Closed for Martin Luther King, Jr. Day

Little Makers

Come to the library for 30 minutes of making! Each Little Maker's session will have a simple craft activity that we do together. This week we will make a Snowy Day Painting.

Recommended ages 2-6

Registration is Required

Monthly Writers Group

Do you consider writing to be a passion, hobby, or general interest? If that's the case, then our Monthly Writers Group might just be for you!

Every second Tuesday of the month (sometimes third Tuesday) at Atwater Memorial Library @ 10:30AM, please join us for a friendly discussion with likeminded writers of all levels, where you can share your work, as well as offer constructive criticisms and thoughts on other's writing.

These meetings will be facilitated by Rona, a writer with 40+ years of literature and writing teaching experience. If you are unsure of what to write, here are a few optional prompts:

"These are meant to offer some ideas for writing, not to limit you in any way. Feel free to ignore them entirely and write on whatever seems meaningful for you. Write in any genre you prefer: poetry, fiction, nonfiction/personal essay, etc. If you use a prompt, choose just one of these, and approach it from any angle that seems fun to you."

1. Write a piece inspired in some way by a color.

2. Listen to a favorite piece of music, and let it provide inspiration for your writing.

3. Think of a pivotal moment in your life. Write about it.

4. Consider some of the more memorable people you have met. Write about one of them.

Nature, Art, and Service as Medicine with Journalist Julia Hotz

Nature, Art, and Service as Medicine with Journalist Julia Hotz, Journalist and Award-Winning Author of The Connection Cure, Tuesday, January 20th at  2 PM ET.

Be sure to jump start your new year with us as we chat with journalist and author Julia Hotz about her book The Connection Cure: The Prescriptive Power of Movement, Nature, Art, Service, and Belonging.  

The Connection Cure combines diligent science reporting, moving patient success stories, and surprising self-discovery to help us discover the lasting and life-changing power of social prescribing. Traditionally, when we get sick, health care professionals ask, “What’s the matter with you?” But around the world, teams of doctors, nurses, therapists, and social workers have started to flip the script, asking “What matters to you?” 

Science shows that social prescribing is effective for treating symptoms of the modern world’s most common ailments—depression, ADHD, addiction, trauma, anxiety, chronic pain, dementia, diabetes, and loneliness. By integrating age-old medicines like art, nature, movement, and volunteer service into patient’s daily lives, social prescriptions are radically changing health and healthcare in more than thirty countries. Julia Hotz travels around the world to survey them —sea-swimming lessons for depression, “culture vitamins” for anxiety,  a fishing club for ADHD, a farm-based day-care for dementia, a phone-buddy program for social isolation, and many more.

As the first book on social prescribing, The Connection Cure empowers you to find, experience, and implement this revolutionary medicine in your own community. The success stories Julia finds bring a long-known theory to life: if we can change our environment, we can change our health. By reconnecting to what matters to us, we can all start to feel better.

Register today to find out how you can use the wisdom of social prescribing to live your best life!

About the Author: Julia Hotz is a solutions focused journalist based in New York. Her stories have appeared in The New York Times, WIRED, Scientific American, The Boston Globe, Time, and more. She helps other journalists report on the big new ideas changing the world at the Solutions Journalism Network. The Connection Cure is her first book.