Upcoming Events!

Previous Events!
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Annual Meeting,
Richie Davis Reading, and
Ice Cream Social!

When:  Saturday, June 18
             2–4 p.m.



Where:  New Salem Public
              Library
              23 S. Main Street,
              New Salem

We’ll be outside, but if it rains, we’ll move inside, so please bring a mask.




Join the Friends for our annual meeting (members can vote for the budget and board members!), which will be blissfully short.

Then long-time Greenfield Recorder journalist Richie Davis will entertain us with a reading from his book Good Will & Ice Cream.

To be followed by, naturally, ice cream!
Richie’s books will be available for
sale, cash or checks only.
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Meet the Candidates April 26 at 7 p.m.
 
                               The New Salem Town Election is May 2
This is your chance to learn where the candidates stand on the issues you care about.
When:      Tuesday, April 26, 7–8 p.m.
Where:     Zoom, streamed live
How:        Sign up at https://tinyurl.com/newsalem2022 to receive the Zoom link. If you  
                 wish to submit questions, sign up by April 25. The Zoom link will be sent out
                 the day of the event to the email you provide.
                
 Who:      Candidates for the May 2 Annual Town Election are:
                Carl Seppala, Selectboard
                 Lynn Layton, Board of Health
                Stacy Senflug, Town Clerk
                Cam Dunbar, Moderator
                David Briand, Assessor
                David Cramer, Planning Board
                Heidi Bohn, Planning Board
                Steven Blinder, School Committee
                Judy Northup-Bennett, Library Trustee  
                Kathy Soule-Regine, Municipal Light Plant

Reading Aloud for Grownups
Tuesday, March 15
7 to 8:30 p.m.

Hugh Mackay and Douglas Turner
There will be a special remembrance of Dorothy Johnson.

Show up or sign up at tinyurl.com/ReadingAloud2022
to receive the link the day of the reading.
(The link will go to everyone who signs up,
whether you decide to show up or Zoom)

Friends' Ciderfest and Raffle
October 9, 2021


Join The Friends of the New Salem Public Library for an evening at New Salem Cider.

$20 Ticket Includes:
  • Tasting of four different hard ciders
  • One pint of a glass cider of your choice (non-alcoholic sweet cider also available)
  • 30 minute talk by cider maker Wiliam Grote
  • A small plate of hors d'oeuvres
Ticket price is per person.

Raffle tickets for two baskets full of local products will also be available for purchase $1 each or 6 for $5 at the event. Raffle baskets will also be on display at the library one week before the event with tickets available to purchase (cash only).
Additional glasses of hard cider and pretzels will be available for purchase. Non-alcoholic sweet cider will also be available.
Rain date is Saturday, October 16. Guests will be notified via email by midday in event of heavy rain.

While the event will be held outdoors, New Salem Cider requires masks to be worn at the barn.

                   ANNUAL MEETING


 
You are cordially invited to our annual meeting on Saturday, June 26, at 10 a.m. via Zoom. While only active Friends members can vote, all are welcome to join us! Sign up for the Zoom link at https://tinyurl.com/friendsannual2021.

We have two items of business—voting in board members and accepting the fiscal-year 2022/2023 budget. Below is the list of board members to be voted on and the budget.

Marny Ashburne
Betsy Bergantino
Jo Boskind
Anna Channing
Lisa Finestone
George Perides
Karen Stevens
Anan Zurba


After the votes, we will hold our regular board meeting, and you are welcome to stay and join us. We are excited to take the momentum we’ve gathered during the pandemic for even more exciting events and ideas to help support our favorite library! We welcome new board members, so if you are curious, come check us out (you don’t even have to put your video on).

We look forward to seeing you.

