Events at the Athens Public Library

The Passenger Train Congress: Bringing Back Train Travel to Southeast Ohio

Saturday, August 30 at 1:30 pm
We have recruited a host of important people with progressive perspectives on how to bring back passenger trains to our part of the state.� This will be an informational forum with audience participation and a panel of experts and interested community leaders.� Every viewpoint from historical to logistical to technological to economic to political will be examined on one of the best, practical answers to our fuel crisis and employment problems.� Here is the current list of panelists scheduled to attend:
1. Paige Alost, Executive Director, Athens County Visitors Bureau
2. Tim Anderson, Associate Professor of Cultural and Systemic Geography, Ohio University
3. Larry Blake, Operator for Hocking Valley Scenic Railroad
4. Andrew Bremer, Executive Director of ALL ABOARD OHIO
5. Paul Logue, Athens City Planner
6. Stu Nicholson, Public Information Officer for OHIO RAIL DEVELOPMENT COMMISSION
7. Debbie Phillips, Athens City Fourth Ward Representative
8. Charles "Chip" Rogers, Veteran Athens Passenger Railway Advocate and Historian
9. Jimmy Stewart, Ohio State Representative for 92nd District
10. Bill Theisen, Athens County Commissioner
11. Israel Urieli, Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering, Ohio University
12. Paul Wiehl, Athens City Mayor
Schedule of Events:
1:30 pm – Bruce and Gay Dalzell Sing Classic Train Songs

�� -- while showing --��

1:30 pm – silent documentary film of trains, lines and services of Amtrak for vacation and business across the USA

2:00 pm – digital slide-show, narrated by Patricia Morrison, written by Charles Rogers: a visual retrospective of passenger rail service in America, Ohio, and Athens County

2:15 pm – Panel discussion with audience participation: questions, concerns, comments;

�� adjournment at 4:45

You Can Build a Greenhouse Business!: with Virginia Coover

Thursday, September 11 at 7:30 pm
Virginia Coover, author of THE NATURAL GREENHOUSE: GROWING PLANTS AND FOOD FOR PROFIT, will show you how to take charge of your own food supply as well as how to sell your surplus produce for profit!� In this age of rising food costs, uncontrolled food contamination, the low-nutrient value of hybrids, agricultural outsourcing to countries with low health standards and safety regulations, and the pervasive unregulated use of carcinogenic pesticides and herbicides, people everywhere are looking for other answers for a reliable and wholesome food supply.� So go local with food resources, and find out how at this free public lecture!

Gary Pettigrew Print Signing: Artist's Reception

Thursday, September 18 at 5:00 pm
One time only, Mr. Pettigrew will be signing prints of "Skyline of Athens," his painting that permanently hangs in the Athens library lobby.� Prints will be available for sale.� All proceeds benefit the Athens Public Library.

Several of Mr. Pettigrew's other paintings will be on display during regular library hours during the month.� This program is free and open to the public.

Lore and Legend of the Afterlife: with Dr. George Weckman

Thursday, September 18 at 7:30 pm
Our guest speaker, Dr. George Weckman, Associate Professor Emeritus of Ohio University's Classics and World Religions writes:
"Afterlife pictures and ideas are common in human cultures and religions. �They
run from horrible hells to ecstatic heavens, with limbos and purgatories also.
Very common are ghost ideas, including those celebrated every October in
Athens."
Please come to this installment of the Lore and Legend Series, in which the beliefs of many cultures are presented for examination and intriguingly compared.

Gardening with Native Ohio Plants: with Frank W. Porter

Thursday, September 25 at 7:30 pm
This lecture will enable you to create a garden consisting of native plants.� Frank Porter will discuss landscape design, soil amendments, plant selection, and low maintenance techniques. Our guest speaker owns and operates Porterbrook Native Plants, located along the beautiful Ohio River in Meigs County. Dr. Porter’s nursery has one of the largest selections of native plants in the tri-state region. All of the plants are grown only from ethically collected seeds in the wild. Dr. Porter was instrumental in the design of the Parkersburg Arboretum and providing plants for its many display gardens. Most recently, Dr. Porter helped in the planting of the Carriage Trail in Charleston, West Virginia and provided plants for the Pollination Station located in the Monongahela National Forest.

