Free Music Event: Jeanne MacDonald Performs

Friends of Middletown Thrall Library, Inc. Presents

"Both Sides Now"

Jeanne MacDonald Performs Standards Old and New

Steven Wing - Accompanist

Sunday, March 21, 2010 at 2 PM

This musical performance will be held in the 2nd floor Community Room at Thrall.

All are welcome to attend! Light refreshments will be served.

Poetic Performances

Coming to Life
at the End of Winter

An Evening of Poetry

Tuesday, March 23, 2010, 7 - 8 PM

Presented by Poets Mary Makofske and Joan Siegel

Enjoy an evening of great poetry from two well-known published poets. Both will read from their own works and from poems of some of their favorite poets.

Mary's poems have appeared in Poetry, Zone 3, Poetry East, Mississippi Review, Calyx: A Journal of Art and Literature by Women, and other literary magazines and anthologies. She is the author of THE DISAPPEARANCE OF GARGOYLES and EATING NASTURTIUMS. Individual poems have received the Robert Penn Warren Poetry Prize, Spoon River Poetry Review prize, and the Iowa Woman prize.

Joan's most recent book, Hyacinth for the Soul garnered high praise from poets including Maxine Kumin, (former US Poet Laureate) who said, "…Siegel knows how to go for the small specific details that illuminate even the darkest subjects." Recipient of the New Letters Poetry Prize and the Anna Davidson Rosenberg Award, her poetry has appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, The American Scholar, Commonweal, Prairie Schooner, The Gettysburg Review among other journals and anthologies.

Both women have recently retired from the English Department at SUNY Orange.

Music Event in Celebration of Black History Month

The Friends of Middletown Thrall Library, Inc Present

Kofi and Sankofa Drum
and Dance Ensemble

Sunday, February 7, 2010, 2 PM

in the 2nd Community Room at Thrall

This musically wonderful event is free and open to the public!

Light refreshment will be served.

Learn about Middletown's History

We invite you to attend this free and interesting program exploring our town's unique history:

Old Middletown in Slides

Businesses, Homes, and Streets

Presented by Marvin H. Cohen

Tuesday, January 26, 2010, 7 - 8 PM
in the 2nd Floor Community Room

Marvin Cohen is the curator of the Historical Society of Middletown and the Wallkill Precinct.

A lifelong resident of Middletown, he is proud to share his deep knowledge of the community, gained in part from his fifty-year membership in the Middletown Fire Department and his decades of research as a railway historian.

Reel Eclectic Film Series: 2010 Schedule

Program dates: (please see below)

"Reel Eclectic" is Middletown Thrall Library's year art and international film series.

In this series we present independent as well as acclaimed feature films of interest to art and foreign film buffs and cinematic connoisseurs alike.

If mature entertainment of a truly different order is what you crave, this series might appeal to you!

Here is our film schedule for 2010:

• January 7, 2010
• February 4, 2010
• March 4, 2010
• April 1, 2010
• May 6, 2010
• June 3, 2010
• July 1, 2010
• August 5, 2010
• September 2, 2010
• October 7, 2010
• November 4, 2010
• December 2, 2010

All films begin at 7 PM, and admission is always free! Films are shown in the 2nd Floor Community Room at Middletown Thrall Library.

Due to licensing restrictions, we cannot publicize film titles outside of the library. Please call (845) 341-5454, ext. 5479 for more details or send e-mail to thrall16@warwick.net.

Free Parent Information Session

Program date: January 11, 2010, 7:00 - 8:00 PM

Middletown Thrall Library and the Hudson Valley Special Education Parent Center present:

"Referrals, Evaluations And Eligibility Determinations"

A Special Education Parent Information Session

on Monday, January 11, 2010, 7:00 - 8:00 PM
in the 2nd Floor Community Meeting Room at Middletown Thrall Library.

Topics to be covered are:

• Who can make a referral for an evaluation if there are concerns about a child's progress in school?
• How is an evaluation conducted?
• What is "Response to Intervention" and how is an eligibility determination made?

Look for the next HVSEPC information session on February 22, 2010.

Before attending, please contact the library or click here to view delays/cancellations due to inclement weather.

For more information, please contact:

A New Year-Long Movie Series

Program dates: (please see below)

In 2010 Middletown Thrall Library Presents

Afternoon Movies for Grownups

"Something for Everyone!"

Movies are shown at Middletown Thrall Library in the 2nd floor Community Room on the 3rd Wednesday of each month throughout 2010.

All movies are FREE and begin at 2:00 PM.

Due to licensing restrictions, movie titles cannot be publicized outside of the library.

Please call (845) 341-5454, ext. 5479 for more information.

