Posts from Inwood Library

Thanks to Lifetime Arts for securing funding and inviting our library system to participate, NYPL is once again able to offer free sustained art courses, taught by professional teaching artists, for adults age 55 and over. Seventeen branch libraries have received funding that enables them to host these classes, which will take place from February-November 2013, and which cover a wide variety of arts including: painting, sculpting, collage, memoir-writing/performance, drawing, and quilt-making.

I spent a recent weekend pondering the existence of God. It’s something I do from time to time because I was a religious person once, in the Judeo/Christian tradition, but am not so now. After many years, I’m still getting used to living without that label. I have to admit, my non-religious years have been very good years.

The sound of a Rattlesnake's warning is terrifying and hard to describe. It doesn’t sound like a baby’s toy. Well, it might if the toy was being shaken at a million times per second by an angry, tight-fisted god who looked kind of like a baby. Add to that impossible sound a buzz and a sinister, insistent shhhhhhhhhhh. You may think I’m being dramatic, but in my defense, it’s easy to be dramatic when you’re face to face with a Diamond Back Rattler.

"It's the jokes. I need the jokes."

This is something a young library patron said to me the other day. He wanted me to find him a DVD of Abbott and Costello’s greatest movies and routines.  I felt an instant kinship with the boy, whom I’ll call Hal. “Yes,” I thought as I took to the catalog. “It’s the jokes.”

It can be tricky to find good non fiction for kids.  The good offerings strike a delicate balance between factual accuracy, realistic portrayal and general appeal.  I recently found two great new books that seem to strike all three, but in very different ways for two different age groups.

Social Dancing, which consists of various forms of dance, such as square dancing, is a communal tradition brought to the American continent by its earliest immigrants. Big in centuries past, social dancing is still practiced today, even in New York City. I know because I attended my first dance very recently: a barn dance.

I am a rabid, chronic life-long learner, and I'm starting this column because promoting life-long learning is one of the key components of our mission here at NYPL. Also, I bet there are a lot of people like me out in the world, people who want to know about EVERYTHING.

The first time I saw the film Koyaanisqatsi I was a college student rambling around on an aimless Saturday night. A campus hall was screening it for free, so I ducked inside, my curiosity piqued.  I remember thinking, “Koyaanisqatsi? What does that mean?” With an “oh well” shrug, I settled into one of the classroom’s half-desk chairs as the lights dimmed to black. When the film ended and the lights shone, I was changed.

Warp Speed by Lisa Yee tells the story of Marley Sandelski, a seventh grade Star Trek geek at Rancho Rosetta Middle School.  Marley has some great friends and loves being in AV club with the other geeks.  They could spend all day debating the merits of Star Trek vs. Star Wars, but sadly, that is only one period of the day.  The rest of the time he is avoiding bullies like the Gorn, who shove him into lockers and chase him after school.

Like Pickle Juice on a Cookie by Julie Sternberg and illustrated by Matthew Cordell takes place during the summer between second and third grade, but starts out not as sunny as a summer day.