ONLINE Local History Talk: The Life, Times and Political Career of Levi Woodbury with John P. McGee Hosted Tuesday, September 22 This program was cohosted with the Portsmouth Athenaeum About the Presenter John P. McGee Jr. was born and brought up in Portsmouth. He is most commonly known today as Jack. He attended college at Yale University and received his BA in Economics. Following college, he married his high school sweetheart, Diane O’Leary, also of Portsmouth. He went to law school at the College of William and Mary, obtaining his J.D. degree in 1975. Jack has always been interested in Portsmouth history as well as history in general. He became a member of the Portsmouth Historical Society at the age of 12 and at one time or another has been a member of all historical societies in Portsmouth save one (The Colonial Dames). He was a long-time officer of the Portsmouth Athenaeum as well as President. He has been Director of the Wentworth Gardner Tobias Lear Houses Association and on the finance committee of Strawbery Banke. He currently practices law in Portsmouth, under the firm name of Flynn & McGee, P.A. and he is a member of various Bar groups including the New Hampshire Bar Association and is also a member of the United States Supreme Court Bar. He has also argued many cases before the New Hampshire Supreme Court and frequently appears before other Courts as well. When he was young, he’d often play with friends at a house across the street from the Levi Woodbury Mansion. By that point, the mansion was in a state of great disrepair and looked like something out of “Dark Shadows”, unfortunately torn down in 1960. While a sophomore at College, he read Arthur Schlesinger’s The Age of Jackson and could not believe how important Levi Woodbury was in that period. As a third-year law student he did a major paper on Levi Woodbury and since that time he has frequently lectured on him and the times in which he lived. Introduction: Abraham Lincoln's law partner, William Herndon, wrote in his biography of Lincoln that "his ambition was a little engine that knew no rest." The same comparison can be made as to Levi Woodbury. As a young man, he wrote in his notebook "aut Caesar aut melior," to be Caesar or greater. That was a lofty ambition for a farm boy from Francistown, New Hampshire. Yet that ambition carried him to the threshold of the White House. Death, however, barred his entry. At his death in 1851, Levi Woodbury was the only man to ever have served in all three branches of the federal government. He was a United States Senator. He was both Secretary of the Navy and Secretary of the Treasury. And finally, he was an associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court. Since this time, only two others have attained this accomplishment - Salmon P/ Chace, born in New Hampshire, though he went to Ohio as a young man; and James Byrnes, of South Carolina. In September of 1851, at the time of his death, his presidential campaign was well underway and things were going extremely well. But then stomach cancer struck him down in a short time... If you’d like to give the Portsmouth Public Library feedback on our programming, and enter to win a library book bag, please fill out a brief Event Feedback Form here: https://forms.gle/uLaj2MrLtenEZmvH7 Want to learn about more upcoming events at the library? Sign up for our monthly newsletter here: https://www.cityofportsmouth.com/library/newsletter

ONLINE Genealogy Workshop Spinning Gold: Shaping your Family Research into Compelling Stories with Christine Halvorson Hosted Sunday, September 20 In this workshop, local author Chris Halvorson inspires you to dust off your boxes of family memorabilia and start mining them for golden stories - true or not. Last Fall, Halvorson published a young adult novel, Inmate, very loosely based on her family. She will focus on that book's genesis, which was her curiosity about the technology behind such websites as ancestry.com. Halvorson will share her research process, the mistakes she's made, and a bit about the story-writing process. "The work that goes into genealogical research so often never see the light of day beyond, maybe, family members," she says. "Every family has secrets and stories to tell. It's a shame to let them molder unseen." If you’d like to give the Portsmouth Public Library feedback on our programming, and enter to win a library book bag, please fill out a brief Event Feedback Form here: https://forms.gle/uLaj2MrLtenEZmvH7 Want to learn about more upcoming events at the library? Sign up for our monthly newsletter here: https://www.cityofportsmouth.com/library/newsletter

On Sunday September 13, the library hosted a Portsmouth Peace Treaty Forum event featuring Joseph S. Nye, Harvard University Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus, Asia expert, and author most recently of Do Morals Matter? Presidents and Foreign Policy from FDR to Trump. In conversation with forum chair Chuck Doleac, Nye outlines his metrics for rating the morality of each president’s foreign policy, and takes questions from our audience. Enjoy! This program was sponsored by the library, the Portsmouth Peace Treaty Forum, the Portsmouth Athenaeum, and Riverrun Bookstore. If you’d like to give the Portsmouth Public Library feedback on our programming, and enter to win a library book bag, please fill out a brief Event Feedback Form here: https://forms.gle/uLaj2MrLtenEZmvH7

Learn about Tarot reading in this recorded workshop with Kate Sheridan, hosted by the Portsmouth Public Library on September 8, 2020. Tarot cards can be a great tool for self-reflection and personal growth, and this workshop is geared toward beginners who are looking for practical tips on how to get started. The workshop uses the classic Smith-Rider-Waite deck as a guide, and covers basic tarot theory, giving you the bird's eye view of all 78 cards, how they work together, and how to interpret them in a reading. Find Kate on Instagram as @themodernlaundress!