See Santa & Mrs. Claus at the Library!
Save the date: the Bethany Lions Club will be bringing everyone’s favorite holiday elves to Clark Memorial Library on December 5th, from 4:30 – 6:30 PM. Visit with Santa and Mrs. Claus, and join members of the Lions Club and your local librarians at the makerspace table!
A Historical Walk Through Bethany: First Photo Scanning Day
November 23, 2:00 – 3:30 PM
The Library is hosting Photo Scanning Days in collaboration with the Bethany Historical Society to collect images for the upcoming “A Historical Walk Through Bethany” exhibit! Bethany residents are invited bring in photos that show everyday life in Bethany through the past decades. Members of the Historical Society in the downstairs Community Room will scan the photos to create digital copies for the exhibit and return the originals.
Photos can also be dropped off at the Library during our hours of operation, at the Town Clerk’s office, or at a Bethany Historical Society event; please bring them in an enclosed envelope labeled with your name and contact information so that they can be returned to you once they have been scanned.
For more information, contact Linda Wooster
at ljwooster@gmail.com or 203-393-1832.
Have You Tested Your Water Lately?
Even if your water tastes and smells fine, that doesn’t always mean it’s safe to drink…
UConn Extension is providing reduced-cost well testing for residents of Bethany and the surrounding areas. Normally $350 or more, tests will be provided for $200!
Please sign up by November 11th. If you miss the deadline to register, we will have sample kits to distribute at the event. Kits will need to be returned the day of or brought back to the UConn main campus at a later date.
Where: Clark Memorial Library, 538 Amity Road, Bethany, CT 06524
When: November 16th, 10:00 AM – 1:00 PM
Visit s.uconn.edu/bethany-well-testing to register
Contact alec.janis@uconn.edu with questions
Clark Memorial Library and the Bethany Historical Society are working together to create A Historical Walk Through Bethany, an exhibit highlighting the visual history of the town of Bethany through the years. The exhibit will feature photos shared by the community, which will be scanned, enlarged, matted, and arranged by decade in the Library’s Community Room, allowing visitors to “walk through” the everyday lives of Bethany residents.
A few photos have already been collected, and are on display across from the glass display cabinets outside the Community Room! Be sure to stop by and get a glimpse of how life in Bethany has changed over time.
The Library will be hosting Photo Scanning Days on November 23 and December 10 to collect images for the final exhibit. For more information about these events, and the exhibit as a whole, see the Library’s Calendar of Events.
An artist reception will be held on November 16th, 3:00 – 4:30 PM for the local artist featured in our Arts@Clark! exhibits for October and November, Roberta Scott. Her work will be shown in the Community Room and the downstairs display cabinets from Tuesday, October 8th, until Friday, December 6th.
Roberta is, in her own words, “a maker of fine art and not so fine art.”
She grew up in the Four Corners area of New Mexico, Arizona, and Utah, on and off the Navajo reservation and military bases. After high school, she went to work for the Forest Service, served 5 years in the Navy working as an aviation mechanic, and worked locally at Sikorsky Aircraft. She received a BFA in Sculpture at Lyme Academy College of Fine Arts, a college of the University of New Haven, and is currently a technical writer for Sikorsky, a mother, and a “fair weather artist.”
What is a cryptid? It’s a mysterious creature that has been claimed (but never proven) to exist, like Bigfoot or the Loch Ness Monster.
Join Patrick Scalisi and Valerie Ruby-Omen, the author and illustrator of Connecticut Cryptids: A Field Guide to the Weird and Wonderful Creatures of the Nutmeg State, for a presentation on Connecticut’s cryptids – including a special look at our local Bethany cryptid, the Downs Road Monster. The presentation will take place in the Library’s Community Room on Saturday, October 12, starting at 3:00 PM.
For more information about the book and its creators (as well as special bonus stories!) you can visit the Connecticut Cryptids website at www.ctcryptids.com.