About Our Guest Authors
As an author, Sally Bellerose loves to mess with rhythm, rhyme, and awkward emotion, and she is drawn to humor and transcendence. She was awarded a Creative Writing Fellowship from the NEA. Excerpts from her novels have been published in Sinister Wisdom, The Sun, The Best of Writers at Work, Cutthroat, Quarterly West, and won the Tennessee Williams Saints and Sinners Award, the Rick De Marinis Award, the Writers at Work Award, and a Barbara Deming Award.  She writes about class, sex, sexuality, gender, illness, absurdity, and lately, growing old. She is the award-winning author of The Girls Club.
 
Combining the pathos and social significance of Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle-stop Café and the humor of The Golden Girls with a cast of diverse characters worthy of the musical Rent, Sally’s newest novel, Fishwives, chronicles a lifetime through the eyes of two old women behaving badly. A simple trip to the dump by 89-year-old Regina and 90-year-old Jackie triggers memories of their decades’ long life—together and apart—at the intersection of historic cultural and political change. They met in 1955, an era when women were rounded up and jailed simply for dancing together or dressing like a man. Through police raids, an epiphany of love, infidelity, lives on the run from intolerant landlords, Regina and Jackie, two sensual, loving, and flawed beings, struggle with the harsh realities of life, including poverty, which Jackie calls “that fishwife who gets louder and meaner in old age.”
Find Fishwives at https://www.bywaterbooks.com/products/fishwives-by-sally-bellerose
 
Susan Stinson (susanstinson.net) is the author of four novels, including Spider in a Tree and Martha Moody, and Belly Songs, a collection of poetry and lyric essays. She was the Writer in Residence at Forbes Library for five years. Her work has appeared in Poets & Writers, The Kenyon Review, The Seneca Review, Curve, Lambda Literary Review, and The Women's Review of Books. She has taught at Amherst College, been awarded the Lambda Literary Foundation's Outstanding Mid-Career Novelist Prize, and has received a number of fellowships. An editor and writing coach, she was born in Texas, raised in Colorado, and now lives in Northampton.
 
Originally published in 1995, Martha Moody was recently reissued by Small Beer Press. With good reason. At once a love story and a lush comic masterpiece, Martha Moody is a speculative western which embraces the ordinary and gritty details—as well as the magic—of women’s lives in the Old West. “Stinson has invented substantial woman heroes who have agency and imaginations and she’s placed them into a historical novel in ways we had not seen before.  . . . But the tale of Martha Moody is just part of this novel’s pleasure. Stinson’s language is joyful and buoyant. Her frame of reference includes liberal doses of Shakespeare, the bible, and Zane Grey, all of which make the novel such a complex and wonderful gift. Read and enjoy— preferably with a cup of tea and a luxuriously buttered biscuit nearby!” —Judith Katz, Lambda Literary
Find Martha Moody and Susan’s other books at https://www.bookmoonbooks.com/books-susan-stinson

The 2021 Season of Reading Aloud for Grownups

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Join us on Zoom for an evening of short stories
read with expression and delight.

Thursday, January 21, at 7 p.m.
Dee Waterman and Andy Lichtenberg

Thursday, March 18, at 7p.m.
Mira Bartók and Lisa Finestone
(No snow dates needed!)

REGISTER HERE to receive the Zoom link the day of the reading.

Donations at nsfriendsoflibrary.weebly.com benefit the 
Friends of the New Salem Public Library.

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Join the Friends of the New Salem Public Library and Nalini’s Kitchen at the Quabbin Harvest Food Co-Op for a free, live cooking event on Zoom. Watch, ask questions, and learn how to make sambar, a South Indian lentil and vegetable stew. If you would like to cook along with Nalini (or watch and try it later), a “Friends of the New Salem Library Special Spice Pack” will be available at Quabbin Harvest (12 North Main Street, Orange) until February 25 for just $10. The pack will include enough spices for one meal and the recipe. All registrants will receive the recipe before the day of the show. Then join us on Zoom!
Due to the corona virus pandemic we have limited our activities to online events. 
​While the board is meeting regularly, we don't plan any in person events this year. 
We will keep you posted, when we resume in person activities.