Main Library

“Minidoka: An American Concentration Camp” and Q&A with Hanako Wakatsuki

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As part of our WINTER READ and focus on the Minidoka National Historic Site and Japanese American incarceration during World War II, The Community Library welcomes Hanako Wakatsuki, Chief of Interpretation at Minidoka National Historic Site.

The evening will feature a screening of Minidoka: An American Concentration Camp, produced by North Shore Productions for the National Park Service. The 30-minute film tells the story of a group of Americans and their incarceration by the U.S. government in the High Desert of southern Idaho, purely on the basis of race. The film also explores the lasting impact of incarceration on Japanese-Americans, through decades of shame and silence, before the community took a stand for redress, and examines the relevance of their story for civil rights today.

A Q&A with Hanako Wakatsuki will follow the screening.

The Community Library’s 2020 WINTER READ explores the history and effects today of the incarceration of Japanese Americans in the U.S. during World War II. Throughout February and March we invite the community to read Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, Jamie Ford’s novel that focuses on two families, of Chinese and Japanese ancestry, who experience discrimination, incarceration, loss, and friendship during the early war years in Seattle. The novel features the Minidoka War Relocation Center, Idaho’s own site of war-time incarceration where more than 9,000 Japanese Americans were imprisoned from 1942-45. The site is located just eighty miles south of Ketchum. Join us as we engage in conversation around this important regional and national civil liberties history.

The 2020 Winter Read has been generously sponsored by the Spur Community Foundation and Carlyn Ring.

Minidoka Civil Liberties Symposium: The Legacy of Minoru Yasui and WWII Japanese American Incarceration with Jessica Asai

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As part of our Winter Read and focus on the Minidoka National Historic Site and Japanese American incarceration during World War II, The Community Library welcomes civil rights investigator Jessica Asai, presented by the Minidoka Civil Liberties Symposium. Her lecture will speak to the legacy of Minoru Yasui’s Supreme Court case protesting the war-time incarceration and the implications for citizenship and civil liberties today.

Jessica Asai is yonsei, a fourth generation Japanese American, and was raised in Hood River, Oregon where her family has farmed for four generations.  After receiving a B.A. in Politics from Willamette University, Jessica worked in marketing and government relations before attending Lewis & Clark Law School.  In 2010, Jessica became a civil rights investigator for the Affirmative Action and Equal Opportunity Department (AAEO) at Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU).  At OHSU, she conducts internal civil rights investigations, facilitates the reasonable accommodation interactive process, and provides advice and training to administrators, faculty, staff, and students on civil rights, equity, and Title IX.  Jessica is a founding board member of the Oregon Asian Pacific American Bar Association, and contributed to the team effort that successfully nominated attorney and civil rights activist Minoru Yasui for a 2015 Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor.  More recently, in December 2018, she was appointed to serve on the Oregon Commission for Asian and Pacific Islander Affairs.

Minoru Yasui was an American lawyer and son of Japanese immigrants who fought the restrictions imposed by Executive Order 9066 that allowed the military to set up exclusion zones, curfews, and ultimately the internment of Japanese Americans during the war. The Order was signed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt on February 19, 1942, and Minoru Yasui’s case was the first to test the constitutionality of the curfews targeted at minority groups.

The Minidoka Civil Liberties Symposium is a partnership between Friends of Minidoka, the National Park Service, Boise State University, and the ACLU of Idaho. The Community Library is extremely grateful to this partnership for bringing Jessica Asai to the Wood River Valley.

     

 

The Community Library’s 2020 WINTER READ explores the history and effects today of the incarceration of Japanese Americans in the U.S. during World War II. Throughout February and March we invite the community to read Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, Jamie Ford’s novel that focuses on two families, of Chinese and Japanese ancestry, who experience discrimination, incarceration, loss, and friendship during the early war years in Seattle. The novel features the Minidoka War Relocation Center, Idaho’s own site of war-time incarceration where more than 9,000 Japanese Americans were imprisoned from 1942-45. The site is located just eighty miles south of Ketchum. Join us as we engage in conversation around this important regional and national civil liberties history.

The 2020 Winter Read has been generously sponsored by the Spur Community Foundation and Carlyn Ring.

Sage School Dam Debate and Discussion: Should the Four Dams on the Lower Snake River be Removed?

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The Sage School 8th and 9th grades will present a debate and discussion on the future of the lower Snake River as both a vital and threatened natural ecosystem and a resource heavily utilized by humans. Students will take on the roles of various stakeholders — from salmon biologist to fly-fishing guide to an employee at Lower Granite Dam — and debate how to manage competing demands for salmon recovery, recreation, barge traffic, ecosystem health, and electricity, among others. This is the culminating event of a trimester spent studying these issues through research, numerous field visits, and meetings with experts in these fields.

Join us for this publicly presented mock debate.

