Making the best of it
While many of you are staying closer to home these days, we want you to have an abundance of ways to Explore and Engage in exciting opportunities near and far. We have gathered a variety of resources to help you keep growing and learning. We hope you enjoy these fun and interesting activities. We will be updating this page as new opportunities arise so visit us often!
STC BOOK CLUB
Reading books brings people together in new ways. Join our Towne Club Book Club for a lively discussion monthly of a great book!
Books are selected in advance by the members.
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Horse : A Novel
Geraldine Brooks
MAY SESSION
Tuesday, May 16, at 10:30 a.m.
Kentucky, 1850. An enslaved groom named Jarret and a bay foal forge a bond of understanding that will carry the horse to record-setting victories across the South. When the nation erupts in civil war, an itinerant young artist who has made his name on paintings of the racehorse takes up arms for the Union. On a perilous night, he reunites with the stallion and his groom, very far from the glamor of any racetrack. New York City, 1954. Martha Jackson, a gallery owner celebrated for taking risks on edgy contemporary painters, becomes obsessed with a nineteenth-century equestrian oil painting of mysterious provenance. Washington, DC, 2019. Jess, a Smithsonian scientist from Australia, and Theo, a Nigerian-American art historian, find themselves unexpectedly connected through their shared interest in the horse—one studying the stallion’s bones for clues to his power and endurance, the other uncovering the lost history of the unsung Black horsemen who were critical to his racing success. Based on the remarkable true story of the record-breaking thoroughbred Lexington, Horse is a novel of art and science, love and obsession, and our unfinished reckoning with racism.
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DEMON COPPERHEAD
Barbara Kingsolver
JUNE SESSION
Tuesday, June 20, at 10:30 a.m.
Set in the mountains of southern Appalachia, Demon Copperhead is the story of a boy born to a teenaged single mother in a single-wide trailer, with no assets beyond his dead father’s good looks and copper-colored hair, a caustic wit, and a fierce talent for survival. Relayed in his own unsparing voice, Demon braves the modern perils of foster care, child labor, derelict schools, athletic success, addiction, disastrous loves, and crushing losses. Through all of it, he reckons with his own invisibility in a popular culture where even the superheroes have abandoned rural people in favor of cities. Many generations ago, Charles Dickens wrote David Copperfield from his experience as a survivor of institutional poverty and its damages to children in his society. Those problems have yet to be solved in ours. Dickens is not a prerequisite for readers of this novel, but he provided its inspiration. In transposing a Victorian epic novel to the contemporary American South, Barbara Kingsolver enlists Dickens’ anger and compassion, and above all, his faith in the transformative powers of a good story. Demon Copperhead speaks for a new generation of lost boys, and all those born into beautiful, cursed places they can’t imagine leaving behind.
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Dear America: Notes of an Undocumented Citizen
Jose Antonio Vargas
July SESSION
Tuesday, July 18, at 10:30 a.m.
“This is not a book about the politics of immigration. This book––at its core––is not about immigration at all. This book is about homelessness, not in a traditional sense, but in the unsettled, unmoored psychological state that undocumented immigrants like myself find ourselves in. This book is about lying and being forced to lie to get by; about passing as an American and as a contributing citizen; about families, keeping them together, and having to make new ones when you can’t. This book is about constantly hiding from the government and, in the process, hiding from ourselves. This book is about what it means to not have a home. After 25 years of living illegally in a country that does not consider me one of its own, this book is the closest thing I have to freedom.” —Jose Antonio Vargas, from Dear America
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And There Was Light: Abraham Lincoln and the American Struggle
Jon Meacham
August SESSION
Tuesday, August 15, at 10:30 a.m.
A president who governed a divided country has much to teach us in a twenty-first-century moment of polarization and political crisis. Hated and hailed, excoriated and revered, Abraham Lincoln was at the pinnacle of American power when implacable secessionists gave no quarter in a clash of visions bound up with money, race, identity, and faith. In him we can see the possibilities of the presidency as well as its limitations. At once familiar and elusive, Lincoln tends to be seen as the greatest of American presidents—a remote icon—or as a politician driven more by calculation than by conviction. This illuminating new portrait gives us a very human Lincoln—an imperfect man whose moral antislavery commitment, essential to the story of justice in America, began as he grew up in an antislavery Baptist community; who insisted that slavery was a moral evil; and who sought, as he put it, to do right as God gave him to see the right. This book tells the story of Lincoln from his birth on the Kentucky frontier in 1809 to his leadership during the Civil War to his tragic assassination in 1865: his rise, his self-education, his loves, his bouts of depression, his political failures, his deepening faith, and his persistent conviction that slavery must end. In a nation shaped by the courage of the enslaved of the era and by the brave witness of Black Americans, Lincoln’s story illustrates the ways and means of politics in a democracy, the roots and durability of racism, and the capacity of conscience to shape events.
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The Kingdoms of Savannah
George Dawes Green
SEPTEMBER SESSION
Tuesday, September 19, at 10:30 a.m.
