Natick Report

More than you really want to know about Natick, Mass.

Natick historic holidays event: Victorian Gossip Girl Tea

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Join the Natick Historical Society and Gossip Girl Annie Fields on Sun., Dec. 6th, 2pm, via Zoom, as she spills the beans on her famous literary friends this holiday season, including the “Father of Christmas,” Charles Dickens. Counting Nathaniel Hawthorne, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow amongst her closest friends, she witnessed a great deal of Victorian revelry at her waterside museum in Beacon Hill. Mrs. Fields wrote about her guests’ embarrassing moments in her novel Authors and Friends (1896) and shares them with you. This intimate teatime conversation is filled with laughter, disbelief, and even some blushing cheeks, when you hear the tantalizing tales of the Victorian Gossip Girl.

Holiday Tea, Natick

Please register here to gain access to the Zoom link.

This event is suitable for all ages, and is FREE and open to the public.

DATE: Sun., Dec. 6, 2020

TIME: 2pm – 3pm, followed by a Q & A

This program is jointly sponsored by the Bacon Free Library and the Natick Historical Society and is supported by a grant from the Natick Cultural Council, a local agency which is supported by the Mass Cultural Council, a state agency.

Natick Historical Society and Bacon Free Library to co-sponsor December book discussion

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Everyone is welcome to join a virtual discussion of The Last Days of Night by Graham Moore on Thur., Dec. 10, 11am – noon, co-sponsored by the Natick Historical Society and the Bacon Free Library

The Last Days of Night (2017) is  a page-turning historical thriller—based on actual events—about the nature of genius, the cost of ambition, and the battle to electrify America. In 1888, the miracle of electric light is in its infancy. Thomas Edison has won the race to the patent office and is suing his only remaining rival, George Westinghouse, for the unheard of sum of one billion dollars. To defend himself, Westinghouse makes a surprising choice in his attorney: He hires an untested twenty-six-year-old fresh out of Columbia Law School named Paul Cravath.

Bacon Free Library, Natick

The task facing Cravath is beyond daunting. Edison proves to be a formidable, wily, and dangerous opponent. Yet this young, unknown attorney shares with his famous opponent a compulsion to win at all costs. How will he do it? As he takes greater and greater risks, he’ll find that everyone in his path is playing their own game, and no one is quite who they seem.

If you are interested in joining this free and virtual book discussion, please email: director@natickhistoricalsociety.org.

EVENT: Discussion of The Last Days of Night by Graham Moore
DATE: Thur., Dec. 10
TIME: 11am – noon

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Film screening: Neither Wolf Nor Dog—sponsored by Bacon Library & Natick Historical Society

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There will be a free virtual screening of the path-breaking film Neither Wolf Nor Dog between Sunday, November 15, and Sunday, November 22.

On Sunday, November 22, at 2pm, the Bacon Free Library and the Natick Historical Society will co-sponsor a free virtual conversation with the filmmaker, Steven Lewis Simpson.

Sign up for links to watch the film and join the conversation HERE.

In the 2016 film adaptation of the best-selling Native American novel by Kent Nerburn, a white author gets sucked into the heart of contemporary Native American life in the sparse lands of the Dakotas by a 95-year-old Lakota elder and his sidekick. Once known as the great unmade Native American novel in Hollywood, Neither Wolf Nor Dog has sold around half a million copies worldwide. The novel is acknowledged to successfully bridge the gap between white America and the Native American worlds.

Natick film screening

The film runs for 1 hour and 50 minutes, and is  generously sponsored by the Bacon Free Library and the Natick Historical Society.

EVENT: Film screening, Neither Wolf Nor Dog
DATE: November 15 – November 22
SIGN UP LINK

EVENT: Virtual conversation with the filmmaker, Steven Lewis Simpson
DATE: Nov. 22, 2020
TIME: 2pm
SIGN UP LINK

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Bacon Free Library, Natick History Museum now open by appointment only

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The slow crawl back to normalcy continues at Bacon Free Library and the Natick Historical Society, which are now adding in-person visits to the building by appointment only on Tuesdays from 10am-1:30pm.

You can book the library, Natick History Museum, or both for a total of 30 minutes.

Bacon Free Library, Natick

Your party can include up to four people.

Note: No public bathroom use.

The Morse Institute Library reopened to patrons in August.

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Online lecture about suffrage from Bacon Free Library, Natick Historical Society

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Bacon Free Library and the Natick Historical Society are co-sponsoring an online lecture on the campaign for the Equal Rights Amendment delivered by Barbara Berenson, J.D. The Zoom event, set for Sept. 22 from 7-8:30pm, is free and open to the public.

The link to the virtual lecture is available upon registration. Register by emailing events@natickhistoricalsociety.org

This year marks the 100th anniversary of the passage of the 19th amendment, protecting the right to vote from discrimination on the basis of sex. The success of the women’s suffrage movement inspired greater calls for equality and evolved into the campaign for the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment. First introduced to Congress in 1923, the amendment passed the House and Senate in 1972 but has yet to be ratified by three-fourths of the state legislatures. Campaigns for the passage of the ERA continue today.

Barbara Berenson is the author of Massachusetts in the Woman Suffrage Movement: Revolutionary Reformers (2018), Boston in the Civil War: Hub of the Second Revolution (2014), and Walking Tours of Civil War Boston: Hub of Abolitionism (2011, 2d ed. 2014).   She is currently a lecturer at Harvard Law School and teaches a course on women’s suffrage at Tufts University.