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Meet Bernardsville author, poet and editor Donna Baier Stein at Bernardsville Public Library on Tuesday, September 23 at 7:00 pm. Ms. Stein will read from her collection of short stories, Sympathetic People, which was published last year. Bestselling author Caroline Leavitt wrote of the book, "Donna Baier Stein uncovers the sometimes heady glint of danger in relationships in a brilliantly edgy collection of stories that gets under your skin even as it illuminates love, lust - and everything in between." Copies of Ms. Stein's books will be available for purchase and signing at the library event.
Donna Baier Stein's poetry and prose have appeared in Virginia Quarterly Review, New York Quarterly, Prairie Schooner, Washingtonian, and many other journals and anthologies. She was a founding poetry editor at Bellevue Literary Review and now publishes Tiferet Journal. Her story collection was a Finalist in the Iowa Fiction Awards; her unpublished novel Fortune received the PEN/New England Discovery Award. Other awards include a scholarship from Bread Loaf, fellowships from Johns Hopkins University and the New Jersey Council for the Arts, prizes from the Poetry Societies of Virginia and New Hampshire, an Honorable Mention from the Allen E. Ginsberg Poetry Prizes, a Summer Literary Seminars Scholarship, three Pushcart nominations and prizes from Kansas Quarterly, Florida Review, and elsewhere. Her poetry chapbook Sometimes You Sense the Difference was published by Finishing Line Press in 2012.
A freelance direct marketing copywriter since 1980, Donna Baier Stein has also written for clients that include Smithsonian, Time, The Nature Conservancy, World Wildlife Fund, and many others. She created and presents seminars on copywriting for the Direct Marketing Association and has taught copywriting and writing at universities, corporations, and clubs. Her two nonfiction books on copywriting are published by McGraw Hill and Thomson Shore. She was also named Direct Marketer of the Year by the New England Direct Marketing Association in 2004 and Copywriter of the Year by the American Writers and Artists Institute.
There is no charge to attend the library reading, but advance sign-up is requested. Register online at www.bernardsvillelibrary.org and follow the link from Adult Programs, or call the library at 908-766-0118 to sign up.
The "Make" movement is sweeping across the country and encompasses everything from Do-It-Yourselfers, artists and crafters to computer programmers and app developers. To experience the movement yourself, drop in at Bernardsville Public Library on Saturday, September 20 from 11:00 am to 4:00 pm when all kinds of makers will be on hand, and there will be interactive activities for adults and children alike.
Among the exhibits and exhibitors scheduled at the Library are a 3D printer demonstration, Arduino kits and Raspberry Pi, a jeweler, an artist who uses pressed flowers to make her art, a seamstress who uses up-cycled materials, a painter who paints mandala art and one who paints gourds. There will be special children’s activities in the Story Time Room including beading, origami and edible chocolate modeling clay. It’s all free.
Doug Baldwin, Emerging Technologies Librarian at Piscataway Public Library, will provide a hands-on demonstration of a Makerbot 3D printer, as well as free software you can use to start working with 3D models. He will also give visitors a look at the Raspberry Pi, a credit-card sized computer, and give attendees an opportunity to use Arduino kits to build all types of electrical circuits.
Local artists will also be demonstrating their crafts, and many will have hands-on projects for visitors to complete and take home. Rebecca Baranowski will use her sewing machine to up-cycle clothing and fabric scraps. She’ll display clothing, doll hats, fascinators and pins that she has made. Brigid Glynn-Young will have a display showing the origin and history of Mandalas. She will demonstrate her process of creating Mandala, the stages of a piece, and the tools and supplies she uses. There will be Mandala templates for visitors to practice making their own Mandala art. Michelle Marigliano and Lorenzo DiAndrea will display samples of Lorenzo’s Saori weaving. Participants will be given time to weave on a pre-warped Saori loom. Beth Murphy will demonstrate and describe the process of pressing botanicals to best preserve their color and beauty. She will have a variety of different presses and a supply of already pressed flowers for people to work with to make their own cards or bookmarks to take home. Andrea Skerratt, who makes jewelry and metal objects using silver, copper, brass, gold and semi-precious gems, will demonstrate how she uses hand tools to create silver jewelry. Mark Thompson will demonstrate how to dry gourds and then cut, carve, burn, sand, paint, dye and apply various dried flowers to make decorative and useful bowls, vases and birdhouses. Tiny bottle gourds will be available for visitors to decorate and take home. The library's on-going Saturday Crafters will meet in the Small Meeting Room at 3:00 pm and answer questions about their group.
