Free and open to the public, monthly programs are held on the 4th Monday of each month in Phelps.  Guests from around upstate NY speak on a variety of topics! Funds for these programs are made available through the NYS Council for Humanities Spearkers Program.

Sept22 The Wild Wild East : NY's Drama of Western Expansion with Robert Speigelman New York’s early frontier is America’s true “Wild West.” Civilization means Westward Expansion, but two “obstacles” block the way: Indians and Nature. Combining dramatic images and fresh research, Spiegelman details this forgotten New York, where settler dreams encounter native lifeways.... Then grasp Manhattan’s rise to prominence via the Erie Canal, which in turn, inflames a religious upheaval across Central New York that America calls “The Burnt Over District.” We end with an appreciation of how—against all odds—indigenous New Yorkers retain a toehold in their deforested ancestral homelands. Program time is 7:30 PM Program Location is: American Legion, Route 96, Phelps, NY Oct 27 Scandle of Women’s Bicycling in the Gilded Age with Ellen Garvey Women bicyclists in the 1890s found new freedom and thereby excited disapproval and scandal. Protectors of propriety fretted that young unchaperoned women would become unmarriageable or masculine. But women were thrilled with the exercise and mobility, and celebrated bicycling as good preparation for voting. Conservatives who opposed women's mobility found devious objections...and women continued to ride. This talk uses slides of early bicycling ads and graphics to tell the story of women's excitement about bicycling, and the opposition they overcame to do it. Program time is 7:30 PM Program Location is: American Legion, Route 96, Phelps, NY Nov 24 The Arts and the Sacred in Native America, with Nadema Agard This interdisciplinary and multimedia presentation explores the arts as vehicles of power, as vehicles of visual language, and as sacred repositories of the cosmic knowledge of symbols and colors from an Indigenous perspective where life and arts are interconnected. This presentation will employ images of traditional and contemporary artwork, in addition to video clips, music, and literary references. It will include a discussion of sacred architecture and geometry, the importance of visions and dreams in the development of art forms, sacred art as visual prayers and vehicles for healing, the healing aspect of humor and the sacredness of clowns, the protective qualities of certain clothing, and the power of medicine bundles, dolls, and funerary objects. Examples of art by modern Native people will exemplify the importance of the continuity of a spiritual aesthetic. Program time is 7:30 PM Program Location is: American Legion, Route 96, Phelps, NY Dec 6 HolidayOpen House 1-3 PM