Public Input for New Southwest Regional Branch in Louisville

LINK

Link to October 15 Louisville Courier-Journal article, "Meeting scheduled to get input on southwest library".

Excerpt: The new library will enhance service for nearly 100,000 people in southwestern Jefferson County. The city has secured about four acres for the project but construction has not been scheduled.

Three initial public meetings were held in June to learn what the community wants in the new library. They suggested lots of space, quiet places to work and read, community meeting rooms, a large children’s department and a place for teens. Public input gathered at the Oct. 26 discussion will help guide architects and library staff as they develop more specific plans.

Accessibility on the November 2 Ballot for Mineral Point

Link to brochure

Link to October Wisconsin State Journal article, "On Wisconsin: Mineral Point has 'opportunity to change'."

Excerpt:   Twenty years after the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act, steps prevent Joyce from using the main entrance to the library, perusing the library's collections of magazines, CDs or books or reading this newspaper at one of the reading tables bathed in natural light from 5-foot-wide and 10-foot-tall windows.

Joyce cannot visit city offices on the second floor of the building, constructed in 1915, or see the former jail that is home to the Mineral Point Archives, an impressive collection of historic artifacts from this former lead mining community where, in 1836, Henry Dodge was sworn in as Wisconsin's first territorial governor.

So when voters here on Nov. 2 go to the polls to elect the state's 45th governor, they'll also have a chance to provide access to basic city services.

A referendum will ask permission for the city to borrow $1 million for the $1.5 million renovation of the building into a three-story library and archives facility and to renovate the adjacent senior center to also hold city hall offices. The project includes a new, accessible main entrance to the library and an elevator.

Pat Conroy on the Books and People That Shaped His Writing Career

Publication date:  11/2/2010

6 LINKcat copies on order

13 holds placed

Link to October 17 Charlotte Observer article, "Conroy piles praises on his literary mentors".

Excerpt:   For his fans, much of the pleasure of reading Pat Conroy is in the lush, exuberant prose he himself terms "overcaffeinated." For them, these 15 essays about the people and books that have made up the author's reading (and by extension, writing) life will be especially welcome because they lend themselves to being taken up separately, at leisure, and savored like a rich dessert.

When Conroy likes something or someone, his praise is as lavish as his prose. His most eloquent accolades go to his mother, a voracious reader who instilled in him her belief that "books contained powerful amulets that could lead to paths of certain wisdom."

Stealthily at first, she matched her small son's catches from the nearby woods with library books "oversized and swimming with photographs of creatures with their claws extended and their fangs bared."


One chapter is devoted to Thomas Wolfe's Look Homeward Angel, which as Conroy describes it, took full possession of me in a way no book has before or since.  

I experienced a similar reaction while reading this book in college.  One of my professors, however, thought I have taken leave of my senses when I shared this opinion with him.