There will be other activities as well. Angela Ferraro-Fanning will conduct a demonstration of Photoshop on the library’s iMac from 12:00 to 1:00 pm. From 1:00 to 2:00 pm, she will be available to answer questions. Library staffers Sarah Gillis will direct visitors in a hands-on craft creating a paper circuit using copper tape and LED lights, and Laura Shabazz will demonstrate how, with black-out poetry, one can combine a love of word finds and lists to reveal one’s inner artistic poet.
Maker activities for children will start at 10:30 am with a special Saturday Story Time for families. This drop-in program will run until 12:30 pm and include stories and Maker crafts. Older children (Grades 4 to 12) will enjoy Maker activities from 1:00 to 4:00 pm such as beading, origami, edible chocolate modeling clay and creating a refrigerator magnet.
There is no charge to attend Maker Day, and no sign-up is needed. For further information, call the Library at 908-766-0118.
On Tuesday, September 30, at 11:30 am, the Friends of the Bernardsville Public Library will host Ilene Beckerman, author and inspiration for the current Nora and Delia Ephron play, Love, Loss and What I Wore, at a luncheon at the Roxiticus Golf Club. In addition to having written many books, Beckerman has written for The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times and The Ladies Home Journal; Oprah Winfrey has profiled her. She is a New Jersey resident with ties to the Somerset Hills, having lived and worked in Bernardsville and some of the surrounding towns. She also ran The Beckerman Group, an advertising and public relations firm that was located on Mill Street in Bernardsville.
Tickets may be purchased at the library until September 20th and will be sold for $75. Wine and lunch will be served and the author’s books will be available for purchase.
The Friends of the Bernardsville Public Library was established in 1902. The Friends consists of a group of volunteers who are committed to providing special programs and services that benefit all users of the library and all members of the community. If you have questions about this fundraiser, please contact Madelyn English at the library at (908) 766-0118.
Bernardsville Public Library’s next session of English-As-A-Second-Language (ESL) classes will begin on Monday, September 15. Classes will be offered on Mondays and Thursdays at both 3:00 pm and 7:15 pm and will run for ten sessions (through November 20). There is no charge to attend and students may sign up for more than one timeslot if they wish. Concurrent activities for children aged three and up are available during the evening sessions.
At the first session, students will be divided into small groups based on their native language and their facility with English. The classes will follow a variety of formats including lessons and practice, and conversation and role playing daily tasks that have to be executed in English. Trained community volunteers teach the classes. Community members who would like to volunteer as teachers are encouraged to call the library at 908-766-0118.
There is no charge to attend the program, but advance registration is requested. Registration is optional. Go to www.bernardsvillelibrary.org and follow the link under Adult Programs, or call the library at 908-766-0118 for more information or to sign up.
Eleanor Roosevelt, with her passion for social justice and sensitivity to the underprivileged, was an inspiration to people all around the world. At Bernardsville Public Library on Sunday, September 14 at 2:00 pm, in this one-woman play by Stephen LaRocque, actress Linda Kenyon assumes Mrs. Roosevelt’s voice, gestures, warmth and engaging personal touches and illuminates some of the steps along her life’s journey.
Ellie Seagraves, Eleanor Roosevelt's granddaughter, said of the show, "Linda has the ER voice, gestures, warmth and engaging personal touches of ER. What Linda does with this role is the best I've seen or heard any place."
