16 April 2014

16 April 2014 Congratulations to all who have gotten their taxes in on time. It seems every year it gets harder to make the deadline because the forms are not available from the government until late January and even into February. With spring comes thoughts of working in the garden and getting the lawn in good shaped. The Library has a display of gardening books on display in the west window above the magazine rack. Everything from pruning, shrubs, complimentary planting and how to get great flowers. This is national poem month and we have a display of poets in our display case in the vestibule of the Library. From Homer to Poe to Robert Frost and Langston Hughes. Come in and enjoy reading a poem or two. On Monday, 21 April, the Brown Bag Classic Club will be discussing poems. We meet in the Library meeting room in the basement from noon to 1:00 p.m. The Library will supply hot water for coffee or tea, you bring your lunch and your favorite poem and we'll talk. Next month we will read James Fenimore Cooper's, The Last of the Mohicans. He is the author of the Leather Stocking Tales, The Spy and The Pilot. We are taking applications for library page. You need to apply at the Library and meet the following standards. Must be at least 14 years old, work Tuesdays and Thursdays from 3-5 and alternate Fridays and Saturdays from 3-5. You must have reliable transportation and pass a simple test. The page shelves the books and other materials, straightens out the shelves and keeps the materials on the shelves in order. We are also looking for a volunteer at the Library to pull the obituaries of local citizens from the newspapers and funeral homes and organize them alphbetically by date in a binder for genealogy research. The volunteer will only need to work for about two hours a week two days a week. Come into the Library and talk with me about this. We will be closed on Easter Sunday. A reminder for our parents and children that we will be ending our storytimes at the end of the month and there will be not programs during May as our staff will be getting everything ready for the Summer Reading Program. I know that many of the children look forward to coming in for the programs each week but there is much that needs to get done before the Summer Reading Program begins. Remember that you can access the Secretary of State online and perform some basic tasks such as renewing a driver's license or state i.d. card or the tags for your car, file a change of address or register for organ donation at, https://www.michigan.gov/sos. On Friday mornings, Andrea does tech tutoring from 10:30 to 11:30. If you need help setting up or using an iphone or tablet or other device bring it in and she can see if she can help you. This is National Library Week and overdue print materials returned this week will have the fines waived. This ends on April 19 at closing time. Until next week, have a Happy and Safe Easter. John

Wednesday 2 April 2014

2 April 2014 April has brought warm weather with it and I am glad the winter is over. The Winter Reading Program is over and the winners were as follows. Mary Evelynn Bell won the Grand Prize of the tickets to see Boeing, Boeing and Annie Get Your Gun at the Kalamazoo Civic Theater, a canvass Library bookbag and two ceramic Library mugs. Ruth Ann Littlejohn had the most books read and won a gift certificate to the Vault and two Library travel mugs and finally Velma Cannell was third place and won a gift certificate to Rise-n-Dine and a ceramic Library mug. Thank you to all who participated in our program this year. We are looking for a new Library Page. One of our pages is graduating in June and is leaving us. The page position is six hours a week. Two days during the week and then alternating Friday and Saturday. You need to be at least 14 years old, be able to lift 25 lbs, and pass a simply test. We will take applications until April 20. We expect the person to start in early May. National Library Week is April 13-19 and to celebrate we will forgive fines on late returns on print material only. Fines that are already on your record will still need to be paid. The only fines to be forgiven will be the new fines on the materials you return during National Library Week. Time to think about lawns and gardens. There is a display of books on gardening on display in the west window of the Library in the magazine section. Everything from pruning trees and shrubs to square foot gardening. Books on flowers, herbs and vegetable growing are displayed. This month we are also featuring books made into movies. We will have a display of the books along with the videopack so that you can check out the book and the movie. Watch the movie and then read the book and compare the two. What did the movie cut out? How did the movie differ from the book? Which did you prefer? Come in and take a look at what the Library staff have chosen. Maybe you know of some titles that we don't know about. With April comes the winding down of our storytimes. May is the month used to get everything set for the Summer Reading Program. The theme this year is science and the programs are designed to show that science is fun as well as interesting. The Brown Bag Book Club is reading poetry this month because it is National Poetry Month. Poetry has become the lost literary form and it was the original form for centuries. Poetry was used to pass on cultural stories. The best known example of this is the Iliad and the Odyssey by Homer. For the English speaking world, the epic poem Beowulf is considered the earliest English language work but it was an oral poem long before it was written down. Poetry has been a major literary form up to last half of the 20th century. Some major American poets were Walt Whitman, Henry Wadsworth Longfello, Stephen Vincent Benet, Edgar Allan Poe, Robert Frost, Emily Dickenson, Carl Sandburg and Langston Hughes. Great English poets include Alfred, Lord Tennyson, William Wordsworth, Edmund Spenser, William Shakespeare, Samuel Taylor Collridge, Robert Louis Stevenson, Robert Browning, Robert Burns, John Masefield and Dylan Thomas. It is both a literary and an art form. Today, most of our exposure to poetry is in song lyrics. When people say they have a favorite song, it isn't the music that makes it their favorite, it is the lyrics, the poetry, that make the song. So enjoy a good poem, a good song and celebrate National Poetry month. Until next week, stay safe and visit the Library. John Sheridan