Adult Events

The Oliver Wolcott Library offers a wide range of programming for adults, from continuing series like Monday Scholars,
to lectures, book discussions, and author talks. All events are free and open to all.

Continue your journey of lifelong learning with us!

Tuesday Scholars: The Great Tours - Ireland & Northern Ireland

Tuesday Scholars combines the best of online learning with live virtual discussion! All you need to do in advance is be eager to learn and discuss. 

 

About the course:
The Great Tours: Ireland and Northern Ireland gives you the chance to traverse this amazing land with a leading scholar in the field of Irish history, culture, and literature. Taught by Professor Marc Conner, president of Skidmore College and a scholar of modern Irish literature, you'll go on a sweeping tour of the Emerald Isle, from the Guinness Brewery in Dublin to the ancient ruins of Newgrange to the battle-scarred village of Derry in Northern Ireland.

For more information on this series, click here

 

  

 

Friday Scholars: Classic Novels - Meeting The Challenge Of Great Literature

*No class November 25

Friday Scholars combines the best of online learning with live virtual discussion! All you need to do in advance is be eager to learn and discuss.

 

About the course:

Join us for the whole series or pop in to hear selected lectures! Classic novels perform a sort of miracle, jolting us to see the remarkable, often provocative truths that underlie the human condition. To experience these extraordinary novels is to ask deep and sometimes unsettling questions about our lives and our world. In this series, we will move beyond what is often offered in literary courses: plot synopses, anecdotes, facts about where and when a novel was written.

For more information on this series, click here

 

 

Move Your Mind; Move Your Body With Nancy Schuler

Zoom Participants:  Zoom Link - click here at 10:15 AM on Tuesdays starting June 28 to Zoom to the Event. 

Note: This Class is designed for senior women.

The United Nations General Assembly has declared 2021 to 2030 The Decade For Healthy Ageing. The OWL has always been committed to expanding minds and now we would like to help our community expand their physical strength. 

Nancy Schuler will be conducting an introductory exercise class for senior women. You will have the option of joining the class in person, here at the OWL, or online in the privacy of your home. The class will feature stretching and exercises that can be done in a chair or standing and lifting weights. All exercises are gentle and easy to understand.  Exercise has been proven to help one's cognitive abilities, blood pressure, insomnia, digestive issues, depression, strength and independence.  The Alzheimer's, Diabetes and Heart Associations all recommend exercise for healthy ageing.

No prior experience is necessary. Bring in a set of light weights for this class - 1 to 2 lbs.

 

 

 

Adult Summer Camp Take & Make Bag

* While supplies last!
 
Time travel back to summer camp with August’s take & make! The bag includes instructions and supplies for 5 classic camp activities - friendship bracelets, postcards with writing prompts, balloon rockets, sand art, and stargazing. This take & make is first come, first served, so be sure to ask for one at the circulation desk in the library beginning August 4!

 

 

 

 

 

First Light Images with Pete Kandefer

In-Person Space is limited. Registration is Required. Register here

Zoom Participants:  Zoom Link - click here at 7:00 PM on August 4 to Zoom to this event.

Join Pete Kandefer from the Litchfield Hills Amateur Astronomy Club for a fabulous presentation featuring:
FIRST LIGHT IMAGES - full color photos just released by NASA from the James Webb Space Telescope on July 12th.  

The talk will also include background information about the telescope itself, how observations are scheduled, plus a preview of the next observing programs that will be released during the week of August 1st.

To Join by Phone:
Dial: +1 646 876 9923 | Meeting ID: 845 8200 6602 | Passcode: 003350

 

Classical Music Rocks in 19th Century Cuba

Zoom Participants:  Zoom Link - click here at 2 PM on August 10 to Zoom to the Event. 

Please join us for another musically enchanting afternoon with Jeffrey Engel as he explores the ways in which American music has been influenced by the Cuban repertory!

Cuba has a longer history of classical music than any other island nation in the Caribbean. Music making at first was centered around cathedrals in Santiago and Havana as far back as the early 17^th century. Two hundred years later, Cuba was being greatly influenced by European Romanticism. Opera was thriving as were numerous music societies offering solo and chamber music.

Cuba would produce several generations of talented composers who would instill their music with native rhythms and dances. They would influence American composers who visited Cuba or heard the country’s music on the radio. Leonard Bernstein and George Gershwin are among several Americans who wrote works influenced by music from our southern neighbor.

 

Jeffrey Engel was recently selected by Litchfield Magazine as one of the fifty most influential people in Litchfield County. For fifteen years he has been giving lectures devoted to music history in libraries, colleges and retirement communities throughout Connecticut. His preference is for 19th and 20th century music ranging from the wonderful to the wacky in operatic, symphonic and chamber works. Subjects are always placed in a historical context in order to show how non-musical developments impacted the lives and creativity of composers.

 

 

 

Non-Fiction Discussion Group

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Thursday, August 11

Meeting will be held in the Library's Jamie Gagarin Community Room.

My Two Italies by Joseph Luzzi

More than a memoir, this book touches on history, geography, sociology, language, literature, film, food and family. It covers Italian identity as a whole:  mammoni (Italian men who live with their mothers), Italy's Slow Food movement, and the country's politics since World War II. It is also a book about exile, the sense of displacement and confusion that those driven from their roots carry with them forever.  Moderated by Margaret

 

 

 

Fiction Discussion Group

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Thursday, August 11

Fiction Group: 3:30 pm 

Meeting will be held in the Library's Jamie Gagarin Community Room.

