Jan's Column 2024

“Are these snowflakes which I see before me?”, I asked myself Sunday and Monday. We are halfway through the month of March and the grass is greening, the birds are singing and thinking about nesting, the spring books are arriving in goodly numbers weekly, and now the weather has decided to make a turn back towards colder temperatures and solid precipitation. The NCAA basketball tournaments are about to get underway and the forecast, though chilly, hasn’t mentioned “blizzards” or measurable snowstorms (knock wood). I find these cold, gloomy days perfect for settling in with a good books, and a hot cup of something, with possibly a cat, dog, significant other or perhaps all three snuggling nearby.  Below you will find some books which you might just find perfect for curling up with and forgetting what’s happening outside while we all wait for spring to arrive. And, well, actually. Spring did officially arrived this week on March 19th at 10.06 p.m. Since March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb, it shouldn’t be long until more spring-like weather arrives. Until then, curl up with one of these dandy new books. Enjoy!

It looks like Booky, the library’s prognosticating Badger, made the correct call on Groundhog’s Day. Winter seems to have withdrawn while spring exerts its influence more and more each week. Birds are literally flocking back. The dawn chorus has started up and early signs of nest building can be found. We have already rolled past the Girls WIAA basketball tournaments with nary a flake of snow to be seen. The Boys WIAA basketball  tournament gets underway on March 15th and if you believe the Weather Kitty app -- which I do-- the only precipitation in the forecast is rain. So, it would appear that we have dodged that potential blizzard magnet. This upcoming weekend is also the selection weekend for the NCAA Basketball Tournaments. Those tournaments pose the last of the big-snow-attracting events. While my Weather Kitty app doesn’t forecast beyond 7 days, by the end of March the probability of snow diminishes weekly. All that being said, the spring book titles are popping up at the library like croci and daffodils reaching towards the sun. Below you will find some of the many new titles which recently arrived at the library. With the milder weather and more light at the evening end of the day, why not sit and read daylight? Enjoy!

Here it is, second week of March, and (knock wood) so far, not a snowflake to be seen. There’s nothing much in the 10-day forecast either.  I read in a newsletter – either the International Crane Foundation or Aldo Leopold Newsletter – that this year there has been 18 days of winter. The sandhill cranes left the Baraboo area on January 12th and had returned by February 12th, The 18 days of winter included those couple of snows and the deep-freeze plunge with high winds. That’s been it so far (knock on wood).  I keep reminding folks that even with fortuitous weather forecasts that get us to the middle of March, we are not truly out of the snow/blizzard season until we have gotten through the WIAA basketball tournaments (and possibly the NCAA ones as well). Every day gets us closer to Easter on March 31st (it is a fairly early Easter—the earliest possible is March 22nd) which gets us that much closer to April. [However, I do remember the Chicago Easter snow storm on March 29th, 1964 when 7.1 inches fell. We had to drive to our cousin’s for dinner and the snow kept coming down. We ate and left almost before dessert was served (My dad refused to go before he had his slice of coconut-covered-lamb-shaped cake festooned with jelly bean eggs. He was driving so he had his cake and got us home safely]. But I digress. Below you will find some of the new books which recently arrived at the library. Enjoy!

The weather certainly has been a rollercoaster lately. Monday was in the low 60s, Tuesday in the high 60s, and Wednesday, forecast to struggle to make it to the high 20s.and then back to close to 70 degrees by the weekend. I keep asking people if it’s still February and up until today (assuming the publication date of Friday, March 1st) the answer has been in the affirmative. The high school boys and girls basketball final tournaments are yet to be played and we all know that those tournaments, in the past, have acted as a snow-storm magnet. Who knows if that will be the cast this year? In the meantime the grass continues to green and new birds are migrating back into the area almost daily (I saw a migratory flock of starlings over the weekend and while starlings tend to hang around most of the year they do come south to find warmer temperatures and more available food and they do flock-up when they make these moves).  Speaking of books, the spring titles are flocking to our shelves almost as quickly as the birds.  Below you will find some of the new titles which recently arrived at the library.
Enjoy!

