Newton Free Library


December, 2001 / Archives

Gallery & Main Hall Hours Monday to Thursday 9:00 am to 9:00 pm Friday 9:00 am to 6:00 pm Saturday 9:00 am to 5:00 pm Sunday Noon to 5:00 pm Are you interested in exhibiting your artwork at the Library? Please click here for more information.
G A L L E R Y
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SYLVIA BRODSKY’S "RECENT PAINTINGS" "nova mosaic", oil on canvas, 22 x 28 Sylvia Brodsky will present an exhibition of Recent Paintings at the Newton Free Library Gallery December 4 – 30 with an opening reception on Wednesday, December 5, 7:30PM. Brodsky’s vibrant abstract oil paintings express her love of jazz with its energy, spontaneity and infectious rhythms. Much of her work is of urban landscapes, jaunty and colorful as a city street teeming with life. Strong vertical lines, blocks of color and large, juxtaposed, angular shapes convey the height and weight of the buildings. Other works explore the sheer face of the towering Palisade cliffs, a patchwork quilt of a mountain, a simmering "Painter’s Garden" and other subjects through interacting forms and shapes. "The art of painting challenges me to discover new shapes and their relationships," this master painter says. She advises viewers to enjoy her works "for their impact without searching for hidden meanings or messages." Brodsky counts painter Albert Alcalay as the major influence on her artistry, having studied with him for many years at Harvard University’s Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts. A member of the Falmouth Artist Guild, she has won several prizes and shown in many of their juried shows. Other exhibits include those at the Federal Reserve Building in Boston, University Place in Cambridge and many Cambridge Art Association prize shows and juried shows. Brodsky is co-founder of the Harvard Square Art Centre.
M A I N H A L L
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"KALEIDOSCOPE OF NATURE" BY MAXINE TRAINOR "mangrove orange" Maxine Trainor’s "Kaleidoscope of Nature" photography exhibit will be on display in the Main Hall of the Newton Free Library December 4 – 30 with an opening reception, Tuesday, December 4, 7:00PM. Trainor has a unique eye for nature photography. Shooting her underwater images from above, she imbues them with an otherworldly quality. Focusing on a small area, cropped close, and maximizing natural light effects, she creates an abstract image of colorful shapes – a kaleidoscope of nature, as her title suggests. In "Rush" a forceful spray of water becomes a white, textured plume; in another piece, a pattern of wavering light reflected through crystal clear water gives an impressionistic feel to a bed of underwater rocks. Her mangrove series is particularly arresting. Here, "shards of light, filtered through an umbrella of trees, reflecting on a mangrove swamp, result in colorful shapes," she says. The shapes: vertical stumps, pale leaves and brilliant purple and gold patches of light on the swamp floor create a picture that is hard to identify, but rather invites creative interpretation. Trainor has exhibited her work in the Greater Boston area, in Charlotte, North Carolina and on Sanibel Island, Florida. She received an award for placing in the top ten of a national wildlife photography competition. Studies in drawing and watercolor at the DeCordova Museum have enhanced the perspective of her photography. You can email the photographer at: maxt22@mediaone.net

Library groups meet at the Newton Free Library, 330 Homer Street, Newton Centre, unless otherwise noted.
All meetings are free and open to the public.

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African Literatures Group
Led by Anne Serafin, this group explores the rich variety of writings from Africa. The group meets on the third Wednesday of the month at 7:30PM, in Meeting Room A. Meeting Date: December 19: Coming to Birth, a novel by Kenyan writer Marjorie Oludhe MacGoye. For further information, call 617-552-7145.

Children's Book Writers Group
Meetings are usually held on the first Monday or the fourth Wednesday of the month at 7:00PM, in Meeting Room A. This group is for writers who have work in progress. Pre-registration required. Please call Karen Day at 244-4830 for more information. Meeting Dates: Monday, December 3 or this month Tuesday, December 18.

Current Fiction Discussion Group
Meetings are held the first Wednesday of the month, 7:30PM in Meeting Room A. Participants should read works in advance. Group coordinator: Alice Simons. For information, call the Library at 552-7159. Meeting Dates: December 5: Jim Crace, Being Dead and January 2: Alice Hoffman, River King.

Great Books Discussion Group
Meetings are held on the second Tuesday of the month at 7:15PM in Meeting Room A. Members read books from the Great Books Foundation (available at the Library). Meeting Date: December 11: Ecclesiastes from the Bible (from GBF Series 5, Volume 1). For further information, call the Library at 552-7145.

