close

Basic Digital Camera session is among upcoming events at the library

5 min read

Weekly Activities

Preschool Story Hour on Wednesday, May 27, at 10:30 a.m.

Scrapbook Crop on Monday, June 1, at 6:00 p.m.

Activity Details

Children can delight in stories shared each week in the Preschool Story Hour as well as gain experience in craft making.

Those working on scrapbooks and desiring to meet with others for work time and to gain or share an idea or two, consider joining in the Scrapbook Crop on June 1.

Upcoming Activities

Whether looking to buy a digital camera or wanting to know more about what you can do with the one you already have, consider the Basic Digital Camera session on Tuesday, June 9, at 10:30 a.m. The session will present many examples of the typical features and options available, ideas worth considering, and guides for where to find more information. Pre-registration for this presentation is needed.

Another chance to make custom and unique cards is available on Thursday, June 11, at 10:30 a.m. Pre-register and $3 materials fee are needed. Materials will enable you to make a custom and unique card for that special person or event.

Landscaping

If you have time you can assist in a landscaping project on library grounds, please see me. The projects are planned so they can be completed in a few visits. It helps a lot when there is help in this regard as we want to keep grounds in tip-top shape.

Barker

It’s a rare TV viewer who hasn’t heard of Bob Barker. He hosted “The Price Is Right” for 35 years and prior to that 18 years hosting “Truth or Consequences.” His “Priceless Memories” (791.45 BAR), released last month, is a conversation with him. You’ll learn all kinds of little tidbits along the way, e.g. in 1987 he refused to have his hair dyed and became the first TV host to let his hair go au natural.

Hammett

Samuel Dashiell Hammett was an American author of raw, unadorned fiction or, as The New York Times called him in an obituary, “the dean of the hard-boiled school of detective fiction.” Unlike the intellectualized mysteries of earlier detective works, Hammett would offer less than glamorous realism that somehow gave the reader an opportunity to understand urban American culture.

He spent his early twenties as a detective in San Francisco and then enlisted in the army during WWI. His most famous work is probably “The Maltese Falcon” being published in 1930 and the subject of several movie versions. Some will recall the 1941 movie version wherein Humphrey Bogart played a detective who epitomized the “hard-boiled” hero as he tackled society’s corruption.

Hammet, who experienced set-backs because of excessive drinking, also gained recognition for quality writing. His last work, “The Thin Man,” which will be the book discussion’s choice for deliberation in September, became the basis for a successful film series.

During WWII, at the age of forty-eight, he enlisted as a private in the army and served as a naval fighter pilot. Unfortunately, as mentioned earlier, his drinking did not work to his advantage and he suffered setbacks both medically and in the literary world. While his works were limited to five novels (though most of us would probably be in heaven with one novel), Hammett remains as one of the most influential writers of his time.

We have his “Complete Novels” (CL M HAM) and hopefully you might consider joining the book discussion in September. Copies of “The Thin Man” are available at the front desk for $6.00 so you can highlight and write notes.

Saga for Explorers

“Grief turns out to be a place none of us know until we reach it.” In “The Year of Magical Thinking” (921 DID), her account of a life upended by her husband John’s sudden death, Joan Didion chronicles the craziness, the jumble of events, emotions, memories she endures as she tries to make sense and order out of his death and her life. But what sets this book apart is Didion’s meticulous documenting of her mind’s twists and turns, her application of magical thinking to escape the inexorable rules of time and place and create a different ending for what has already happened.

But all the king’s horses can’t repeal the law of the Democratic Republic of Death and alter an outcome. It is her straightforward narration, in all its dignity, complexity, and pathos that makes this such a riveting story. Not a “comfort book” in the conventional sense, it is a saga for explorers into the human heart and spirit, the Marco Polos, the Walter Raleighs, the Shackletons who enter unknown territory.

Library Hours

Don’t remember library hours? Call for information. When we are closed, a recorder gives the hours of operation either on 765-8162 or on 765-8163. Except for holidays, which would be mentioned on the recorder, we are open Monday and Wednesday from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m., Tuesday; Thursday and Friday 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.; and Saturday 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. We look forward to seeing you.