May 11   7:00 p.m. Warner Town Hall (upstairs)  $10/ticket  Spring Fundraiser

Rally ‘Round the Flag, The American Civil War in folksong with Woody Pringle & Marek Bennett.                 

Musicians/educators Woody Pringle and Marek Bennett present an overview of the American Civil War with their unique combination of period music and visual materials.

Through camp songs, parlor music, hymns, battlefield rallying cries, and fiddle tunes, they examine the folksong as a means to enact living history, share perspectives, influence public perceptions of events, and simultaneously fuse and conserve cultures in times of change. 

This dynamic and engaging session features instruments such as banjo, fiddle, dulcimer, accordion, whistle, and guitar, and challenges participants to find new connections between song, art, and politics in American history. Audience members participate and sing along in an energizing forum as we explore lyrics, documents, and visual images from sources such as the Library of Congress.

May 26   1:00 p.m. MainStreet BookEnds

Come and celebrate a new publication by the Warner Historical Society featuring Educators & Agitators: Selected Works of 19th Century Women Writers from a Small New Hampshire Town by Larry Sullivan and artwork by Mimi Wiggin. 

"Larry Sullivan's Educators & Agitators is a history-lover's dream.  Sullivan gives us newly collected historical writings accentuated with author biographies and peppered with reliable source quotes.  That the featured authors are 19th century women from rural Warner, New Hampshire, makes it even better. 

Educators & Agitators restores the lost and forgotton voices of fifteen published village women, showing us the sensibilities, styles, and concerns of the times.  Although attached to a small New Hampshire town walled in by rounded hills, Warner's 19th century women engaged in the social, political, and literary movements of their day.  They and their words traveled to and from the town with regional and national audiences in mind. 

Diligent research lifts these selections out of a misty past.  Enticing links with better known names - such as Susan B. Anthony, Sarah Josepha Hale, Childe Hassam, Josiah Bartlett, and many others - suggest how local writers fit into the larger themes of U.S. social, political, and literary history. 

Visually, the book pleases.  The reader will appreciate the carefully selected photographs of the featured writers and their houses.  The delicate color illustrations by Mimi Wiggin perfectly embody the landscape and subject matter, presented as if gazing into the past throug a softly-focused lens.

This is a treasury of the unexpected. Read it with confidence and delight!"

Judith Nichols Moyer, PhD.  Faculty Emerita  University of New Hampshire