Library Sponsors Free Environmental Events

BISBEE, AZ – In conjunction with “World Habitat Awareness Month,” which culminates in April’s annual Earth Day celebration (April 28), the Copper Queen Library will present free films, lectures, and workshops throughout the month on subjects related to environmental education.

Programming kicks off on April 2 at 5:30pm with a screening of The Future of Food, the first of five environmental films scheduled in the “Monday Night ‘Did You Know…?’ Documentary Film Series.” Other films include An Inconvenient Truth (April 9), Straw Bale Construction: The Elegant Solution (April 16), Winged Migration (April 23), and Living With Wolves (April 30).

A special highlight of April’s environmental programming, which follows up the April 9 screening of Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth, includes a lecture on “Global Warming, Climate Change, and the Human Condition” on April 13 from 5-7pm by world-renowned scientist Dr. Robert Strom from the University of Arizona’s Department of Planetary Sciences Lunar and Planetary Laboratory (LPL).

Strom has been with the LPL since 1963 and is now a Professor Emeritus at the Lab. He previously worked with Apollo, Mariner, and Voyager spacecrafts and, among other projects, is now active on the science team for NASA’s Messenger orbiter. His lecture, based on his forthcoming book of the same title, promises to be a scientific tour-de-force.

Immediately preceding Strom’s Friday lecture, the first of two weekend “Water Awareness” WaterWise workshops will be presented. The first, “When and Where to Water” will focus on drip irrigation basics and will be presented by Cyndi Wilkins on April 13 from 3-5pm. The following Saturday, April 14, Cado Daily will lecture on “Low Water Spring Gardens” from 10am-noon.

Finally, on April 18 at 6:30pm, Arizona Humanities Scholar and Chautauquan Judy Nolte Temple will portray the life of Mary Hunter Austin (1868-1934), one of the Southwest’s first environmental writers.

Temple teaches in the Women’s Studies and English Departments at the University of Arizona, is a past-president of the Western Literature Association, and was a Fulbright Senior Scholar to New Zealand in 2003, where she studied the journals of English missionary women.

Her "living history" presentation will bring to life Mary Hunter Austin, one of the prominent literary figures of the early 20th century. Austin’s most notable book, Land of Little Rain (1903), is a meditation on the harsh Mojave Desert area of the eastern Sierra. Her approach to landscape, which includes people from many cultural and racial backgrounds, differs sharply from the work of John Muir and Edward Abbey. Austin also wrote novels, poetry, and essays, many of which are in print and still controversial.

These events celebrate the library’s “6 Main Centennial” and are sponsored by the City of Bisbee and the Friends of the Copper Queen Library. All are free and open to the public.

For further information, contact the Library Circulation Desk at 432-4232.