Library Adventures – June 2024

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My most frequent interactions with my local library are digital…checking out Kindle books. In June, there were 3 interactions that were not digital at all!

The first one was volunteering at one of the branches with the Friends group used book sale. It was a smaller branch and was only a one-day event. I helped with the set-up the day before and then with the first hours of the $3/bag sale. There were quite a few people that stopped by and left with 1 or more bags of books and the Friends netted $295 from the day. My favorite was an elementary school aged boy that came in with his mom and picked out two bags of books; he was very pleased with his haul and shared that he might share some of them with his older brother.

The second interaction was an art class that was announced in the monthly library newsletter. It was free…held in the early evening…2 one-hour sessions over 2 weeks. It was scheduled in the branch library closest to where I live. I signed up. We made a color wheel the first session and then did shades of the same color (by adding white) on the same small canvas in the second.

I took a picture of the plate I used to mix the paint for the shades of ‘red’ in the second class.

The next day I made Zentangle patterns over the white space of the canvas (and into some of the painted areas as well).

The class was a good learning experience. 1) It was my first experience with acrylic paints…and I realized that I enjoy the pens and Zentangle too much to make time for paints! 2) Canvases are not smooth enough for pens. I used a Sharpie Ultra-Fine pen and it was hard to control the tip of the pen over the bumps of the canvas fibers.  3) A free class is a low-risk way to try something new!

The third interaction occurred when we had a form that required notarized signatures. My husband found out that the library had a notary so we took our form there and indeed the person at the desk was a notary – it was very easy!

 Positive interactions at the library….it’s more than just a place to check out books!

Ten Little Celebrations – June 2024

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June 2024 ---- the transition to the heat of summer ---- celebrating June days.

Sunflower in the window…following the sun. I cut a sunflower from my wildflower garden and put the vase on the windowsill in my office…and celebrated when that it followed the sun!

Peachicks. I had never seen a peachick before and had walked more than halfway around the Dickerson Park Zoo in Springfield, MO before I spotted three peachicks with a peahen. Celebration! The young birds already had the beginning of the topknot on their heads but none of the iridescent color.

Corn muffins. Sometimes deciding to make a food remembered from childhood is about celebrating more that the food itself. The dash of cayenne pepper in the batter provided an extra flavor pop.

Mowing the whole yard. My plan at the beginning of the season was to mow the front yard on one day and the back another…but I am doing great mowing both on the same day. I am celebrating that I am physically able to do more than I anticipated!

Blueberries. Picking blueberries was another first this June. I celebrated the experience – and that the orchard is less than 30 minutes from my house.

Breakfast with my daughter. My daughter wanted to try breakfast at a coffee shop she frequents…invited me to meet her there. I celebrated the serendipity of the event (and savored the breakfast  and spending more time with my daughter too).

Hummingbird. I’ve seen a hummingbird buzzing around our yard several times. I celebrate every sighting and am determined to plant some ‘big nectar’ plants for them for next year.

Young robin. I celebrated seeing a small robin – about half the size of the adult feeding it – on our backyard fence. And it could fly!

So many good books. There are so many books available electronically from my local library and Internet Archive that I am never without reading material. I celebrate living at a time when technology makes books so available.

Scissortail flycatchers in the neighborhood. I hadn’t seen scissortail flycatchers in our neighborhood during the two previous summers….so am celebrating seeing a pair of them this month!

Then and Now – Books

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Books – and other reading material – have changed a lot between the 1960s and now.

In the 1960s they were all physical – printed on paper. There were already paperbacks, but I remember hard backs more – textbooks and reference books along with fiction. Now those physical formats still exist, but there are digital forms available too. I have shifted almost entirely to digital forms (Kindle and Internet Archive mostly) for my reading. Most of what I read is something I will only read once so there is no reason to have the book permanently. Another reason I like digital books: the weight of the device I use for reading is less than one book; I can access a lot of books with no additional weight!

