7 pm, Small Meeting Room/Zoom

The books we're reading are award winners (The Booker Prize) or have been featured in the public space as a good read. Join us as we discuss these literary gems. You are welcome to attend whether or not you have read or listened to the selection. Ages 18+. Books selected for Fredricksen Reads will be listed on the Fredricksen Library online events calendar.

How to Build a Boat by Elaine Feeney (2023) 301 pages. 

A boy’s irrepressible dream finds expression through a community propelled by love out of grief. Lyrical and compassionate, this novel is about the courage of conviction and the power of the imagination to transform—and how sometimes the best way to break free of old walls is to build something beautiful within them. Long listed for the Booker Prize in 2023. Registration required.

Small Meeting Room  

Join with fellow book lovers as we take a look at works from a period in a language or culture's history that was particularly creative and productive. You do not have to read the selection before the meeting date. No registration required.

December: Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell 

The author’s powerful memoir chronicling his experiences of poverty and hardship in both cities. It offers a raw and eye-opening exploration of the realities faced by the working class in the early 20th century.  

This program is sponsored in memory of Marie Schleicher.

6:30 pm in the Community Room

With his unique gravelly, tobacco-scarred, and whiskey-soaked voice and experimental presentation styles, Waits is one of our great composers and performers of "people's music" since the early 1970s. Recognized by Bruce Springsteen, Johnny Cash, Bob Dylan, Rod Stewart, and others, we will be celebrating his music and cultural contributions (he is also a bit of a movie "star").  Visuals and projected lyrics for singing along to Tom's extraordinary and idiosyncratic prestidigitations. Presented by guitarist, singer and West Chester University professor, Doug Morris. All are welcome!   

7:00 pm - 8:30 pm in the Atrium, Upper Level

Join us for a musical celebration of the season with selections from The Praise Ringer Handbell Choir of the First United Methodist Church in Mechanicsburg followed by seasonal selections from harpist Louis Lynch.

6 pm in the Community Room
Discuss types of investments, technology, diversification, researching before you invest, and the “power” of compound interest. This program is presented by the PA State Dept. of Banking and Securities. Register or walk in. 

1:30 p.m. – 3:30 p.m. in the Community Room 

Between 1935 and 1975, the pursuit of mental health became a social priority in the United States particularly in the San Francisco Bay Area. How did San Francisco, once a sleepy outpost of the mental health professions, become a world-class psychiatric city after World War II? Why did the pursuit of self-improvement through psychotherapy become commonplace in certain regions of the country but not in others? Join writer and historian Justin Suran in this discussion of his Substack series “Reason's Frontier: How Psychiatric Science and Therapeutic Culture Became Part of Everyday Life.” No registration required.

Come prepared for a discussion at each meeting by reading these articles on Substack:

Nov 23 - Preface, 1, 2, and 3

Friday, October 25, 6:30 – 8:30 p.m. in the Community Room 

Kris was a composer, singer, guitarist, poet, short-story writer, film actor (e.g., A Star is Born; Semi-Tough; Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid; Lonestar, etc.), helicopter pilot (he landed a helicopter in Johnny Cash’s yard to get Cash to listen to one his songs, winner of the Free Speech Award from the “Americana Music Association, member of the Country Music Hall of Fame, an activist for peace and social justice, a Rhodes Scholar with a Master’s in literature from Oxford; a friend, colleague and comrade of Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, and Waylon Jennings.  

Kristofferson brought Dylanesque poetry, Blakean literary adventurousness, and a combination of the personal as political and the political as personal to Nashville and country music. His work opened a connection between country music, folk music, rock music, and the “counterculture.”  

This program is presented by Doug Morris, musician, composer, storyteller and West Chester University professor.