The Archaeology of the Trojan War: with Dr. Ruth Palmer

Thursday, October 2 at 7:30 pm
So you've read the ILIAD, and it makes for an exciting tale of wonder, heroism and awesome tragedy, but does the world it imagines have any basis in fact?� Historians and archaeologists talk about a world before Classical Greece, before even the preceding 'Greek Dark Age', a culture of tremendous wealth and power girdling the Aegean Sea and including its myriad islands.� They call it the Mycenaean Age, and the writing of those times is not even in the same alphabet or even the same form of language that we associate with Plato or Aristophanes.� It is a lost world whose culture came to an end for reasons not entirely known, shortly after the events of the Trojan War.� After its passing, civilization in Greece had to start all over again, almost from scratch.� Ruth Palmer, Associate Professor of Classics and World Religions at Ohio University, is both an archaeologist and textual scholar of this succession of ancient Greek civilizations.� Dr. Palmer will guide us through the clues and impressive artifacts that have been unearthed from those legendary times.� Please come to this fascinating lecture and slide show, and encounter a world largely forgotten but powerfully (if somewhat imperfectly) recalled by Homer's engaging epics.�

The Un-Lawn: What Trees Can Do for You!

Wednesday, October 22 at 7:30 pm
Terrence Hanley is the Service Forester with the Ohio Division of Forestry serving Athens County.� This program will cover the myriad advantages of preserving or creating wooded property, including tax incentives!� So liberate yourself from your lawnmowers, herbicides, fertilizers and expensive gasoline!� This program will provide practical information and interesting facts that will enable you to create or safeguard a healthy ecological environment and change the way you view the aesthetics of your property.

Bio-Crystals!: With Dr. Ido Braslavsky

Thursday, October 30 at 7:30 pm
Assistant Professor of Physics at Ohio University, Ido Braslavsky, will discuss his research on how weedy plants use crystalline structures to protect them from the cold in winter, how marine invertebrates grow crystalline shells to protect their soft bodies, and how mammals and reptiles grow the crystalline formations we call 'teeth'!

A Mind Lively and at Ease: Jane Austen and Emma: the Agatha Christies of Highbury

Thursday, November 6 at 7:30 pm
“A mind lively and at ease, can do with seeing nothing, and can see nothing that does not answer.” �These are Jane Austin’s lines describing her heroine, Emma, standing in the doorway at Ford’s store and gazing at the main street of Highbury village. �Mr. �Perry walks hastily by, Mr. Cox lets himself in at the office door—nothing much happening.
� � � �The truth, though, is that a lot is happening, all of it right under Emma’s nose. �Her mind is lively because she is clever, but it’s at ease because she isn’t really thinking. �She’s quite content being unperceptive, and equally content in the knowledge that those misconceptions she has actually represent reality.
� � � �They don’t.
� � � �Neither do ours, as readers.
� � � �Jane Austen is tricking us, just as effectively as Agatha Christie tricks us in a novel such as The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, the final pages of which turn the world inside out like a glove, and force us to reconsider everything we’ve read before.
� � � �There is no text in the English language so seemingly innocuous, and yet so deviously subtle, as Jane Austen’s novel, EMMA.
� � � �We’re going to take a close look at one brief series of scenes in Volume II Chapter IX—scenes in which, at first glance, almost nothing seems to happen.
� � � �Then, our minds hopefully becoming a bit less at ease though no less active, we’ll see what’s truly going on in Highbury’s wonderfully intricate world, and begin to understand why P.D. James refers to Jane Austen as “The greatest mystery writer in the English language.”
� � � �Hope you can come to this presentation by Dr. Joe Reese of Ohio University's Department of English Literature.

Yoga: For People 50 and Up

Every Tuesday at 2:00pm through July, then back to Wednesdays at 2:00pm in August.
Move... Relax... Gain flexibility... Breathe... Stretch... Gain strength

Instructor Linda Cochran teaches simple yoga poses.

Sponsored by the Friends of the Athens Public Library.

Reflections: Conversation for seniors and Friends

We meet the first Friday of each month at 3:00 PM.
Join us for friendly conversation about the past, the present and the future!

All ages are welcome.

Spanish Conversation Hour: Conversation for seniors and Friends

Every Tuesday from 3-4 PM
Adults and teenagers