Join us on the Library lawn* for the official beginning of the 2021 Summer Challenge! Register, pick up t-shirts & more!
*In the event of rain, this event will be held in the library's Main Reading Room
3:00 pm VINS - Raptors: Inspiring Conservation - Live Bird Program
For hundreds of years, humans didn’t understand the vital role that raptors play in our ecosystem. Some of our most charismatic birds, including the Bald Eagle and Peregrine Falcon, wound up on the Endangered Species List, and today we know that a majority of bird species are in decline. Join us in learning how people banded together to save these magnificent animals, and meet some live birds who will help us tell these inspiring conservation stories. Best of all, learn what you can still do to help them thrive in the wild.
4:30 pm Poetry Reading by Angela Patten
Birds are at home in many different places, including literature. Poet Angela Patten brings to life the birds of North America and Ireland when she reads from her newest collection, The Oriole & the Ovenbird.
"Just keeping an eye on things," Angela Patten tells us, but what an eye it is, one that observes a raven as a "faux-sorrowful funeral director," a cardinal in his "ecclesiastical robe," grackles with their "Prussian blue heads." And her ears are wide open, too: "The sky is black with crows / crying in cracked voices of their plans / to steal what is left of the light" and the ovenbird with its "teacher-teacher-teacher— / as if imploring academics / to lay down their dusty books / their medieval regalia." These are birds both of North America and Ireland, but the poems are universal. How I want to be like her cardinal, a "feathered arrow," "unstoppable/ as hunger, red as desire." A wonderful collection, for poetry lovers and bird lovers alike.
—Barbara Crooker, author of The Book of Kells (Cascade Books), winner of the Best Poetry Book 2018 Award from Poetry by the Sea and Some Glad Morning (Pitt Poetry Series).
Angela Patten is author of four poetry collections, The Oriole and the Ovenbird (Kelsay Books), In Praise of Usefulness (Wind Ridge Books), Reliquaries and Still Listening (both from Salmon Poetry, Ireland), and a prose memoir, High Tea at a Low Table: Stories from an Irish Childhood (Wind Ridge Books). Her work has been widely published in literary journals and anthologies. She was also a Senior Lecturer in English at UVM.
3-6 pm Summer Challenge Registration & Community Science Information
Rain Date: June 24