The Sage School is a privately funded, coeducational day school located in Hailey, Idaho. Its mission is to honor adolescence as a critical developmental window for learning essential academic, cognitive, social, and emotional skills. The Sage School creates a thriving environment for students through a challenging, authentic curriculum centered on human ecology and engaging experiences designed specifically to promote self-awareness, community responsibility, and a sense of place.

“American Zion: Cliven Bundy, God & Public Lands in the West” with Betsy Gaines Quammen

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WATCH THE PROGRAM

Join The Community Library on May 26, 2020, at 5:30 p.m. for a virtual conversation with Betsy Gaines Quammen, author of American Zion: Cliven Bundy, God & Public Lands in the West. Quammen will be in conversation with the Library’s Programs and Education Manager, Martha Williams.

What happens when members of an American religion—one built in the nineteenth century on personal prophecy and land proprietorship—assert possession over western federal lands, armed with guns and a certainty that God wants them to go to war? American Zion is the story of the ongoing feud between Mormon ranching family the Bundys, the federal government, and the American public. Historian Betsy Gaines Quammen examines the roots of the Bundys’ cowboy confrontations, and how history has shaped an often-dangerous mindset which today feeds the militia movement and threatens public lands, wild species, and American heritage.

Betsy Gaines Quammen is a historian and conservationist. She received a doctorate in Environmental History from Montana State University in 2017, her dissertation focusing on Mormon settlement and public land conflicts. She has studied various religious traditions over the years, with particular attention to how cultures view landscape and wildlife. The rural American west, pastoral communities of northern Mongolia, and the grasslands of East Africa have been her main areas of interest. After college in Colorado, caretaking for a bed and breakfast in Mosier, Oregon, and serving breakfasts at a café in Kanab, Utah, Betsy has settled in Bozeman, Montana,where she now lives with her husband, writer David Quammen, two huge dogs, an overweight cat, and a pretty big python named Boots.

This program was originally scheduled for March 26. Books are available for sale at Chapter One Bookstore.

Visit Sun Valley Biannual Meeting

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Visit Sun Valley invites the entire community to attend its second biannual meeting of 2019. They’ll have summer season results, winter season teasers and everything in-between. Visit Sun Valley has a lot of projects they’re working on and always appreciate sharing the details with you!

Coffee and treats will be provided.

While RSVPs (to aly@visitsunvalley.com) are not required, they’re certainly appreciated (to ensure we have enough treats!).

“Ulysses Cylinders” Exhibit Tour and “Chihuly Short Cuts” Film Screening

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Join The Community Library docents for an afternoon tour of the Ulysses Cylinders, on display in the Library’s foyer through January 10, 2020. The tour will be followed by a screening of Chihuly Short Cuts in the Lecture Hall.

“Ulysses Cylinders” Exhibition and Docent Tour (2:00-3:00 pm)

Inspired by James Joyce’s novel, the Ulysses Cylinders combine the alchemic artistry of Dale Chihuly with painter Seaver Leslie’s pen and ink drawings to create a unique collection of golden glass Cylinders. 

Chihuly’s and Leslie’s love of Ireland and Irish literature inspired an earlier series, Irish Cylinders, over forty years ago. In the summer of 2013, Chihuly and Leslie, together with Flora C. Mace and Joey Kirkpatrick decided to revisit this body of work focusing on Joyce’s Ulysses as the sole inspiration. Working with Leslie’s drawings on paper, artists Mace and Kirkpatrick constructed fragile glass drawings, which Chihuly’ s team amalgamated into individual Cylinders of glass wrapped in gold leaf. By applying Leslie’s adapted drawings to simple cylindrical forms, Chihuly uses the Cylinder as a canvas to create a series of visual portals into the novel.

The exhibit at The Community Library includes 23 cylinders from the set of 45. This is the third exhibition of the Cylinders. They first exhibited at Dublin Castle in June 2014, and then at the Vassar College Thompson Library in 2015.

The Community Library would like to thank the Dale and Leslie Chihuly Foundation and the Chihuly Studio for the loan of this exhibition.

Film Screening in the Lecture Hall: Chihuly Short Cuts (3:00-4:30 pm)

Join us for an afternoon of short films documenting a decade of Dale Chihuly’s personal odyssey. The films serve as an intimate guide of some of his most well-known projects, including “Chihuly Over Venice” and “Chihuly in the Light of Jerusalem,” as well as some of his lesser-known work that will surprise even the most avid followers. From his glass hotshop and others in Finland, Ireland, Mexico, France, Murano and the Hebron, to exhibitions and installations in London, Chicago, and his home state of Washington, Chihuly’s passionate mission to explore and push beyond the boundaries of glass never falters.

The short films average 6 minutes in length. Please drop in to view one, two or many of these incredible short films.

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