I am writing this on Monday, February 19th, which, I’m sure, most of you will recall, is Presidents Day. This holiday was originally designated to celebrate George Washington’s birthday which is actually on February 22nd..  As the years went on Lincoln’s birthday (February 12th) was also included under the umbrella term “Presidents Day”.  In 1968, Presidents Day became a federal holiday which means there is no U.S. mail (which I shall have totally forgotten about when I stop to get my mail on the way home) and banks and a few other businesses may be closed.  Presidents Day is a fine opportunity for sales and many retailers both online and in brick-and-mortar stores take advantage of the holiday to offer discounts.  The funny thing about Presidents Day, also known as George Washington’s birthday is that for all the places that you will find his birth date as February 22nd, 1732 in fact, he was born in Virginia on February 11th, 1731.  How is this possible, you ask? Well he was born when the Gregorian calendar was being used. In 1752, Britain and its colonies switched to the Julian calendar which added one year and 11 days to preceding dates.  I won’t go into why one calendar system was preferred over the other now. Suffice it to say, the three-day federal holiday celebrating various presidential birthdays makes it a moveable feast which Washington’s birthday sort of was anyway.(Lincoln’s birthday has moved around at all). Below are some of the new books which recently arrived at the library – none via U.S. mail on Monday, however – Enjoy!

Is this indeed an early spring?  I know we have recently sailed past Ground Hogs’ Day and Super Bowl Sunday and it is still only the second (full) week of February, but the piles of snow are all but gone, the grass is greening up nicely, and the chickadees have started singing their “phoebe” song. I saw power line full of dark, medium-sized birds at the beginning of the week.  Could these have been early migrating red-winged blackbirds? Could be. I’ve seen big skeins of geese heading north. These feel like migrants, not locals who are going to just circle back and land on a pond.  Although they could be geese that wintered over here and are practicing to make the big push north. And you know me and sandhill cranes. I can just feel them coming north. My google feed showed me a newscast from Kearney, Nebraska this morning talking about how early the crane migration is this year. As we all know, typically, cranes don’t start staging north until Valentine’s Day – which at this writing has yet to happen.  But the cranes are already starting to appear at the Kearney flyway. I got a text from my friend and fellow craniac telling me by crane instincts were right on. She heard cranes calling in her marsh on Monday morning.  And speaking of spring, the spring book titles are also flocking north (ur book jobber is in Momence, IL). Below are some of the titles which recently appeared at the library. Enjoy!

A trifecta of prognosticating animals (Booky, Phil, and Jimmy) declared on February 2nd, that there would be an early spring. The weather during the last part of January and so far this month and even into the 10-day forecast seems to be bearing their prognostications out.  The days are noticeably longer – we are gaining a little over a minute everyday at sunset and making very slow progress on the sunrise end of things. But still. Progress is progress.  While the snow cover has mostly left except where there huge piles (mountains some would say), that green grass showing through heartens the winter-weary soul. One almost expects the birds to begin returning. I haven’t spotted any returning birds yet. Only the usual suspects are hanging out on my porch, but the squirrel activity has certainly ramped up. And the very best news for library users is that the book drought we had been experiencing seems to have lessened. The UPS guy has been like a rainmaker this past week. Bringing little showers of books into the library on an almost daily basis.  This week we have a full baker’s dozen of book titles for you to peruse. Enjoy!

Happy Ground Hog’s Day! At this writing, our prognosticating Badger, Booky, has yet to take a squint outside to see what he sees and make a prediection. Will he see his shadow thus forecasting an additional 6 weeks of winter? Or will he not see his shadow and the January thaw we have been experience for the past week or more, will continue? Tune in on the actual day to see what Booky predicts. Booky, as you probably recall, has a perfect record for Ground Hog Day predictions. While badgers and ground hogs are both, squat, short-legged mammals the similarity ends there. Groundhogs (Marmota monax) are grazing members of the rodent family; badgers are hunting members of the weasel family, (Mustelidae). This pretty much means, theoretically, a badger could eat a groundhog for lunch which is probably why our badger’s predictions trump the local groundhog’s prediction consistently. Ground Hog’s Day is a nice way of celebrating that spring might just be about to appear over the horizon. Sure, February, over the decades has had days that don’t get above zero and March is rather notorious for dumping large amounts of snow during high school basketball tournaments. But still, we are at least at the top of the hill, and will be rolling towards spring any day now. The seed catalogs and seed packets are beginning to appear in mailboxes and in hardware stores. The spring book titles are also beginning to appear.Below you will find some of them. Enjoy!

