How to Use Your iPad
Thursday, October 1
2:00 pm - 3:30 pm
Confused about how to use your iPad? Come to this class and learn how to get started. Learn how to navigate, use apps, & change settings.
Registration with an email address is required to receive the Zoom link. Register here.
Virtual Book Discussion: The Things We Cannot Say by Kelly Rimmer
Friday, October 9
12:00 pm - 1:00 pm
Don’t let social distancing prevent you from discussing a great book with your neighbors! Download The Things We Cannot Say by Kelly Rimmer on Hoopla (free with your Blackstone Library card), then meet up with us via zoom for a live book discussion on October 9th.
In 1942, Europe remains in the relentless grip of war. Just beyond the tents of the Russian refugee camp she calls home, a young woman speaks her wedding vows. It’s a decision that will alter her destiny…and it’s a lie that will remain buried until the next century.
Since she was nine years old, Alina Dziak knew she would marry her best friend, Tomasz. Now fifteen and engaged, Alina is unconcerned by reports of Nazi soldiers at the Polish border, believing her neighbors that they pose no real threat, and dreams instead of the day Tomasz returns from college in Warsaw so they can be married. But little by little, injustice by brutal injustice, the Nazi occupation takes hold, and Alina’s tiny rural village, its families, are divided by fear and hate.
Then, as the fabric of their lives is slowly picked apart, Tomasz disappears. Where Alina used to measure time between visits from her beloved, now she measures the spaces between hope and despair, waiting for word from Tomasz and avoiding the attentions of the soldiers who patrol her parents’ farm. But for now, even deafening silence is preferable to grief.
Slipping between Nazi-occupied Poland and the frenetic pace of modern life, Kelly Rimmer creates an emotional and finely wrought narrative. The Things We Cannot Say is an unshakable reminder of the devastation when truth is silenced…and how it can take a lifetime to find our voice before we learn to trust it.
Registration is required to receive a link to this online event. Click here to register.
“You Are Not Alone”: A Virtual Paranormal Author Event
Saturday, October 10
2:30 pm - 4:00 pm
Acclaimed Connecticut paranormal author, Sydney Sherman, shares her life experiences with her book, You Are Not Alone: Our Loved Ones Are Here…You’re Just Not Listening. Sherman’s book outlines her passage from confusion to acceptance of her relationships with the many spirits who inhabit her everyday world. Frustrated with media sensationalism and misinformation about the afterlife and contact with spiritual entities, Sherman decided to “come out” with her secret. You Are Not Alone is part of her goal to provide clarity and understanding of the paranormal.
You Are Not Alone approaches the paranormal with a healthy dose of common sense and encourages rational skepticism. The author looks at why and what we believe about the paranormal and the afterlife. Her book draws distinctions between myths and the paranormal and recounts numerous experiences with spirits. She offers hints to avoid falling prey to the frauds in the paranormal field. The author educates readers on how they too can continue their relationship with their loved ones. With step by step advice, Sherman encourages people to think about the potential the paranormal holds for all of us. With her book and speaking engagements, thousands have learn how to connect and benefit from the guidance and protection of their own loved ones.
Registration is required to receive a link to this online event. Click here to register.
High School Diploma Info Session
Tuesday, October 13
11:00 am - 12:00 pm
Shoreline Adult Education is a regional program for adults wishing to continue their education. They offer different options to earn a high school diploma. These programs are free and designed with flexibility to meet the needs of individuals in varying stages of life.
Registration is required to receive a link to this online meeting. Click here to register.
High School Diploma Info Session
Wednesday, October 14
6:30 pm - 7:30 pm
Shoreline Adult Education is a regional program for adults wishing to continue their education. They offer different options to earn a high school diploma. These programs are free and designed with flexibility to meet the needs of individuals in varying stages of life. Additionally, there will be a presentation on free resources for job seekers.
Registration is required to receive a link to this online meeting. Click here to register.
Virtual Beginners Chinese Calligraphy
Saturday, October 17
2:30 pm - 3:30 pm
Join artist Jojo Liu in this beginner’s Chinese calligraphy class, from the safety and comfort of your own home! In this class, Jojo will be teaching you the art of traditional Chinese calligraphy: how to hold a brush, write basic strokes, and write standing.
Space and supplies are limited. Calligraphy kits will be available to pick up at the library beginning Saturday, October 10th. You must be registered for the program in order to pick up a kit.
