Today, our Woodstock Weekend continues!

Sunday, July 26 at 2 p.m.

We'll continue our Woodstock Weekend on Sunday with a discussion of  the new book Woodstock Revisited: 50 Far Out, Groovy, Peace-Loving, Flashback-Inducing Stories from Those Who Were There. The book is a compilation of 50 stories written by people who attended the 1969 festival; Editor Susan Reynolds and contributing authors Jeff Blumenfeld, Louis Denaro, Catherine Hiller, and Sandy McKnight will read their essays and talk about their experiences.

(Far out!)

Woodstock Weekend is an Adult Summer Reading event.

Just a few weeks after the moon landing, about half a million young people landed on an upstate New York farm for "An Aquarian Exposition"...now known as one of the most important cultural events of the late 1960s: Woodstock.

The story behind the festival is told in Bob Spitz's Barefoot in Babylon, and it's a nearly-unbelievable sequence of events that makes you wonder how four guys actually pulled the whole thing together. The gates opened on Friday, August 15, and the original 200,000 ticket holders were eventually joined by so many others that the concerts were declared free and the New York State Thruway had to be shut down because of incoming traffic.

All weekend, attendees were treated to unforgettable performances by, among others, Richie Havens, Joan Baez, Santana, the Grateful Dead, Janis Joplin, The Who, The Band, and Jimi Hendrix. They endured rain, mud, medical emergencies, a scarcity of food and drinks, and lost cars...and came away with a lifetime of memories.

This weekend, we're presenting the Academy Award-winning documentary Woodstock, Saturday evening at 7. Barefoot in Babylon author Bob Spitz will join us to introduce the film! We also have a discussion of Woodstock Revisited, a new oral history of the event, on Sunday afternoon at 2. Join us for two very special events to commemorate 40 years of peace and music!

(Additional parking for evening and weekend Library programs on Thorndal Circle, behind Nielsen's.)

Last week, we hosted the first-ever One Page Poetry Circle at Darien Library, under the leadership of teacher and author Madge McKeithen. Poems by Walt Whitman, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Hart Crane, Robert Frost, and many others were read and discussed, and we hope to repeat our success at the next circle, on Wednesday, August 5!

The Good Old Summertime is the name of our Adult Summer Reading program and we're reminding our readers of the simple pleasures of life, like poetry. One of the discoveries last week was that reading a poem aloud can bring new meaning to light...and all of us went away inspired with each other's poetry choices.

To join us in August, please choose a one page poem that reflects the theme "Poetry & Rhyme." We're displaying some suggestions on Main Street and welcome your ideas and enthusiasm. See you at 7 PM on Wednesday, August 5 for another evening of poetry, cookies, coffee, and community!

Photo from Flickr user bwanderson.

While life slows down for many during the summer, we're busy planning and providing suggestions and experiences for your precious down-time. (Also, I'll bet you didn't know that we're also busy planning your fall!*)

Adult Summer Reading continues in July with (right off the bat) a One Page Poetry Circle (tonight, July 1st at 7 p.m.), Meet Us on Main Street, a weekly staff-recommends, Short Stories for Long Days, a short story dicussion group, a special Meet-the-Author event featuring Jayanti Tamm, author of Cartwheels in a Sari: A Memoir of Growing Up Cult, Classics 2.0, a fun and fresh look at the classics, and a Woodstock Weekend which will feature a screening of Woodstock with an introduction by Bob Spitz, the author of "Barefoot in Babylon: The Creation of the Woodstock Music Festival - 1969."

Monday at Seven will also continue throughout the month (and beyond). The next meeting will be on Monday, July 6th, when the speaker will be Wayne Pasternack of Bloomberg. He will demonstrate the feature of the Bloomberg terminal that will be installed here at the Library on July 1st (major news!).

We also begin our Summer Film Series this Friday, July 3rd at 7:30 p.m. with Confessions of a Shopaholic. Next Friday, July 10th, be here for Taken. The series will run for eight consecutive weeks -every Friday at 7:30. For a the full summer movie lineup, click here.

And as long as we're talking coolness factors, in case you haven't been by the Library in the past week or so, we have refreshing news...the courtyard fountain is now operational (and beautiful)!

*...here are a few events that are confirmed for the fall. Ready? I'll wait while you get your calendar/Blackberry/organizer....On Sunday, October 4th at 5:30 p.m., A.J. Jacobs will be here to talk about his new (side-splittingly hilarious) book The Guinea Pig Diaries: My Life as an Experiment. And, on Thursday, November 5th at 7 p.m., the week following the release of his newest book "True Blue," David Baldacci will be here. Looks like it won't only be a great summer...the fall is looking spectacular, too!