Celebrate Go Green Summer Reading!

Photo: Were you there for the fun with Vic and Sticks and their recycled rhythms? You missed being a recycled pirate with apprentices Marley and Zackery Aldrich.






Don't miss out on any more of the fun and help your community at the same time. It is not to late to sign up for Go Green @ Wheeler Memorial Library. So far 414 hours have been logged by reading club members. This raises $248.00 for the Orange Food Pantry since every minute read earns a penny from the Friends of the Orange Libraries. And there are still 3 great programs coming up: Neighborhood WIldlife Walk with wildlife biologist Trina Moruzzi on Wednesday July 28 at 3:00, Animal Invaders from the Boston Science Museum on Wednesday at 3:30 and 4:30, and the grand finale Make Your Own Sundae Ice Cream Party on August 11 at 6:30 with a drawing for free passes to the Big E.. All these programs are free thanks to help from the Friends of the Orange Libraries, the Division of Massachusetts Wildlife, the Boston Museum of Science, and the Massachusetts Regional Library System. Registration is required for these last 3 events.

Invaders!

Animal Invaders are coming to the Wheeler Memorial Library in Orange on Wednesday, August 4 for a 3:30 and a 4:30 show. The Boston Museum of Science is bringing these creatures as part of their Sharing Spaces program. All animals have a place in our environment and they often occupy the same spaces we do…whether we want them to or not! During this program we will learn how we can all coexist even as we talk about the potential risks and benefits of living in close proximity to animals. Several live examples of the “invaders” will be on hand to observe. This event is free to all thanks to support from the scholarship program of the Museum of Science, Boston but registration is required, 978-544-2495 x103.

Robert Collén on "The Town and the River"

The following comments (by the author) about "The Town and the River" were recently added to our site's Virtual Gallery.  The poem itself is here.




by Robert Collén, July 10, 2010

The poem, “The Town and the River,” grew out of a slideshow I had been presenting to groups in Orange and Athol in the early 1990s. The photographs and commentary focused primarily on the Millers River as the organizing feature of the landscape, and secondarily on the architecture and layout of the town.

A few years later, as I was reviewing the notes, I found myself writing a poem about the town and the river that flows through the center. After innumerable drafts, I read it to Marcia Gagliardi, who immediately suggested that Haleys publish it as a booklet.

Not long after the poem was published, my good friend and next-door neighbor, Ralph Henley, came to the house, holding a large painting he called “Millers River Sunrise.” Cynthia Henley included the painting and the poem in the May 16, 2010 exhibit of her father’s work. Whenever I look at it, I think of Robert Frost’s lines from his poem, “A Tuft of Flowers”:  

‘Men work together,’ I told him from the heart, 
‘Whether they work together or apart.’

Haleys published a tenth anniversary edition in 2003. Anne Williamson, who was then Wheeler Memorial Library Director, put this version on-line in the library’s virtual gallery. The current Library Director, Walt Owens, permanently maintains the poem on the site.

In the poem, I mythologize my Nordic passion for birch trees and my fascination with the Millers River. Other themes deal with classical influences on the architecture of the town, the devastating consequences of the Great War (1914-1919) with which we are still living, my homage to Walt Whitman, and the railroad as a symbol of our restlessness and our longing to return home.

Like Henry David Thoreau, “I have never got over my surprise that I should have been born into the most estimable place in the world, and in the very nick of time, too.”

Model on Display

This model of the original Orange Meetinghouse built in 1781 for municipal and religious meetings is on display at the Moore Leland Library.  The building after several additions and alterations including a 1/4 turn in 1832 houses the Community Church of North Orange and Tully today.  The model was made by Norman Flye of North Orange in honor of Orange's bicentennial.

Summer in North Orange

Vic and Sticks!

PHOTO CAPTION: VIC and his recycled antique washboard.

July 19, Monday, 6:30pm, Wheeler Memorial Library's side lawn. Another spectacular FREE event has been added to the Wheeler Memorial Library's Summer Reading Program. Come laugh with the singing comedy duo Vic and Sticks as they help save the earth with their vintage vaudeville Recycled Rhythms performed with an antique washboard and suitcase percussion. Your funny bone will be tickled as your your talent to use the R's (Reduce, Reuse, Recycle) is put to the test while keeping up with this face paced family show. This performance is part of Go Green at Your Library which is made possible through the generosity of the Friends of the Orange Public Libraries, the Massachusetts Regional Library System, the Boston Bruins, and the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners.