Culture

PROLOGUE

At the beginning of the 19th century, the Village was considered the northern extreme of the city. By the time of the Civil War, stables on Christopher Street rented horse carriages for city folk to get away from it all, driving into the countryside above 11th Street. Free from the constraints of city life, Villagers thrived on their rural feeling of independence. Thomas Paine chose to live in a wood frame ‘country house’ at Bleecker and Christopher Streets rather than the congested lower Manhattan.

In 1810, when architect John Randel was assigned to lay out the expanding city streets in grid formation, Villagers resisted his gridiron plans in favor of the quaint, narrow, odd and disjointed layout of streets that infused this colorful neighborhood so unique to the city.

Award-winning French photojournalist Lionel Delevingne discusses “To the Village Square: From Montague to Fukushima 1975-2014,” his new book of photography at 6pm on Friday, November 7th at Everyone’s Books.

Having witnessed the student riots in France in 1968, Delevingne began photographing non-violent protests around the world. After settling in Montague, Massachusetts, the epicenter of New England activism, Delevingne began photographing the protests of the local power plants, including Vermont Yankee and Seabrook. Earlier this year he traveled to Fukushima, Japan.

In light of his experiences fighting in Iraq, veteran Tyler Boudreau will discuss PTSD and “moral injury” in a talk at Brooks Memorial Library on November 5 at 7:00 pm.

His talk, “The Morally Injured,” is part of the Vermont Humanities Council’s First Wednesdays lecture series and is free and open to the public. The library sponsor for this event is the Brattleboro Retreat. Sponsored by the Vermont Humanities Council. Funded in part by the Friends of Brooks Memorial Library; the Vermont Department of Libraries; and the Institute of Museum and Library Services. The event is free and open to the public. 

Boudreau served twelve years in the Marine Corps infantry, deployed to Iraq in 2004, and is the author of Packing Inferno: The Unmaking of a Marine. Boudreau told Martha Bebinger of WBUR in an interview,”We were always getting shelled, constant rocket and mortar attacks,” Boudreau says. “An IED, the roadside bomb, blew up right next to my vehicle and I was involved in some firefight that was pretty, you know, pretty intense.”

The Friends of Brooks Memorial Library are seeking donations of “like new” and good condition hardback and paperback books for their Holiday Book Sale to be held on Friday, December 5 and Saturday, December 6.

If you have books that are in good condition and that you are willing to donate to the Library please contact Therese Marcy at 254-5290 x 106. 

Proceeds from the Holiday Book Sale will go to support the purchase of books, materials and equipment for the Library and the Children’s Room.