WHAT'S HAPPENING?

At Wednesday's 10:00 a.m. storytime, Sue Maness will tell you everything you ever wanted to know about sheep - shearing, spinning, dying, and weaving. Seating will be on the west lawn of the library. At Wednesday afternoon's 3:30 storytime, participants will take a trip to Egypt, learn about mummies, and make a pyramid on the West lawn of the library. Ice cream is the theme for Saturday morning's 10:00 storytime. Participants will make and taste homemade ice cream and make a miniature ice cream sundae craft.

BOOK TALK

Children's Librarian Mary Stickford provides this week's book information. Money, money, money - hate to think about it? Wish you had some to think about? A great basic guide is "Kiplinger's Practical Guide to Your Money: Keep More of It, Make It Grow, Enjoy It, Protect It, Pass It On" by Ted Miller, editor of "Kiplinger's Personal Finance Magazine." The Guide offers 500 pages of easy-to-understand information about every aspect of your finances - from how to raise money-smart kids to how to plan your funeral. If you want to finance a house, select the right car, plan for college, invest in the stock market, control your taxes, or get ready for retirement, you will learn valuable information from this guide!

Wish you knew enough to make money in the stock market like everyone else seems to be doing? Milton Fisher offers wisdom from his 50 years in investing in "The Wonderful World of Wall Street - Where Ordinary People Can Become Quiet Millionaires." He helps you think through the hows and whys of investing, with an eye toward conservatively building wealth rather than risk-taking like the daytraders you hear about. If your philosophy is "Slow and Steady Wins the Race," then you will enjoy and appreciate his approach to investing.

DID YOU KNOW?

The "Good Old Days" are often not as good as they seem, but they are often the source of phrases that we use commonly today. For instance, in the 1500s, lead cups were used to drink ale or whiskey. The combination would sometimes knock them out for a couple of days. Someone walking along the road would take them for dead and prepare them for burial. They were laid out on the kitchen table for a couple of days, and the family would gather around and eat and drink and wait to see if the "dead" person would wake up. From this comes the custom of holding a "wake."

England is very old and very small, and they started running out of places to bury people. So, they began to dig up coffins, take out the bones, and reuse the grave. In reopening the coffins, they found scratch marks on the inside of one out of every 25, which meant that people had been buried alive. To help solve this problem, they tied a string on the dead person's wrist and led it through the coffin and up through the ground and tied it to a bell. Someone would have to sit out in the graveyard all night to listen for the bell. Hence, on the "graveyard shift," they would know that someone was "saved by the bell" or he was a "dead ringer."