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Library Topics
August 25, 2025
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Address: 301 N.
Pennsylvania
Phone #: 622-7101
Hours: Sunday 2-6
Monday and Tuesday 9-9
Wednesday through Saturday 9-6
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This week you can celebrate several
"firsts." Wednesday is the anniversary of the day in 1939, when WXBS television
in New York City broadcast the first televised major league baseball game - a doubleheader
between the Cincinnati Reds and the Brooklyn Dodgers. Thursday is the anniversary of the
First Commercial Oil Well. On August 27, 1859, W. A. "Uncle Billy" Smith
discovered oil in a shaft being sunk in western Pennsylvania. Drilling had reached 69
feet, 6 inches when Smith saw a dark film floating on the water below the derrick floor.
Soon, 20 barrels of crude were being pumped each day.
Thursday is also the anniversary of the day in 1655 when the first
play, "Ye Bare and Ye Cubb," was presented in the North American colonies in
Virginia. Three local residents were arrested and fined for acting in the play. Finally,
Sunday is the birth anniversary of the First White House Presidential Baby. In 1893,
Frances Folsom Cleveland (Mrs. Grover) became the first First Lady to have a baby at the
White House, when she gave birth to a baby girl (Esther). The first baby born in the White
House was a granddaughter to Jefferson in 1806.
WHAT'S HAPPENING?
Dinosaurs are big fun at Wednesday's 10:00 a.m. and 3:30 p.m.
storytimes. Participants will make a dinosaur poster and get a dinosaur bookmark. It's
pirate time at Saturday morning's 10:00 storytime, when participants will decorate a
pirate hat, wear an eyepatch, and make a treasure chest!
BOOK TALK
Librarian Barbara Harris provides this week's book information. If you
think poetry is written by people in ivory towers and requires college professors to
decipher it, you haven't been reading the new poetry books at the library. For poems by,
about, and for "real" people, we suggest "All Things, Seen and
Unseen," by Dan Masterson; "Points of Departure," by Miller Williams;
"Infinite Morning," by Meredith Carson; "Aunt Carmen's Book of Practical
Saints," by Pat Mora; "Blue Horses Rush In," by Luci Tapahonso; and
"Sojourner, So to Speak," by Joseph Somoza.
Thanks to fine teachers and a good library, our local young people have
become great poetry readers. Teenagers looking for something new might like to try
"Everywhere Faces Everywhere," by James Berry; "The Taking of Room
114," by Mel Glenn; and two new anthologies, "Earth-Shattering Poems" and
"The Invisible Ladder." Children's poetry books often have beautiful pictures,
as well as wonderful poems. Among the treasures waiting for youngsters and their families
at the library are "Animal Lullabies," by Pam Conrad; "Once in the
Country," by Tony Johnston, "Hoops," by Robert Burleigh; and "Soda
Jerk," by Cynthia Rylant.
DID YOU KNOW?
According to "Material Matters," books were so precious in
the Middle Ages that any measure taken to protect them was welcomed. Once a book had been
produced, it was carefully catalogued and locked in a secure place, with the keys kept by
a most responsible official. Monastic community regulations specified in detail how books
were to be guarded, who was to be responsible for them, how the reader was to borrow them,
and the procedure for their return. To loan a book to someone outside the monastery walls
was considered equivalent to throwing it away. If a book had to be loaned, a heavy pledge
was placed against it. Several communities prohibited any loan under any circumstances.
But what is the ultimate protection for a book? Any book can be stolen,
and what can protect it from smudges, stains, unwelcome notations, or, most tragic, the
ripping out of a particularly interesting page? Medieval man had the ultimate solution: he
who had placed his existence in the hands of the Almighty decided that there was room
there for his books as well. And so, books were placed under God's protection - a
Librarian few, if any, would be foolhardy enough to cross.
THOUGHT FOR THE WEEK: "Of all four-letter words, 'self' is the
worst."
JUDY ARMSTRONG, 624-7276
Address: 301 N. Pennsylvania
Phone #: 622-7101
Hours: Sunday 2-6
Monday and Tuesday 9-9
Wednesday through Saturday 9-6. |
