Published: 04/27/2022 09:50:29
Modified: 04/27/2022 09:49:01
Join the New Hampshire Audubon on April 27 at 7 p.m., with the live virtual program “Hummingbirds Are Energy Ninjas, Day and Night,” featuring Anusha Shankar, Rose Postdoctoral Fellow at Cornell Lab of Ornithology, and a National Geographic explorer and young leader who studied hummingbirds and their amazing adaptations. What do hummingbirds do when they can’t eat or see their food plants at night? Are they starving, or maybe… going into a state of near hibernation? Discover the surprising nightlife of hummingbirds! The program is the second in NH Audubon’s 2022 Pollinator Conservation Series, which aims to inspire participation and engagement in pollinator conservation. The Pollinator Series will conclude with a Pollinator BioBlitz at the McLane Center in Concord on June 25. Watch and participate in the live broadcast via zoom, YouTube or Facebook Live. Register at nhaudubon.org/event/hummingbirds-are-energy-ninjas-day-and-night.
Gibson’s Bookstore is pleased to feature local teacher Brandon K Gauthier on April 27 at 6:30 p.m. at the launch of his new history book, “Before Evil: Young Lenin, Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, Mao, and Kim.”
Adolf Hitler. Joseph Stalin. Benito Mussolini. Mao Zedong. Kim Il Sung. Vladimir Lenin. These cruel dictators have written their names on the pages of history in the blood of countless innocent victims. Yet they themselves were once young people finding their place in the world, dealing with challenges that many of us face – parental authority, education, romance, loss – and doing it in a way that might be uncomfortably familiar.
Gauthier has created a fascinating work – epic yet intimate, well-researched yet immensely readable, lucid and empathetic – that examines the lives of these six dictators, with a focus on their youth. We watch Lenin’s older brother executed by the Tsar’s police – an event that helped radicalize this high school student. We watch Stalin grapple with the death of his young and beautiful wife. We see Hitler’s mother mourning the loss of three young children – and determined that her first son to survive infancy would find his place in the world.
The point is not to excuse or simply explain these horrible men, but rather to treat them with the empathy that they too often lacked. We may prefer to hold these lives at bay in order to demonize them at will, but this book reminds us that these monstrous rulers were human beings too – and perhaps easier to understand than we would like.
Masks are strongly encouraged but are no longer mandatory for vaccinated participants. We cannot predict the future course of the pandemic, so Gibson’s reserves the right to institute masking and/or vaccination rules for this event depending on the circumstances.
RSVPs aren’t required, but you can sign up to receive email notification if the event is scheduled to move to virtualforms.gle/opVjBpRbPBZfSyFz7. Your submitted email addresses will not be retained after the event ends. If you can’t make it to this event, autographed copies of “Before Evil” can be ordered from the Gibson Bookstore website.
Christopher Smykil was born in Anchorage, Alaska, the eldest son of Keith and Joyce Smykil. Within a year, Chris would be living with his parents in Concord, New Hampshire. Concord is where he would play, go to school, make lifelong friends, find a job, marry his wife Paula, raise his sons Keith and Aaron, become an active member of the community, and be diagnosed with advanced and aggressive colorectal cancer, which would eventually end his life. in 2020. On June 2, the Smykil family will host the Friends of Chris golf outing at the Pembroke Pines Country Club. Registration and pairing of golfers will begin at 7:30 a.m., there will be approximately one hour to set up and get transported. Meanwhile, enjoy complimentary pastries and drinks. Using a scramble format, a shotgun start is launched at approximately 8:30 a.m. During the course, drinks will be available for purchase from carts provided by Pembroke Pines C C. Lunch will consist of sandwiches at pulled pork and grilled chicken. There is a full-service bar in the dining room for purchasing beer, wine, and other beverages. We consider this a friendly golf outing rather than a competitive tournament. There will be no golf score related rewards, but for those who wish, we will post low net and gross scores for bragging rights. The Smykil Family Foundation is delighted to present the cash prizes as follows; $500 4th hole, par-3, tee shot closest to the hole; $500 12th hole, par-5, longest tee shot on the fairway; $1,000 16th hole, par 3, 144 yards, from the “hole in one” tee. The Friends of Chris Golf Outing is a fundraising event sponsored by the Smykil Family Foundation. The purpose of the foundation is to provide financial assistance to graduate students of the Concord Regional Technical Center, who are pursuing post-secondary education or training in a trade-related field. For more information, call 603-573-0818 or 603-573-6446.
Hillsborough Community Center, Inc. offers two performances along with a delicious Italian dinner with dessert, which you can enjoy while participating in this hilarious who-dunnit. at Hillsboro-Deering Middle School, Saturdays, May 14 and 21, doors open at 5 p.m. Adults $25, children 15 and under $15. All proceeds will go towards the purchase of land for the future regional community centre. hccnh.org/play