The Sandcastle Girls by Chris Bohjalian

An American nurse arrives in Syria in 1915 to help deliver food and medical aid to refugees of the Armenian Genocide during the First World War. There she meets a young Armenian engineer who has lost his wife and daughter. Years later, another American woman embarks on a journey back through her family’s history, uncovering a story of love, loss, and a secret that was buried for generations.  Moderated by Sharon

 

 

 

 

Traveling Down Memory Lane

Space is limited to 8 participants & their caregivers.
Registration is Required.  Register here

Join us the third Wednesday of August, September and October for you and your caregiver as we travel down memory lane. 

This will be an immersive sensory experience for those dealing with memory loss.  We will explore a different European country at each class, learn a few phrases, a brief history, highlights of the culture, a few dance steps and share experiences or interests and much more.

In August we will explore the beauty of France. In September let’s travel to Italy and in October, Spain.

Is this class right for you? Email our instructor, Nancy Schuler at [email protected], who will answer your concerns. 
Au Revoir, Arrivederci, Adios!

10 Tips to Manage your Stress

In-Person Space is limited. Registration is Required.  Register here

Zoom Participants:  Zoom Link - click here at 7 PM on August 18 to Zoom to the Event. 

We all experience stress in our lives: Consider joining a conversation with Dr. Hurwitz to discover 10 Tips to Manage your Stress!

Whatever your age or situation, this presentation will provide strategies to manage stress. Everyone will learn a technique to minimize stress and maximize vitality.

 

Did you know..

• Up to 90% of all visits to the doctor’s office are stress-related, according to Harvard.
• Stress can be considered as much a risk factor for disease as smoking.
• Why can two people be in the same situation and respond to stress differently? 
• Can going through stressful times without stress be a learned skill?

A graduate of Yale University School of Medicine, Dr. Wendy Hurwitz is a nationally recognized expert on stress. A former medical researcher for ABC News, she is an expert in two fields: Mind/Body Medicine and Energy Medicine. She has a forthcoming book on stress. 

Dr. Hurwitz helps organizations and individuals achieve peak performance by enhancing vitality and wellness. She translates the latest and most sophisticated scientific research into practical, easy-to-use techniques people can use to maintain and enhance vitality even under the most trying circumstances. She has provided training for AT&T, Unilever, Lowe Worldwide, the FDNY, and has been an invited guest speaker at the United Nations.

NOTE: Please refrain from wearing fragrances for this event, our presenter is highly sensitive.

 

 

Swamplands: Tundra Beavers, Quaking bogs & the Improbable World of peat

Zoom Participants:  Zoom Link - click here at 7 PM on August 25 to Zoom to the Event. 

Don't miss this talk with author and award-winning scientist Edward Struzik.

Struzik was awarded the Knight Science Journalism Fellowship and spent a year at Harvard and MIT researching environment, evolutionary biology, and politics with E.O. Wilson, Stephen Jay Gould and Richard Lewontin. 

He is an active speaker and lecturer, and is regular contributor to Yale Environment 360. He also serves on the Board of Directors for the Canadian Arctic Resources Committee, a citizens’ organization dedicated to the long-term environmental and social well-being of northern Canada and its peoples. 

The Wall Street Journal called Swamplands, "a fascinating book."

Join us as Struzik takes us to a world filled with breathtaking beauty, the Arctic wetlands where sandhill cranes and muskoxen dwell, and explore their critical significance. Swamplands highlights the unappreciated struggle being waged to save peatlands by scientists, conservationists, and landowners around the world. An ode to peaty landscapes in all their offbeat glory, the book is also a demand for awareness of the myriad threats they face. It urges us to see the beauty and importance in these least likely of places. Our planet’s survival might depend on it.

Edward Struzik has been writing about scientific and environmental issues for more than 30 years. A fellow at the Institute for Energy and Environmental Policy at Queen’s University in Kingston, Canada, his numerous accolades include the prestigious Atkinson Fellowship in Public Policy and the Sir Sandford Fleming Medal, awarded for outstanding contributions to the understanding of science. 

To Join by Phone:
Dial: +1 646 876 9923 | Meeting ID: 882 1233 5560 | Passcode: 545192

 

 

 

About Our Zoom Events:

All of our Virtual Zoom Events are live. They are not recorded. To participate/join the event, you need to use the exact link connected to the event. Once you click on the link at the specified date and time, you will be prompted to open Zoom, the virtual meeting program we are using. All you need is an internet connection and a device or computer with a webcam and audio. Most computers have built-in webcams. No passwords or confirmation codes, just click the link and follow the prompts.

Still having difficulty understanding how to access Zoom? Email OWL's Technology Coordinator Ted at emoy[at]owlibrary.org to set-up a virtual Book-a-Tech session and he will go over it with you.

 

More security, more privacy: In response to concerns about privacy in a virtual meeting space, we have enabled additional security features in Zoom and updated our meeting links to be protected, private, and secure. These new, unique links can also be accessed through our e-newsletters.To receive secure information regarding these events, please subscribe to our e-newsletter! Click here to subscribe