Altamont Library Notes for Wednesday, December 11, 2019

Thank you to all of our friends who contributed to our annual Library Lights campaign, and to those of you who joined us in Orsini Park last Friday despite the snow. Due to your efforts, we raised over $600 for the library!

A full list of this year’s honorees may be found on our website at AltamontFreeLibrary.org. We’d especially like to thank Mayor Kerry Dineen, Jeff Moller, and the team at the Village Department of Public Works for all their invaluable help in making a space in the park for us and setting up the lights. Thank you all!

Victorian Holiday Celebration

We hope that you’ll be in Altamont on Sunday, Dec. 15, for the annual Victorian Holiday Celebration, taking place all over the village. And while you’re in Altamont for the Victorian Holiday Celebration, don’t forget to stop by the library.

We’ll be open from noon until 5 p.m. and we’ll be hosting storyteller Nancy Payne whose books would make phenomenal presents. We’ll also have drop-in ornament making for kiddos.

And don’t forget to be here at 5 p.m. for a very special train arrival with a very special passenger! (I don’t think anyone told Santa that the library isn’t a train station anymore! Let’s keep that a village secret, shall we?)

Story Swap 

Back in October, we held our first ever Altamont Remembers Story Swap, and it was a huge success! We heard all kinds of stories about people and events that occurred in the village, some going back more than a century.

This holiday season, we’ll be holding our second Story Swap, but this time we want to hear all about your Christmas and winter memories. What did Main Street look like after the first snow? Who led the caroling? Where was the best sledding hill?

If you’ve got memories to share, we’d love to hear them and record them for posterity, so join us on Friday, Dec. 20, from 6 to 7 p.m. for some hot chocolate, good neighbors, and great stories.

Dan Frinta​ Exhibit

We have a very talented community, and we love getting to put those talents on display. For the next few weeks, it will be our pleasure to host an exhibit of photographs by our friend, Altamont-based photographer Dan Frinta.

Dan’s work has been featured frequently in the Times Union and The Altamont Enterprise among other publications. Thanks, Dan, for letting us show a small bit of your incredible body of work.

Gala 

There’s so much 2019 left, but we’re already looking ahead next year, and the social event of the winter, so save the date. The always-anticipated annual I Love My Library! Gala is coming up on Saturday, Feb. 8, 2020 at the Community Room at Altamont Village Hall.

Invitations will be in the mail soon and tickets will be available at the library in the coming weeks. If you haven’t attended in the past and are interested in receiving an invitation, please get in touch with us.

This is our biggest fundraiser of the year, and we need your support. You’ll enjoy a fantastic dinner and homemade desserts, exciting live and silent auctions, and the delightful company of your fellow library supporters.

This year, we will be honoring the many contributions made to our community by Kristin Casey and Linda Cure, two longtime friends, board members, and volunteers whose dedicated service to our library and our village are a shining example for us all. Please join us!

Amazon Smile

Speaking of fundraising, here’s a great, easy, cost-free way to support the library: If you do some of your holiday shopping on Amazon, please consider going to Smile.Amazon.com (instead of just regular old Amazon.com).

Everything on the website will be exactly the same as usual, but you’ll have the opportunity to choose Altamont Free Library as your charity of choice and a portion of your purchase will go to support the Altamont Free Library, even though your gifts won’t cost you a penny more than they normally would! (You can do that all year round, if you like, but we just thought we’d mention it now.)