Massachusetts Superior Court Judge Elizabeth Fahey will give a program on Thursday, January 8 at 7:30 pm. After being appointed as an International Judge to serve in the War Crimes Chamber in May 2007, Judge Fahey took an unpaid leave of absence from her job to serve as an International Judge on the State Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina. She served at the State Court in Sarajevo from September 2007-October 2008. Her talk will focus on her experiences serving in the War Crimes Chamber and living for a year in Sarajevo.

Judge Fahey is a graduate of Boston College Law School. She has served as an Associate Justice on the Massachusetts Superior Court since 1999 where she has been responsible for case management and resolution of civil, criminal and equity cases. She participated in several United States State Department Judicial Exchange programs including those in China, Mongolia and Macedonia. As a participant in International Rule of Law Judicial Exchange programs she spent time in France and Cuba. Judge Fahey founded the firm of Pierce, Davis, Fahey and Perritano. She also served as Assistant District Attorney, Middlesex County for six years.

The 2009 Green Decade Coalition Environmental Speaker Series kicks off on Monday, January 12 at 7:00 pm. Charles River Watershed Association’s Executive Director, Bob Zimmerman, will be talking about the EPA and DEP’s new storm water rules for the Charles watershed. The talk is called, Green and Blue: Fixing Our Cities and Towns to Work with the Environment.

The Museum of Bad Art, MOBA, is the world’s leading (and only) museum dedicated to the collection, exhibition and celebration of the worst art. Louise Reilly Sacco, the lovely, Permanent Acting Interim Executive Director of MOBA, will give a talk on Tuesday, January 13 at 7:30 pm. She will speak about how this unusual institution has thrived, explain MOBA’s criteria for acquisitions, display some pieces from the permanent collection and introduce the book Museum of Bad Art: Masterworks. The talk will be followed by a book signing. If you have a piece of art that you think belongs in MOBA, bring it along, it will be considered for the collection.

Louise Reilly Sacco is a founding member of the Museum of Bad Art. She is currently co-host of the Frugal Yankee Radio Hour on WNTN, 1550. For more information about the museum visit http://www.museumofbadart.org/.

Alexander Graham Bell made history on March 10, 1876, when he placed the world’s first telephone call to Thomas Watson. But did he really invent the telephone? Join Seth Shulman, author of The Telephone Gambit: Chasing Alexander Graham Bell’s Secret, for a fascinating author talk that promises to reveal the truth about Alexander Graham Bell and his extraordinary invention on Thursday, January 15 at 7:30. A book signing will follow.

Delving into Bell’s personal notebooks and previously unavailable online evidence, Shulman’s book offers conclusive evidence that the idea for the basic element of the new telephone was stolen from another inventor, Elisha Gray. By uncovering a fascinating series of anomalies in the process by which Bell secured the telephone patent, Shulman has created a story that is overflowing with surprising and eye-opening twists.

A graduate of Harvard University, Seth Shulman has written five books and numerous articles for magazines including, among others, Smithsonian, The Atlantic, and Time, and for newspapers including the Times of London and the Boston Globe.

Join Christopher McIntyre, Ph.D., founder of Green Harbor Financial, Joshua Humphreys, Ph.D., founding director of the Center for Social Philanthropy and David Wood, Ph.D., Director of the Institute for Responsible Investment at the Boston College Center for Corporate Citizenship for a program entitled, Hope and Change: Socially Responsible Investing and Financial Planning Under the Obama Administration. The program will be held on Tuesday, January 20 at 7:30 pm.

The seminar is for people who are interested in learning about the social, environmental and financial benefits of socially responsible investing (SRI). After giving a brief history of the field of SRI there will be a review of current sustainable investing trends and opportunities, and impacts; including how SRI has weathered the current financial crisis. After examining what the immediate future might hold, for example how the Obama presidency might affect SRI, participants will learn how this broad context relates to those who want their investments to reflect their values, and how they might accomplish that within the framework of a financial plan. There will be a Q & A session.

Join the Newton Camera Club on Monday, January 26 at 7:00 pm for a program called, A Journey Through the Great Marsh. Photographer Dorothy Kerper Monnelly will give a visual presentation using large format black and white images from her recent book, Between Land and Sea: the Great Marsh. She will discuss and show examples of her use of light, texture, form and pattern to evoke the feeling of place, and describe her own experience of the Great Marsh.

Dorothy Kerper Monnelly's images are in several U. S. galleries, corporate and private collections, and have been published by numerous conservation groups to support land protection. For more information on her work visit www.dorothykerpermonnelly.com.

Jane Kamensky, author of, The Exchange Artist: a Tale of High-flying Speculation and America’s First Banking Collapse, will give an author talk on Tuesday, January 27 at 7:30 pm. The talk will be followed by a book signing with books provided by New England Mobile Book Fair.

In a study that details the events leading up to the first banking collapse in this country, Kamensky reveals the story of how Andrew Dexter Jr., financial pioneer-turned-confidence man, financed his Exchange Coffee House in Boston by commandeering a string of banks stretching from Boston to Detroit, and then using them to issue millions of dollars in paper money, bills backed by little more than hope. When Dexter’s financial pyramid collapsed in the spring of 1809 he went bust and fled to Canada. The Exchange remained in Boston, a monument to Dexter’s ambition and his equally monumental failure. Much like the recent banker financed and directed sub prime mortgage backed bonds fiasco, the collapse of Dexter's speculative endeavor led to a panic and crash that severely impacted businesses across the country.

Jane Kamensky, earned her Ph.D. in history from Yale University. She is Associate Professor of History at Brandeis University. Her scholarship has been supported by numerous grants from, among others, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities. She serves as a consultant and on-camera expert for documentaries on PBS and The History Channel.

In her new book, The Children in Room E4: American Education on Trial, author Susan Eaton examines the complex relationships between poverty, segregation, racial discrimination and educational policy-making. Eaton relates the story of how she spent four years in a public school in one of the most dangerous cities in the country and reveals that like the one she studied, the schools in our major cities are growing poorer and more segregated every year; far worse today than it was when our nation faced the Brown V. Board of Education trial fifty years ago. Eaton will give an author talk on Thursday, January 29 at 7:30 pm. The talk will be followed by a book signing with books provided by New England Mobile Book Fair.

In a school that the Bush Administration named as a model of urban education, Eaton’s story brings to life the world of elementary age students as they contend with Band-Aid reforms, principals who turn a blind eye and the extreme poverty and isolation of inner-city life. On a hopeful note Eaton also tells the dramatic story of a determined team of civil rights lawyers who are fighting a landmark legal battle, now in its eighteenth year, to end separate and unequal schooling.

Susan Eaton is research director at the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice at Harvard Law School. Her expertise is centered around the causes and cures for unequal opportunity in the United States, especially as it affects children of color. Her writing has appeared in numerous publications including The New York Times, Boston Globe Sunday Magazine and the Nation.