L is for Library Lover

 My A to Z Challenge Theme this year is the ABC's of me.  Each day in the month of April with the exception of Sundays I will be posting about one aspect of my life that begins with the letter of the day. 

It's time for some  A to Z catch-up. , I am currently 3 posts behind.  The next letter is  L so let's get right to it shall we?

A was for Amateur Parodist

B was for Blogger

C was for Christian

D was for David Davidovich

E was for Evangelical Sans the Trump Kool-Aid

F was for Father of 3 Adult Children

G was for Giraffe Lover

H was  for Husband of One Amazing Wife

I was for Iguchi Appreciator

J was for Jester

K was  for Kindergarten Clear

L is for Library Lover

My family loves libraries.  I grew up literally across the street from one.  Over the years I have written lots and lots about libraries.  To give you an idea of what me and my family do at libraries, I too a post from Jabuary of 2024 that was languishing in draft status finished it up and am inserting it below.  I'm putting it in italics so you'll know when I'm back.  

Double Library Day

Today was my last school day off of school for winter break.  I decided to spend some of it on ad adventure.

First I went to breakfast with my wife at Allen's Corner Diner in Hampshire, Il.

Allen's Corner is an excellent spot to eat, but they accept cash only.  They do have an ATM on the premises, but I am not fond pf paying the  additional fees. Last year, we were on our way to being regulars there, (Amy and I dream of being regulars at a local place with atmosphere, And Allen's Corner diner has atmosphere in spades.) when we were both working at the same school in Hampshire.  Unfortunately, I am no longer working at the same school, so when we came in today, there was no shouting of Norm, or any other "regular" greeting.  We split a skillet and had a good time.

While we were at the restraunt, I looked up cities that were 60 miles or less than Hampshire.  I found a place called Rockton, Illinois and found out they had a library called the Talcott Free Library.  I headed over to Rockton after Amy went to her school to catch up on work before the students and teachers came back in force on Monday.  

I got to Rockton before the library was open so I decided to go the extra few miles to the Wisconsin state border and make it a double library day by going to the library in Beloit.  The library in Beloit was also not open upon my arrival.  So I checked out some of the beautiful areas near the library.

The Library is located to  some sort of medical building that used to  be a department store.

I got to the library and decided to check out the children's section.  They had a section of A to Z books which I believe are called alphabets.  

They also had what is called a library of things where you can borrow all kinds of things.  I was struck by the fact that you could borrow snow shoes. Amy and I went snowshoeing a few years in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and really enjoyed ourselves.  Maybe some day we'll make the trek tp Beloit and borrow us up some fun. 

I really enjoyed the Beloit Library but it was time to get back to Rockton and the Talcott Free Library. Libraries were traditionally private and not just anyone could use them.  This article gives a good history of the first free libraries. 

Rockton, Illinois is kind of a blink or you'll miss it border town.  I know because I've driven to Beloit many times, and blinked and missed Rockton.  I did like my time in downtown Rockton not only at the library but visiting some of the local haunts.  They had a very nice bookstore there and I had a good meal at a sit down restaurant before my double library day came to an end.  

One of my favorite books with a cool cover at a Rockton Bookstore 

Meanwhile back at the challenge ...

Our Local Public Library 

Celebrating 150 Year Anniversary

January 2024

Our family used to do something twice a year during our homeschool days called library week.  Once each semester usually over Christmas and Spring Break instead of our regular school days we would visit libraries.  

We would still do school but in a different format.  It is one of the things we liked best about  homeschooling and also some of our best memories as a family.  

Making friends at the library.

That boy with Lucy  is now pre-med at Loyola

(You prove he isn't)

Charlie playing Chess

Chillin' at the library

So this is why we bibliotech ourselves before we wreck ourselves.

Click on the various words to get to the various places.

A to Z Challenge Home Page

A to Z Challenge Page for the letter L

A to Z Challenge Master List

Coming Up: Muppets show up

Wordless Wednesday: 16 Years of Pictures from This Blog

 

For More Wordless Wednesday @ Comedy Plus Click here.

Weekly Writer's Workshop: For God So Hugged The World

Here are the prompts for this week’s Writer’s Workshop:

1.  Write a post based on the word hugging. 
2. Write a post in exactly 13 sentences. 
3. How do you cope with days where you’re stuck in the house due to bad weather? 
4. What are your favorite food items to order online? 
5. If evidence of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe were discovered, would it alter your core beliefs or sense of self? 
6. List your five most recent favorite things.

I am combining 2 prompts today, #1 and #5.  It's not exactly one from column A and one from column B, but it gets the job done.