Ms. Kenyon is an experienced television, stage and film actress whose special skills include impersonations of Eleanor Roosevelt and Babe Didrikson as well as Julia Child. She received her training on the Arena Stage (Norman Gevanthor), the Folger Theatre (Franchelle Dorn), and the Poet & Peasant Professional Actors’ Workshop.
There is no charge to attend the program, but advance sign-up is requested. Register online at www.bernardsvillelibrary.org and follow the link from Adult Programs, or call the library at 908-766-0118 to sign up.
In a partnership of Bernardsville Library and Bernardsville Recreation, a six-session course on yoga basics will be offered in the library's Community Room on Tuesdays, September 9 to October 14 at 1:00 pm. Taught by Julie Shaw of Lotus Mind and Body, the total cost for the 6-week session is $30.00. Registration is required through Bernardsville Recreation’s Community Pass portal, https://register.communitypass.net/bernardsville. Students should bring a yoga mat or towel with them to class.
Suitable for all students, the classes will offer an integrated sequence of poses designed to warm up the body and then work toward a specific intention within the natural movements of the spine. Students are encouraged throughout the entire practice to link their awareness of breath to the movements of the body. This awareness is the single most important key to a Hatha yoga practice because it serves to keep the practitioner in the present movement, observing and accepting what is. Pranayama (breath work) and a final deep relaxation are integral to every class.
Some twenty-five years ago, Instructor Shaw's long commute in a car with a cranky clutch resulted in back pain. She looked up “yoga” in the yellow pages and stepped into so much more than an exercise class. Fourteen years later she completed her first level Yoga Alliance-approved teacher training, followed six years later by her second level training. She began teaching more than 10 years ago and has studied several primary forms of yoga, including Iyengar, Kripalu and Viniyoga. Currently, she is studying to become a certified yoga therapist in the Viniyoga tradition, which is one of the remaining truly authentic yoga traditions. She teaches group classes and works privately with individuals, developing a yoga practice which can best serve their needs, whatever their condition may be. Ms. Shaw has had the privilege of experiencing the cumulative effects of decades of yoga, and she uses that awareness to encourage all students, beginners or veterans, to be open to what yoga can offer in this moment of their lives.
For further information, call Bernardsville Library at 908-766-0118 or Bernardsville Recreation at 908-766-2546.
Bernardsville Library’s book group, Saturday Samplers, will meet Saturday, September 6 at 3:30 pm to discuss “Motherless Brooklyn” (1999) by Jonathan Lethem. [The author will not be present.]
Mr. Lethem is an American novelist, essayist and short story writer. He was born in Brooklyn, NY and went to Bennington College. His first novel, "Gun, with Occasional Music," a genre work that mixed elements of science fiction and detective fiction, was published in 1994. "Motherless Brooklyn," published in 1999, won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction, The Macallan Gold Dagger for crime fiction, and the Salon Book Award; it was named book of the year by Esquire whose reviewer described it as "The best novel of the year… Utterly original and deeply moving." In 2003, Lethem published "The Fortress of Solitude," which became a New York Times Best Seller. In 2005, he received a MacArthur Fellowship.
"Motherless Brooklyn" is a return for the author to the detective theme. The book's protagonist, Lionel Essrog, is an orphan whose Tourette's syndrome drives him to bark, count, and rip apart the English language in startling and original ways. Together with three veterans of the St. Vincent's Home for Boys, he works for small-time mobster Frank Minna's limo service cum detective agency. When Frank is fatally stabbed, Lionel's world is suddenly topsy-turvy, and this outcast who has trouble even conversing attempts to untangle the threads of the case while trying to keep the words straight in his head.
Led by Program/PR Assistant Evelyn Fischel, Saturday Samplers is a book discussion group dedicated to sampling various kinds of literature, including short stories, nonfiction, new and old novels, and even teen fiction. Its goal is to search out interesting, noteworthy, and sometimes overlooked books. Readers can find information about the group and about the books and authors on the reading list at http://saturdaysamplers.blogspot.com. No sign-up is needed to join the discussion. Call the library at 766-0118 for more information.