In the 1960s, we had sets of general references like encyclopedias at home; now we either use a search of the internet or sites like Wikipedia to get that type of information – i.e. digital vs a physical book. And the wed sites are usually free rather than purchased. There is also the added advantage that the information is refreshed frequently (although we do have to become more adept at accessing the quality of the information provided). In addition, many references I use now come in the form of apps (for example, Cronometer for calorie/nutritional information about foods, Merlin for bird identification, iNaturalist for other organism identification, and NPS for details about national parks).

It seemed like books were expensive in the 1960s; there were some we bought but most of them we checked out from libraries (school or public) or they were provided during the school year. My mother bought children’s books for my sisters and me prior to us becoming proficient reader; some of those books still exist – distributed primarily to her grandchildren over the years. Kindle books are available from my library…but I buy one occasionally. And Internet Archive has older books that are freely available and newer ones that can sometimes be checked out for 14 days (or for 1 hour which is ideal if it is a needed reference). It still is probably true that physical books are popular with young children/new readers.

Finding a particular book in the 1960s was done with card catalogs or a ‘books in print’ reference. Today I search the Amazon site; books are easy to find and then purchase. I don’t remember going into book stores in the 1960s, perhaps because we lived in a small town rather than a city….or my parents deciding that libraries should fulfill our need for books as we became good readers.

As I was growing up it always seemed like there were never enough books near at hand to read. That set the stage for me to start buying books – new and used – as an adult (past the 1960s) so that I would always have a substantial pile of books at home, ready to read. When digital forms of books became able – it was like a dream come true. At first, I printed some of the eBooks so that I could read them offline. Gradually, I began reading more and more books entirely online. These days I never lack for reading material…and I donated most of my physical books. We have a lot of empty bookcases.

Previous Then and Now posts

Volunteering Again

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My first volunteering since moving to Missouri happened last weekend – helping set up a Friends of the Library in Christian County, Missouri book sale near where I live. I was part of the first wave of the set up so the first task was setting up the long folding tables around the edges and down the middle of the large space. There was one that seemed a little rickety and we quickly realized that it was not stable enough to load with books; it went back in the storage closet with a label that it was broken.

The boxes of donated books had been stored in a shed at the library and JROTC from the local high school loaded them onto a trailer and brought them over to our building. Fortunately the boxes were labeled well enough that we could aggregate them on the tables where the contents would be displayed. None of the volunteers with older backs (me included) had to lift any book boxes!

There were a large number of donated puzzles and I started emptying boxes and making a display that spread over two long tables. It seems that there were more puzzles than last year; maybe people are donating puzzles they bought during COVID. My goal was to get at least a small picture of the puzzle and the number pieces showing for each one. Most of the puzzles ended up in towers or standing on end.

It was a great way to spend a Saturday morning and I hope Friends of the Library make $$ from the sale that formally begins today.

More Used Puzzles

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The county just north of where I live is more populous and their Friends of the Library sale was a lot larger – held in a building of the county fairgrounds. They filled the large building with tables loaded mostly with books but there were some CDs and a few puzzles/board games. I bought the best of the 500-piece puzzles to take to my parents – 17 boxes that contained 28 puzzles…for the bargain total of $52! I was grateful that my husband went with me to help get them into bags…through checkout…and into the car. I’ll be taking them to Carrollton in a few days….adding them to the stack I created last month (probably a little reduced with my parents finishing some of them). They enjoy having lots of puzzles to choose from!

In the 1990s, I went to used books sales…and staggered out with so many books I could hardly lift my bags. But now I am not tempted. I read eBooks…and for things like planning travel, I do searches to get the most current information rather than buy dated books. It felt a little strange to go to a large used book sale and buy nothing at all. My husband was not tempted either.

Finding Puzzles

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My parents have seemingly gotten more adept at finishing puzzles this spring. For the past decade they have been enjoying working on jigsaw puzzles on a high table in their garden room; they can work standing or sitting…and enjoy the view of their garden/birdfeeder outside the windows. There is always a partially assembled puzzle on the table. They began to get frustrated this year; the 1000-piece puzzles were taking too long so they asked that we skew the mix toward 500-piece puzzles. Now that my sisters and I have done that – they need more of puzzles! They are completing more than one per week even with their increased activity this time of year outdoors and away from the puzzles.

