Category Archives: Author Talk

Author Talk, Public

Author Talk: Brendan Buckley – “The Morse Code: Legacy of a Vermont Sportswriter”

 

Triumph over hardship. Pay it forward. The power of community. These were the moral codes of Dave Morse (1937-2015), a beloved Vermont Sports Hall of Fame journalist who spent 20 years at the Hardwick Gazette writing “The Morse Code,” an all-sports, all-ages column. The Vermont Book Shop and Ilsley Library welcome Middlebury College alumnus and retired Hardwick physician Brendan Buckley, who will read from and discuss his new book about the intriguing figure of Dave Morse, The Morse Code: Legacy of a Vermont Sportswriter.

Brendan Buckley fell in love with Vermont while attending Middlebury College. After graduation, he taught sixth grade for two years, but then decided to pursue a career in medicine. He did his internship and residency at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center and then moved to Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom, where he practiced primary care medicine at the Hardwick Area Health Center for thirty four years, until his retirement in 2019. He continues to live in East Hardwick with his wife Helen, a retired school psychologist. Their children, Matthew and Emma, live in California and Utah. The Morse Code: Legacy of a Vermont Sportswriter is his first book.

Recorded 8/1/23
Producer: MCTV

Author Talk, Public

Author Talk: Leslie C. Smith – “Spitfire: A Story of Adversity, Acceptance and Resurrection”

 

Local author, Leslie C. Smith, discusses her new book, Spitfire: A Story of Adversity, Acceptance and Resurrection. With unique insight, candor, and encouragement, Leslie recounts a life lived well and with intention, even with the odds stacked against her. She had one goal to begin it all: “I needed to learn to accept myself and the diagnosis I had been given… I was on a personal journey to find peace, accept my new life and assimilate into a life that I wanted to live. I had heard the restrictions that would be part of my life and now I needed to find the flip side of the limitations.”

Recorded 5/2/23
Producer: MCTV

At the Ilsley, Author Talk, Public

Author Talk: Matthew Hongoltz-Hettling – “If It Sounds Like a Quack…A Journey to the Fringes of American Medicine”

 

Local author, Matthew Hongoltz-Hettling, discusses his new book, If It Sounds Like a Quack…A Journey to the Fringes of American Medicine.  A bizarre, rollicking trip through the world of fringe medicine, filled with leeches, baking soda IVs, and, according to at least one person, zombies.

Recorded 4/4/23
Producer: MCTV

At the Ilsley, Author Talk, Public, The Vermont Book Shop

Author Talk: Jo Brunini – “Never a Cloud”

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[/ezcol_1third] [ezcol_2third_end]Local Charlotte author,  Giovanna “Jo” Brunini Congdon discusses her new book, Never a Cloud.  Some things can only be hidden for so long. Some things are too difficult to talk about, and some things you have to repeat even when no one is listening . . .Never a Cloud charts the course of three women—Violet, Ava, and Margot— who find their way to a new understanding of home and family at Otyrburn, an estate in rural Scotland. We are happy to be partnering with Vermont Book Shop for this local author series.  Recorded 2/7/23 [/ezcol_2third_end][ezcol_1third] Producer: MCTV

Author Talk, Public, The Vermont Book Shop

VT Book Shop: Bill McKibben, author of “The Flag, the Cross, and the Station Wagon”

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“I’m curious about what went so suddenly sour with American patriotism, American faith, and American prosperity.”

Like so many of us, McKibben grew up believing—knowing—that the United States was the greatest country on earth. As a teenager, he cheerfully led American Revolution tours in Lexington, Massachusetts. He sang “Kumbaya” at church. And with the remarkable rise of suburbia, he assumed that all Americans would share in the wealth.

But fifty years later, he finds himself in an increasingly doubtful nation strained by bleak racial and economic inequality, on a planet whose future is in peril.

And he is curious: What the hell happened?

In this revelatory cri de coeur, McKibben digs deep into our history (and his own well-meaning but not all-seeing past) and into the latest scholarship on race and inequality in America, on the rise of the religious right, and on our environmental crisis to explain how we got to this point. He finds that he is not without hope. And he wonders if any of that trinity of his youth—the flag, the cross, the station wagon—could, or should, be reclaimed in the fight for a fairer future.

 Recorded 6/20/22 at CVUUS.[/ezcol_2third_end][ezcol_1third]

Producer: VT Book Shop

At the Ilsley, Author Talk, Public

At The Ilsley: The Legacy of Apollo 11

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[/ezcol_1third] [ezcol_2third_end]Middlebury resident and former Nasa senior science writer Louis Varricchio offers a 50-year look back at the historic and scientific legacy of the United States’ first mission to land astronauts on the Moon in July 1969. Varricchio was also a producer of science-related documentaries for Prairie Public Television and Public Radio International. Today, he is an adjunct science instructor at Community College of Vermont as well as the managing editor of the Vermont Eagle weekly newspaper. He is the author of the science-history book, titled Inconstant Moon: Discovery and Controversy on the Way to the Moon, which was first published in 2006 (and remains in print). Recorded 7/15/19 by MCTV.[/ezcol_2third_end][ezcol_1third]Producer: Ilsley Public Library

At the Ilsley, Author Talk, Public

Author Talk: Glacier National Park – Reflections from an Artist (and Angler) by Matt Dickerson

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[/ezcol_1third] [ezcol_2third_end]Through image, video, and story Matthew Dickerson shares some of his experiences as June 2017 artist-in-residence at the stunningly beautiful Glacier National Park in Montana.  He spent a month exploring the Park and learning from USGS and NPS biologists, rangers, and other park workers, as well as taking lots of photographs and videos.  The presentation focuses on river and lake ecology and the native fishes of the west slope, most notably bull trout and westslope cutthroat trout, and the impact and future threats from invasive species as well as climate change. Professor Dickerson has just published a book set in Glacier National Park, The Voices of Rivers. Recorded 4/24/19.[/ezcol_2third_end][ezcol_1third]
Producer: Ilsley Public Library