Alexander Findley Community Library

Bicentennial Play Day!
2024-08-10 11:00 - 13:30 (America/New_York)
Since it’s Mina’s Bicentennial Celebration this weekend, we will not be having a regular Storytime. Instead, we will have a Play Day! We are borrowing the button maker and the paint spinner from CCLS, so folks can stop in and play for a bit and still participate in the festivities downtown. Be sure to check out the Vintage Parade at 10am, and wave hello to library trustees and friends!

Bicentennial Open House!
2024-08-09 18:00 - 20:00 | Alexander Findley Community Library

Arts & Crafts for Grownups!
2024-08-08 15:00 - 17:00 | Alexander Findley Community Library

Soil Health & Erosion Demonstration
2024-08-07 10:00 - 23:00 | Alexander Findley Community Library
Wednesdays with Summer Recreation Week 4
Josie Allen is back for our last Wednesday with the kids from Summer Recreation. This week she’ll teach us about soil health and the problems with soil erosion. This event is held for the kids attending Summer Recreation at the Mina Community Center, but all our patrons are welcome to join!

Saturday Storytime: Stars!
2024-08-03 11:00 - 12:00 | Alexander Findley Community Library

Could You Be a Grape Farmer?
2024-07-31 10:00 - 11:00 | Alexander Findley Community Library
Wednesdays with Summer Recreation Week 3
Josie Allen from the Cornell Cooperative Extension will be here to see if we have what it takes to be a grape farmer. This event is held for the kids attending the Summer Recreation at the Mina Community Center, but all our patrons are welcome to join in!

Saturday Storytime: Geodes!
2024-07-27 11:00 - 12:00 | Alexander Findley Community Library
Join us in the library for a story and a snack. Then we’ll smash some geodes and see what we find inside!
Note: This activity is meant for older kids, but there will be an alternative for our youngest patrons.

WILD Creatures Reptile Show!
2024-07-24 10:00 - 11:00 | Alexander Findley Community Library
Wednesdays with Summer Recreation Week 2
Join us in the gymnasium for WILD Creatures as Chris Duckett shows off some of his incredible reptile friends. It’s sure to be an educational and entertaining time! This show is held for the kids attending the Summer Recreation at the Mina Community Center, but everyone is welcome to join us for the fun.

Board Meeting
2024-07-22 18:30 - 20:00, 2024-03-25 18:30 - 20:00 | Alexander Findley Community Library
The library board meets the fourth Monday of the month to discuss library matters. Meetings are open to the public.

Saturday Storytime: Crocs!
2024-07-20 11:00 - 12:00 | Alexander Findley Community Library

Book Club
2024-07-18 18:00 - 19:00 | Alexander Findley Community Library
Join us in the library for a discussion of July’s book, Let Us Descend by Jesmyn Ward.
Summary:
“‘Let us descend,’ the poet now began, ‘and enter this blind world.’” — Inferno, Dante Alighieri
Let Us Descend is a reimagining of American slavery, as beautifully rendered as it is heart-wrenching. Searching, harrowing, replete with transcendent love, the novel is a journey from the rice fields of the Carolinas to the slave markets of New Orleans and into the fearsome heart of a Louisiana sugar plantation.
Annis, sold south by the white enslaver who fathered her, is the reader’s guide through this hellscape. As she struggles through the miles-long march, Annis turns inward, seeking comfort from memories of her mother and stories of her African warrior grandmother. Throughout, she opens herself to a world beyond this world, one teeming with of earth and water, of myth and history; spirits who nurture and give, and those who manipulate and take. While Ward leads readers through the descent, this, her fourth novel, is ultimately a story of rebirth and reclamation.
From one of the most singularly brilliant and beloved writers of her generation, this miracle of a novel inscribes Black American grief and joy into the very land—the rich but unforgiving forests, swamps, and rivers of the American South. Let Us Descend is Jesmyn Ward’s most magnificent novel yet, a masterwork for the ages.” (via goodreads)

Bubble Painting
2024-07-17 10:00 - 11:00 | Alexander Findley Community Library
Wednesdays with Summer Recreation Week 1
This week we’ll be trying our hand at bubble painting! This event is held for the kids attending Summer Recreation at the Mina Community Center, but all our patrons are welcome to join in on the fun!

Saturday Storytime: Bubbles!
2024-07-13 11:00 - 12:00 | Alexander Findley Community Library

Arts & Crafts for Grownups!
2024-07-11 15:00 - 17:00 | Alexander Findley Community Library
Join us in the library for Paintapalooza! There will be different kinds of paint, and lots of things to paint (birdhouse, glass jar, terra cotta pot, etc.)!

