Events by this organizer

The Gunn Memorial Library Stairwell Gallery presents the “Atmospheric Abstractions” Exhibit by Edward Muszala on display from Saturday, March 23rd – Saturday, May 18th, 2024.

Pilot and artist, Edward Muszala, finds inspiration in the sky. “As a pilot I was aware of the constantly changing play of air and light in the atmosphere, the warmth of the sun, the speed of the wind, the water in the clouds” he says. Through the lens of a seasoned aviator, he captures the ever-shifting tapestry of light, color, and temperature in the atmosphere, translating this awe-inspiring spectacle onto canvas with his mastery of oil and encaustic techniques bringing these atmospheric scenes to life, evoking feelings of calm and awe in every brushstroke.

Patricia Mason-Martin says that very often a career in writing is not a direct line, from A to B to C. Patricia will discuss the routes her writing journey has taken, from the freelance commercial copywriting life, creating taglines, ads, brochures, videos, and even features for the LEGO Builders’ Club magazine, to being an author of several nonfiction books: a poetry collection In Venice I Could Sing, and a haiku chapter book, How Fickle is Love. It has been, and remains a grand adventure!

Patricia feels honored to have been appointed The State of Connecticut Beat Poet Laureate 2023 – 2025, and during her presentation, she will read select poems from both In Venice I Could Sing and How Fickle is Love.

Mason-Martin also collaborated on a music/spoken word CD with musician/composer/producer Ogostino Mancini entitled Mancini and Martin, and will play two or three pieces from it. It was a wonderful experience recording it and is a great way to demonstrate the synergy of original music and poetry.
Q&A will follow!

From acclaimed filmmaker Nicole Holofcener comes a sharply observed comedy about a novelist whose longstanding marriage is suddenly upended when she overhears her husband give his honest reaction to her latest book. A film about trust, lies, and the things we say to the people we love most.
R – 1 hr 33

Register here

In April, our Thursday evening book club will discuss the New York Times Bestseller, Lady Tan’s Circle of Women, by Lisa See. Copies of the book are available at the Gunn Memorial Library circulation desk.

According to Confucius, “an educated woman is a worthless woman” but Tan Yunxian—born into an elite family, yet haunted by death, separations, and loneliness—is being raised by her grandparents to be of use. Her grandmother is one of only a handful of female doctors in China, and she teaches Yunxian the pillars of Chinese medicine, the Four Examinations—looking, listening, touching, and asking—something a man can never do with a female patient.

Yunxian learns about women’s illnesses from a young age, many of which relate to childbearing, alongside a young midwife-in-training, Meiling. The two girls find fast friendship, a mutual purpose and vow to be forever friends, sharing in each other’s joys and struggles.
But when Yunxian is sent into an arranged marriage, her mother-in-law forbids her from seeing Meiling and helping the women and girls in the household. Yunxian is to act like a proper wife—embroider bound-foot slippers, recite poetry, give birth to sons, and stay forever within the walls of the family compound, the Garden of Fragrant Delights.

Register here

Children and caregivers are welcome to join Miss Linda on Friday mornings for various engaging activities including stories, songs, games, crafts, and playtime. The sessions revolve around seasonal themes and provide a relaxing and welcoming atmosphere for moms, caregivers, and preschoolers to socialize. Feel free to bring a friend along or make new ones during the session!

Register here

A Teddy Bear Picnic! Bring a favorite cuddly teddy bear, or another stuffed animal, for an indoor “picnic.” They will enjoy old-fashioned field day games like egg and spoon races, hopscotch, bean bag toss, and parachute. Bear-themed treats and lemonade will be available. Our activities will be based on the beloved children’s book, We’re Going on a Bear Hunt, and will also include sensory play that will have you using all your senses to learn new things.

Based on a true story, this heartfelt, underdog comedy follows the American Samoa soccer team, infamous for their brutal 31-0 FIFA loss in 2001. With the World Cup qualifiers fast approaching, the team hires down-on-his-luck, maverick coach Thomas Rongen (Michael Fassbender), hoping he will turn the world’s worst soccer team into winners.
PG 13 – 1 hr 44

Register here

The Gunn Memorial Library Stairwell Gallery presents the “Atmospheric Abstractions” Exhibit by Edward Muszala on display from Saturday, March 23rd – Saturday, May 18th, 2024.

Pilot and artist, Edward Muszala, finds inspiration in the sky. “As a pilot I was aware of the constantly changing play of air and light in the atmosphere, the warmth of the sun, the speed of the wind, the water in the clouds” he says. Through the lens of a seasoned aviator, he captures the ever-shifting tapestry of light, color, and temperature in the atmosphere, translating this awe-inspiring spectacle onto canvas with his mastery of oil and encaustic techniques bringing these atmospheric scenes to life, evoking feelings of calm and awe in every brushstroke.

