Learn the story of the Pack Horse Library initiative, a little known program of FDR’s Work Progress Administration (WPA) on Tuesday, July 12 at 2PM via Zoom.

Its mission, carried out almost entirely by women, was to deliver and distribute reading materials to the far off corners of Appalachia during the darkest hours of the Great Depression. Led by Jeffrey Urbin, Education Specialist at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum.

Register directly on Zoom HERE.  This virtual event is a collaboration between several libraries.

Join Leanne Rodd, Director of Talent for FlexProfessionals Boston and Certified Career Coach (BCC) on Monday, July 11 at 2PM via Zoom to help you develop a plan for exploring options and moving forward using a design-thinking framework for both career exploration and exiting a role that no longer fits.

Career transitions can be challenging in the best of times. Add a layer of economic uncertainty, and they can feel overwhelming. If you find yourself considering a career transition – whether chosen or by circumstance – there are steps you can take to help you decide whether now is the right time, plan your path forward, set attainable goals, and keep your momentum. FlexProfessionals delivers the power of an untapped, highly-qualified talent pool to growing businesses while providing meaningful opportunities for professionals seeking part-time and flexible work options. 

Register directly on Zoom HERE. This virtual event is a collaboration between several libraries.

Author Uli Lormier will discuss his new book, The Northeast Native Plant Primer: 235 Plants for an Earth-Friendly Garden, on Wednesday, July 6 at 7PM via Zoom.

Register directly on Zoom HERE. This virtual event is a collaboration between several libraries.

About The Book: Bring your garden to life—and life to your garden. Do you want a garden that makes a real difference? Choose plants native to our Northeast region. The rewards will benefit you, your yard, and the environment — from reducing maintenance tasks to attracting earth-friendly pollinators such as native birds, butterflies, and bees. Native plant expert Uli Lorimer, of the Native Plant Trust, makes adding these superstar plants easier than ever before, with proven advice that every home gardener can follow. This incomparable sourcebook includes 235 recommended native trees, shrubs, vines, ferns, wildflowers, grasses, sedges, and annuals. It’s everything you need to know to create a beautiful and beneficial garden. This is a must-have handbook for gardeners in Massachusetts.

About The Author: Uli Lorimer is the director of horticulture at Native Plant Trust. He is a tireless advocate for native plants in public gardens, the designed landscape, and those found in the wild. Founded in 1900 as the Society for the Protection of Native Plants, the Native Plant Trust is the nation’s oldest plant conservation organization and a recognized leader in native plant conservation, horticulture, and education. The Society’s headquarters, Garden in the Woods, is a renowned native plant botanic garden in Framingham, Massachusetts, that attracts visitors from all over the world. From this base, 25 staff and more than 700 volunteers work throughout New England to monitor and protect rare and endangered plants, collect and preserve seeds to ensure biological diversity, detect and control invasive species, conduct research, and offer a range of educational programs.

Australian award-winning author Sulari Gentill will discuss her new mystery, The Woman In The Library, on Wednesday, June 29 at 7PM via Zoom. 

About The Book: The tranquility of the Boston Public Library’s reading room is shattered by a woman’s terrified scream. Security guards take charge immediately, instructing everyone inside to stay put until the threat is identified and contained. While they wait for the all-clear, four strangers, who’d happened to sit at the same table, pass the time in conversation and friendships are struck. Each has his or her own reasons for being in the reading room that morning—it just happens that one is a murderer. Award-winning author Sulari Gentill delivers a sharply thrilling read with The Woman in the Library, an unexpectedly twisty literary adventure that examines the complicated nature of friendship and shows us that words can be the most treacherous weapons of all.

About The Author: After setting out to study astrophysics, graduating in law, and then abandoning her legal career to write books, Sulari Gentill now grows French black truffles on her farm in the foothills of the Snowy Mountains of Australia.  Gentill’s Rowland Sinclair mysteries have won and/or been shortlisted for the Davitt Award and the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, and her stand-alone metafiction thriller, After She Wrote Him, won the Ned Kelly Award for Best Crime Novel in 2018. Her tenth Sinclair novel, A Testament of Character, was shortlisted for the Ned Kelly Best Crime Novel in 2021. Learn more about Sulari HERE.

Register directly on Zoom HERE. This virtual event is a collaboration between several libraries.

Learn which perennials will work best in your gardens and discuss how to keep them in good form on Thursday, June 23 at 11AM via Zoom. Perennials are the workhorses of the garden with most coming back year after year. With a little know-how you can keep your garden in bloom for most of the season. 

