How to Have a Fun Saturday

It's easy:  go to the new library!

Yes, the long awaited new Main library is now open.

To give you an idea, here are a couple of pictures of the outside of the old library:

The old Main library.

Another view.

To give you even more of an idea, as they tear the old one down, they are having to do asbestos remediation.  You know, as long as that stuff stays solid, it's fine, and the old place wasn't dangerous from it, but now that they are tearing it down, they have to get the stuff out safely.

For a long time, there were fights over where to put a new Main library.  Everyone except the politicians wanted it to stay in the same location, as they have plenty of room there.  The politicians wanted it moved, for their own nefarious purposes, but they were yelled down in the debate and lost.  Score one for library patrons!

The new place is much brighter and more modern.

Still constructing, but even so it looks a lot better.

The new building has 3 floors, the top one is dedicated to offices and places the public won't usually see.  There are meeting rooms, and they are building an internet cafe and theater!

Inside, it's bright and airy and cheery.

Looking from the periodicals area into the children's section.

 Yes, the children's area has those squares that light and change color, and so do the stars in the ceiling.

They change colors!

Since the children's area of a library is usually my favorite part, for sentimental reasons, i took the most pictures there.

Colorful reading area!

Fun computer stations!

One of the new children's story time rooms.

 The area for teens is separate, too.  There's even a small area where they can buy a snack and go sit to eat it.

Study area for teens.

Computer and study area for teens.

Have a snack, then get back to studying.

The second floor is the adult stacks, genealogy area, and more meeting rooms.

The old building wasn't nearly this bright and cheerful and open.

 So, that's how i spent a fun Saturday -- i went to the new library, found some more Spanish lesson CDs, read a book in the children's area, explored, and took photos.

If you haven't been to a library in a while i hope you get to go to a good one soon.  There's nothing quite like it.

Today is:

Constitution Day -- Mexico (trad.)

Feast Day of Jacob, Patriarch -- Catholic Christian

Kashmir Day -- Pakistan

Liberation from the Alberoni Occupation -- San Marino (also St. Agatha's Day)

Longest War in History Ends -- The Third Punic War, between Rome and Carthage, was officially ended on this date with a peace treaty signed in 1985, which is 2,131 years after the war began

Move Hollywood & Broadway to Lebanon, PA Day -- sponsored by Wellcat Holidays, and Why would they want it?

National Chocolate Fondue Day

National Girls and Women in Sports Day -- US (information here)

National Weatherperson's Day -- US (mostly, though some other countries now observe it as well; in honor of the first US meteorologist, John Jeffries)

Nones of February -- Ancient Roman Calendar; also
     Fornacalia -- celebration in honor of bread and the ovens used to dry grain; held any day between now and the 17th, one of Rome's few movable feasts)

Runeberg's Birthday -- Finland (National Poet)

Sapporo Snow Festival (Sapporo Yuki Matsuri) -- Sapporo City, Japan (fun in the cold, ice sculpting  competitons, and hot springs with hot sake to take the edge off; through the 11th)

4#Shiretoko Fantasia -- Shiretoko, Hokaido, Japan (laser lights and music illuminate the drift ice and waves of the Okhotsk Sea each night; through March 12)

St. Agatha's Day (Patron of bell-founders, fire prevention, jewelers, martyrs, nurses, rape victims, single laywomen, torture victims, wet-nurses; Malta; San Marino; as well as over 50 cities around the world; against breast cancer, breast disease, earthquakes, eruptions of Mt. Etna, fire, natural disasters, sterility, volcanic eruptions)

Unity Day -- Burundi

World Nutella Day


Birthdays Today:

Jeremy Sumpter, 1989
Sara Evans, 1971
Bobby Brown, 1969
Michael Sheen, 1969
Laura Linney, 1964
Jennifer Jason Leigh, 1962
Christopher Guest, 1948
Barbara Hershey, 1948
David Alan Ladd, 1947
Charlotte Rampling, 1946
Roger Stauback, 1942
Jane Bryant Quinn, 1941
David Selby, 1941
H.R. Giger, 1940
Alex Harvey, 1935
Henry "Hank" Aaron, 1934
Andrew Greeley, 1928
Red Buttons, 1919
William Burroughs, 1914
John Carradine, 1906
Adlai E. Stevenson, Jr., 1900
Andre' Citroen, 1878
Belle Starr(Myra Maybelle Shirley), 1848
Dwight Lyman Moody, 1837
Ole Bull, 1810
Robert Peel, 1788
John Witherspoon, 1723
Sanjo, Emperor of Japan, 976


Debuting/Premiering Today:

"Where On Earth Is Carmen San Diego"(TV), 1994
"Hagar The Horrible"(Comic strip), 1973
"Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour"(TV), 1967
"Peter Pan"(Disney cartoon film), 1953
"Otello"(Verdi Opera), 1887


Today in History:

Earthquake in Pompeii, Italy, 62
King Alfonso V orders Sicily's Jews to attend conversion sermons, 1428
A group of early Japanese Christians are killed by the new government of Japan for being seen as a threat to Japanese society, 1597
The first US livestock branding law is passed, in Connecticut, 1644
Georgia becomes the first state to abolish both entail and primogenature, 1777
Sweden recognizes US independence, 1783
Hannah Lord Montague of New York creates the first detachable shirt collar, 1825
The "Oregon Spectator" is the first newspaper published on the American West Coast, 1846
An adding machine employing depressible keys is patented in New Paltz, NY, 1850
Two innovations which helped pave the way for motion pictures are pateneted, a hand turned stereoscope by Samuel Goodale of Cincinnati, and the Kinematoscope by Coleman Sellers of Philadelphia, 1861
Four inches of snow falls in San Francisco, 1887
The loop-the-loop centrifugal railroad (a/k/a the roller coaster) is patented by Ed Prescot, 1901
Greek military aviators, Michael Moutoussis and Aristeidis Moraitinis performed the first naval air mission in history, with a Farman MF.7 hydroplane, 1913
Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, and D.W. Griffith launch United Artists, 1919
Reader's Digest magazine is first published, 1922
The Royal Greenwich Observatory begins broadcasting the hourly time signals known as the Greenwich Time Signal, 1924
A hydrogen bomb known as the Tybee Bomb is lost by the US Air Force off the coast of Savannah, Georgia, never to be recovered, 1958
The so-called Big Three banks in Switzerland announce the creation of a $71 million fund to aid Holocaust survivors and their families, 1997
Danish special forces storm a ship captured by Somali pirates, freeing 25 crewmembers on board, 2010