The big event this weekend is the Authors and Artists Virtual Festival 2021: Honoring Nature at the Greenfield Public Library! It runs from Saturday at 11AM until Sunday at 11AM!
The 2nd annual Authors and Artists Festival offers two days of virtual author presentations and related programming exploring the theme “Honoring Nature” on Saturday, February 27 and Sunday, February 28. For more information about the festival and to get the Zoom link, visit: https://authorsandartistsfestival.wordpress.com/
This event, cosponsored by the Greenfield Public Library through the generosity of the Friends of the Greenfield Public Library, is free and open to the public.
Are you in need of help of any sort? Speak with Mass Support! They’re here to help, and they’re doing a lot of stuff virtually this year. You can also just get in touch via MASSSUPPORT@RIVERSIDECC.ORG or 888-215-4920.
Miss the movies? Watch Images Cinema online! Or watch Amherst Cinema online!
You can order Tony DiTerlizzi signed books here from Odyssey Bookshop!
Buy comics from amazing local retailers Comics N’ More! They’re great!
You can join up with the Westfield Athenaeum Monthly Reading Challenge:
Sign up at https://westath.beanstack.org/ to join our Monthly Reading Challenges, running from September 2020 to June 2021. Each month, read a book for a new challenge and then join one or more of our Reader’s Chats to discuss the book you’ve read with other readers on the fourth Tuesdays of every month. Not sure what to read? Check our Facebook page for a themed #shelfiesunday video and Beanstack for book lists for applicable challenges. The challenge and book clubs are for all ages.
Monday from 4PM -5PM kids can attend Hero Kids! Contact Theresa Boulrice at (413) 568-7833 or tboulrice@westath.org to register!
Calling young adventurers! Are you ready to save villages, defeat monsters, and find treasure? Join us virtually to play Hero Kids, a fantasy role playing game, where you get to be the heroes and save the day. Our quest is on fourth Monday of each month and begins at 4:00PM.
Monday from 8PM to 10PM you can see the Virtual Far Out Film Discussion via Zoom about Mauvais Sang!
Far Out Film Discussion will have a zoom meeting to talk about the 1986 film Mauvais Sang by French filmmaker Leos Carax. The trailer can be viewed here – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_nJz2KTKIk. It can be found online at kanopy – https://boston.kanopy.com/product/mauvais-sang. To virtually attend this discussion, click the link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87523942049
Tuesday from 6:30PM – 7:30PM Palmer Public Library will be hosting a Virtual Discussion with author E. Dolores Johnson. Register to join the discussion here!
E. Dolores Johnson grew up in Buffalo, NY, the daughter of a white mother and an African American father who married 25 years before the famous Supreme Court Loving decision that overturned laws against race mixing. After earning degrees from Howard University and Harvard Business School and starting a career in business, she began a search to understand her family’s history and found the white half of the story missing. Say I’m Dead unwinds her family’s story and shows the secrets and transformation they experienced living as mixed race in America. Johnson identifies her family history in the larger American racial story, bringing readers to the present day. Now her African American daughter can do what her white grandmother couldn’t: marry across the color line without fear. Don’t miss hearing about this remarkable book, which received a starred review from the American Library Association and won the 2020 Outstanding Literary Award from the National Association of Black Journalists.
Tuesday from 6:30PM – 7:30PM you can talk to fellow book-lovers at the Westfield athenaeum Reader’s Chat! Register by contacting ghohmeyer@westath.org!
Reader’s Chats occur on the fourth Tuesday of every month at 6:30PM. These casual book clubs meet to discuss books tied into that month’s Beanstack challenge. Sign up for the challenge at http://www.westath.beanstack.org. Register for your chosen Reader’s Chat on EventKeeper. FEBRUARY’S CHALLENGE: Read a book by an African-American author! These meetings will take place on Zoom. Registration required. This event is all ages.
Tuesday from 7PM – 8PM you can attend the Mystery Book Discussion about The Awkward Squad by Sophie Henaff. You can join thee Zoom Meeting
https://zoom.us/j/98217285052?pwd=dURwSXl2dGtYRmJPMm1yMHAzNVFCUT09. Meeting ID: 982 1728 5052. Passcode: 956244
Suspended from her job as a promising police officer for firing “one bullet too many”, Anne Capestan is expecting the worst when she is summoned to H.Q. to learn her fate. Instead, she is surprised to be told that she is to head up a new police squad, working on solving old cold cases.