If you would like to supply your own materials for this class, you can order them here:
Large bottle of ink (You will need a small dish to hold the ink)
Practice Paper (Optional – Can substitute with newspaper or printer paper)
Registration is required to receive a link to this online event. Registration begins September 19th. Click here to register.
Virtual Branford Forum – Let them Eat Tweets, How the Alliance of Populism and Plutocracy Undermined our Democracy
Sunday, October 18
2:00 pm - 3:30 pm
The Branford Forum, a community organization that brings nationally renowned figures to the Shoreline, is returning to the Blackstone Library for a series of virtual conversations. All presentations are 2:00 to 3:30 Sundays. For October’s meeting Jacob Hacker, a Sterling professor at Yale, prolific author and media commentator, will speak on Let them Eat Tweets, How the Alliance of Populism and Plutocracy Undermined our Democracy.
Registration is required to receive a link to this online event. Click here to register.
“All of the Belles”: A Centennial Presentation on F. Scott Fitzgerald
Thursday, October 22
6:00 pm - 7:30 pm
Join us for a presentation by Kirk Curnutt, executive director of the F. Scott Fitzgerald Society and managing editor of The F. Scott Fitzgerald Review. He is also the author of the introduction to a new collection of Fitzgerald’s stories: All of the Belles: The Montgomery stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald. 2020 marks the 100 year anniversary of many events in Fitzgerald’s career and personal life, including his marriage to Zelda Sayre. You can read the full synopsis of the book below:
During his Roaring Twenties heyday, F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote three stories about the belles of Tarleton, Georgia, a setting readers recognized as a thinly veiled version of his wife Zelda’s hometown of Montgomery, Alabama. Inspired by Fitzgerald’s own belle, Zelda Sayre, whom he met in Montgomery while stationed at Camp Sheridan training for the Great War, these stories are minor masterpieces long regarded as the very best of the 160-plus short stories the writer published during his short life. All of the Belles collects these stories ― “The Ice Palace,” “The Jelly-Bean,” and “The Last of the Belles” ― in a single volume for the very first time. This special book is being released to commemorate the centennial anniversary of Scott and Zelda’s marriage and in recognition of the many hundredth anniversaries of Fitzgerald’s work which will be celebrated starting in 2020. The heroines of these still remarkable tales rebel against Southern expectations of women, revel in the newfound freedoms young people enjoyed at the outset of the modern age, and ultimately discover that home is far harder to run away from than they ever expected. The stories capture all the winsome qualities that readers love about F. Scott’s writing: the keen observation of manners, the comic insights, the lyricism, and the poignant, powerful sense of loss. The Jazz Age may have begun a century ago, but Fitzgerald’s works remain among American literature’s most powerful writing, as will become clear with a reading of All of the Belles.
Registration is required to receive a link to this online event. Click here to register.
Beyond the Visible World: W.B. Yeats and the Occult
Saturday, October 24
3:00 pm - 4:30 pm
Join us for a fascinating Zoom presentation by Yeats scholar Maureen DeLeo. W.B. Yeats remains one of the most respected poets of his time, but his fascination with the occult and its influence in his poetry has largely been downplayed—until now. Ms. DeLeo will discuss Yeats’s long fascination with magic and other occult practices, both in his personal life and as represented within his poetry. Regardless of your level of expertise, you’re sure to learn something new!
Registration is required to receive a link to this online event. Click here to register.
Bestseller Book Club
Saturday, October 31
3:30 pm - 4:30 pm
Have you ever thought about joining a book club? It’s a fun way to get connected, make new friends, and read more books! In the Bestseller Book Club, we’ll be reading and discussing newly released, highly rated books from a wide variety of genres. This month we’re reading The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett. Read the full synopsis below:
The Vignes twin sisters will always be identical. But after growing up together in a small, southern black community and running away at age sixteen, it’s not just the shape of their daily lives that is different as adults, it’s everything: their families, their communities, their racial identities. Many years later, one sister lives with her black daughter in the same southern town she once tried to escape. The other secretly passes for white, and her white husband knows nothing of her past. Still, even separated by so many miles and just as many lies, the fates of the twins remain intertwined. What will happen to the next generation, when their own daughters’ storylines intersect?
Weaving together multiple strands and generations of this family, from the Deep South to California, from the 1950s to the 1990s, Brit Bennett produces a story that is at once a riveting, emotional family story and a brilliant exploration of the American history of passing. Looking well beyond issues of race, The Vanishing Half considers the lasting influence of the past as it shapes a person’s decisions, desires, and expectations, and explores some of the multiple reasons and realms in which people sometimes feel pulled to live as something other than their origins.