Advocacy services for assisting elderly with the complexities of aging

This program is led by by Art Mulligan and Sara Lynn Leavenworth of Senior Advocacy Services and Jade LaBella of Berkshire Hathaway. This group of specialists has united to assist you and your family in gracefully navigating the aging journey with dignity. The process can be overwhelming and intimidating, but the team is dedicated to providing guidance and support along the way.

The team will talk with you about how to plan for your later years, short and long-term. They will also provide information to guide your decision about whether to age in place or sell your home and choose a senior living community that is right for your lifestyle needs. They will also discuss navigating the complexities of our healthcare system and insurance coverages and how to partner with financial and legal advisors as well as a Seniors Real Estate Specialist® to answer your questions and provide you with information based on their collective experience.

Register here

Children and caregivers are welcome to join Miss Linda on Friday mornings for various engaging activities including stories, songs, games, crafts, and playtime. The sessions revolve around seasonal themes and provide a relaxing and welcoming atmosphere for moms, caregivers, and preschoolers to socialize. Feel free to bring a friend along or make new ones during the session!

Register here

Join us at the Gunn Memorial Library as we will be showing two powerful movies for our May Monday matinees.

About The Color Purple: A story of love and resilience, “The Color Purple” is a decades-spanning tale of one woman’s journey to independence. Celie faces many hardships in her life, but ultimately finds extraordinary strength and hope in the unbreakable bonds of sisterhood.
PG 13 – 2H 20

Register here

Children and caregivers are welcome to join Miss Linda on Friday mornings for various engaging activities including stories, songs, games, crafts, and playtime. The sessions revolve around seasonal themes and provide a relaxing and welcoming atmosphere for moms, caregivers, and preschoolers to socialize. Feel free to bring a friend along or make new ones during the session!

Register here

Up for our Friday book discussion in May is The Island of Missing Trees by Elif Shafak.

Two teenagers, a Greek Cypriot, and a Turkish Cypriot, meet at a taverna on the island they both call home. In the taverna, hidden beneath garlands of garlic, chili peppers, and creeping honeysuckle, Kostas and Defne grow in their forbidden love for each other. A fig tree stretches through a cavity in the roof, and this tree bears witness to their hushed, happy meetings and eventually, to their silent, surreptitious departures. The tree is there when war breaks out, when the capital is reduced to ashes and rubble, and when the teenagers vanish. Decades later, Kostas returns. He is a botanist looking for native species, but really, he’s searching for lost love.

Years later a Ficus carica grows in the back garden of a house in London where Ada Kazantzakis lives. This tree is her only connection to an island she has never visited— her only connection to her family’s troubled history and her complex identity as she seeks to untangle years of secrets to find her place in the world.

A moving, beautifully written, and delicately constructed story of love, division, transcendence, history, and eco-consciousness, The Island of Missing Trees is Elif Shafak’s best work yet.

Register here

The Gunn Junior Library welcomes back local artist Marisabel Artieda for a special Mommy & Me Art Program!

In this artistic program, mothers and caregivers will learn to draw and paint tulips on canvas panels, while children will enjoy painting ceramic fruits. Join us for a delightful experience! This program is best suited for children aged 5 years and older.

About Marisabel Artiega: Marisabel comes from Lima, Peru, and developed a passion for painting early on, studied art at the Institute of the Andes, and furthered her skills at the Washington Art Association. She merged her love for art with teaching children, finding fulfillment in creating art and nurturing young minds.

This program is free and open to the public. Space is limited.

Register here

In her collection of essays, Karen Chase weaves together threads from one single contemporary life and recounts how that life collides with history. As a girl with polio, a Jewish woman, poet, writer, and painter, the author is an outsider as are most of the characters in these pages – undercover cops, poets, a gay couple in 1500s India, bear poachers, psychiatric patients, even a president. Each of these characters is one tiny dot in the enormous flow of humans from the beginning until now. Each life is equally a story that adds to the human story, to history.

What binds the characters all together is her distinct voice, the startling directness, immediacy, and intensity of her writing, and her fearlessness to go wherever her interests and imagination take her. Yet there are no easy conclusions or phony epiphanies here, no designs on the reader, but instead many surprises. Chase prizes authenticity and has it in spades.

About the author:

Karen Chase is the author of two collections of poems, Kazimierz Square and BEAR, as well as Jamali Kamali, a book-length homoerotic poem that takes place in Mughal India. Her award-winning book Land of Stone, tells the story of her work with a silent young man in a psychiatric hospital where she was the hospital poet. Her childhood bout with polio sparked her memoir Polio Boulevard, as well as FDR on His Houseboat: The Larooco Log, 1924-1926. She and her husband live in western Massachusetts.
Visit her online at www.karenchase.com

Register here

The Gunn Memorial Library in collaboration with The Hickory Stick Bookshop presents an author talk with Karen Chase, “History is Embarrassing.”

