Looking at a map of northern Ohio, you will see towns by the name of New Middletown, Middlefield, Saybrook, Hartford, Manchester, Clinton and Litchfield. There are two towns named after men from Middletown – Stow (after Joshua Stow) and Shalersville, (after Nathaniel Shaler).

This is not a coincidence. Soon after the Revolutionary War, people from Middletown and from other towns throughout Connecticut headed over the mountains to the Western Reserve of Connecticut to seek new opportunities. The Western Reserve eventually became part of the current state of Ohio.

Richard Buel, professor of history emeritus at Wesleyan University, will talk about the impetus and events that led to the settling of the Western Reserve, or New Connecticut, when he discusses his new book "The Peopling of New Connecticut" on Tuesday at the Russell Library in Middletown. He will outline the findings in his book and conclude with a sketch of what it teaches us about the western movement in the 19th century.

Buel is a graduate of Amherst College and received his PhD in history from Harvard University. He taught at Wesleyan from 1962 to 2002, during which time he published five books, the best known of which was co-authored with Joy Buel and is titled "The Way of Duty." Since retirement he has worked on five books, the last of which is the subject of his remarks.

The program will be held at 7 p.m. in the Hubbard Room of the library at 123 Broad St.

Buel's presentation will be followed by a book signing. For more information, call (860) 346-0746.

"After Revolution: Mapping Gender and Cultural Politics in Neoliberal Nicaragua" by Florence E. Babb will be discussed on Wednesday, April 27, from noon to 1 p.m., in the Seminar Room of the Hartford Public Library, 500 Main St.

An anthropologist, Babb focuses on life of lower-income people in Nicaragua in the 1990s, after the revolution and Contra war. The author is especially concerned with gender issues.

This program is sponsored by the Hartford Public Library and the Hartford/Ocotal Sister City Project, which fosters friendship and mutual understanding of people in the areas of Hartford and Ocotal, a city in northern Nicaragua.

The event is free and visitors are encouraged to bring a brown-bag lunch. For more information, call (860) 695-6300.

Commemorating both the American Civil War and National Poetry Month, Wallingford Public Library welcomes actor Stephen Collins and his one-man show “An Evening with Walt Whitman” Wednesday, April 20, at 7 p.m.

The show opens with Collins portraying Whitman on the evening of his seventieth birthday. As he begins to reminisce about his life, he transforms into a young man retelling the experiences that led to the creation of "Leaves Of Grass," his lifetime work.

In the second part of the performance, Whitman's life is changed forever by the occurrence of the Civil War. It is here that he finds "... the most important work of my life..." nursing the wounded soldiers in the hospitals. Through poetry and reading of actual letters, the audience will experience Whitman's movement from selfishness to selflessness and his growth into a mature artist who is at peace about "himself, God and death."

Please contact the library at (203) 265-6754 for more information and to reserve a seat.

Matthew Goldman aka Constant Waterman will read from his three self-illustrated books at The Buttonwood Tree today at 2 p.m.

Goldman’s first book, "The Journals of Constant Waterman: Paddling, Poling, and Sailing for the Love of It," is a collection of introspective, lively, and often wry memoirs. His second book, "Landmarks You Must Visit in Southeast Connecticut," gives brief histories, complimented by pen and ink drawings, of better and lesser known landmarks about the mouth of the Connecticut River and along the coast to Rhode Island.

In "Vincus the Invisible Divulges His Secret Recipe for Maple Pistachio Birch Beer Raspberry Ripple," he introduces Vincus the Griffin, who cleans up The Endless Forest and also makes huge batches of a unique ice cream. A sequel, "Vincus the Invisible Visits Planet Earth," will be released this spring.

The reading is free and the author will sign books afterward. The Buttonwood is located at 605 Main St. in Middletown.

More than 70 years after his death, a new biography tells the story of one of the American theater’s greatest stars.

William Gillette, a Hartford native, is best-remembered today as the living personification of Sherlock Holmes. He wrote the first popular play about the detective and brought Holmes to life and established for all time the image of Holmes with the deerstalker cap, the bent briar pipe and the profile, creating what may be the most instantly recognizable icon in the world. And it was from Gillette’s play that Hollywood film-makers derived four of the famous phrase, "Elementary, my dear Watson."

