2025-2026 calendar
Fall 2025
- September 16, 6:00 P.M. (Gaier Room, Clark County Public Library, Main Branch) - "From War Trauma to Dialogue: The Influence of a WWII POW Diary" with Melinda Barnhardt
The POW diary of Dutch prisoner of the Japanese Willem 鈥淲im鈥� Lindeijer, Sr., is a vivid first-hand account of what it was like to be a medic during the 1942 Dutch defense of Java; what it was like to minister to the sick and dying in the lowest hold of a 鈥渉ellship鈥� during a month鈥檚 long voyage to Japan; and what it was like to survive three years in an iron mining camp in northeast Honshu. It is unique among war memoirs for having been written in the form of daily letters to his wife and children that he was never able to mail; letters focusing less on the brutality of the prison experience than on the life patterns he relied on to come to terms with his trauma and retain his humanity. Join us to learn how the coping strategies that 鈥淟indy鈥� practiced daily led to his diary鈥檚 surprising transgenerational and transnational influence in the twenty-first century.
Spring 2026
- February 10, 6:00 P.M. (Gaier Room, Clark County Public Library, Main Branch) - "The Two Declarations" with Thomas T. Taylor
The appearance of the Declaration of Independence is one of the seminal moments in world history and it has attracted the attention of some of the finest of our historians. This talk asks what the Declaration meant in 1776, and what it came to mean throughout our history.
- April 16, 6:00 P.M. (Gaier Room, Clark County Public Library, Main Branch) - "St Patrick: Irish Apostle and Antislavery Advocate? Separating the Man from the Myth" with Erin T. Dailey
St Patrick remains a celebrated figure and an object of devotion for his influence upon Ireland and the spread of Christianity after the fall of the Roman Empire in the West. Some of his legacy is clearly the work of later legend鈥攄riving the snakes out of Ireland, for example, or using a shamrock to explain the mysteries of the Trinity. But his experience of slavery is rooted in his surviving writings: captured by raiders at sixteen, freed through a daring escape, and later taking up the pen against a notorious slave trader. Was he the antislavery figure presented in many modern retellings? Or is the truth more complex? This talk separates myth from reality and examines not only St Patrick himself but the dynamics of slavery and slave-trading after the Fall of Rome.