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Women's History Program, "Sharing Our Stories, Weaving Our Lives"

"If you are lucky enough to live on an island, you are LUCKY ENOUGH" - Rachel Todd, calligraphy by Lelania Avila

Lelania Avila, Calligrapher at work

The Southwest Harbor Public Library – Open Doors, Open Minds

March is Women’s History Month, and the Women’s History Project (WHP) of the Southwest Harbor Public Library will continue the tradition of presenting exhibits and programs that especially highlight the accomplishments of women. This year’s theme is “Women & The Sea”. The month-long series of events will include an art exhibition, panel discussions, a film viewing, and an ongoing oral history project.

Women’s History Program 2008 “Women & The Sea”

• March 6 - Artists’ Reception & Opening Celebrations, 6:00 – 8:00 PM
• March 13 - Round-table Conversation “Women in the Boat Industry”, 7:00 PM
• March 20 - "Tugboat Annie Sails Again", a 1940s feature film with Ronald Reagan, Jane Wyman, and starring Marjorie Rambeau as Tugboat Annie. 7:00 PM
• March 27 - Kitchen Table Conversation, “Women in the Fishing Industry”, 7:00 PM

For directions to and information about the Southwest Harbor Public Library, please call 244-7065 or visit us online.

Like the women on Mount Desert Island, the Southwest Harbor Public Library has a long and interesting history. The Library began when, in 1884, Annie Sawyer Downs gathered together a small collection of books left behind at summer hotels after the last visitors had gone. She placed these books on a shelf in the corner of Dr. R. J. Lemont’s drug store.

When the book collection grew too large, it was moved to a former coffin shop. In 1888 efforts began to look for a way to permanently house and sustain the collection. In 1893 the Library Association bought the lot of land where the library building now stands for $100. The Library building was completed and dedicated on October 31, 1895. Since then there have been five additions making it a large and modern library. The original part has been restored and it remains the oldest building in town whose use has not change.

Women’s History Project Poem 2007

No Idle Hands: An Invitation

Where there's a woman there's a story.
One by one we live them.
Meet us here in our work.
Evolving.

Now, in this community we share.
Stories taking shape in our hands.
Hands of woman moving make a world.
Imagine all we touch.

Soup spoons. Blood. Silk. Cell phones!
There's a woman sifting a basket of rice
Or one pressing a scalpel to bare bone.
Reaching towards the ache of a child.
You can see her on your street and on the news.

Memories of a woman swept through brush strokes
Or caught in a stitch, holding lines
nights she wrote or wove the dark away.
The leaf she pressed, a scrap she saved, transformed.
Hours in her hands returned, becoming yours.

by Candice Stover
Women’s History Month 2007