BY KAREN BOSSICK
Learn the back story about women’s right to vote as Ketchum’s Community Library offers two more notable lectures this week.
- Dr. David Adler, who has an amazing ability to turn subjects dealing with the Constitution into the stuff of Robert Louis Stevenson adventures, is back with another talk at 6 p.m. Tuesday, Aug. 13.
Adler will present “A Constitutional Odyssey: Securing Passage of the Historic 19th Amendment” that evening.
The presentation examines the historic and persistent fight waged by women since the Republic was created to enjoy constitutional status, access and the right to vote in a land that denied that right.
Adler says securing the right of women to vote represented one of the greatest story lines in the evolution of American Constitutionalism. A nation that denied that right to half of its population mocked democratic values and the principle of equal protection of the law.
Adler is president of the Alturas Institute, a non-profit organization created to promote the Constitution, gender equality and civic education. He is also the author of six books—the most recent being “The War Power in an Age of Terrorism.”
He also is the founder of the Conversations with Exceptional Women conference, which brings notable women to the library for two days to tell their stories.
This year’s conference on Sept. 12 and 13 will feature Mariel Hemingway, Tara Buck, sportswriter Karen Crouse, Anne Taylor Fleming and others (visit www.alturasinstitute.com for more information.)
- On Thursday, Aug. 15, at 6 p.m. Gayle Marie will present a reading and discussion around her novel “The Serpent, The Puma and The Condor: A Tale of Machu Picchu.”
Marie, a Boise native, earned a 2019 Gold Medal for Best First Book-Fiction from the Independent Publisher Book Awards. She also received a 2019 National Indie Excellence Award for Multicultural Fiction and was a 2019 finalist for Multicultural Fiction at the Next Generation Indie Book Awards.
The tale revolves around a prophet who for the first time in history is a female who carries a birthmark on her forehead in the shape of a condor, the sacred bird that delivers the souls of the deceased.
This young girl enjoys the gifts of clairvoyance and being able to communicate with animals and plants. And she sets out on a mission to prevent her vision of her land being invaded by tall, white strangers from across the sea from occurring.
Marie is working on a second novel titled “The Muse of Albi,” a time-travel tale that takes place in New Orleans and France.
Copies of her book “The Serpent” will be for sale at the event, with 25 percent of the sales donated to the Sun Valley Center for the Arts.