Landscape of Aging
This group has a new focus on reading autobiographies and writing/ discussing 1 – 3 page memoirs. Led by Marilyn Bentov, meetings are held on the second Thursday of the month, 2 – 3:30PM in Meeting Room A. Limited to 15 people. Pre-registration required; call 617-969-8022. Meeting Date: December 13.

Newton Camera Club
Meetings are usually held at 7:30PM on the second and fourth Mondays of the month at the Nonantum Branch Library. Group coordinator: Elisif Brandon: (617) 243-0557. Meeting Date: December 10: Minishows by Members and Techtips.

Playreading
Meetings are held at Newton Corner on the first Tuesday of the month at 7:00PM. Preparation is not necessary. Meeting Date: December 4. For further information, please call the Library at 552-7145 or the branch at 552-7157.

Sequences: Women Tell Our Stories
In this women's workshop, participants read, discuss and write about literature by women. The group meets the second Wednesday of each month from 10 - 11:30AM in Meeting Room A. Leader: Robin Mayer Stein. Meeting Date: December 12. For further information, call 552-7145.

Short Fiction Writing Group
This workshop provides an atmosphere of expert support to polish short fiction. It is geared for published writers as well as those who are actively pursuing publication. Preregistration is required: 617-965-8835. The group meets the first Tuesday of each month, Meeting Room A, 7:00PM. Meeting Date: December 4. Please bring 5 copies of work to the meeting. Coordinator is Halcyon Mancuso.

Short Story Discussion Group
Meetings are held on the second Monday of the month at 7:30PM in Meeting Room A. Group leader is Mary Lanigan. For further information, call 552-7145. Meeting Date: December 10: Anton Chekhov, "Gooseberries" and Eudora Welty "Where is the Voice Coming From?"

All concerts are free and open to the public. For directions to the Library, click here.
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	"SONGS OF THE SEASON" FOLK CONCERT Versatile folk musicians Lorraine and Bennett Hammond will present a joyful holiday concert at the Newton Free Library on Sunday, December 9, 2:00PM. With voice, guitar, banjo, Appalachian dulcimer and Celtic Harp, "Songs of the Season: Familiar and Unfamiliar Music from Diverse Traditions" will incorporate Appalachian and African-American hymns, French and medieval English carols, Hanukah songs and some of the Hammond’s own compositions celebrating the turning of the year. Seating is limited. Lorraine, renowned master of the Appalachian dulcimer, is also an expressive singer, songwriter and teacher. Bennett is a superb finger-style guitarist who, with his wife hosts a Brookline Cablevision show, "Great Acoustics" and performs regularly at coffeehouses and folk festivals throughout the country with extended tours ranging as far as the British Isles. The Boston Globe calls them "a dazzling, witty, eclectic, delightful duo." They can be heard on more than thirty recordings as featured artists, most recently on "Love Has a Life of its Own" and "Hell Up Coal Holler," which features Lorraine with fiddler Gerry Milnes.
photo by Susan Wilson
CLASSICAL GUITARIST SHARON WAYNE Classical guitarist Sharon Wayne will present a concert of Bach, Rodrigo, Albeniz, Dyens, Barrios and others at the Newton Free Library, Sunday, December 16, 2:00PM. With sparkling agility, "this young artist…is one of the most appealing new classical guitarists around" (San Jose Mercury News). First Prize winner of the 1991 ASTA Solo Guitar Competition, she was also a semi-finalist at the Guitar Foundation of America’s International Competition in Buffalo, NY. She has played throughout the U.S. and Japan and was twice invited to perform at the Piccolo Spoleto Festival in Charleston, SC. As a member of the San Francisco Guitar Quartet, she commissioned and performed much new repertoire for guitar. Her music appears on five compact discs including her solo recording "From the Heart" which features works by 20^th century composers. Wayne is a former member of the guitar faculties of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and Santa Clara University.
Cellist Alexei Romanenko Gifted young cellist Alexei Romanenko will perform works by Bach and Kodaly for unaccompanied cello at the Library on Sunday, December 2, 2:00PM. Seating is limited. Romanenko began his performance career at an early age, winning the Far Eastern Competition for Strings in Russia at the age of 12. Many other awards followed: first prize at the international competition Classical Heritage in Moscow in 1997, first prize at the Vienna International Competition in 1999 and winner of the Web Concert Hall International Auditions in 2000 (broadcast on www.webconcerthall.com). He concertized throughout Russia and Western Europe before coming to Boston to study at the New England Conservatory which awarded him an Artist Diploma in 2000. Recent performances include Jordan Hall, the Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C., the Bar Harbor Music Festival and at the Berlin Brandenburg Gates where he played in a cello ensemble conducted by Mstislav Rostropovitch. His performance in February, 2000 with the Chameleon Arts Ensemble in Boston was enthusiastically reviewed in the Boston Globe: "Romanenko’s lamenting harmonics seemed wrung not from steel strings but a single stretched nerve fiber that sang the sadness of the world."
Young Newton Soloist Competition More than a dozen outstanding young Newton musicians have been chosen to compete for the Newton Symphony Orchestra's Henry and Gertrude Lasker Young Soloist Award on Thursday , December 6, 3:30PM at the Library. The judges committee will be headed by NSO Music Director Jeffrey Rink and Gertrude Lasker. The winner will be featured as soloist with the NSO at the orchestra's annual youth concert in February. The competition, where each musician will perform an audition piece, is open to the public.