“Gillette established the manner in which Holmes was to be portrayed,” author Henry Zecher explained. “Mysteries in general have been staged on the template he created; and, until Jeremy Brett did his own interpretation, actors playing Holmes for the next several decades did it the way Gillette did it.”

More than bringing Holmes to life, however, Gillette was among the 19th century’s most successful actors and playwrights. In a career spanning six decades, he was one of the best-known celebrities in the Western world.

“Gillette was a towering figure in an age of towering figures,” Zecher added. “Among his friends were Mark Twain, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Theodore Roosevelt, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Thomas Nast and Maurice Barrymore. He built a castle on the Connecticut River and a miniature railroad to run around it. Among the guests who rode on that train were President Calvin Coolidge, physicist Albert Einstein and Tokyo Mayor Ozaki Yukio, who gave to America the cherry blossoms in 1912. James M. Barrie, the creator of Peter Pan, wrote two hit plays for which he specifically asked for Gillette to star in.”

As a playwright Gillette was known for the stark realism of his sets, costuming, dialogue and actions. He developed realistic and dramatic lighting and sound effects. And he led the way in making American drama truly American.

“American arts tended to be like the British,” Zecher continued, “and the British had a very poor opinion of American drama. Then Gillette took his first Civil War play – Held by the Enemy – to London in 1887 and it was the first American play with a thoroughly American theme to be a major success on British stages.”

As an actor, he developed the philosophy of The Illusion of the First Time, in which an actor speaks his lines each night, not as if he has spoken them a hundred times before, but as if he is making them up as he goes along, as real people do. Actors were to enter the room of the set the same way, looking about as they go rather than blithely walking in as if they had done so many times before. The idea, Gillette said, was to create the illusion of life on the stage.

Among the young stars Gillette helped at the dawn of their careers were Ethel Barrymore, Charles Chaplin and Helen Hayes, and later screen stars made their film debuts in productions of his plays: William Powell in Sherlock Holmes in 1922, starring John Barrymore as Holmes; Meryl Streep in the 1976 Broadway Theater Archive filming of Gillette’s greatest play, Secret Service, co-starring John Lithgow; and Christian Slater in Sherlock Holmes in 1981 opposite Frank Langella as Holmes.

Gillette played Holmes more than 1,300 times in both America and England between 1899 and 1932. Upon his death in 1937, the New York Times declared, “His comedy bordered on farce, his drama on melodrama, but it would be hard to convince that portion of the American public that knew and followed him that any better actor had ever trod the American stage. And it might be impossible to find any other actor who at 76 could revive a role from the Nineties and make a smashing tour with it through two seasons over the length and breadth of the country. It would be conservative to say that Mr. Gillette was the most successful of all American actors."

For generations of theater-goers and Holmes enthusiasts, Gillette remained the definitive Sherlock Holmes of all time. This is the first full biography published on him. It is published by Xlibris Press in Bloomington, Ind.

Author and scholar Richard Buel will speak at the Essex Library on Monday, April 25, at 7 p.m. about his newest book, "Joel Barlow: American Citizen in a Revolutionary World."

Buel spoke at the library on April 8, but a second session had to be scheduled due to his popularity, library officials said.

Professor Emeritus at Wesleyan University, Buel has spent the last five years researching this fascinating but little-known figure from America’s founding: Connecticut poet turned entrepreneur, diplomat, and international revolutionary, whose circle included Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, Tom Paine, Mary Wollstonecraft, Lafayette, and Yale classmates Noah Webster and Oliver Wolcott.

