BY KAREN BOSSICK

The symphony may be taking the night off. But there’s no shortage of cerebral activity to keep your mind active in its absence.

Lee Pollock will explore the “American Hero” side of Sir Winston Churchhill during a free talk at 6 p.m. tonight—Thursday, Aug. 10—at Ketchum's Community Library.

Churchill visited the United States for the first time in 1895 as a 20-year-old aristocrat.

“A great, rude strong young people are the Americans…like a boisterous healthy boy among well-bred ladies and gentlemen,” he wrote to his family.

Churchill actually was half-American, as his mother Jennie Jerome was a Brooklyn-born lass who married the son of Britain’s Duke of Marlborough. Churchill visited the United States regularly, addressing Congress in his later years.

“There is one country where a man knows he has an unbounded future—the USA,” he responded when asked what country he would have liked to have been a citizen, given a choice.

Pollock, who speaks regularly on Churchhill, is the executive director and a trustee and advisor to the Board of the International Churchill Society, a non-profit research and educational organization with offices in Washington and London.

Tonight the Joseph Campbell Foundation Mythological RoundTable of Ketchum will celebrate its second anniversary.

The celebration will take place at 6 p.m. tonight—Thursday, Aug. 10—at Light on the Mountains Spiritual Center just north of Gimlet Road and Highway 75.

The topic for tonight’s discussion led by Jan Peppler—“The Mythology of Home.” The discussion will include C.G. Jung’s idea of individuation, including why we need to leave home and how we return.