Main Library

“Uncharted” with Kim Brown Seely

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Kim Brown Seely and her husband were at a crossroads. With the economy in freefall, their jobs stagnant, and their youngest son moving away to college, the couple decided to face another unknown. They impulsively purchased a too-big sailboat, learned how to sail, and embarked on a 700-nautical-mile voyage through the Inside Passage. Bound for an expanse of untamed wilderness—the stunningly wild Great Bear Rainforest of the Northwest—in search of the elusive white Kermode bear, the couple begin to discover who they are as individuals and as a couple in a pivotal moment in their lives. 

Join us for an evening with Kim Brown Seely, as she shares tales from her new book, UNCHARTED: A Couple’s Epic Empty-Nest Adventure Sailing from One Life to Another. Honest, self-effacing, and full of humor and generosity, this unforgettable memoir is at once a breathtaking adventure tale and a lyrical meditation on the changing nature of love.

 

Kim Brown Seely, a 2016 Lowell Thomas Journalist of the Year, has worked in publishing on both coasts, including as senior editor at Travel + Leisure, contributing editor at National Geographic Adventure, and travel editor at Microsoft and Amazon. Her writing has also appeared in Outside, National Geographic Traveler, Sunset, Coastal Living, and Virtuoso Life.

Special Screening of “Dammed to Extinction”

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Join us for a special screening of the documentary Dammed to Extinction, a film by Peterson Hawley Productions.

For eons, a one-of-a-kind population of killer whales has hunted chinook salmon along the Pacific Coast of the United States. For the last 40 years, renowned whale scientist Ken Balcomb has closely observed them. He’s familiar with a deadly pattern, as salmon numbers plummet, orcas starve.

The orcas need roughly a million salmon a year, where to find a million fish? The solution, says Balcomb, is getting rid of four fish-killing dams 500 miles away on the largest tributary to what once was the largest chinook producing river on earth.

Join us for this film screening featuring a talkback session with the film’s producers, Steven Hawley and Michael Peterson.

This screening is presented in collaboration with Advocates for the West, a Boise-based nonprofit environmental law firm whose mission is to win for the West’s natural treasures and wildlife.

Voyaging from Extinction to Renaissance with Nainoa Thompson

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Join us for an evening with Nainoa Thompson, the explorer, environmentalist, master navigator, cultural revivalist, educator, and storyteller who  has led the rediscovery and revival of the ancient Polynesian art of navigation. Through his voyaging, teaching and engagement, he has opened a global, multi-generational dialogue on the importance of sustaining ocean resources and maritime heritage. Nainoa has dedicated his life to exploring the ocean, maintaining the health of the planet and ensuring that the ancient marine heritage and culture of Polynesia remain vibrant into the future.

Thompson is the first Native Hawaiian in 600 years to practice the ancient Polynesian art of navigation: long-distance open-ocean voyaging on a traditional double-hulled canoe without the aid of modern instruments. His work has led to a renewed understanding and revival of traditional voyaging arts lost for centuries due to the disappearance of such travel methods and the colonization and Westernization of the Polynesian archipelagoes.

Currently the president of the Polynesian Voyaging Society (PVS), a non-profit research and educational organization, Thompson recently completed a four-year voyage around the world on the Hōkūleʻ a , a traditional, double-hulled voyaging canoe. Through these travels, Thompson and his crew engaged with thousands of people, including world leaders to highlight the importance of ocean resources, cultural legacies and protection of these critical places in the future.

A Native Hawaiian, Thompson’s impact reaches beyond voyaging. The non-instrument navigation system Nainoa developed – blending traditional principles and modern scientific knowledge – is taught in schools throughout Hawai’i and the Pacific. This shared knowledge and his broader work with the next generation of ocean stewards is done with a hope that they will protect and continue the connection between the ocean past and future.

This presentation will be live streamed and recorded for later viewing on our LIVESTREAM page.

“Lifestyles of the Richard and Family” Play Reading with Company of Fools

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David values a full-time job and a gym membership, and is having an affair with Clare. Maree prefers to do her shopping online and has a drinking problem. Jimmy has just returned from “the other side.” And Sarah is a teen goth who likes welding. The story starts in a living room and ends in the deepest reaches of the black hole that is the internet.

This poetically absurd modern drama takes our most familiar truths and our most popular aspirations to a level of strangeness beyond comprehension – but is it a point of no return? Playwright Roslyn Helper partnered with a predictive text AI program to create a theatrical “algorithm” that asks us to consider the increasing role that AI plays, and will play, in our cultural lives. The performance will be followed by a discussion on the future of AI and cultural expression.

Written by Roslyn Helper in collaboration with SwiftKey Note
Directed by Jana Arnold

Click here to RESERVE YOUR SEAT!

This play reading is presented by Company of Fools as part of its 2019/2020 series. This is event is FREE, with a suggested donation of $10.

Sheep Ranching Q&A with Henry Etcheverry & Friends

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Join fellow patrons of the 23rd Annual Trailing of the Sheep Festival for the presentation: Sheep Ranching Questions & Answers with Henry Etcheverry, Laird Noh & Ranching Friends.

This free event is on Friday, October 11 from 2:30 pm – 4:00 pm at The Community Library in Ketchum. This is a wonderful opportunity to hear these ranchers’ personal and family stories, ask questions and get answers from those in the know!

Visit Trailing of the Sheep Festival for more information.

“Church of the Open Sky” with Nat Young

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What makes for a surfing life? With a blaze of groundbreaking performances and a swag of titles claimed from all over the world to his name, Australian world champion surfer Nat Young might know. His seventieth birthday inspired some reflection on exactly that, and on the waves and characters that have marked his remarkable life – Miki Dora and Midget Farrelly to name a few.

But surfing for Nat Young – and so many like-minded surfers – has never been about winning, never been about the sport. It’s a calling, an endless quest, a philosophy, a religion. Most of all, surfing is a way of life that has underpinned his other identities as board shaper, film producer, writer, raconteur, conservationist, activist, pilot, husband, and father.

Join us for a presentation on Nat Young’s new book, Church of the Open Sky, which explores what it means to be a surfer and gathers true stories of Nat’s surfing life – and the friends, foes and heroes he’s met along the way.

Books will be available for sale and signing, courtesy of Chapter One Bookstore.

 

Nat Young is a World Champion Australian surfer and author who grew up in the small coastal suburb of Collaroy. He was runner-up in the Australian Junior Championship in 1966, won three Australian titles in 1966, 1967 and 1969, won the Bells Beach Surf Classic four times, and was named World Champion in 1966 and again in 1970. He is celebrated for pioneering the shortboard revolution in surfing. He has appeared in a number of surf movies, including the iconic Endless Summer, and produced two documentaries of his own: Fall Line and The History of Australian Surfing. His books include Nat’s Nat and That’s That, The Complete History of Surfing, Surfing Fundamentals and Surf Rage. He divides his time between the North Coast of New South Wales and Sun Valley, and he still enjoys paddling out to a catch a wave every chance he gets.

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