Garden Club
2024-06-29 11:00 - 12:00 | Alexander Findley Community Library
This month we’ll continue to clean up our edges and pull new weeds. Don’t forget to sign up for Summer Reading (by today!), and we’ll spend some time in July and August checking out people’s Nature Journals (from last year and this year, too).

Book Club
2024-06-20 18:00 - 19:00 | Alexander Findley Community Library
Join us in the library for a discussion of June’s book Sarah’s Key by Tatiana de Rosnay.
Summary:
“Paris, July 1942: Ten-year-old Sarah is brutally arrested with her family in the Vel’ d’Hiv’ roundup, the most notorious act of French collaboration with the Nazis. but before the police come to take them, Sarah locks her younger brother, Michel, in their favorite hiding place, a cupboard in the family’s apartment. She keeps the key, thinking that she will be back within a few hours.
Paris, May 2002: On Vel’ d’Hiv’s sixtieth anniversary, Julia Jarmond, an American journalist, is asked by her Paris-based American magazine to write an article about this black day in France’s past. Julia has lived in Paris for nearly twenty-five years, married a Frenchman, and she is shocked both by her ignorance about the event and the silence that still surrounds it. In the course of her investigation, she stumbles onto a trail of long-hidden family secrets that connects her to Sarah. Julia finds herself compelled to retrace the girl’s ordeal, from the terrible days spent shut in at the Vel’ d’Hiv’ to the camps and beyond. As she probes into Sarah’s past, she begins to question her own place in France and to reevaluate her marriage and her life.
Writing about the fate of her country with a pitiless clarity, Tatiana de Rosnay offers us a brilliantly subtle, compelling portrait of France under occupation and reveals the taboos and denial surrounding this painful episode in French history.” (via goodreads)

Arts & Crafts for Grownups!
2024-06-13 15:00 - 17:00 | Alexander Findley Community Library
Arts & Crafts for Grownups meets the second Thursday of the month at 3pm. In June, Barb Cooper from FLAIR (Findley Lake Artists in Residence) will be teaching us shaving foam marbling and stenciling! All supplies are provided, so just come on down and join the fun.
If you have questions, please call 716-769-6568 or email manager@findleylibrary.org

Garden Storytime: Busy, Buzzy Bees: How Bees (and Other Pollinators) Make Everything Grow
2024-06-08 11:00 - 12:00 | Alexander Findley Community Library
Join us on Saturday, June 8th at 11am for a Storytime in the garden as we learn about pollinators, and plant perennials with our friend Susannah, who is learning to be a Master Gardener!
This program may be geared toward kids, but Garden Club folks are encouraged to come as well!
Note: if it rains, we’ll simply move the program inside and plant at a different time.

Annual Meeting
2024-06-08 09:00 - 10:30 | Alexander Findley Community Library
The AFCL Board of Trustees will hold its Annual Meeting in the Young at Heart room. They will discuss current library events and will elect Executive positions. Meetings are open to the public.

Garden Club
2024-05-25 11:00 - 12:00 | Alexander Findley Community Library
April’s meeting was a bust due to Cala being sick and all. Let’s try again! We’ll discuss possibly splitting into teams and breaking the garden into sections for easier maintenance.

Book Club
2024-05-16 18:00 - 19:00 | Alexander Findley Community Library
Join us in the library for a discussion of May’s book After I’m Gone by Laura Lippman.
Summary:
“Dead is dead. Missing is gone.
When Felix Brewer meets nineteen-year-old Bernadette “Bambi” Gottschalk at a Valentine’s Day dance in 1959, he charms her with wild promises, some of which he actually keeps. Thanks to his lucrative—if not all legal—businesses, she and their three little girls live in luxury. But on the Fourth of July in 1976, Bambi’s comfortable world implodes when Felix, facing prison, vanishes.
Though Bambi has no idea where her husband—or his money—might be, she suspects one woman does: his devoted young mistress, Julie. When Julie disappears ten years to the day after Felix went on the lam, everyone assumes she’s left to join her old lover—until her remains are discovered in a secluded park.
Now, twenty-six years later, Roberto “Sandy” Sanchez, a retired Baltimore detective working cold cases for some extra cash, is investigating her murder. What he discovers is a tangled web of bitterness, jealousy, resentment, greed, and longing stretching over five decades. And at its center is the man who, though long gone, has never been forgotten by the five women who loved him: the enigmatic Felix Brewer.
Felix Brewer left five women behind. Now there are four. Does at least one of them know the truth?” (via goodreads)

