12:00 AM - 12:00 AM
To honor Vietnam Veterans in Southern NH through a nine-week period of speakers, theater presentations, and author visits. This involves eight community libraries and the Timberlane Regional School District.
Earlier this year, the SNHLC formed a working group to plan a “Big Read”-style regional project, titled “Community Stories.” Our mission is to encourage our southern New Hampshire communities to embrace the humanities and arts by connecting them through a shared reading experience. Our project’s focus is “Soldiers Home & Away” and we chose Tim O’Brien’s classic Vietnam War novel, The Things They Carried, to serve as our community book and the inspiration for our programming. We invited neighboring libraries and the Timberlane Regional School District to participate. Community Stories is now comprised of eight libraries – SNHLC members plus Chester, Danville, Hampstead, Newton, and Salem – and the school district, which draws students from Atkinson, Danville, Plaistow and Sandown. Between these eight
communities, the reach of Community Stories will extend to approximately 60,000 residents, including 16,000 library patrons. Our partnership with Timberlane High School connects us with a young adult population of 1,500 students.
We selected The Things They Carried because it presents a vivid picture of war and the toll it takes on a soldier overseas and at home. O’Brien’s account of the Vietnam experience is compelling as a literary work and facilitates conversations about the challenges and triumphs that service men and women face in combat zones and stateside. The high school has long recognized the power of this novel and has accorded it a central place in its curriculum for three decades.
Through the power of storytelling, performance, service, and dialogue, we will promote serious exploration of vital questions raised by the experience of war. We have planned numerous programs in a wide variety of formats to engage veterans and civilians over the course of