It begins quietly on a balmy Southern night as some locals gather at Bo Peep’s, one of the town’s favorite watering holes. Within an hour, however, a man will be murdered and his companion will be “disappeared.” An unlikely detective, Morgana Musgrove, doyenne of Savannah society, is called upon to unravel the mystery of these crimes. Morgana is an imperious, demanding, and conniving woman, whose four grown children are weary of her schemes. But one by one she inveigles them into helping with her investigation, and soon the family uncovers some terrifying truths―truths that will rock Savannah’s power structure to its core. Moving from the homeless encampments that ring the city to the stately homes of Savannah’s elite, Green’s novel brilliantly depicts the underbelly of a city with a dark history and the strangely mesmerizing dysfunction of a complex family.
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Dreamland
Nicholas Sparks
OCTOBER SESSION
Tuesday, October 17, at 10:30 a.m.
After fleeing an abusive husband with her six-year-old son, Tommie, Beverly is attempting to create a new life for them in a small town off the beaten track. Despite their newfound freedom, Beverly is constantly on guard: she creates a fake backstory, wears a disguise around town, and buries herself in DIY projects to stave off anxiety. But her stress only rises when Tommie insists he’d been hearing someone walking on the roof and calling his name late at night. With money running out and danger seemingly around every corner, she makes a desperate decision that will rewrite everything she knows to be true. . . . Meanwhile, Colby Mills is on a heart-pounding journey of another kind. A failed musician, he now heads a small family farm in North Carolina. Seeking a rare break from his duties at home, he spontaneously takes a gig playing in a bar in St. Pete Beach, Florida, where he meets Morgan Lee—and his whole life is turned upside-down. The daughter of affluent Chicago doctors, Morgan has graduated from a prestigious college music program with the ambition to move to Nashville and become a star. Romantically and musically, she and Colby complete each other in a way that neither has ever known. In the course of a single unforgettable week, two young people will navigate the exhilarating heights and heartbreak of first love. Hundreds of miles away, Beverly will put her love for her young son to the test. And fate will draw all three people together in a web of life-altering connections . . . forcing each to wonder whether the dream of a better life can ever survive the weight of the past.
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Run
Ann Patchett
November SESSION
Tuesday, November 14, at 10:00 a.m.
Since their mother's death, Tip and Teddy Doyle have been raised by their loving possessive and ambitions father. As the former mayor of Boston, Bernard Doyle wants to see is sons in politics, a dream the boys have never shared. But when an argument in a blinding New England snowstorm inadvertently causes an accident that involves a stranger and her child, all Bernard Doyle cares about is his ability to keep his children--all his children--safe. Set over a period of twenty-four hours, Run takes us from the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard to a home for retired Catholic Priests in downtown Boston. It shows us how worlds of privilege and poverty can coexist only blocks apart from each other, and how family can include people you've never even met. As an in her bestselling novel, Bel Canto, Ann Patchett illustrates the humanity that connects disparate lives, weaving several stories into one surprising and endlessly moving narrative. Suspenseful and stunningly executed, Run is ultimately a novel about secrets, duty, responsibility, and the lengths we will go to protect our children.
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Hester
Laurie Lico Albanese
January SESSION
Tuesday, January 16, at 10:30 a.m.
Isobel Gamble is a young seamstress carrying generations of secrets when she sets sail from Scotland in the early 1800s with her husband, Edward. An apothecary who has fallen under the spell of opium, his pile of debts have forced them to flee Glasgow for a fresh start in the New World. But only days after they've arrived in Salem, Edward abruptly joins a departing ship as a medic––leaving Isobel penniless and alone in a strange country, forced to make her way by any means possible. When she meets a young Nathaniel Hawthorne, the two are instantly drawn to each other: he is a man haunted by his ancestors, who sent innocent women to the gallows––while she is an unusually gifted needleworker, troubled by her own strange talents. As the weeks pass and Edward's safe return grows increasingly unlikely, Nathaniel and Isobel grow closer and closer. Together, they are a muse and a dark storyteller; the enchanter and the enchanted. But which is which? In this sensuous and hypnotizing tale, a young immigrant woman grapples with our country's complicated past, and learns that America's ideas of freedom and liberty often fall short of their promise. Interwoven with Isobel and Nathaniel's story is a vivid interrogation of who gets to be a "real" American in the first half of the 19th century, a depiction of the early days of the Underground Railroad in New England, and atmospheric interstitials that capture the long history of "unusual" women being accused of witchcraft. Meticulously researched yet evocatively imagined, Laurie Lico Albanese's Hester is a timeless tale of art, ambition, and desire that examines the roots of female creative power and the men who try to shut it down.
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OTHER BIRDS
Sarah Addison Allen
FEBRUARY SESSION
Tuesday, February 20, at 10:30 a.m.
