Science Time teaches children about nature, animals and their habitats, and the natural world. Science Time is geared toward pre-school age children and is every Tuesday from 11:00 am to noon.
Story Time YOGA with Heather Miller
Join Yoga instructor Heather Miller for Yoga Story Time for kids and their parents. Yoga Story Time includes yoga poses, stories, and a craft to follow.
Libraries Rock! Opening Pizza Celebration
Our Summer Reading Program is under way. Come register for summer reading in The Children’s Library between 11:00 am and 4:00 pm and enjoy a slice of pizza (while supplies last). Then read all summer long and log your minutes to enter to win some great prizes: a bike, a $100 Toy Store Gift Card, or an Amazon Fire.
“Oceans Ventured: Winning the Cold War at Sea” by John Lehman
In partnership with the Sun Valley Center for the Arts.
Free but pre-registration recommended through The Center to reserve your seat.
In his new book, OCEANS VENTURED: Winning the Cold War at Sea, former United States Secretary of the Navy John Lehman provides readers with the ultimate insider’s perspective on America’s Cold War struggles on the high seas. Lehman’s position as one of the chief architects and leaders of the navy’s Cold War resurgence gave him unprecedented access and unparalleled insight into the personalities, theories, and command decisions that helped America win the Cold War. John Lehman, a former U.S. Navy aviator, served as United States secretary of the navy from 1981 to 1987. From 2003 to 2004, he was a member of the 9/11 Commission. Join us for a lecture discussing the tensions and trails of the Cold War. A book signing will follow the lecture.
“Gay Rodeo and Masculinity in Reagan’s America” by Rebecca Scofield
The International Gay Rodeo Association was founded in 1985 at the height of a conservative political realignment, an emerging AIDS epidemic, and a national crisis in masculinity. Navigating tense debates about what it meant to be a man in Reagan’s America, gay cowboys pushed back on the notion that gay culture was both inherently urban and effeminate. Investing in hypermasculinity, however, also potentially excluded women and effeminate men from this supposedly inclusive space. Focusing on surging popularity of gay rodeo in the 1980s and 1990s, this lecture analyzes the growing internal debates among gay rodeoers about the performance of gender and the performance of the US West.
Dr. Rebecca Scofield earned her PhD in American Studies from Harvard University in 2015. Originally from Emmett, Idaho, she is happy to now serve as Assistant Professor of American History at the University of Idaho. Her research focuses on the history of gender and sexuality, with a focus on popular culture and the American West. She has published on Dolly Parton, the figure of the urban cowboy, and her current book project–tentatively titled Outriders: Rodeo at the Fringes of the American West–analyzes rodeo as a significant cultural performance for marginalized groups over the twentieth century. Her Gay Rodeo Oral History Project received a University of Idaho Center for Digital Inquiry and Learning Fellowship for Fall 2018. This award will provide time and technical support as she seeks to create an online curated exhibit of gay rodeoers’ experiences and reflections.
A Reading by Michael Branch
Mike Branch is a writer, humorist, environmentalist, father, and desert rat who lives with his wife and two young daughters at 6,000 feet in the remote western Great Basin Desert. His work includes eight published books, one of which is the Pulitzer Prize-nominated John Muir’s Last Journey: South to the Amazon and East to Africa (Island Press). He has three recent books: Raising Wild: Dispatches from a Home in the Wilderness (Shambhala / Roost Books, 2016), Rants from the Hill: On Packrats, Bobcats, Wildfires, Curmudgeons, a Drunken Mary Kay Lady, and Other Encounters with the Wild in the High Desert (Shambhala / Roost Books, 2017), and ‘The Best Read Naturalist’: Nature Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson (co-edited with Clinton Mohs, University of Virginia Press, 2017).
He has published more than 200 essays, articles, and reviews, and has given more than 300 invited lectures, readings, and workshops. His creative nonfiction includes pieces that have received Honorable Mention for the Pushcart Prize and been recognized as Notable Essays in The Best American Essays (three times), The Best Creative Nonfiction, The Best American Science and Nature Writing, and The Best American Non-required Reading (a humor anthology). His essays have appeared in magazines including Utne Reader, Orion, Ecotone, Slate, Terrain.org, National Parks, Hawk and Handsaw, Places, Red Rock Review, and Whole Terrain, and have been included in numerous books, including Let There Be Night: Testimony on Behalf of the Dark (Univ. Nevada Press), Trash Animals: The Cultural Perceptions, Biology, and Ecology of Animals in Conflict with Humans (Univ. Minnesota Press), Companions in Wonder: Children and Adults Exploring Nature Together (MIT Press), Wonder and Other Survival Skills (Orion Readers book series), and Best Creative Nonfiction of the South, Volume I: Virginia (Texas Review Press).
Mike’s essay series Rants from the Hill offers a comic view of life and parenting in the spectacular but rugged and remote environment of the high desert. The series consists of sixty-nine 2,000-word essays that were published monthly between July, 2010 and April, 2016 in High Country News online at http://www.hcn.org/. The Rants received more than 100,000 page views, have been widely reprinted, and have been taught in creative writing and/or environmental literature courses at colleges and universities around the country. Many of these short essays have also been professionally produced as podcasts that are available for free on iTunes.
Mike, who is Professor of Literature and Environment at the University of Nevada, Reno, is co-founder and past president of the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment(ASLE), served for sixteen years as the Book Review Editor of ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment, and is a co-founder and series co-editor of the University of Virginia Press book series Under the Sign of Nature: Explorations in Ecocriticism. When he isn’t writing, Mike enjoys activist and stewardship work, native plant gardening, bucking stovewood, playing blues harmonica, sipping sour mash, cursing at baseball on the radio, and walking at least 1,000 miles each year in the hills and canyons surrounding his remote desert home.
