Library News & Updates

Criminal Justice or the New Jim Crow?

May 1, 2019

The rate of incarceration in the United States is higher than anywhere else in the world, and our legal system has shown a particular structural bias against black males. Author Michelle Alexander explores and documents this phenomenon in her book, The New Jim Crow, and we wanted to know what prisoners across the country thought…

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Art News from Prisoner Express

April 20, 2019

Prisoner Express has begun two new art projects inviting the community (both local and national) to participate with prisoners through letter correspondence focusing upon art. The first art project is in conjunction with Prison Arts Coalition. Established in 2008, the Prison Arts Coalition serves as a national network for prison arts in the United States.…

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Getting ready for Spring earth keeping

April 18, 2019

We’re excited and honored to be participating and sponsoring the upcoming Climate Wise Gardening, An Earth Keeping Fair event on April 27th. This is a free, all ages event from 10 – 3pm at Boyton Middle School featuring talks, exhibits, demonstrations, plant sales (and freebies), and films. Exciting! We hope you’ll join the Alternatives Library in sharing…

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Join Us for Opening Night–Art from Behind Bars April 17

April 15, 2019

We invite you to join us on April 17 from 6:30 to 8:30 to view art and write letters of encouragement to the prison artists! Prisoner Express is one of the library’s longest-running programs.  Its annual prisoner art exhibit, Art from Behind Bars, features the work of incarcerated individuals and will be held from April…

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Thank you! Our Podcast is fully supported

April 14, 2019

Last month I wrote a quick blog post about a plan to release a podcast from the Durland Alternatives Library about the ways people are taking action to implement solutions to some of today’s challenges. Today I’m happy to announce that the project is fully funded! We were asking for a modest $300, just enough…

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Movement-based Book Club

April 12, 2019

Peanut butter and maple cream. Peanut butter and coffee. Books and movement. How wonderful it is when we can take two things that are perfectly sublime on their own and then introduce them to each other—sparks fly! Being a librarian means I get to connect with people, information, and ideas daily. And then connect them…

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Will you help us launch season one of our podcast?

March 11, 2019

The Alternatives in Action podcast has been “coming soon” for way too long. But now we have 15 completed episodes, and an introduction. What are we waiting for!!!!???? Well, turns out creating and running a podcast has quite a learning curve, but I’ve broken through and figured it out thanks to the support of wrfi.org…

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