As with her New York Times-bestselling debut The Mothers, Brit Bennett offers an engrossing page-turner about family and relationships that is immersive and provocative, compassionate and wise.
Registration is required to receive a link to this online event. Click here to register.
The Blackstone Library has a limited number of copies available for book club participants. If you are interested in obtaining a library copy, please call us at (203) 488-1441 ext. 318 or email programs@blackstonelibrary.org. Copies are first come, first served.
Cutting the Cord: Saying Goodbye to Cable
Thursday, November 5
2:00 pm - 3:15 pm
Dealing with cable can be a pain, but trying to find an alternative can be equally frustrating. If you’ve had enough of cable and need some guidance for making your next move, come to our class on cutting the cord! We’ll discuss all the most popular streaming services and devices so you can decide which one is right for you!
Registration with an email address is required to receive the Zoom link. Register here.
Boats Against the Current: A Virtual Author Event
Thursday, November 5
6:00 pm - 7:30 pm
Join us for a virtual talk with local author Richard “Deej” Webb of Westport! In celebration of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s centennial, he’ll discuss his book Boats Against the Current, companion to the documentary Gatsby in Connecticut, The Untold Story. Deej will chat about his book and do a live reading then take questions from viewers. You can read the full synopsis of the book below:
Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald honeymooned for five months in the summer of 1920 in a modest gray house in Westport, Connecticut. It was an experience that had a more profound impact on both of their collective works than any other place they lived. It was, for Scott and Zelda, their honeymoon. Having just gotten married and after being kicked out of some of New York city’s finest hotels, they were, for the first time, in their very own place, albeit for only five months. It was a time that Scott Fitzgerald called “the happiest year since I was eighteen.”He had, after all, just achieved success with his first novel, This Side of Paradise, and was suddenly awash with money.
The Fitzgeralds lived a wild life of drinking, driving and endless partying while living in suburban Connecticut. As it happens, living near the beach, they were neighbors to a larger-than-life reclusive multi-millionaire, F.E. Lewis.
Historian Richard Webb grew up in Westport a few doors down the street from where the Fitzgeralds had lived some forty years earlier. Fascinated with the Fitzgeralds, when Webb learned that author Barbara Probst Solomon, who grew up across the river from the F.E. Lewis estate, proposed in the New Yorker that Westport was the real setting for Fitzgerald’s Great Gatsby, he was stirred to actively researching her claim.
Boats Against the Current tells the real story behind the famous novel and its tragic hero, debunking the long-held belief that the book was solely inspired by the Fitzgerald’s time in Great Neck, across the Sound in Long Island, and lays out enough information about the fascinating Mr. Lewis that it is difficult not to believe that author Webb has located the true inspiration for one of the most captivating and iconic characters in American literature, the great Gatsby himself.
Registration is required to receive a link to this online event. Click here to register.
Virtual Paint Party
Saturday, November 7
2:30 pm - 4:30 pm
Learn how to paint a real work of art at home! Follow instructor Pamela Halligan of Pam’s Picassos on Zoom as she walks you through the steps of creating your own masterpiece. Paint kits will be available to pick up at the library beginning Saturday, October 31. Space is limited. You must be registered for the program in order to pick up a paint kit.
Registration is required to receive a link to this online event. Registration begins October 3rd. Click here to register.
Greetings from Indian Neck: Presented by the Branford Historical Society
Wednesday, November 11
7:00 pm - 9:00 pm
Jane Bouley will share images from her collection of Indian Neck postcards with a historical tour of the beaches, stores, and summer hotels from Sybil Creek to Limewood Avenue, along Linden Avenue to Summer Island and Sunset Beach.
The heyday of the travel postcard was 1905 until World War I when tourists came to Indian Neck to spend a few days or the whole summer at one of Indian Neck’s summer hotels or rent a shoreline cottage. They came to keep cool, swim and boat, go fishing and clamming, or just have fun. There was something here for everyone, from an inexpensive cottage to the 200 room Montowese House called the “Queen of the Sound”, the largest summer hotel between Newport and New York City.
Registration is required to receive a link to this online event. Click here to register.
Virtual Branford Forum – An Introduction to Opera: the Greatest Art Form
Sunday, November 15
2:00 pm - 3:30 pm
The Branford Forum, a community organization that brings nationally renowned figures to the Shoreline, is returning to the Blackstone Library for a series of virtual conversations. All presentations are 2:00 to 3:30 Sundays. For November’s meeting Charlotte D’Aniello, a long-time teacher at Albertus Magnus and distinguished pianist, will present An Introduction to Opera – the Greatest Art Form.
