News & Notes from the Blanding Library

Story Times
Story and Craft Times for children ages 3 years and up will continue on Thursday mornings from 10:30 to 11:15. Siblings are welcome. Please register in advance so we can have craft supplies ready.

Baby and Toddler Story Times for children up through age 4 and their caregivers will continue on Tuesday mornings from 10:30 to 11. Siblings are welcome too at these interactive programs of movement, books, music, and games. Please register for these programs.

History Discussion Group
The History Discussion Group led by Hank Coleman meets at the library on Wednesdays from 11 to noon. The group, which is now discussing various aspects of the Civil War, is open to all with an interest in history.

Museum Passes & More
Did you know that you can reserve over a dozen one-day museum passes on the library’s website? While a few of these places are closed for the winter, most are open and welcome visitors. The passes are free to borrow with your SAILS library card and offer discounted admission fees to local attractions in Massachusetts and Rhode Island. Find out more at www.blandinglibrary.net under Museum Passes or call the library for more information.

The Blanding Book Club meets the first Wednesday of each month at 7pm and welcomes new members. To find out more, stop by or call the library.

You can access the popular genealogy website Ancestry.com for free at the library. All you need is your SAILS library card. Stop by to find out more.

Worth Reading
The Blanding is constantly acquiring new books, fiction and non-fiction, for readers to check out, and the SAILS library system has many thousands of books and other items that you can reserve for delivery to the Blanding.

One new non-fiction book that should appeal to all those interested in Massachusetts history is “The Ruin of All Witches: Life and Death in the New World” by Malcolm Gaskill. Witchcraft trials weren’t held in Salem alone, though that location gets all the publicity. This book vividly describes earlier witchcraft trials that were held in Springfield in the 1640’s, when the town was newly settled and far from the rest of Massachusetts Bay Colony. The settlers felt constantly under threat from the wilderness all around them and life was very difficult.

The author is British, a professor emeritus at the University of East Anglia who has written other works about witchcraft and the earliest settlers in New England. This book is fascinating, and thanks to his extensive research on court records from that time, it reads more like a novel than a scholarly work. He focuses especially on one very unhappy couple, Hugh and Mary Parsons, two troubled souls who turn against each other with disastrous results.

The Blanding Public Library (blandinglibrary.net) is located at 124 Bay State Rd., Rehoboth. Phone 502-252-4236. The library is open Monday through Thursday from 10am to 8pm and on Friday and Saturday from 10 to 4. Closed Sundays and holidays, including Monday Jan. 16 for Martin Luther King Day.