Monday, May 3, 7:00 p.m. (Rescheduled from April 22)

Join the Concord Free Public Library Corporation's Sustainability Committee to discuss the Library's Sustainability Plan Draft. [Register for Zoom Link]

Join Be Well Be Here for a 30-minute morning meditation practice with the Concord Free Public Library, and start your day with a moment of ease. Discover mindful tools that center the body, settle the mind, and open the door to well-being. [Register for May 6 Zoom Link]

Please join us for the Tuesday book discussion group on Zoom. This month's book is Selected Stories of Anton Chekhov, translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. The discussion will be led by group member Susan Heartlein. Please email bgugluizza@concordma.gov if you are interested in attending the discussion and we will send you the Zoom link.

Wednesday, May 19, 2:00 - 3:00 p.m.

Love a good mystery? All are welcome to join our mystery book discussion via Zoom. May's title is As Long As We Both Shall Live by Joann Chaney. Print copies of the title are available at the Fowler Branch for pickup. An eBook and an audiobook of the title can be requested via OverDrive. [Register for Discussion Zoom Link]

Mondays, 10:00 a.m. on the Library's Facebook Page

Every Monday, thirteen year-old Concordian Jacob reads a special story from our staff-curated list of 101 Picture Books Concord Free Public Library Loves! Can't make the Facebook video premiere at 10? No problem! "Jacob Reads" storytimes will be archived in a playlist, linked above.

Monday, May 3, 11:00 - 11:30 a.m.

Hear stories, songs, and rhymes in this gentle half hour story time for our very youngest readers. [Register for Zoom Link]

Monday, May 3, 5:00 - 5:30 p.m.

Get a jumpstart on bedtime with stories, songs, and rhymes! [Register for Zoom Link]

Tuesday, May 4, 4:00 - 5:00 p.m.

Do you love writing? Games? If so, join us for a writing RPG, a game where you can create your own characters, interact with other participants, and jump into different worlds, in order to write a collaborative story. For tweens/teens ages 10-16. No writing experience required! For more information, contact Madeline at mklein@minlib.net. [Register for Zoom Link]

Wednesday, May 5, 10:00 - 10:30 a.m.

Join us on Zoom for some short stories, songs, & rhymes! This is a great way to build early literacy skills. This program is geared for pre-schoolers, but all ages are welcome to join. [Register for Zoom Link]

Join Branch Librarian Dorrie for stories, songs, and rhymes. Please register to receive the Zoom link. For ages 5 and under. The same link will work weekly. [Register for Zoom Link]

Hey Kids - Feeling crafty? Let's make this week's take and make craft together! Pick up a free craft kit at curbside pickup, and join us on Zoom. We will do the craft together and enjoy a story. New kits are available at the start of each week while supplies last. [Register for Zoom Link]

Join friends, impostors, and the like over Zoom, and play the very popular, freely downloadable game Among Us. [Register for Zoom Link]

That's right! We're back. First three Saturdays of every month. Join Cary Stough, Senior Library Assistant and resident Master of Poetry, for boundary-pushing weekend writing! No experience required. Age limits are mainly arbitrary: if you wanna join, just ask! [Register for Zoom Link]

Sunday, May 9, 3:00 p.m.

The Friends of the Concord Free Public Library will present an online piano recital with Tanya Bartevyan on Mothers' Day.

The program will include selections from Chopin Waltzes and Etudes, Schubert Impromptus, and an improvisation on an Armenian song created in the moment.

Ms. Bartevyan has concertized in well known Boston venues such as the Gardner Museum, Jordan Hall, WGBH Radio, the Concord Free Public Library, and internationally in Spain, France, Canada, Switzerland, and Turkey. Her musical studies began at age 3. She is a graduate of Harvard University and the New England Conservatory of Music.

The concert will be live-streamed via YouTube and a discussion will follow on Zoom. Here is the YouTube link. No registration is needed to enjoy the live concert.

Zoom link information will be posted shortly on the Library's calendar of events.

This program is supported in part by a grant from the Concord Local Cultural Council, a local agency which is supported by the Mass Cultural Council, a state agency.

Krysten Hill & Cynthia Manick: A Reading and Conversation with Joyce Peseroff

[Register for Webinar Link]

The Poetry at the Library Series caps its 2020-21 season with the vibrant voices of award-winning Black poets Krysten Hill and Cynthia Manick in conversation with poet-editor Joyce Peseroff.

Krysten Hill's How Her Spirit Got Out (Aforementioned Productions) is a lively, urgent song of the writers whose voices raised her and the women who brought her up. "Hill understands the power of narrative and savor of vernacular speech," writes Joyce Peseroff. "The result is a voice that is beautiful and raw, intimate yet public, both confident and vulnerable." Hill has received the 2016 St. Botolph Club Foundation Emerging Artist Award, the 2017 Jean Pedrick Chapbook Prize, and a 2020 Mass Cultural Council Poetry Fellowship. Hill has widely showcased her poetry on stage. Her work has been featured in The Academy of American Poets Poem-A-Day Series, and elsewhere. She teaches creative writing at the University of Massachusetts Boston.