Arts & Crafts for Grownups!
2024-05-09 15:00 - 17:00 | Alexander Findley Community Library
Arts & Crafts for Grownups meets the second Thursday of the month at 3pm. In May, Barb Cooper from FLAIR (Findley Lake Artists in Residence) will be teaching us iris folding and paper weaving! All supplies are provided, so just come on down and join the fun.
If you have questions, please call 716-769-6568 or email manager@findleylibrary.org

Spring Craft Show Fundraiser!
2024-05-04 10:00 - 16:00 | Alexander Findley Community Library
The AFCL Spring Craft Show Fundraiser is coming up soon! As usual, it’s at the Findley Lake Fire Hall at 10372 Main Street, Findley Lake. Doors are open from 10am – 4pm.
Spring-Clean Leftover Fundraiser Blowout!
Just in time for the Bicentennial & Mother’s Day! Stop by the library tables to find…
• Cook’s Books
• Ceramic fish for the library’s In Honor/Memorial Mural
• Postcards with photographs by locals
• Prints of drawing with the anchor, gazebo, & water wheel
• Plus hanging flower baskets and other plants
30+ tables of hand-crafted items!
Just a few of the things you will find:
• Cherry Pit products • Crochet • Decoupaged Bottles
• Freeze-dried Candy • Hooded bath towels • Jewelry
• Wax Melts • Wreaths • Raw-edge Wood Items
• Much, much more!
Plus the usual:
• 50/50 Raffle • Vendor Auction • Homemade food • Pie

Garden Club
2024-04-27 11:00 - 12:00 | Alexander Findley Community Library
It’s been a long winter, but Garden Club is back! We’ll be giving the garden a spring clean, and will continue working on edging and other goals for the season. Inside, there will be seeds (plants and veggie) for Green Thumbs to try out at home.
Meets the last Saturday of the month at 11 am. Some tools and gloves are provided, but feel free to bring your own favorites, too.
Come when you can, participate as much as you want. Get a garden buddy to make it more fun!

Earth Day Celebration + Plantstravaganza!
2024-04-20 11:00 - 13:00 | Alexander Findley Community Library
Join us as we celebrate our favorite planet!
• Check out books on gardening, animals + more
• Do a fun Earth Day Craft (or two)
• Join our Garden Club and help maintain the library pollinator garden
• Snag some seeds from our Seed Library
• Start some seeds to take home
• Take home houseplant cuttings

Book Club
2024-04-18 18:00 - 19:00 | Alexander Findley Community Library
Join us in the library for a discussion of April’s book, My Sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite.

Summary:
“When Korede’s dinner is interrupted one night by a distress call from her sister, Ayoola, she knows what’s expected of her: bleach, rubber gloves, nerves of steel and a strong stomach. This’ll be the third boyfriend Ayoola’s dispatched in, quote, self-defence and the third mess that her lethal little sibling has left Korede to clear away. She should probably go to the police for the good of the menfolk of Nigeria, but she loves her sister and, as they say, family always comes first. Until, that is, Ayoola starts dating the doctor where Korede works as a nurse. Korede’s long been in love with him, and isn’t prepared to see him wind up with a knife in his back: but to save one would mean sacrificing the other…” (via goodreads)

Solar Eclipse Storytime!
2024-04-06 11:00 - 12:00 | Alexander Findley Community Library
Join us on Saturday, April 6th at 11am for a Solar Eclipse Storytime! We’ll hear stories about the sun and the moon, do a craft, and learn a bit about the upcoming Solar Eclipse! Plus, we’ll hand out free eclipse glasses (while supplies last)!

Closed for Easter!
2024-03-30
We’re closed today in observance of Easter. See you again at 9am on Monday, April 1st!

Agricultural Literacy Week Storytime: I Love Strawberries!
2024-03-23 11:00 - 12:00 | Alexander Findley Community Library
March 18th-22nd is Agricultural Literacy Week. Volunteers will read an agricultural book to kids across Chautauqua County in an effort to increase agricultural education. Ag. Lit. week is a celebration of our county’s legacy and the hard work of those who produce healthy, local food, 365 days a year! Join in the learning and fun as Josie from the Cornell Cooperative Extension comes for a special Storytime. She will read I Love Strawberries by Shannon Anderson. Come for the story, and stay for a craft and activities.
