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MUSIC AT THE LIBRARY Sponsored by the Memorial Library Foundation and the Music in the Morning Concert Society, the final performance in this continuing series of talks and live music will take place on May 11th in the Peter J . Peters Meeting Room, preceded by refreshments at 10:00 a.m. The featured artist will be Robert Rogers, pianist. Tickets are available at the Library. Single tickets will be $14.00 at the door if seating is available. For further information call San Given 926-0582 or Marilyn Ross at 921-7921. ARTISTS RECEPTION The next artist's reception will take place on Monday, May 2,1994, from 7:30 - 8:30 p.m. The artist featured will be Peggy Smith. The exhibition will continue until May 29th. VILLAGES AND PEOPLE: PART 1 _------ Villages are so much a part of the scenery of Britain, it seems, that we have always taken them for granted. Yet throughout history, village fortunes have ebbed and flowed as communities have declined and thrived. In an increasingly urban society, the ideal of village life is held dear today, both by those who would preserve a rural dream and those who are determined to keep this vital section of our culture alive, with its history and legends, people and settings, revealing that village life is alive and kicking in the 20th century. In the spring, bit by bit, day by day, as the days lengthen and the weather brightens, and as the gardens are sown and planted, the village comes to obvious life again, and people come out into the open, like animals from their winter retreats. Then, all those friendships are renewed between people who may not have seen each other for a good deal of the winter, because they are too elderly or infirm to go walking out, or are not members of the choir or whist club or the Women's Institute. People take a stroll to the pub and do their gardens, or else simply stand, in the doorway or at the gate in the wall, watching to see who goes by, giving good day, catching up on the news. Mrs. Miggs takes her upright chair, with the old round knitted cushion and her crochet, and sits in the porch, and Mr. Harrow, who is very old, very lame, opens his window wide and sits at it hour after hour, and the canary sits beside him in its cage. I go across the lane to talk to Albert Baker, and ask his advice about sowing peas, and to take the eggs that Jane buys twice a week, and Jessica comes with me, skipping and hopping from side to side like one of the young lambs up the lane. This is spring now,' she says to Mr. Harrow, and she picks a bunch of dandelions for Mrs. Miggs, who sits with the rug over her knees, and the flowers lie on it like gold doubloons. The close proximity, in a small village like Barley, of the very young and the very old, is a fine thing, especially for a child like ours, who does not have grandparents to hand. Small children will talk to anyone, once the guard of shyness has fallen, and they have, like the elderly, a sense of immediacy, a need to say or do something now, the minute it is thought of, combined with that other sense, of the complete irrelevance of time. 73