Celebrate Pride with Forbes!

Hampshire Pride returns this year on Saturday, May 6, 2023. This year's parade begins at 11 am at Sheldon Field at Route 9 (Bridge Street) and Old Ferry Road and marches  1.1 miles to the Armory Street lot behind Thornes. 

If you want to march with us, we will be the 18th group in order preparing to march. Meet us at Sheldon Field by 10:45am to join us in the parade. 

The David Ruggles Center for History and Education will host its Annual Founders Day Symposium on Saturday, May 6, from 1:00 – 3:00 pm at the Bombyx Center for Arts and Equity. Forbes Library is proud to be a co-sponsor of this program. 

Our guest speaker is Lydia Moland, the author of an acclaimed new biography of Lydia Maria Child, a key figure in the national movement to abolish slavery who spent critical years living in Florence. Her talk will be preceded by a tribute to John H. Bracey, Jr.: author, activist, scholar and professor in the W.E.B. DuBois Department of Afro-American Studies at UMass Amherst. Erika Slocumb, a former student of Dr. Bracey, will speak to his influence on her and many others.

10:00-11:00: Meet Lydia Moland in the Grow Food Organic Community Garden where we grow sugar beets on the same land Lydia and David Child did in the 1830s.

1:00-3:00: A tribute to Dr. Bracey followed by Lydia Moland’s talk: “Gathering Flowers on the Dusty Road of Duty: Lydia Maria Child on Beauty and Reform”. Doors open at 12:30.

3:30-5:00: Join us at the Ruggles Center to celebrate the life and legacy of John H. Bracey, Jr. with friends and family. Light refreshments provided.

This event is free of charge but donations are very much appreciated.

For further information write to [email protected] 

MOZART'S MASS IN C MINOR

Friday, May 12 at 7PM

with the PVS Orchestra and Chorus

Greenfield High School Auditorium

21 Barr Avenue

Greenfield, MA

Closing the Pioneer Valley Symphony’s 84th season, “For the Love of Music,” the PVS presents the overture to Coleridge-Taylor’s Song of Hiawatha, a work that was immensely popular at the turn of the 20th century yet unjustly has been rarely performed for nearly 100 years, and Mozart’s Great Mass, in the 240th anniversary year of its premiere, featuring complex harmonies sung by the PVS Chorus and a quartet of world-class vocal soloists.

Pre-concert talk at 6PM with resident musicologist David Schneider. Face masks are required in the auditorium.

Use the Pioneer Valley Symphony Orchestra museum pass for free admission for up to four people. 

Click here to read the Forbes Library Weekly Events - May 5, 2023