In her collection of essays, Karen Chase weaves together threads from one single contemporary life and recounts how that life collides with history. As a girl with polio, a Jewish woman, poet, writer, and painter, the author is an outsider as are most of the characters in these pages – undercover cops, poets, a gay couple in 1500s India, bear poachers, psychiatric patients, even a president. Each of these characters is one tiny dot in the enormous flow of humans from the beginning until now. Each life is equally a story that adds to the human story, to history.

What binds the characters all together is her distinct voice, the startling directness, immediacy, and intensity of her writing, and her fearlessness to go wherever her interests and imagination take her. Yet there are no easy conclusions or phony epiphanies here, no designs on the reader, but instead many surprises. Chase prizes authenticity and has it in spades.

Register here

About the author: Karen Chase is the author of two collections of poems, Kazimierz Square and BEAR, as well as Jamali Kamali, a book-length homoerotic poem that takes place in Mughal India. Her award-winning book Land of Stone, tells the story of her work with a silent young man in a psychiatric hospital where she was the hospital poet. Her childhood bout with polio sparked her memoir Polio Boulevard, as well as FDR on His Houseboat: The Larooco Log, 1924-1926. She and her husband live in western Massachusetts. Visit her online at www.karenchase.com.

Children and caregivers are welcome to join Miss Linda on Friday mornings for various engaging activities including stories, songs, games, crafts, and playtime. The sessions revolve around seasonal themes and provide a relaxing and welcoming atmosphere for moms, caregivers, and preschoolers to socialize. Feel free to bring a friend along or make new ones during the session!

Register here

The Gunn Memorial Library Stairwell Gallery presents the “Atmospheric Abstractions” Exhibit by Edward Muszala on display from Saturday, March 23rd – Saturday, May 18th, 2024.

Pilot and artist, Edward Muszala, finds inspiration in the sky. “As a pilot I was aware of the constantly changing play of air and light in the atmosphere, the warmth of the sun, the speed of the wind, the water in the clouds” he says. Through the lens of a seasoned aviator, he captures the ever-shifting tapestry of light, color, and temperature in the atmosphere, translating this awe-inspiring spectacle onto canvas with his mastery of oil and encaustic techniques bringing these atmospheric scenes to life, evoking feelings of calm and awe in every brushstroke.

Join us at the Gunn Memorial Library as we will be showing two powerful movies for our May Monday matinees.

About Hacksaw Ridge: The amazing true life story of Desmond Doss, the first conscientious objector ever to be awarded the Medal of Honor. A 7th Day Adventist who believed WWII was a just cause – even though killing was not- Doss was the only American soldier to serve on the front lines without a weapon and single-handedly saved the lives of 75 men.
R – 2H 19

Register here

The Thursday evening book club at the Gunn Memorial Library will discuss the 2017 award-winning book, Small Great Things by Jodi Picoult. Copies of the book will be available at the library’s circulation desk.

Ruth Jefferson is a labor and delivery nurse at a Connecticut hospital with more than 20 years experience. During her shift, Ruth begins a routine checkup on a newborn, only to be told a few minutes later that she’s been reassigned to another patient. The parents are white supremacists and don’t want Ruth, who is African American, to touch their child. The hospital complies with their request, but the next day, the baby goes into cardiac distress while Ruth is alone in the nursery. Does she obey orders or does she intervene?
Ruth hesitates before performing CPR and, as a result, is charged with a serious crime. Kennedy McQuarrie, a white public defender, takes her case but gives unexpected advice: Kennedy insists that mentioning race in the courtroom is not a winning strategy. Conflicted by Kennedy’s counsel, Ruth tries to keep life as normal as possible for her family – especially her teenage son – as the case becomes a media sensation. As the trial moves forward, Ruth and Kennedy must gain each other’s trust, and come to see that what they’ve been taught their whole lives about others – and themselves – might be wrong.

With incredible empathy, intelligence, and candor, Jodi Picoult tackles race, privilege, prejudice, justice, and compassion – and doesn’t offer easy answers. Small Great Things is a remarkable achievement from a writer at the top of her game.

Register here

Children and caregivers are welcome to join Miss Linda on Friday mornings for various engaging activities including stories, songs, games, crafts, and playtime. The sessions revolve around seasonal themes and provide a relaxing and welcoming atmosphere for moms, caregivers, and preschoolers to socialize. Feel free to bring a friend along or make new ones during the session!

Register here

Children and caregivers are welcome to join Miss Linda on Friday mornings for various engaging activities including stories, songs, games, crafts, and playtime. The sessions revolve around seasonal themes and provide a relaxing and welcoming atmosphere for moms, caregivers, and preschoolers to socialize. Feel free to bring a friend along or make new ones during the session!

Register here

Save the date for Gunn Memorial’s annual spring fundraiser. Kick off the evening with cocktails at the library from 5:30-7:00 PM. Then head to a private dinner in one of the homes of our gracious hosts with engaging conversation and the company of a 2024 Library Luminary. Mark your calendar – more information to come!