Kimchi – spicy, salty, and delicious fermented vegetables of all kinds – is a staple food in Korea. More and more people around the world are discovering kimchi, and it is quickly becoming one of the world’s favorite foods. What if, one day, a Korean-American family living in Brookline came across an American family calling out and looking for “Kimchi” at Halls Pond Sanctuary? How did a cute puppy come to have such a name? Based on a true story that took place here in Brookline, Cori Ahn’s children’s book, My Name is Kimchi, is a delightful story of two cultures, food, and friendship surrounding the dog named Kimchi.

Hanbok is a traditional costume in Korea. People enjoy wearing hanbok on special occasions and holidays. In My Name is Kimchi, the Korean family and their puppy wear hanbok to celebrate the first birthday of the youngest child of the family – the dol celebration. The hanbok in this display is called saekdong (many-colored stripes patched together), which symbolizes harmony and babies. Young children wear it for good luck, especially on their very first birthdays!

For more information, or to purchase My Name is Kimchi in Korean, please email Cori Ahn at libkstorytime@gmail.com.

This collective of women artists — Juliet Lockwood, Shelley Borg, Sherry Flashman, Rachel Cox, Sheila Golden, and Sarah Lyberger* — began gathering online during the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic. Ranging in age from 22 to 79, they benefited from daily invitations to challenge themselves with themed references, photos, paintings, and drawings. Each artist brought her own gifts to the collective’s intentional, supportive, shared space. This group show features work that brings tragedy to light, inspired by feelings of uncertainty, isolation, and unrest. The Salon de Corona still gathers, evolving in membership but persevering in its mission to stay real, celebrate growth, and nurture creativity.

*Other participants, also integral to the group, are not represented in the exhibit.

Welcome Blanket is a national craftivist project conceived by Jayna Zweiman, the co-creator of the Pussyhat Project. It reconceptualizes Trump’s 2,000-mile concrete border wall into 2,000 miles of yarn knitted into blankets for new immigrants and refugees to the U.S. Participants knit/crochet/quilt/sew blankets and write their family’s own immigration stories, with words of welcome in accompanying notes. The blankets (over 6,000 thus far) are displayed in the community and then distributed through 30+ resettlement agencies.

In 2017, Hadassah Margolis formed Welcome Blanket Brookline, where community members could come together, create, and talk about immigration. The group met initially at the Coolidge Corner Library. Welcome Blanket Brookline now has 200 members and meets monthly, either in person (at the Senior Center) or on Zoom. For more information or to join, email Hadassah Margolis at media@welcomeblanket.org.