Be sure to look for us at the 2024 Bethany Harvest Festival! The Friends of the Library will be hosting a bake sale, there will be a raffle to win a Halloween gift basket, and if you don’t already have a library card, we’ll have everything you need to sign up for one!
The Festival takes place at the Old Bethany Airport (695 Amity Road) on Sunday, October 6, and lasts from 11:00 AM – 4:00 PM.
As promised, we have collected some of the many photos taken during the 5th Annual Public Art Exhibit into a short video commemorating the event! Thank you again to everyone who helped to make this year’s Public Art Exhibit our biggest success so far. This video will remain available to view on the Library’s YouTube channel as well as the Arts@Clark! page on our website, under Previous Events.
We hope to see you again next year!
Thank you to everyone who took part in our Adult Summer Reading Raffle!
The complete Butterfly Tree, which showcases our adult patrons’ favorite books from their childhoods, will temporarily be on display upstairs in the magazine area. It includes books and series for the full range of young readers, from picture books to full-length novels and everything in between. The full list of submissions is below; whether you’re reminiscing or looking for a new favorite, there’s sure to be something for you!
Adult Summer Reading Submissions:
A Little Princess – Frances Hodgson Burnett
A Series of Unfortunate Events (Series) – Lemony Snicket
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn – Betty Smith
A Wizard of Earthsea – Ursula K. Le Guin
A Wrinkle in Time – Madeleine L’Engle
Anne of Green Gables – L. M. Montgomery
Appointment with a Stranger – Jean Thesman
“B” is for Betsy – Carolyn Haywood
Berenstain Bears (Series) – Stan and Jan Berenstain
Black Beauty – Anna Sewell
Blueberries for Sal – Robert McCloskey
Danny the Champion of the World – Roald Dahl
Fancy Nancy and the Mermaid Ballet – Jane O’Connor
Fantastic Mr. Fox – Roald Dahl
From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler – E. L. Konigsburg
Go, Dog. Go! – P. D. Eastman
Gooseberry Park – Cynthia Rylant
Harriet the Spy – Louise Fitzhugh
Judy Bloom (Author)
Julie of the Wolves – Jean Craighead George
Knight’s Castle – Edward Eager
Little Critter (Series) – Mercer Mayer
Little House on the Prairie (Series) – Laura Ingalls Wilder
Little Women – Louisa May Alcott
Madeline – Ludwig Bemelmans
Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel – Virginia Lee Burton
Miss Nelson is Missing! – Harry Allard
Misty of Chincoteague – Marguerite Henry
Nancy Drew (Series) – Carolyn Keene
Pinkalicious – Victoria Kann
Popcorn – Frank Asch
Rosebud – Ed Emberly
The Babysitters Club (Series) – Ann M. Martin
The Contented Little Pussycat – Frances Ruth Keller
The Giving Tree – Shel Silverstein
The Hobbit – J. R. R. Tolkien
The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe – C. S. Lewis
The Little Engine That Could – Watty Piper
The Little Prince – Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
The Little Red Hen – Folk Tale
The Little White Horse – Elizabeth Goudge
The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett
The Secret Language – Ursula Nordstrom
The Secret of the Caves (Hardy Boys) – Franklin W. Dixon
The Story of Doctor Dolittle – Hugh Lofting
The Swiss Family Robinson – Johann David Wyss
The Velveteen Rabbit – Margery Williams
The Westing Game – Ellen Raskin
The Yearling – Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
Uglies – Scott Westerfield
Where the Sidewalk Ends – Shel Silverstein
White Fang – Jack London
An artist reception will be held on August 24th, 3:00 – 4:30 PM for the local artist featured in our Arts@Clark! exhibits for August and September, Kim Ahrens. Her work will be shown in the Community Room and the downstairs display cabinets from Saturday, August 3rd, until Thursday, October 3rd.
Kim is a Bethany resident whose favorite subjects include landscapes, chickens and other animals, and flowers, mostly painted in watercolor or acrylic. She paints almost daily in her studio, and hopes her creativity is an inspiration to all who see her work.
Stop in during Library hours to take a look!