Wednesday from 6:30PM – 7:30PM Historic Deerfield will be presenting “Following the Captives’ Trail – A presentation by Allison Williams Bell”
Just before dawn on February 29, 1704, French forces and their Native allies raided the English village of Deerfield. In the ensuing attack, the raiders killed 47 villagers and left with 112 captives on a harrowing overland journey to Montreal. The raid, and its aftermath, has continued to fascinate and inspire researchers, historians, and the general public for more than 300 years.
In 2003, photographer Allison Williams Bell was curious about what the Deerfield captives’ journey to Canada might have looked like in 1704. Believing that the story of the 300-mile trek is at least as compelling as the account of the raid itself, she traced the route of captives Reverend John and Stephen Williams during the cold, snowy winter that year. Agriculture, hydroelectricity, and development have changed the complexion of the rivers and surrounding landscape along the route through Massachusetts and Vermont. Still, Allison discovered that the wildness, if not the wilderness, remains in the fractured and shifting ice, open water, rapids, gorges, and uneven, unending snow along the way.
Wednesday from 6:30PM – 8:30PM you can attend the Frances Crowe Film Series: You Are Not a Loan. Register here!
Right before COVID-19 disrupted our lives, I assembled a group of activists and academics to discuss the crisis of higher education and what was next for the growing movement to cancel student debt and make college and university tuition free. The 45-minute film “You Are Not a Loan” is a record of this encounter, which took place on February 7, 2020. You can watch the film here: https://theintercept.com/2021/01/25/student-debt-you-are-not-a-loan-film/
Wednesday from 7PM – 8PM why not cook along with the Cookbook Bookclub! Contact Becky Blackburn at 413-568-7833 x 111 or bblackburn@westath.org to register!
Meeting on the last Wednesday of the month at 7:00 over Zoom, this club will focus on cooking healthy meals from a variety of cookbooks. There will be copies reserved and available for pick up. Each cook uses the book throughout the month and gives a review at the meeting, sharing the good, the bad and the worth repeating. There will also be a topic discussed each month, on subjects such as menu planning, techniques, finding ingredients, etc. FEBRUARY selection is COOK90 The 30-Day Plan for Faster, Healthier, Happier Meals by David Tamarkin and the Editiors of Epicurious. Please register to receive your login for this program! Once you register your copy of the month’s cookbook will be placed on hold and available to pickup through Library to Go. You will be notified when it is available! Pickup times are: Monday-Thursday 8:30-6 and Friday 8:30-5:30
Wednesday from 7PM – 8PM you can attend the SciTech Cafe to see Raychelle Burks, professor of chemistry at American University as she presents “All My Favorite Science Teachers Are Undead” and answers the questions: Why horror (not horrible) teachers? What are some science concepts even the shallowest horror movies can get us thinking deeply about? Is Jaws actually a vampire?
Wednesday from 7PM – 9PM you can have a keen time at the Forbes Library Zine Club!
Zoom with Zine Club! Come to a show and tell of zines you’ve been reading or zines you’ve been making! Let’s share ideas, hang out and make art zoom-style! Zoom link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/88448156224?pwd=eTkxUlM1YS91UCsxNi96cGVOd0lsdz09. password – 614664
Wednesday from 7PM – 8PM you can join the folks at Odyssey Books on Crowdcast for a poetry reading by Martín Espada from his new book, Floaters. Espada will also be in conversation with Paul Mariani, former University Professor of Poetry at Boston College. Questions about joining an online event? Email events@odysseybks.com for more info! This event is free and open to the public. To register, please click here.
Floaters takes its title from a term used by certain Border Patrol agents to describe migrants who drown trying to cross over. The title poem responds to the viral photograph of Óscar and Valeria, a Salvadoran father and daughter who drowned in the Río Grande, and allegations posted in the “I’m 10-15” Border Patrol Facebook group that the photo was faked. Espada bears eloquent witness to confrontations with anti-immigrant bigotry as a tenant lawyer years ago, and now sings the praises of Central American adolescents kicking soccer balls over a barbed wire fence in an internment camp founded on that same bigotry. He also knows that times of hate call for poems of love—even in the voice of a cantankerous Galápagos tortoise.
