Friends of UMaine Libraries Newsletter — February 7, 2025

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In this issue:

• Black History Month resources
• Upcoming Salon events
• New from Special Collections and Projects: Listening in to history; Exhibit highlights the history of the Winter Carnival

Upcoming Salon Events

Since the end of the most recent ice age, 11,000 years ago, human ingenuity and adaptability have led to enormous changes in the way we live. The rapid global expansion of human population and industrialization in the past six decades has led to alarming changes to Earth’s climate, among other things. Now we find ourselves facing serious challenges to present and future generations — challenges that seem overwhelming at times. Please help us explore several reasons for optimism and hope.

Click here to attend this event via Zoom

Join this conversation with Professor Diya Abdo and Orlina Boteva, director of International Programs at UMaine, to learn about the ways in which universities in Maine (and across the nation) are currently supporting refugees and im/migrants and why this is an important commitment from a community engagement perspective, a student-centered perspective, and an institutional accountability/responsibility perspective.

Click here to attend this event via Zoom.

New from Special Collections and Projects

Listening in to history

The Special Collections and Projects Department welcomed UMaine staff members and alums Julie and Ron Lisnet (pictured below, left) to use equipment to digitize audio cassette recordings of stories told by Julie’s late mother Gertrude Brandt Arnold of her escaping Germany during World War II. It was the first time Julie had heard her mom speak since she passed away seven years ago.

The photo on the right is of Gertrude from 1945 on the border between what would become East and West Germany. It was taken by Julie’s father James Arnold.

The last time Gertrude crossed the border (she did it seven or eight times to bring food to her family), she came out in the American sector and got a job in an American Air Force mess hall. Julia’s father was a pilot in the AF and that’s how they met.

On one of her several trips across the border she was shot at and incarcerated by the Russians. It was by a fluke that they interrogated her on a Saturday night when most of them were out drinking and dancing that she escaped.

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Exhibit highlights the history of the Winter Carnival

In anticipation of this year’s Winter Carnival, to be hosted at Fogler Library on February 22, come and learn about the history of this UMaine tradition, with our newest exhibit, located in the Center Hallway on Level 1 of Fogler Library. The annual tradition of Winter Carnival at UMaine began in 1922. The Intra-Mural Association hoped to boost campus morale and promote the university for prospective students, area businesses, and alumni. The exhibit features photographs of students and snow sculptures during the winter carnival, programs, dance cards, and Maine Campus and Prism yearbook coverage of the event.

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