As the days have noticeably begun getting longer and the brief bout of bitterly cold wind chills has loosen its grip, and the mountains of snow are slowly turning into mere hills of snow, the drought of new books reaching this library has also begun to end. Below you will find ten (count them, 10!) new book titles. Indeed some of them are so new that they technically haven’t been published yet even though the physical book is sitting on a shelf in our backroom even as I write. “How is this possible?”, I hear you. “So glad you asked,” I reply. Publishing a book is the final part of the process of bringing a book from the writer’s pen to the physical or digital book that you, gentle reader, can sit down and read. Formatting, editing, designing cover art, determining fonts, chapter headings, etc. all precedes publishing as does the printing, binding, and shipping from the publishers. Releasing the final product into the world is the final step of getting a book into your hands. That releasing of the book is the publishing, Due to mostly market consideration, books are not “published” until certain dates. So right now three or four of the books listed below will not be published until the 30th. That doesn’t mean you can’t put a hold on the book, it just means we can’t release it by wanding the barcode to make it available to fill holds. Occasionally we get books with strict “on-sale” date which threatens dire consequences if we let those books loose before that date. All that being said, below are some new titles which recently arrived at the library. Enjoy!

This week I have very few books to regale you with. I blame the supply chain. The two major winter storms the past week, I believe, slowed down the delivery of the many, many books we have on order. As of this writing, because of the holiday, neither the USPS nor UPS are making deliveries. Soon, we will have many books to tell you about. In the meantime, there are a half dozen listed further down the page. But since there is a lacuna in the titles of hard copy, print materials, let me tell you about some other hard copy, print materials we have.  Did you know that the library subscribes to 126 magazine titles?  We have many of your “classics” like “Better Homes and Garden”, “Consumer Reports”, “People”, “Popular Mechanics”, “Prevention”, and “Newsweek”.  But we also get some titles that are a but more esoteric like :”Elle”, “The Atlantic”, “Lighthouse Digest”, “The Cottage Journal”, “Flower”, “F1 Racing”, “Game and Fish Midwest”, “Writer’s Digest”, and “US Weekly”.  These magazines live upstairs at the end of Fiction on the Library Street side of the building. You should be able to locate them and other magazine titles that may be of interested, in the library catalog. Placing a hold on a specific issue can be a bit tricky, so if you need help. Ask at the Circulation desk.  Overdrive, the online resources available through the Libby App, has a large number of magazines available in digital format.  Check out the Libby App. Check out our magazines. Check out the titles listed below. And enjoy!

By the time you read this, assuming you read it on the paper’s publication date, Friday, January 12th, then we shall have, perhaps, passed the first major snow event of the season that has any chance of staying around.  As of this writing on Monday, the forecast is full of possibilities, but nothing tangible yet.  Libraries, like grocery stores, sometimes experience a run in front of major snow storm predictions. There is often a run on milk, eggs, and bread at one place and books, dvds, board games, and puzzles at the other. Everyone is stocking up in order to make it through a couple of days without easy access to what might be needed.  I hope you had a chance to stock up, or if not, that the potential forecast didn’t pan out.   I would like to note that as of January 10th, we started gaining a minute of light in the morning which will accelerate to a minute every couple of days going forward. At the evening end of the day, since the earliest sunset which occurred at 4:22 on 8th, 9th, and 10th of December, we have already gained 20 minutes. Of course, we all know the old weather adage about January, don’t we? As the days lengthen, the cold strengthens. As we head towards the coldest couple of weeks in the year, there are some new book titles, listed below, to keep you warm.  Enjoy!

I, for one, am hoping that this shiny, hardly-used, new year will be better than the previous year. You get to a certain age-- and trust me, I am well past that certain age--and the names of friends, acquaintances, and colleagues start appearing in the obit section of the newspaper. 2023 was one of those years for me. I imagine you all have your stories of loss and blessings from 2023 to tell. Stories are really important. They help us organize our thoughts in not only a linear, chronological fashion, but also causally and etiologically (the non-medical definition). Stories help us make sense of the world and of our actions. I believe that stories define what it is to be human as much as, if not more, than tool making.  Science has found any number of animals that use tools of some sort. Story tellers in other species have yet to be found.  (Although I do think my cats tell each other stories about, say, their trips to the vet or the birds they just saw on the porch.) The stories we tell delve into motivation as well as telling a series of events. Our stories sometimes describe not only how we behaved but how we could have or should have behaved. Stories can help us understand other people’s circumstances and the reasons for their actions. They can create empathy. Libraries are filled with stories. Some of those stories are telling a series of facts in a narrative frame to aid understanding of the events and motivations of people. That is non-fiction. Libraries are also filled with fiction stories too which ask us to imagine plots, people, and even different worlds. If you’re reading this you probably like stories too. Below are some of the recent titles of books filled with stories some of which may help you understand your own story better. Enjoy!