Springfield OLLI

Anita Rafael – Author, For the Love of Vermont: The Lyman Orton Collection

We’ll hear the story of the magnificent art collection of Lyman Orton, proprietor of The Vermont Country Store, and how he went about collecting this artwork for nearly half a century to ensure that these treasures stayed in their home state of Vermont. We’ll view photographs of many of the pieces and hear how Rafael helped to collect and tell the stories behind the scenes and the artists that depict a true love of Vermont in the landscape and the lives of Vermont’s people. Included will be pieces by Rockwell Kent, Luigi Luciani, Dean Fausett, Henry Shokler, and Stuart Eldredge – all from a time that Lyman Orton calls the ‘Golden Era’ of the painters in Vermont, from 1910 to 1970.

Andrew Buchanan – Senior Lecturer, Global, Environmental, Military History, University of Vermont 

We’ll hear about the long–term global effect that World War II had upon the world order, and how what happened more than 80 years ago is still crucially important in the politics and current events of today. 

Michelle Arnosky Sherburne – Author, Vermont Historian, Newspaper Publisher

Building upon last year’s tremendous interest in Vermont’s role in the Underground Railroad, Sherburne will return for a closer look at its local history.  We’ll zoom in on networking examples from four compass points in Vermont: Burlington, Springfield, Thetford and Ferrisburg.  In Burlington and Thetford, locals had a system in place to aid freedom seekers from one household to another discreetly, due to dangers of exposure, capture, and ruined reputations.  Underground Railroad agents worked together to move people through their town northward to full freedom in Canada. Another form of networking will be shared about the Robinsons in Ferrisburg who used their Quaker ties and family connections to receive and pass along freedom seekers.  We’ll meet Vergennes native Delia Webster whose mission to help freedom seekers in Kentucky and Indiana made her notorious, for which she was in and out of jail and the news constantly.  We’ll hear more about Springfield’s own Noah Safford and his association with New England abolitionists and his local Springfield efforts of moving freedom seekers along the Underground Railroad. 

Please note: This program takes place on Wednesday.

Joseph A. Citro – Writer, Folklorist, Native Vermonter

Join us for a Special Halloween Program with Vermont’s expert in all things strange and consider the evidence!  Ghosts? Are they real? Are the routines of our lives occasionally disrupted by inexplicable happenings? Coincidences? Visions? Messages from beyond? Can we filet fact from fiction in the realm of the supernatural?  Through a series of books, fiction and nonfiction, and via twenty-two years as a public radio commentator, Joe Citro is the first writer in the history of our state to collect Vermont’s strangest tales – historic and folkloric. Join him for a sampling of our rich local lore and an overview of his efforts to preserve it.  We’ll hear excerpts from his work and the stories of how he collects and validates claims. His books will be available for purchase and signing. 

Sydney Lea – Author, Vermont’s Poet Laureate (2011-15) 

Mark Breen – Senior Meteorologist and Planetarium Director, Fairbanks Museum and Planetarium

**Returning for his 13th Annual Presentation to our Springfield OLLI Group** 

Of all the astronomical events that we can witness, none has brought the range of fear and excitement, superstition and science, hysteria and history, as that of eclipses. Breen will illuminate the shadowy nature of eclipses, from lunar eclipses and their curious transformation of the Moon to a bizarre red disc, to the extremely rare total solar eclipse, like the one seen in northern Vermont this past April.  Through the centuries, humans worked tirelessly at unraveling the mysteries of the heavens, and eventually came to understand the role of the Moon, orbiting the Earth, yet only very rarely passing so precisely between the Sun and Earth, or through the Earth’s shadow, in order to create an eclipse.  Breen will weave elements of science, history, and imagery to change the mysterious to the marvelous!