Down a narrow alley in the small coastal town of Mallow Island, South Carolina, lies a stunning cobblestone building comprised of five apartments. It’s called The Dellawisp and it is named after the tiny turquoise birds who, alongside its human tenants, inhabit an air of magical secrecy. When Zoey Hennessey comes to claim her deceased mother’s apartment at The Dellawisp, she meets her quirky, enigmatic neighbors including a girl on the run, a grieving chef whose comfort food does not comfort him, two estranged middle-aged sisters, and three ghosts. Each with their own story. Each with their own longings. Each whose ending isn’t yet written. When one of her new neighbors dies under odd circumstances the night Zoey arrives, she is thrust into the mystery of The Dellawisp, which involves missing pages from a legendary writer whose work might be hidden there. She soon discovers that many unfinished stories permeate the place, and the people around her are in as much need of healing from wrongs of the past as she is. To find their way they have to learn how to trust each other, confront their deepest fears, and let go of what haunts them. Delightful and atmospheric, Other Birds is filled with magical realism and moments of pure love that won’t let you go. Sarah Addison Allen shows us that between the real and the imaginary, there are stories that take flight in the most extraordinary ways.
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Online Enrichment
PLAY ONLINE OR DOWNLOAD EACH APP TO YOUR PHONE OR TABLET
Educational Courses
An investment in knowledge pays the best interest -Benjamin Franklin
Academic
Take a university course at a prestigious university like Notre Dame, Stanford, Cornell, or Yale. Harvard’s course Justice, What’s the Right Thing to Do? is an interesting first place to start.
Academic EarthDRAWING
Drop in anytime for a virtual session of at New York City’s Metropolitan Museum of Art’s popular drawing series. Experience The Met collection through creative drawing challenges.
The MetCOOKING
Fourteen free, pre-recorded, self-paced cooking classes from Christopher Kimball’s MilkStreet cooking school.
Milk StreetPodcasts
BROADEN YOUR PERSPECTIVE AS YOU LISTEN TO TODAY’S TOP PODCASTS
Videos
STIMULATE YOUR MIND WITH THESE THOUGHT-PROVOKING VIDEOS
Museums
World-renowned works of art... enjoyed from the comfort of your own home
Art Institute of Chicago
Wherever you are, whatever the time, online resources from the Art Institute of Chicago are always here to connect you to our collection of art from around the world—whether you’re seeking inspiration, community, or a little adventure.
Visit NowThe Louvre
Visit the museum rooms and galleries, admire the palace architecture and enjoy the views from The Louvre’s virtual tour. Also enjoy a collection of videos and experiences: YouTubers at the Louvre, the Mona Lisa VR experience, and A Closer Look at Louvre Artworks.
Visit NowHermitage Museum
The collection of the State Hermitage includes over 3 million works of art and world culture artefacts. It contains paintings, graphic works, sculptures, works of applied art, archaeological artefacts and numismatic objects.
Visit NowThe National Gallery
Three virtual tours allow you to step inside the Gallery and explore one of the greatest collections of paintings, from the comfort of your home. Experience the Gallery in virtual reality through your desktop, phone or VR headset
Visit NowDegas at the Opéra
This show is dedicated to Edgar Degas’s fascination with the Opéra—its spaces, the music, and the people involved with the thriving theatrical life of 19th-century Paris. This exhibition is organized by the National Gallery of Art, Washington, and the Musées d'Orsay et de l'Orangerie, Paris.
Visit NowYoga & Workouts
I have always believed exercise is a key not only to physical health but to peace of mind -Nelson Mandela
Yoga with Adriene
Welcoming all levels, body, genders, and souls. Browse Adriene’s library of free yoga videos to find a practice that suits your mood or start a journey toward healing.
Register here
Fitness Blender
Low impact workouts. Over 500 free workouts organized by length, difficulty, training type, muscles used, calorie burn, and more.
Meditation
Explore meditation as a means to achieve mental, emotional, and physical wellness
Live Streams
Whether you prefer large and loud or cute and cuddly, these awe-inspiring creatures will help you connect with nature.
Brown Bear Cam
Puppy Cam
Elephant Cam
Cheetah Cam
Birding
Birds inspire us to take flight and soar in our own way.
The Audubon Bird Guide is a free and complete field guide to over 800 species of North American birds, right in your pocket. Built for all experience levels, it will help you identify the birds around you, keep track of the birds you’ve seen, and get outside to find new birds near you.
ContactSalemTowne
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Social Opportunities
Stay connected to us socially and enjoy some personal enrichment along the way
TOWNE CLUB TUESDAYS
Each Tuesday at 10 a.m. grab a cup of joe and join in a live chat with other Towne Club members and a member of the Marketing Team at Salemtowne. We hope that we can get to know you a little better, and you can get to know each other.
Register hereTOWNE CLUB WALKING CLUB
If you enjoy getting out for fresh air and a stroll, consider joining our new Towne Club Walking Club. Choose a time slot to come cruise campus on foot. Get some exercise and, if you’d like, you can pick up a meal to go from our cafe, Bistro Twenty-Six. We look forward to seeing you (and your sneakers!) in our community.
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