Community Calendar

For the summer, we’ll be getting creative and reading books that support our summer reading theme “Color Our World.”

This month we’ll discuss “The Thread Collectors” by Shauna J. Edwards. The group meets at the Main Branch in Jackson.

For ages 18+.

How does your garden grow? Share photos, stories or if you’re starting to reap the rewards of your labor and want to participate in a harvest swap, join us for this month’s garden talk.

For ages 18+ at the Main Branch, Jackson.

The Riverside Regional Library's monthly virtual book club will meet at 7:00 p.m. on June 30 via Zoom.

The June book selection is “The Thread Collectors” by Shauna J. Edwards. Program for ages 18+.

To receive a Zoom invitation, contact Eunice at 573-243-8141 or eschlichting@rrlmo.org.

Learn strategies to identify artificial intelligence-based scams and discover some benefits to AI. Please bring your own device or laptop to follow along and join the activities.

For ages 50+ at the Main Branch, Jackson. To register, please call the Main Branch at 573-243-8141.

For the summer, we’ll be getting creative and reading books that support our summer reading theme “Color Our World.”

This month we’ll discuss the nonfiction book “The Dress Diary: Secrets from a Victorian Woman’s Wardrobe” by Kate Strasdin.

The group meets at the Main Branch in Jackson. For ages 18+.

Join Cape County Archive Center Director Marybeth Niederkorn for this presentation on historic photos in Cape Girardeau County. Discover how the photos can aid in genealogy research.

For ages 18+ at the Main Branch, Jackson.

This month, we’ll discuss the non-fiction book “The Dress Diary: Secrets from a Victorian Woman’s Wardrobe” by Kate Strasdin.

About “The Dress Diary: Secrets from a Victorian Woman’s Wardrobe”:

In 1838, a young woman was given a diary on her wedding day. Collecting snippets of fabric from a range of garments - some her own, others donated by family and friends - she carefully annotated each one, creating a unique record of their lives. Her name was Mrs Anne Sykes.

Nearly two hundred years later, the diary fell into the hands of Kate Strasdin, a fashion historian and museum curator. Using her expertise, Strasdin spent the next six years unravelling the secrets contained within the album's pages, and the lives of the people within. Her findings are remarkable. Piece by piece, she charts Anne's journey from the mills of Lancashire to the port of Singapore before tracing her return to England in later years. Fragments of cloth become windows into Victorian life: pirates in Borneo, the complicated etiquette of mourning, poisonous dyes, the British Empire in full swing, rioting over working conditions and the terrible human cost of Britain's cotton industry. This is life writing that celebrates ordinary people: not the grandees of traditional written histories, but the hidden figures, the participants in everyday life. Through the evidence of waistcoats, ball gowns and mourning outfits, Strasdin lays bare the whole of human experience in the most intimate of mediums: the clothes we choose to wear.

Program for ages 18+.

To receive a Zoom invitation, contact Eunice at 573-243-8141 or eschlichting@rrlmo.org.