Last time I was in Carrollton, they were completely out of puzzles they had not assembled previously.  I bought 8 and they are still working on those but I am being proactive – buying 8 more. I happened to find them on sale at CVS and used all the coupons I had…so the price was good. And I like the pictures. One of my sisters will pick up the baton for the next round…but we must pick of the pace of our acquisitions a little. The puzzles are a great way to add some mental challenge to their daily routine!

My sister is saving a lot of the puzzles – storing them in her attic – for when she gets older. Maybe my sisters and I will enjoy them when we are in our 80s and 90s!

Wouldn’t it be great if libraries could organize to checkout puzzles just like they do books?

Alfred East’s The Art of Landscape Painting in Oil Colour

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I happened upon a book on Internet Archive I had browsed back in 2012 – The Art of Landscape Painting in Oil Colour by Alfred East…and enjoyed the illustrations again.

I particularly enjoyed the ‘Studies of Effect’ series. Since I’ve done a lot more thinking about light as I’ve improved my photographic skills, I probably appreciated them more now than I did 8 years ago.

These days – there are other steps I typically take when I spot something of interest in Internet Archive – either the topic of the book or the author…or maybe just a single picture. I frequently look for the biography of the author in Wikipedia (and maybe follow some of the external links or references). Since East was a British artist, I did a search on The British Museum site and found 32 items! It’s awesome to be able to follow whatever questions I develop looking at old books; perhaps I appreciate the ease more since I remember heavy reference books and card catalogs…and being frustrated when the library didn’t have what I was looking for.  It’s very easy now to find an overwhelming amount of information.

Unique Activities for Yesterday:

Bald Eagle. As we were driving to put flowers on my mother-in-law’s grave (she died in 1990) on Thanksgiving morning, we drove by a historical manor house set well off the road with outbuildings. I noticed a white blotch near the top of one of the trees near the house. It was almost too far away to figure out what it was but when it moved, I realized it was a bald eagle. It turned further and took off as the light turned green and we moved in the other direction. What a great contribution from the natural world to add to our Thanksgiving!

Gleanings of the Week Ending March 31, 2018

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The items below were ‘the cream’ of the articles and websites I found this past week. Click on the light green text to look at the article.

 4 Psychology Lessons That Can Teach Us About Inspiring Climate Action | CleanTechnica – Good ideas – particularly if anticipating a lot of disagreement or people being too depressed about the prospect of the future for Earth to take action.

Top 25 Wild Raptors – National Geographic – From around the world…no bald eagle in this group of photos.

After 250 Years of Dams, Rhode Island River Restored for Migratory Fish – Cool Green Science – Maryland is also removing dams. Bloede’s Dam (see blog post about it here)

Hummingbirds Make an Incredible Journey North – Cool Green Science – This little birds make a very long journey. Hope our recent cold weather has not made is a problematic year for them.

Saving Terrapins From Drowning in Crab Traps – Cool Green Science – Hopefully this can be a success story for terrapins around Long Island…time will tell.

Elusive Deep-Sea Anglerfish Seen Mating for the First Time | Smart News | Smithsonian – I’d only see pictures of dead specimens or drawings. The 2.5 minute video shows a living fish moving slowly through the water with filaments that glow surrounding it. Still very fierce looking but also a slow moving graceful beauty.

Drug-related mortality rates are not randomly distributed across the US -- ScienceDaily – The map says it all. The hotspots for drug-related deaths in the US are not necessarily where historically high drug use happened.

The 20 most beautiful libraries in the U.S. - Curbed – I’ve only been in one of these: the reading room of the Legal Research Library at the University of Michigan; it was part of the campus tour when my daughter visited the university before she added it to her short list that she would apply to for her undergraduate studies. I remember it being very quiet even though people were walking around – cork floors are quiet floors!

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch Is Much Larger and Chunkier Than We Thought | Smart News | Smithsonian – Ugh! It was bad even before the more precise measurements came in. There has to be a way to start cleaning it up and keeping more garbage from getting into the ocean.

Landscape Photography Series Tells “Winter’s Tale” of Snowy Forests – Hopefully we’ve had our last bought with snowy weather here in Maryland. I do enjoy the snowy forests…for a little while.