Here's what the Sandy and Hoodland libraries are reading for November!
Men's Book Club7:00 PM
Sandy Library Community Room
7:00 PM
Online via Zoom
Dispatches from the library
Here's what the Sandy and Hoodland libraries are reading for November!
Men's Book ClubUpcoming Events
This presentation will explain how a few small (and large) changes to your landscape can reduce time devoted to its maintenance, reduce expenses, and provide a friendly environment for the other creatures with which we share it.
When: Thursday, Oct 17th at 6pm
Where: The Sandy Library Hoyt Community Room
A Shroom of One's Own: At Home Edible Mushroom Production
by OSU's Extension Service
If you like growing your own food, then perhaps culinary mushroom cultivation is next on the menu for you. With a focus on Shiitake mushrooms, OSU Extension agent Alicia Christiansen will cover preferred growing media, inoculation methods, caring for your logs, money-saving tips, harvesting and more.
When: Tuesday, Oct 8th from 12-1pm
Where: Free Online - Register Here
How Does Fire Affect Wild Bees & Other Pollinators?
Bee City USA Action Group is hosting Dr. Graham Frank, a forest ecologist, to discuss the effects of wildfires on the biodiversity in our local ecosystem.
When: Thursday, Oct 10th from 6-7pm
Where: Sandy Community Center (38348 Pioneer Blvd, Sandy)
Banned books week is an annually event celebrating the freedom to read. Starting in 1982, Banned Books Week began as a way to highlight growing censorship taking place in libraries, bookstores, and schools.
Celebrating Banned Books Week and highlight the growing call for censorship is more important than ever this year. In 2023, the number of titles targeted by censorship in libraries grew over 92% from the previous year.
Although this number seems to have grown exponentially, book bans have been going on for centuries. According to Freedom to Read, book banning goes back to 259 BC when Chinese emperor Shih Huang Ti burned Confucian scholars for writing down the history of their time. And in America, the first instance of book banning was in 1637 (before America was even a country) when the Puritans banned Thomas Morton's New English Canaan.
The theme for Banned Books Week 2024 (September 22-28) is "Freed Between the Lines." We can find freedom in the pages of a book — but book bans and censorship threaten that freedom, along with many other rights and institutions. - ALA
Here are a few ways you can celebrate banned books week:
Head to BannedBooksWeek.org or the ALA Banned Books Week site to learn more.
Here's what the Sandy and Hoodland libraries are reading for September!
I think it is safe to say that every child is impacted by the works of Roald Dahl in one way or another.
Whether you've seen Matilda for the first time, your teacher reads you the BFG, or you were horrified by Anjelica Houston in The Witches, Roald Dahl is likely a staple of you or your kids childhood.
That's because Roald Dahl creates magic. A chocolate factory? A talking fox? A GIANT PEACH? His stories build a world of imagination.
September 13th is celebrated as Roald Dahl day in honor of the author's birthday. Although the author left us in 1990, his magic still resonates.
We asked some of our staff members what Roald Dahl has meant to them and here are some of their answers:
Brianna Chase, Library Clerk:
"James and the Giant Peach" is one of my earliest memories of having a book really spark my imagination. It was so much fun to insert myself into the story and imagine what it would be like to live inside a peach and to have a bunch of creatures as friends.
Richard Camp, Library Clerk:
As a kid, his stories were huge for me, but as wannabe-writer adult, it's his writing shed that I admire most (which Wes Anderson recreated for his Dahl Netflix adaptations).
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Photo via Austin Kleon |
"If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need." - Cicero
"Composting is just one species digesting another species," - Kris LaMar
Our wonderful presenter provided us with a lot of the science behind composting and how we are simply mimicking nature by recycling our kitchen scraps and yard debris.
And leave it to Kris to make learning about worms so exciting! She let us know that worm castings contain more microorganisms, more inorganic minerals, and more organic matter in a form that is more readily available to plants than soil. The only thing to take note of is that it is nitrogen rich, which is great for foliage production, but not as much for fruit.
Since many of us have clay heavy soil, it's nice to know that adding compost once a year will reduce the compaction and make the soil more workable and drain better.
I have been chatting away about composting for over a month, and in my conversations, one of our patrons shared with me about her time in Uganda. The village she worked in used a keyhole garden method. The garden was planted in a mound that surrounded a composting center. Often these gardens are located near kitchens, so food scraps are easily added to the composting center. This got me so excited that she agreed to share a video with me!
To watch a video on how to assemble a Uganda style keyhole garden, click here.
If you are interested in creating something similar for yourself, you can do an internet search of "keyhole composting garden bed" to will find many examples on how to build yourself one or purchase a kit to assemble.
Composting for the Absolute Beginner by Dede Cummings
This book does get a little bit repetitive at times, but it offers a lot of useful information and perspectives.
One of these perspectives is that of Cheryl Wilfong - she does not like to turn her compost which means it will take more time to become the nutrient-rich soil amendment. For this reason, Cheryl has 3 bins on her property. Each bin represents a different year. When the year is up, she will not add to that bin again, and by the end of year 3, the first bin it is ready.
No-Waste Composting: Small-Space Waste Recycling Indoors and Out by Michelle Balz
Each option presented in this book provided a DIY example that was very easy to follow. I was most intrigued by the terra-cotta pot system. If anyone has experience with this system, I would love to hear about it.
Michelle Balz has an additional book that touches on keyhole composting as well, Composting for a New Generation
Worms Eat My Garbage: How to Setup and Maintain a Worm Composting System by Mary Appelhof
I appreciated that Mary mentions weighing the amount of food waste your household produces in a week to determine the size bin you may need.
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August 31st is known as We Love Memoirs Day! And boy, do we ever! Many of us at the Sandy and Hoodland Libraries are swapping some of our favorite memoirs, and we thought we'd share a few with you!
Kat Aden Recommends:
A Sense of the World by Jason Roberts
It is about an incredible 18th century travel who climbed Mt. Vesuvius while it was active and he happened to also be blind! It's an incredible peek into that century and their approach to medicine as well as their ableist attitudes and an honest account of an absolutely incredible person who defied the odds of his century.