by Local History Librarian David
Sixty years ago on April 17, 1964, Jerrie Mock of Bexley, a self-described “housewife,” landed her single engine Cessna, the Spirit of Columbus, at Port Columbus International Airport. In that moment she became the first woman to fly solo around the world. That same year, Bexley High School student Bob Greene was keeping a diary. For him, April 17 was a day to leave school early, make his way to downtown Columbus, and have a doctor “drill a filling.”
By Youth Services Manager Julie
With Bexley Public Library’s Summer Community Read theme, “100 Years of Adventure,” we’re marking the library’s centennial birthday and celebrating the endless adventures that await you in the stories you hear, books you read, movies you see, and people you meet at your library.
by Public Service Associate & Creative Content Coordinator Hannah
Did you miss Preservation Week? Don’t worry, it will be here next year!
My bad jokes aside, preservation – an umbrella term for activities that reduce or prevent damage to extend the life of things – can easily slip one’s mind. But a recent trip to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History and the Library of Congress thoroughly renewed my appreciation for preservationists and collecting institutions. In this BPL blog post, I hope to get you to think about, thank them, and as always share some great books.
By Public Service Associate Autumn
Everyone knows that humans (unlike much cooler reptiles) are warm blooded, or homeothermic.1 Our bodies try very hard to keep us at one consistent temperature, normally about 98 degrees. Even a four degree change in body temperature in either direction can cause us irreparable harm and a spiral into death. Understandably, this means that humanity has a pretty universal “comfortable” living temperature, between about 68- and 77-degrees Fahrenheit,2 where maintaining your core temperature isn’t too metabolically taxing. Despite this, humans live in basically every ecological niche there is, from Siberia and Northern Canada to the Sahara. Some of this adaptability is technological,3 but a fair amount of it is our bodies’ astonishing ability to cool us off and heat us up. What’s most interesting, to me at least, is how the body does this and what happens when those adaptations fail.
By Library Director Ben Heckman
Bexley Public Library is excited to be celebrating our 100th birthday this year, and we are honored to share this once-in-a-lifetime birthday with the wonderful community we’ve been honored to serve for more than a century. While April marks the start of our many celebratory festivities, we invite you to join us for the host of engaging authors, talented musicians, inspiring artists, and more that will join us throughout the year.
by Public Service Associate Juliana
Midori’s cooking was far better than I had imagined it would be, an amazing assortment of fried, pickled, boiled, and roasted dishes using eggs, mackerel, fresh greens, eggplant, mushrooms, radishes, and sesame seeds, all done in the delicate Kyoto style.
— from Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami
One of the many, many things that I love about the library is that you can develop an interest in something and absolutely take off with it. By which I mean, you can mine the catalog for any and every resource, and you can follow any connection that happens to come your way. I ended up doing this type of deep dive with Japanese breakfast. An interest was born, I followed one lead to the next and the next. From television to cookware, cookbook to novel, memoir to music. It has been such a fun journey; I have to share it.
by Public Service Associate Juliana
I have been in love with Ireland ever since I was little and believed in fairies. Does that explain why I gravitate toward Irish writers? It seemed like a fairy trick last year when I’d start reading a novel and realize, “Another Irish author! How interesting!”
This month, in the spirit of celebrating Irish history and culture, it feels quite appropriate to highlight a few titles within this trend.
by Public Service Associate Autumn
February makes me want nothing more than to sit and read, wrapped in a blanket, with a mug of tea (or hot chocolate). It’s mucky, wet and still fairly chilly outside, so inside I stay. And, as I learned last year, there is a book subgenre that gives you that same warm, cozy feeling as snuggling inside while the wind rages outside: Cozy Fantasy.
by Public Service Associate Juliana
I was fourteen years old and obsessed with Kurt Cobain. His song, “Heart-Shaped Box”, inspired me to dump my Valentine candy into a bag and use the empty heart-shaped box for safekeeping. Shiny red, about the size of a dinner plate, it was perfect for love notes, by which I mean literally notes of “Things I Love.”
By Associate Librarian – Readers’ Advisory Specialist Debbie
The Yiddish Book Center “Stories of Exile” Series concludes this February and March with the powerful novel Beloved by the Nobel Prize-winning author Toni Morrison. Beloved, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1988, is a moving story of an African American family in post-civil war America recovering from the trauma of enslavement.