Hear about how Barlow, born in humble circumstances, made a name for himself in a revolutionary era; his experiences during America’s war of independence (1775-1783); his efforts to sell Ohio lands to the French at the beginning of their Revolution; his revolutionary writing in England that made him persona non grata there, while the French granted him citizenship and asked him to run for the National Assembly(he lost); his response to the Terror and subsequent assignment by President Washington to free American sailors from the Barbary Pirates; his eventual return to America and his purchase of an estate (at Jefferson’s suggestion) that he named Kalorama (just north of DuPont Circle in DC); and his last diplomatic appointment (by Pres. Madison) as ambassador to Napoleonic France. Also his secret marriage to Ruth Baldwin, their unusual relationship, and later their intimate friendship with Robert Fulton.

Books will be available for sale and signing. Please call the Essex Library at (860) 767-1560 to register. The program is free.

MIDDLETOWN — Come celebrate National Poetry Month with Broad Street Books along with poet and photojournalist Marc Regis on Tuesday, April 12, at 7 p.m. Admission is free.

Mark Regis’ dream of becoming a photojournalist became a reality years after a friend gave him a 110-model instamatic camera for a Christmas gift. With his camera, Regis traveled door-to-door and street-to-street photographing house parties, first communions and baptisms. He charged customers $1 each for a picture.

After more than two years, he collected enough money to buy his first 35mm camera. His love of photography led him to seek a career in that field. He enrolled in the Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale and graduated with an associate degree in photography.

Regis, an award-winning photojournalist, worked for the Hartford Courant for 17 years and has traveled on special assignments to St Lucia, Trinidad &Tobago, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Cuba, the Bahamas, England and France.

Throughout the years, Regis has worked on various photographic endeavors. He received the Greater Hartford Arts Council Individual Artist Fellowship and the National Arts Program's Photography Judges Award. Regis was commissioned by the Hartford Public Library to work on a photographic project called Hartford as One under a grant from the National Endowment for Humanity. He spent a year working on it.

The library’s curator selected 100 photographs that became part of the Hartford Library’s permanent collection. In 2004, fifteen of his photographs were featured in the Smithsonian-sponsored Folk life Festival book, called "Haiti Freedom and Creativity from the Mountains to the Sea."

However, photojournalism does not sum up his entire career. Regis is the author of four books, "Haiti Through My Eyes," a selection of poetry about Haiti; "Deadly Road to Democracy," an account of Haiti’s violent struggle for democracy; "Two Good Feet," a photographic documentary of physically-challenged Haitian children and "Haiti after the Shock," a selection of poetry about the earthquake in Haiti.

Regis is the founder and director of Camp Hispaniola that provides children, who live in poverty in Port-au-Prince, Haiti and in the bateyes (sugarcane plantations) of the Dominican Republic, a week-long summer camp where they enjoy activities they would not otherwise have the opportunity to experience. Each year, more than 300 campers at two different venues partake in arts and crafts, music, dance and sports activities. Music, often used as therapy for children traumatized by the devastating earthquake, is an important part of the program.

Several book discussions are scheduled for this week as part of "One Book, One Middletown."

The project, sponsored by the city and the local Rotary Club, is designed to promote a culture of reading by encouraging the community to read the same book at the same time and to participate in book discussions and other related events.

This year's book is "The Art of Racing in the Rain" by Garth Stein.

The narrator is Enzo, an old mixed breed dog who is reaching the end of his long life. He is owned by Denny Swift who is pursuing a career as a race car driver, risking his life and savings to make it on the professional racing circuit. Enzo is frustrated by his inability to talk and is hopeful that he will be reborn as a man (something he learned from a National Graphic documentary about Mongolia). He watches Denny's old racing videos and share his thoughts on principles that apply to both driving and life. When Denny hits a rough patch in his family life, Enzo remains a steadfast, silent supporter.

CLICK HERE for a full schedule of events related to "One Book, One Middletown." And even if you can't attend any of the events, you can still pick up a copy of the book at the library or a local book store and give it a try! When you are done, you can always email us your thoughts about the book at editor@middletownpress.com and we will be happy to post it on this blog.

Author and scholar Richard Buel will speak at the Essex Library on April 8 at 7 p.m., about his newest book, “Joel Barlow: American Citizen in a Revolutionary World.”

Books will be available for sale and signing, and refreshments will be served. The program is free and open to all. For more information or to register, call (860) 767-1560.