Cynthia Manick's Blue Hallelujahs (Black Lawrence Press) is a book of confident, powerful meditations about family, womanhood, and racial histories. Poet Nikky Finney, National Book Award winner, writes that " these are not the things you will hear about Black people on the nightly news. But they remain the things that lock the arms of Black people around Black people when we need to keep moving on." Winner of the Lascaux Prize in Collected Poetry and a number of fellowships, Manick's work has appeared in Los Angeles Review of Books (LARB), The Wall Street Journal, Callaloo, the Academy of American Poets Poem-A-Day Series, and elsewhere. She is editor of two poetry anthologies, Northeast Editor of Jamii Publishing, and Founder/Curator of the Soul Sister Revue Reading Series.

Poetry at the Library Series is sponsored by the Friends of the Concord Free Public Library.

Thanks to the strong interest in the Films at Fowler Series, our host Randall Warniers has added a film for the month of May.

Faces Places (2017)

Wednesday, May 12, 7:00 p.m. (Discussion date on Zoom)

Films at Fowler discussion on Zoom of the French documentary "Faces Places" (Visages Villages, 2017), directed by Agnès Varda and photographer/artist JR. This unconventional and charming film follows Varda and JR as they travel around rural France, creating oversize portraits of the people they meet along the way.

To register for the discussions and receive a Zoom link, please send an email to randall.warniers@gmail.com. [View Film on Kanopy]

This series is sponsored by the Friends of the Concord Free Public Library.

In April 1882, a frail and forgetful Emerson attended the funeral of his old friend Longfellow. Remembering neither the man nor, after the event, the ceremonies. Over the following week, a cold that he had recently caught walking coatless in the rain developed into pneumonia. Surrounded by family and friends in his last days, Emerson died on April 27 a little before 9:00 p.m., one month before his seventy-ninth birthday. At his death, the First Parish bell broke the night’s silence seventy-nine times.

The Emerson family and the people of Concord planned a funeral in keeping with Emerson’s national and local importance. Judge Ebenezer Rockwood Hoar brought First Parish organist Thomas Whitney Surette to the Emerson house to choose hymns for the April 30 church service. Daniel Chester French, who had enjoyed Emerson’s endorsement in obtaining the commission for his Minute Man statue and who in 1879 had sculpted a bust of Emerson, draped the body in a white robe, dramatic in contrast with the dark wood of the black walnut coffin.

The women of Concord made black and white rosettes to decorate houses that people would see on the way from the depot and along the route of the funeral procession. Black drapery hung on public buildings. The Fitchburg Railroad arranged special trains to bring the anticipated throng of mourners to Concord. To support the weight of the numbers expected, First Parish reinforced its floors and galleries.

Both the private and public services were held on April 30. The private service at the Emerson home, conducted by William Henry Furness, began at 2:30 p.m. At its conclusion, a hearse carried the coffin to the First Parish, accompanied by pallbearers, members of the Social Circle, and carriages bearing family members.

Pine and hemlock branches and a variety of flowers decorated First Parish. Louisa May Alcott had prepared a harp-shaped arrangement of jonquils. The service, conducted by James Freeman Clarke, began at 3:30 p.m. Judge Hoar spoke emotionally. Bronson Alcott read a poem he had written for the occasion. After the ceremony, some of those waiting outside received invitations to enter and file past the coffin.

After the body was transported to Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, Samuel Moody Haskins, Emerson’s cousin, conducted the Episcopal burial service. The Emerson grandchildren and the schoolchildren of Concord dropped flowers and greenery into the grave. Before the mourners dispersed, the sun broke through the clouds that had threatened rain all day.

Later, the Emerson family marked the grave with a large piece of rough-hewn rose quartz bearing a bronze plaque inscribed with lines from Emerson’s poem “The Problem.”

National press coverage of Emerson’s death and funeral was fervent. As significant as his passing was to the nation, however, Concord felt the loss in a way no other place could. Much of the May 4, 1882 issue of the Concord Freeman was devoted to Emerson and to events connected with his death and burial. “Concord’s Irreparable Loss!”, the front-page article that day, expressed the town’s particular claim to grief. “Here, for half a century, he walked up and down among the people, grandly, yet humbly; thinking and living at times in a realm far above and beyond the people, yet like all truly great men, in sympathy with his surroundings, and interested in the commonest . . . events . . . [H]e whom many of the great and good from every clime who came to our shores were glad to meet and visit in his unpretentious home, he who never sought, but always received flattering consideration from the world’s intellectually and spiritually distinguished, loved this village and this people . . . ”

Learn more about the major holdings relating to Emerson's life and work in Special Collections here.