Registration is required to receive a link to this online event. Click here to register.
High School Diploma Info Session
Tuesday, November 17
11:00 am - 12:00 pm
Shoreline Adult Education is a regional program for adults wishing to continue their education. They offer different options to earn a high school diploma. These programs are free and designed with flexibility to meet the needs of individuals in varying stages of life. Additionally, there will be a presentation on free resources for job seekers.
Registration is required to receive a link to this online meeting. Click here to register.
High School Diploma Info Session
Thursday, November 19
6:00 pm - 7:00 pm
Shoreline Adult Education is a regional program for adults wishing to continue their education. They offer different options to earn a high school diploma. These programs are free and designed with flexibility to meet the needs of individuals in varying stages of life. Additionally, there will be a presentation on free resources for job seekers.
Registration is required to receive a link to this online meeting. Click here to register.
Bestseller Book Club
Saturday, November 28
3:30 pm - 4:30 pm
Have you ever thought about joining a book club? It’s a fun way to get connected, make new friends, and read more books! In the Bestseller Book Club, we’ll be reading and discussing newly released, highly rated books from a wide variety of genres.
Virtual Branford Forum – Creativity in Art and Science
Sunday, December 13
2:00 pm - 3:30 pm
The Branford Forum, a community organization that brings nationally renowned figures to the Shoreline, is returning to the Blackstone Library for a series of virtual conversations. All presentations are 2:00 to 3:30 Sundays. For December’s meeting Corina Alvarezdelugo, the gallery director of the Ethel Walker School, and Leonard Kaczmarek, a research professor of Pharmacology and of Cellular and Molecular Physiology at Yale, will speak on Creativity in Art and Science – What Lights the Spark and Leads to Innovation?
Registration is required to receive a link to this online event. Click here to register.
Bestseller Book Club
Saturday, December 26
3:30 pm - 4:30 pm
Have you ever thought about joining a book club? It’s a fun way to get connected, make new friends, and read more books! In the Bestseller Book Club, we’ll be reading and discussing newly released, highly rated books from a wide variety of genres.
Bestseller Book Club
Saturday, January 30
3:30 pm - 4:30 pm
Have you ever thought about joining a book club? It’s a fun way to get connected, make new friends, and read more books! In the Bestseller Book Club, we’ll be reading and discussing newly released, highly rated books from a wide variety of genres.
Bestseller Book Club
Saturday, February 27
3:30 pm - 4:30 pm
Have you ever thought about joining a book club? It’s a fun way to get connected, make new friends, and read more books! In the Bestseller Book Club, we’ll be reading and discussing newly released, highly rated books from a wide variety of genres.
Bestseller Book Club
Saturday, March 27
3:30 pm - 4:30 pm
Have you ever thought about joining a book club? It’s a fun way to get connected, make new friends, and read more books! In the Bestseller Book Club, we’ll be reading and discussing newly released, highly rated books from a wide variety of genres.
Bestseller Book Club
Saturday, April 24
3:30 pm - 4:30 pm
Have you ever thought about joining a book club? It’s a fun way to get connected, make new friends, and read more books! In the Bestseller Book Club, we’ll be reading and discussing newly released, highly rated books from a wide variety of genres.
Bestseller Book Club
Saturday, May 29
3:30 pm - 4:30 pm
Have you ever thought about joining a book club? It’s a fun way to get connected, make new friends, and read more books! In the Bestseller Book Club, we’ll be reading and discussing newly released, highly rated books from a wide variety of genres.
Bestseller Book Club
Saturday, June 26
3:30 pm - 4:30 pm
Have you ever thought about joining a book club? It’s a fun way to get connected, make new friends, and read more books! In the Bestseller Book Club, we’ll be reading and discussing newly released, highly rated books from a wide variety of genres.
Bestseller Book Club
Saturday, July 31
3:30 pm - 4:30 pm
Have you ever thought about joining a book club? It’s a fun way to get connected, make new friends, and read more books! In the Bestseller Book Club, we’ll be reading and discussing newly released, highly rated books from a wide variety of genres.
Bestseller Book Club
Saturday, August 28
3:30 pm - 4:30 pm
Have you ever thought about joining a book club? It’s a fun way to get connected, make new friends, and read more books! In the Bestseller Book Club, we’ll be reading and discussing newly released, highly rated books from a wide variety of genres.