with the Wood River Land Trust as part of its “Thinking Globally, Acting Locally Speaker Series,” The Community Library welcomes Dr. Jen Pierce, Associate Professor in the Department of Geosciences at Boise State University, to discuss her research and field work in the rugged and scenic mountains of Idaho to bring a local perspective to this global question.

Pierce will discuss the reality of the increased size and severity of wildfires, reduced water quality, and severe health impacts from wildfire smoke and summer heat that the western U.S. will face as we move into a warmer future.  She will talk about local solutions, among them increasing climate education in our K-12 curriculum to prepare future generations to address these realities.

Jen Hill is an Associate Professor in the Department of Geosciences at Boise State University and is passionate about learning about how we can coexist with our changing environment.  Her diverse research areas include climate science education from the K-12 to university level, wildfires and climate change, soils and carbon storage in the critical zone, and feedbacks among hydrologic, biologic and geologic systems.

Following Jen’s discussion, Ryan Santo, Restoration Specialist for the Wood River Land Trust will discuss some of the projects that the Land Trust is working on to increase the fishery resilience here in the Wood River Valley.  Jen and Ryan will then take questions from the audience. 

 

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VIRTUAL – “The War on Cuba” a Conversation with Documentary Filmmaker Reed Lindsay

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Join The Community Library for a virtual conversation with documentary filmmaker and freelance journalist Reed Lindsay, who will be joining us remotely from Havana, Cuba. Reed will be in conversation with the Library’s operations manager Nicole Lichtenberg to discuss the work of his media organization Belly of the Beast, which shares Cuba’s untold stories through journalism and cinematography.

Lindsay’s newest project, The War on Cuba, is a three-part film series telling the story of the impact of U.S. sanctions on Cuba and the interests driving them. The series, which can be viewed online takes an on-the-ground and in-depth look at the economic war currently being waged by the U.S. government on the Cuban people. Releasing throughout the month of October, the mini-series shows how U.S. policy impacts people’s lives in Cuba through the eyes of a young Cuban journalist, and also investigates the powerful interests behind these policies. The series is executive-produced by Oliver Stone and Danny Glover.

The conversation will also discuss Lindsay’s work reporting from around the world to bring marginalized voices to the fore, expose injustices and abuse of power, create awareness about issues that have been ignored or misunderstood and challenge mainstream narratives that are devoid of context or distort local realities.

This program will air on the Library’s Livestream. Live viewers will be able to join the conversation in the Livestream chat.

 

Reed Lindsay is an award-winning journalist and documentary filmmaker who has lived in Mexico City, Buenos Aires, Port-au-Prince and Cairo and has reported from Libya, India, Venezuela and Honduras, among other countries. He is currently based in Havana, Cuba.His most recent feature-length documentary, Charlie vs Goliath, an inspiring story about a 75-year-old former Catholic priest who runs for the US Senate in the state of Wyoming in a bid to shake up the political establishment, has screened in film festivals across the country. In 2014, Reed won a Gracie Award for Fists of Fury, a short film about a 15-year-old girl in Kolkata, India, striving to be a champion boxer. He was one of the first journalists to enter Libya after the uprising, and co-directed an hour-long film entitled Benghazi Rising that was nominated for a Rory Peck Award as best documentary in 2011. He reported on the Egyptian rebellion from beginning to end, and was co-winner of an Emmy for his contribution to the HBO documentary In Tahrir Square. From 2004 until 2009, Reed was based in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, where he worked as a journalist, lived in a poor neighborhood and founded a non-profit supporting a group of community volunteers who formed two tuition-free schools serving 250 children. His work has been published in more than 20 major newspapers and magazines, aired on numerous radio stations, and broadcast on television news networks throughout the world.

 

LIVESTREAM – Restoring Ecosystem Functionality and Biodiversity with Pollinators with Heather Holm

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How can humans benefit from green infrastructure and ecological landscape restorations?

In collaboration with the Wood River Land Trust as part of its “Thinking Globally, Acting Locally Speaker Series,” The Community Library welcomes author Heather Holm, who will discuss ways we can achieve a sustainable coexistence with the rest of life on earth. Models of restorative landscaping including residential and community opportunities will be highlighted as well as thoughtful plant selection, ecosystem functionality, and how biodiversity can be maximized. A focus on pollinator habitat and outcomes, trouble shooting and monitoring of restorations, and funding opportunities will also be included in the presentation.

Heather Holm is an award-winning author spending much of her time passionately educating audiences about the fascinating world of native bees and the native plants that support them. Her first book, Pollinators of Native Plants, was published in 2014, and her latest book, Bees, published in 2017, has won six book awards including the 2018 American Horticultural Society Book Award. Heather’s expertise includes the interactions between native bees and native plants, and the natural history and biology of native bees occurring in the upper Midwest and Northeast.

Following Heather’s discussion, Keri York, Lands Program Manager for the Wood River Land Trust will talk about the work the Land Trust is doing to increase pollinator habitat here in the Wood River Valley.  She will then take questions from the audience and will provide ways for listeners to get involved, to make a difference on this global issue here in their own backyard.