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NEWTON AUTHOR ARTHUR DIMOND

Newton author Arthur Dimond will speak on his new novel Blurred Images at the Newton Free Library on Monday, December 10, 7:30PM.

Set against the backdrop of a nation still coming to terms with post-war bitterness, Blurred Images follows the story of a man who unwillingly becomes the symbol of a cause for which he never fought. Cornered and terrified during an anti-Vietnam War demonstration in the late 1960s, Jeffrey Stevenson makes a split-second decision that changes his life forever. 25 years later, on the run with a new identity, he discovers his brother is terminally ill and, facing his dark past head-on, begins the long road home. As he makes a tentative re-entry into his former life, he finds the story of his one violent act of self-defense amplified and distorted in the glaring light of a media frenzy.

In his first novel, Dimond, a former journalist and veteran public relations professional, examines the pivotal role a single incident can play in shaping the course of a life and the way those incidents can be interpreted and distorted for public consumption.

Dimond began his career in journalism as a reporter for the Patriot Ledger. After serving in the Peace Corps in Turkey, he pursued a career in public relations working as assistant press secretary to Senator Jacob Javits, as public relations director for a national trade association and as founder and president of his own agency, Dimond Communications Group, in Boston for the past 11 years.

TERRORISM, SECURITY & CIVIL RIGHTS FORUM

The Newton Free Library and the Newton Democratic City Committee will present a forum on A Response to Terrorism at the Library on Thursday, December 6, at 7:00PM. Seating is limited at this free event.

Lieutenant Colonel William D. Kendrick, a National Security Fellow at the Harvard University Kennedy School of Government, will speak on the nature of terrorism in a changed world. Lieutenant Colonel Kevin Riedler, also a National Security Fellow at the Kennedy School, will discuss issues of national safety and security in the wake of the September 11 acts of terrorism against the United States. Newton resident Professor Michael Avery, who teaches Constitutional Law, Individual Rights, Evidence and Scientific Evidence at Suffolk Law School, will address issues of civil rights and civil liberties. The forum will provide an opportunity for the audience to ask questions and to hear from leading experts on issues affecting our present and future.

U.S. Army intelligence officer Kendrick most recently served on the Army staff within the Counterintelligence/ Human Intelligence Directorate of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence. Before that he commanded a strategic counterintelligence battalion headquartered at Fort Meade, MD. His research interests include space control, combating terrorism, technology protection and intelligence operations in complex urban terrain.

Riedler is currently completing strategic studies as part of the Army War College, National Security Fellowship, at the Kennedy School. He spent the last three years as a Congressional Liaison Officer, working from the Pentagon handling day-to-day communications for the Chief of the Army Reserve.

One of the country’s leading civil rights lawyers, Avery was a trial attorney for 28 years. He is president of the Board of the Police Accountability Project of the National Lawyers Guild and co-authored the leading treatise on civil rights claims against the police, "Police Misconduct: Law and Litigation."

"GRIEF AND LOSS AROUND THE HOLIDAYS"

The Newton Free Library will host a program on "Grief and Loss Around the Holidays" on Monday, December 3, 7:30PM. All are welcome.