Led by Kathi Gariepy, a former special needs preschool and kindergarten teacher, who has been gardening since she was a child. She is a Lifetime Master Gardener with the Massachusetts Master Gardener Association, volunteering more than 10,000 hours, past Vice President of the MMGA, past chair of the Master Gardener Advisory Board, past president of the Attleboro Garden Club and past chair of the Garden Club Federation of Massachusetts’ Gardening Study School. Kathi has worked as lead teacher for the Massachusetts Horticultural Society, education coordinator for MassAudubon and studied landscape design at Rhode Island School of Design. She also owns the garden design company Pleasant Vistas. Kathi lives in an old farmhouse with perennial borders, herb gardens, a vegetable garden, grapes, blueberries, raspberries and some very old, still producing, apple trees.

Register directly on Zoom HERE. This virtual event is a collaboration between several libraries.

Learn how you can support local species on Wednesday, June 22 at 11AM via Zoom by utilizing wildlife-friendly gardening practices in your home, business, and community settings. Simple, easy actions like keeping fall leaves on the ground could have huge effects, and bring in more butterflies, come spring! Learn about what to do, and not do, in your yard, garden, or even container, to support nearby birds, frogs, pollinators, and more in a sustainable fashion.

Led by Tia Pinney, a Biologist, Lead Naturalist, and educator at Mass Audubon’s Drumlin Farm Wildlife Sanctuary in Lincoln. Since 1994, when she first started working at the farm, Tia has overseen efforts to maintain New England’s wildlife on our 206-acre property, managing staff and volunteers in planting projects and citizen science.

 Register directly on Zoom HERE.  This virtual event is a collaboration between several libraries.

Bestselling author Nancy Thayer will discuss her latest book, Summer Love, on Tuesday, June 14 at 7PM via Zoom.

About The Book: Old secrets come to light when four friends gather on Nantucket for a life-changing reunion in this heartwarming novel of love and self-discovery by New York Times bestselling author Nancy Thayer. Summer is in full swing on sunny Nantucket, and four old friends decide to hold a reunion on the island, where they’d made fond memories nearly three decades earlier. Yet as the crew gathers for one eventful week in July, it becomes clear that old secrets, jealousies, and betrayals will be revealed. And all the while, their twentysomething children will embark on exciting new adventures all their own. Nancy Thayer shines yet again with another sunswept tale of summer love and self-discovery.

About The Author: Nancy Thayer is the New York Times bestselling author of more than thirty novels, including Summer Love, Family Reunion, Girls of Summer, Let It Snow, Surfside Sisters, A Nantucket Wedding, Secrets in Summer, The Island House, The Guest Cottage, An Island Christmas, Nantucket Sisters, and Island Girls. Born in Kansas, Nancy has been a resident of Nantucket for thirty-five years, where she currently lives with her husband, Charley, and a precocious rescue cat named Callie. Learn more about Nancy HERE.

Register directly on Zoom HERE. This virtual event is a collaboration between several libraries.

Registered Dietician Nutritionist Jill Patterson RD leads this fun and informative program on Wednesday, June 8 at 7PM via Zoom on how making simple tweaks in your foods lead to big results! Good nutrition can positively impact our immune system, health, well-being, productivity, performance, energy, mood, weight management, and prevent certain chronic diseases.

Register on Zoom HERE. This virtual program is a collaboration between the libraries of Georgetown, Newburyport, and Rockport. This is the last event in the series.

Join us for a very special event on Thursday, May 26 at 7PM via Zoom with prize-winning poet, novelist and educator Ocean Vuong, author of On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, in conversation with Professor Sandra Lim, Ph.D., prize-winning poet, and professor of English at the University of Massachusetts in Lowell.

A brief reading will be followed by a conversation between our esteemed guests. Questions for the author can be submitted in advance to jfitzhanso@chelmsfordlibrary.org to be forwarded to Professor Lim.

Register directly on Zoom HERE. Presented by Chelmsford in partnership with the public libraries in Andover, Boxford, Carlisle, Danvers, Dracut, Georgetown, Groton, Groveland, Holden, Lowell, Methuen, Newburyport, South Hamilton, Tewksbury, and West Newbury.

Registered Dietician Nutritionist Jill Patterson RD leads this fun and informative program on Wednesday, May 25 at 7PM via Zoom where we will learn a total approach to improve our heart health. There are many benefits of adopting a heart healthy lifestyle including increased energy, decreased stress, improved cholesterol and blood pressure levels, and decreased risk of heart disease. Learning the science-based strategies and implementing a few simple tweaks to our lifestyle can lead to big results, so sign up today!  

Register on Zoom HERE. This virtual program is a collaboration between the libraries of Georgetown, Newburyport, and Rockport. This is the second event in a three part series. The next (and last) event in this series is June 8th: Eat This, Not That.