For God So Hugged The World

John 3:16 For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. (NIV)

My older sister asked me once what  John 3:16 meant.  So, I told her what the verse said, and her reaction was, "That has nothing to do with football"

I saw my sister right after Christmas as I was at the wedding of my oldest niece, her daughter.  There was an hour or so between the end of the wedding and the reception.  So my family being who we are, took a side trip to a local library between gigs.  While we were there my daughter Lucy emerged triumphantly from the lobby to say that she had found a 1984 Thesaurus in the free stuff bin,  She spent the next few days of the trip regaling us with synonyms from the book.  I have asked her to read me the synonyms for hug. Here goes: embrace, hold, clasp, press to the bosom, hold close, clutch, squeeze, cuddle, snuggle, nestle, and (wait for it) cling together.

As I contemplated the meaning of John 3:16, especially what it meant for God to so love the world, I thought of hugs.  I thought of a child who seemingly gave up on physical expressions of love to their parents initiating a hug with me for no particular reason.  I thought of how hugs show one's love for another but also leave room for a reply. 

 I thought of Jesus in that sense as a hug from God.  To put it back in the context of John 3:16,  our sins had separated us from God.  We were on a path to perishing without a chance to have that relationship mended. God reached out to us, extending his Son as a way to eternal life.  We must reach back to God completing that hug by accepting Jesus as the only way to God.  

This brings me rather clumsily to prompt 5: If evidence of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe were discovered, would it alter your core beliefs or sense of self? 

My short answer is no.  My core beliefs and my sense of self,  emanate from my understanding of biblical Christianity.  Larry Norman a pioneer of Jesus Music broached the subject in the bridge of his song U.F.O.

And if there's life on other planets 

Then I'm sure that He must know 

And He's been there once already 

And has died to save their souls.

Those lyrics have always resonated with me. I have never meant much of a subscriber to the notion of life on other planets.  I like the science-fiction element of extraterrestrial life but that's where it ends. However farfetched I might find it, if confronted with proof that there is life on other planets, I would lean in on Norman's thought process.  To extend my previous thoughts on John 3:16, I can imagine the Lord of the Universe loving other intelligent life so much that he would reach out and hug them through the person of his Son as well.  

Just like I don't jettison my faith when difficult times come my way, I plan to always trust in God no matter what other things may come to challenge my world view.  

A Snapshot of the pioneering christian rock musician Larry Norman taken following concert in Defiance, Ohio on October 20, 2001.

By Ekiledal - http://upload.wikimedia.org/, Public Domain, Link

Thanks to John Holton of The Sound of One Hand Typing for this week's prompts.  To participate more in this Week workshop click here.

100th Post of the Year

 This is my 100th post of the year.  This marks the 8th year since this blogs inception in 2009, and the 4th consecutive year that I’ve published 100 or more post in a year. 

That is of course, it will be my 100th post of the year if and when I publish it. A few years ago  I wrote a post about having 100 posts in draft status. At the end of the post in the only comment, I had written that I had deleted all but 15 of the posts in draft status and hoped never to accumulate nearly as many post there again. 

Well it turns out that I have been accumulating posts in draft status again. I currently have 77 posts with that distinction. The majority of these are from 2023, but I do have 14 from this year. As part of my 100th post of the year celebration,I will now list each incompleted post of 2024 by title in Chronological order.

Double Library Day

Team Saturdazzle

(Untitled)

Milwaukee Brewers Catcher William Contreras bringing major league streak to begin season

Crystal Lake Library

(Untitled)

(Untitled)

Anniversary vs. Annual

A to Z 2024 Reflections

(Untitled)

What’s most wrong about the 2024 White Sox

The Newfangled Four - A Spoonful of Sugar (Parody)  [From Mary Poppins]

Former Chicago White Sox MVP , The late Dick Allen, elected to the Hall of Fame.

Not everybody needs a college degree (Writers Workshop)

That’s the 14. Some of these may see the light of day and most will be discarded. One of the drafts from last year  is scheduled to post tomorrow for the next edition of Wordless Wednesday. I also hope to share the story behind that picture in a subsequent post. 

Tomorrow’s post won’t be the last post of the year as I have a Michael Card Christmas Concert video scheduled to drop on 12/25. I’ll probably land somewhere between 103 and 107 2024 posts before the New Year and the whole race to 100 begins again.

A favorite gymnast and a favorite library

What do you think of when you think of Summer? Do you think of Summer Bartholomew the 1975 Miss America who was the hostess of the game show Sale of the Century?

Or do you think of Summer Glau who played  River Tam om Firefly?

Initially when I think of Summer, I don't think of people whose names begins with Summer as much as I think of events that happen in the Summer.

I think of Summer Reading programs and Summer Olympics.  Olympics are one of my favorite things.  I especially enjoy the team sports, swimming, diving, cycling, track and gymnastics. I love gymnastics.  My favorite current gymnast is  Simone Biles.  