Here is the schedule:

• January 20, 2010: (call for title) 1962. 129 minutes. black & white. Drama. Winner of three Academy Awards including Best Actor for Gregory Peck. Six-year-old Jean Louise "Scout" Finch (Mary Badham) is growing up in the Depression era of the early 1930s in a small Southern town in this acclaimed motion picture based on Harper Lee's novel. Jean's father (Gregory Peck), the town lawyer, is a wise, quiet man with a great sense of justice who defends a black man accused of rape.
• February 17, 2010: (call for title) 1954. 103 minutes. Musical/Romance. Winner of one Academy Award for best music, nominated for three others. Brilliant choreography by Michael Kidd, a spirited score by Johnny Mercer and Gene de Paul, and an imaginative plot about six brothers, who decide to find brides for themselves after the seventh brother (Howard Keel) brings home a wife, heighten this memorable musical. The classic "barn-raising" dance sequence is one of the most thrilling musical numbers of all-time.
• March 17, 2010: (call for title) 1944. 118 minutes. black & white. Comedy. Based on Joseph Kesselring's hit Broadway play, this madcap comedy is a blend of the bizarre and the mundane. A mild-mannered drama critic (Cary Grant) learns that his two kindly and loveable aunts have been poisoning people with elderberry wine.
• April 21, 2010: (call for title) 2004. 131 minutes. Action/Adventure. Benjamin Franklin Gates (Nicholas Cage) comes from a long line of archaeologists who are searching for a secret stash of treasure hidden for centuries. Gates has determined that the clue may lie on the back of the original Declaration of Independence. He plots to steal it to find this war chest but he must also battle the FBI who has been tipped off to the hunt in this intelligent action adventure.
• May 19, 2010: (call for title) 1937. 109 minutes. black & white. Musical. A rumor sparks a romance in this film starring perennial favorites Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. A ballet star crosses the Atlantic on the same ship as the dancer he's fallen for but hardly knows. Their interactions cause such a stir on the ship that by the time they hit land the rumor mill has churned out the incorrect item that the two are secretly married. This rumor forces the two together and they find that they actually are in love! This film features such Gershwin favorites as "Let's Call The Whole Thing Off" and "They Can't Take That Away From Me."
• June 16, 2010 (call for title) 2003. 141 minutes. Drama/History/Sport. This true story based on a best selling book tells the story of a group of the unlikeliest of heroes. It would seem that pairing a knobby-kneed horse with a half-blind ex boxer jockey would lead only to last place. Instead this unsung duo became a winning combination that inspired and intrigued a nation suffering the hardships of the Great Depression.
• July 21, 2010: (call for title) 1934. 91 minutes. black & white. Comedy/Mystery. The chemistry between William Powell and Myrna Loy was so right that this film spawned five sequels. The pair plays Nick and Nora Charles; he is a veteran detective, she his sophisticated wife.
• August 18, 2010: (call for title) 1954. 124 minutes. Drama/War. Humphrey Bogart gives a stellar performance as the mentally unfit Captain Queeg, who is relieved of duty by his executive officer to save their ship in this World War II drama. The ensemble acting makes for a marvelous study of military justice.
• September 15, 2010: (call for title) 1954. 108 minutes. Musical/Fantasy. Two Americans Gene Kelly and Van Johnson on a hunting trip in Scotland become lost. They encounter a small village, not on the map, called Brigadoon, in which people harbor a mysterious secret, and behave as if they were still living two hundred years in the past. Cyd Charisse plays the girl Kelly falls for.
• October 20, 2010: (call for title) 1967. 109 minutes. Thriller/Murder/Mystery. A fascinating look at the strained relationship between a racist Southern cop (Rod Steiger) and a black detective (Sidney Poitier) from Philadelphia, who are involved in the same murder case. Norman Jewison's film was one of the first to explore the sensitive issue of the color line in the South. But, first and foremost this is a tense, entertaining thriller. Winner of five academy awards including best picture.
• November 17, 2010: (call for title) 1995. 94 minutes. Adventure/Fantasy. Based on Dick King-Smith's beloved children's novel, this is the story of an intelligent swine whose talents in sheep herding just might save him from the slaughterhouse. Featuring live-action comedy with state-of-the-art special effects and performances by animal actors, this is an inventive, heartwarming film. Academy Award Winner best effects, visual effects.
• December 15, 2010: (call for title) 2009. 123 minutes. Biography/ Comedy/Romance. A woman verging on 30 and frustrated in a temp secretary job takes on a yearlong culinary quest: cook all 524 recipes in Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking. She chronicles her trials and tribulations in a blog that catches on with the food crowd. This film follows both women (Meryl Streep, Amy Adams) who, while separated by time and space, discover that with the right combination of passion, fearlessness and butter, anything is possible.

(Film annotations are adapted from Movie Licensing USA.)