 

Photo credit: David Joles, StarTribune

VIRTUAL – “A Brotherhood Betrayed” with Michael Cannell

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Join us for a virtual conversation with Michael Cannell, author of the new book, A Brotherhood Betrayed: The Man Behind the Rise and Fall of Murder, Inc., the riveting true story of a coast-to-coast mob network and the executioner-turned-informant whose mysterious death became a turning point in Mob history.

In the fall of 1941, a momentous trial was underway that threatened to end the careers and lives of New York’s most brutal mob kingpins. The lead witness, Abe Reles, had been a trusted executioner for Murder, Inc., the enforcement arm of a mob network known as the Commission. But the man responsible for coolly silencing hundreds of informants was about to become the most talkative snitch of all. In exchange for police protection, Reles was prepared to rat out his murderous friends, from Albert Anastasia to Bugsy Siegel—but before he could testify, his shattered body was discovered on a rooftop outside his heavily-guarded hotel room. Was it a botched escape, or punishment for betraying the loyalty of the country’s most powerful mobsters?

A Brotherhood Betrayed traces the history of Murder, Inc. through Reles’ rise from street punk to murder chieftain to stool pigeon, ending with his fateful death on a Coney Island rooftop. It resurrects a time when crime became organized crime: a world of money and power, depravity and corruption, street corner ambushes and elaborately choreographed hits by wise-cracking foot soldiers with names like Buggsy Goldstein and Tick Tock Tannenbaum.

For a brief moment before World War II erupted, America fixated on the delicate balance of trust and betrayal on the Brooklyn streets. This is the story of the one man who tipped the balance.

Michael Cannell is the author of four non-fiction books, most recently A Brotherhood Betrayed: The Man Behind the Rise and Fall of Murder, Inc. His previous books are Incendiary: The Psychiatrist, the Mad Bomber and the Invention of Criminal Profiling, The Limit: Life and Death on the 1961 Grand Prix Circuit and I.M. Pei: Mandarin of Modernism. Cannell has worked as a reporter for U.P.I and Time, and as an editor for The New York Times. His writing has appeared in The New Yorker, Newsweek, Sports Illustrated and many other publications.

A recording of this program will be available on Friday, Nov. 20 on our Livestream.

“The Hidden Life of Trees” with Peter Wohlleben

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Are trees social beings? In The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate―Discoveries from A Secret World, forester and author Peter Wohlleben convincingly makes the case that, yes, the forest is a social network. He draws on groundbreaking scientific discoveries to describe how trees are like human families: tree parents live together with their children, communicate with them, support them as they grow, share nutrients with those who are sick or struggling, and even warn each other of impending dangers.

Join The Community Library and the Wood River Land Trust for a virtual conversation with Wohlleben, who will be joining us live from his home in Germany, as he shares his deep love of woods and forests, explaining the amazing processes of life, death, and regeneration he has observed in his woodland. After learning about the complex life of trees, a walk in the woods will never be the same again. Wohlleben will be in conversation with the Library’s executive director, Jenny Emery Davidson.

Peter Wohlleben spent over twenty years working for the forestry commission in Germany before leaving to put his ideas of ecology into practice. He now runs an environmentally friendly woodland, where he is working toward the return of primeval forests, as well as caring for both wild and domestic animals. Wohlleben has been celebrated for his distinctive approach to writing about nature; he brings to life groundbreaking scientific research through his observations of nature and the animals he lives among. His first work translated to English, The Hidden Life of Trees is an international bestseller.

In partnership with the Wood River Land Trust.

An Evening with Hisham Matar

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Photo by Diana Matar ©

When Hisham Matar was a nineteen-year-old university student in England, his father went missing under mysterious circumstances. Matar would never see him again, but he never gave up hope that his father might still be alive. Twenty-two years later, he returned to his native Libya in search of the truth behind his father’s disappearance. His 2016 Pulitzer Prize-winning memoir, The Return: Fathers, Sons and the Land in Between, is the story of what he found there.

The Pulitzer Prize citation hailed The Return as “a first-person elegy for home and father.” Transforming his personal quest for answers into a brilliantly told universal tale of hope and resilience, Matar has given us an unforgettable work with a powerful human question at its core: How does one go on living in the face of unthinkable loss?

Born in New York City to Libyan parents, Hisham Matar spent his childhood in Tripoli and Cairo and has lived most of his adult life in London. His debut novel, In the Country of Men, was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award, and won numerous international prizes, including the Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize, a Commonwealth First Book Award, the Premio Flaiano and the Premio Gregor von Rezzori. His second novel, Anatomy of a Disappearance, published in 2011, was named one of the best books of the year by The Guardian and the Chicago Tribune. His first memoir, The Return, was one of The New York Times Book Review’s ten best books of the year, winner of the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award, and a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize.

After finishing The Return, Matar, seeking solace and pleasure, traveled to Siena, Italy. Always finding comfort and clarity in great art, Matar immersed himself in eight significant works from the Sienese School of painting, which flourished from the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries. Artists whom he had admired throughout his life, such as Duccio and Ambrogio Lorenzetti, evoke earlier engagements he has had with works by Caravaggio and Poussin, and the personal experiences that surrounded those moments. A Month in Siena is about what occurred between Matar, those paintings, and the city. That month would be an extraordinary period in Matar’s life: an exploration of how art can console and disturb in equal measure, as well as an intimate encounter with the city and its inhabitants.

 

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