Social Worker Heath Hightower and Rabbi Karen Landy will discuss helpful and creative ways of coping with loss, stress and uncertainty at this time of year. Music and readings will be included as part of the healing response to grief, anger and sadness. Common issues and concerns will be addressed and questions will be welcome. A list of community resources for spiritual and psychological healing will be available to those who attend.

Hightower, MSW, LICSW, is a social worker at Hospice of the Good Shepherd. Landy is a Spiritual Consultant to Jewish Healing Connections.

This program is sponsored by the JFCS/Jewish Healing Connections, the Hospice of the Good Shepherd, Heritage at Vernon Court and the Library.

ITALIAN CULTURE PROGRAM ON VERDI

The Center for Italian Culture will present a talk on "Verdi: Truth and Theater" by Laura Saunders at the Newton Free Library on Tuesday, December 11, 7:30PM.

Living and writing through some of the most turbulent and exciting times of Italian history, Giuseppe Verdi (1813 – 1901) has become known as a symbol of the Italian unification movement, or Risorgimento. An uneducated peasant boy, Verdi was a musical prodigy who became one of the greatest composers of all time.

How much of what we know of Verdi is true and how much is myth, some of it popularized by Verdi himself? This workshop will explore some of the long-held beliefs about the composer and examine a selection of his works in light of his life and the events of his lifetime.

Excerpts from "Rigoletto" and "Aida" will be heard on recordings with a brief live performance by baritone David Saunders.

"American Crisis:
From Thomas Paine to September 11, 2001"
A National Conversation

"These are times that try men's souls."

Thomas Paine (1737-1809) began his impassioned series of pamphlets "The American Crisis" with these words as he struggled with the issues raised by the Revolutionary War. Now the Great Books Foundation is sponsoring a National Conversation on an excerpt from these writings and its relevance to today's issues. The Library is hosting one of the discussions, led by a Great Books Foundation leader on Sunday, December 2, at Noon in Meeting Room A. Seating is limited and will be available to those who arrive first. There is no pre-registration.

On Wednesday evening, December 5, a panel discussion, moderated by David Brudnoy will take place at Faneuil Hall in Boston. This event will be free and open to the public as well.

The text of the excerpt from "The American Crisis" will be available at the Library Circulation Desk, online at the Foundation's website (www.greatbooks.org) and in the November 30 edition of the Boston Herald. The Boston Herald is the local sponsor of the program. Further information on the program may be found on the Foundation's website listed above and in the Herald. The full text of "The American Crisis" may be found in Paine's collected writings.

A nonprofit educational organization, the Great Books Foundation was started in 1947 to give people of all ages the opportunity to read, discuss and learn from outstanding works of literature. A local chapter of Great Books meets monthly at the Library. For more information on the Great Books Club, click here.

Morning Programs at the Library!

At WABAN the book group will discuss I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith on Wednesday, December 26, 10:30AM. All are welcome to attend either group.

NEWTON CORNER'S book group will discuss Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin (973.42 F85.FA 1964) on Friday, December 28 at 10:30AM. This group meets at Heritage at Vernon Court very near the Newton Corner branch.

Friends' Book Sale

Did you know you can buy books for holiday gift-giving at bargain prices at the Friends' next Book Sale? Come Saturday, December 8, 10:00AM - 3:00PM for the best selection from the thousands of fiction and nonfiction books in all genres for both children and adults. Come Sunday, December 9, Noon - 3:00PM, when all unmarked paperback fiction will be $3.00/grocery bag and marked books will be 1/2 price.

Sales are held at the Auburndale branch of the Library. All proceeds benefit the programs and collection of the Library.

For directions to the Auburndale branch, please click here for directions via Mapquest.com.

Gift Cart Goodies

If you're looking for holiday gifts and stocking stuffers, drop by the Friends' Gift Cart in the lobby of the Main Library. On sale are colorful Library note cards, games, puzzles, space toys, large face playing cards, bookmarks and Friends' aprons, tote bags and mugs. Specially designed pins whose sale benefits the Library's literacy program are also available.

New Assisted Hearing Device for Druker Auditorium Programs

The Library now has available assisted hearing devices to be used for amplified programs in Druker Auditorium. If you would like to use one during a lecture in the auditorium, stop by the Circulation Desk with your Library card and check one out. Then turn the unit on, place the headset on your head and adjust the volume to your preference. Directly after the program, please turn off the headset to save the battery and return it to the Circulation Desk (before closing) so that someone else may borrow it. And please let us know how you like them.