Wednesday from 7:30PM – 8:30PM you can check out the Forbes Writer in Residence Series: Lesléa Newman and Sally Bellerose. Join here: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85688020343?pwd=d1dLM28xaFFUYWFvNnBJeTRMSnZlZz09
Lesléa Newman has created 75 books for readers of all ages including the poetry collections October Mourning: A Song for Matthew Shepard (novel-in-verse); I Carry My Mother and I Wish My Father (companion memoirs-in-verse); and the children’s books Gittel’s Journey: An Ellis Island Story; Sparkle Boy; Heather Has Two Mommies; Welcoming Elijah: A Passover Tale With A Tail; and Ketzel, the Cat Who Composed.
Sally Bellerose (she/her) is a grandmother, gardener, and retired RN. In her writing, Bellerose loves to mess with rhythm, rhyme, and awkward emotion. Sally has always written about about class, sex, illness, aging, and absurdity. Recently, she has been writing about people who live in a residential/institutional setting who have profound intellectual disabilities.
Wednesday from 7PM – 11PM you can hang with the lovely folks from Start Playing Online! They gather at the Discord channel: https://discord.gg/fAM8yJw. Most games are played on Board Game Arena if you want to check it out ahead of time. It’s fun and everyone’s nice!
Thursday from 1PM – 2:30PM you can attend a Lunch and Learn with folks at Westfield Athenaeum about growing your business!
Do you have a side-hustle or are you thinking about one? Do you already have an established business you would like to take online or expand your online presence? We are offering a 90 minute classe with you in mind! Come join us at 1:00pm for a class on how to grow your own business online. Register *HERE* https://events.r20.constantcontact.com/register/eventReg?oeidk=a07ehjqo2od0965282f&oseq=&c=&ch= to recieve your online access. You will receive login two hours before it begins. A recording will also be available for anyone registered.
Thursday from 6:30PM – 8:30PM talk to fellow sci-fi fans about Ursula K. Le Guin’s “The Dispossessed”! You just need to join up here to see the event link!
For our December book discussion we’ll be reading The Dispossessed by Ursula Le Guin, and we’ll meet via Zoom to talk about it on Thursday, February 25. NOTE: There are plenty of print copies available through the C/W Mars library system but be aware that there are also (unlimited, no waitlist) ebook copies through the library on Hoopla (https://www.hoopladigital.com/). If your local library doesn’t subscribe to Hoopla, you can still sign up through your Boston Public Library account. If you don’t have a BPL library card yet, go to https://www.bpl.org/ecard/ to get one. Everyone who lives or works in Massachusetts should be eligible. CLICK HERE ( http://www.meetup.com/4scifi/pages/Sci-fi_book_discussion_group_reading_schedule/ ) for a list of the 2021 book discussion selections!!
Thursday from 7PM – 8:30PM you can check out The Grotesque 10: Amazing Architectural Sculpture from Ten American Colleges & Universities – ONLINE at Jones Library! REGISTER FOR THIS EVENT VIA EMAIL at programs@joneslibrary.org
Armed with only a camera, a sense of humor and a host of frequent flyer miles, Mathew Duman embarked on a “grotesque safari”, traveling to 10 universities around the country to photograph the unique grotesques and gargoyles roosting on their academic buildings. Mathew found that this type of sculpture makes its home within a style of architecture known as Collegiate Gothic which was popular in the 19th and early 20th centuries. He has collected his findings in his book called The Grotesque 10: Amazing Architectural Sculpture from Ten American Colleges and Universities and presents a selection in this illustrated lecture, giving you a taste of the variety of ornament, history and humor these campuses have to offer.
Friday from 1PM – 2PM you can join the Forbes Library Virtual Book/Movie/Podcast chat! Join here: https://meet.jit.si/ForbesLibraryBookChat!
You are cordially invited to the Forbes Library Book Chat on Fridays at 1 pm! Participants may share what they’re reading, watching, and listening to, or just hang out to hear from others! All are welcome.
Saturday at 5PM you can check out the Annual Five College Student Film & Video Festival is coming! Annual Five College Student Film & Video Festival! Check out their Facebook and Instagram pages for more details.
Sunday from 2PM – 3PM the 2021 Winter Lecture Series at Historic Deerfield continues with “Recasting the Vote: How Women of Color Transformed the Suffrage Movement”
Presented by Cathleen Cahill, Pennsylvania State University. Register here!
Looking for neat anime? We’ve been really enjoying Otherside Picnic! It’s kind of a combo of Roadside Picnic and creepypasta horror monster-of-the-week, and it’s generally a fun combo between creepy and funny.
Looking for a cool video game to play? Wide Ocean, Big Jacket was real cute!
THE VALLEY NERD WATCH 