I love few things as much as I love the Summer Olympics. Libraries may well be one of them. Not only because  they have the aforementioned Summer Reading Programs.  I am here right now at my local library using their computer for this post.  7 years ago my family moved from one town to a neighboring town. We were very familiar with the Gail Borden Library at the time of our move and were glad that we would now be walking distance from it.

Today at the library I was delighted to be  directed to my libraries facebook page and see two of my summer loves combined in 1 place. 
 

 Total disclosure, I have not read any James Patterson books so my total jump height is currently greater than stacking up all his books that I've read.  This will probably no longer be true if I ever read even just  of his books.  

Thanks GBPL (Gymnasast Biles Patterson Library Gail Borden Public Library)

Poetry Alive 2024

In late December 2022, my daughter told me about  a poetry group that  met the first Monday of the month.  She and I went in January both enjoyed it so we have been attending ever since.  The group meets both in person ad remotely.  Emma and I have only attended in person so far.

The structure of the group is that the poets share any poems they are working on the the moderator leads us through the theme of the week and then gives us a prompt to work on.  After the group is finished composing, they share the work they just completed.  n

In 2023 several poets shared one poem about Elgin, the city I live in, o Valentines Day. Our group was asked to participate in that.  In April of last year we all participated in a event called Poetry Alive where we all read several of our poems at a  public meeting.  My daughter chose not to participate last year i the event but went with the rest of our family to see me read.

Many of the poems I have submitted for Poetry Friday have bee written during or shared at our monthly poetry meetings .  For today's Poetry Friday I would like to present the You Tube video of the 2024 Poetry Alive presentation.  This year Emma participated as well.  We are the 2nd and 3rd poets.  There were 4 rounds of recitations.  Poetry Alive 2024 took place on the night of my 26th wedding anniversary, so in honor of the occasion, I adapted a song I wrote for her into a poem and recited it in the third round.Poetry Friday is hosted this week by Linda Mitchell at A Word Edgewise. 

A to Z 2024: R is for R R R Very Funny. if You think I'm going to respect Lima Beans.

 For The A to Z Challenge this year, I am focusing on everyday holidays. Each day there are multiple unusual things to celebrate.  Every day of the challenge I look for an event taking place that day and pair it with the letter of the day.  I have also made up 5 holidays to coincide with the vowel days of the challenge.  At the end of each post I will share a special song of the day for that day's letter.  At the end of the month, these songs will be assembled in a to z keepsake playlist on Spotify.  Every day is a celebration, let's unwrap today's together. 

April 20th is National Lima Bean Respect Day.

Lima beans the well deserved Rodney Dangerfield of vegetables

I do not need an entire day to respect lima beans.  For me a minute would be too much time.  To misquote Snoopy in Your A Good man Charlie Brown:  I am a Lima Bean hater, a Lima Bean despiser and a Lima Bean loather.  Or to misquote Greg Brady in the Brady Bunch episode," My sister Benedict Arnold": Lima beans are on the top of my bad vegetable list, the bottom of my bad vegetable list and every bad vegetable in-between.  

I grew up in the 70's and we were all members of the clear your plate club.  If my parents served it we ate it, or we hid it, or we fed it to the dog.  I've always been a big fan of food, and there's hardly a food I don't enjoy.  Growing up, I was not really big on most vegetables, I could eat corn or carrots but anything else was a stretch for me.  But the worse of the worst was the lima bean.  

I absolutely hate lima beans.  I would not eat it on a bet.  As I've got older I've learned to enjoy most vegetables and tolerate the ones I don't enjoy.  I am actually a big fan of most beans black, pinto, kidney, garbanzo.  Generally I lead the league in legumes.  But I can not bring myself to eat a single lima bean.  It is probably the only food I won't eat.  I have strong preferences against some food like olives, but in a pinch I can eat one.  Luckily my wife loves olives, so it never comes to that.  

My hate for lima beans is legendary in my family.  Just like my kids grew up knowing that I love The White Sox, Randy Stonehill, Libraries, and diving off the high dive, they also discovered I hate lima beans.  So each Christmas for several years I could always count on that they would wrap up a can of lima beans for me.  

I'm not sure why April 20th is National Lima Bean Respect Day.  If it were up to me I'd ban the Holiday all together.  If I can't do that I would just make it 19 day earlier.  Because a day honoring lima beans has to be some sort of April Fools Joke.

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The song of the day Is Road to Zion by Petra

Here is a snippet of the song performed live ...

 

Here is the entire song ... 

The A to Z mix tape now contains 18 songs.

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To go to the home of the A to Z challenge click here, to see the 2024 master list of participating blogs click here. Enjoy the 2024 A to Z challenge, and Happy Holidays!