VHS Video and Audio Cassette Book Sale

The library is selling its audio book cassette collection and VHS for $1.00 a bag.

May Day Baskets Storytime 4/28-29

May Day Baskets were the topic of this week's storytime. The children enjoyed the stories with Ingvild and had a great time making their own May Baskets. Additonal pictures of the two storytimes can be viewed at Flikr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/kassonlibrary

Wednesday, April 29th

Tuesday, April 28th

Twelve Mental Exercises

Gretchen Rubin has been working on a book,THE HAPPINESS PROJECT--a memoir about the year she spent test-driving every principle, tip, theory, and scientific study she could find, whether from Aristotle or St. Therese or Martin Seligman or Oprah. THE HAPPINESS PROJECT will gather these rules for living and report on what works and what doesn’t. On her daily blog, she recount some of her adventures and insights as she grappled with the challenges of being happier. http://www.happiness-project.com/happiness_project/2008/12/creativity-12-m.html

Dorothea Brande was an American writer and editor, well known for her books Wake Up and Live and Becoming a Writer (a useful resource for writers, by the way).
In Wake Up and Live, she suggests twelve mental exercises to make your mind keener and more flexible. These exercises are meant to pull you out of your usual habits and to put you in situations that will demand resourcefulness and creative problem-solving. Brande argues that only by testing and stretching yourself can you develop mental strength.

Even apart from the goals of creativity and mental flexibility, Brande’s exercises make sense from a happiness perspective. One thing is clear: novelty and challenge bring happiness. People who stray from their routines, try new things, explore, and experiment tend to be happier than those who don’t. Of course, as Brande herself points out, novelty and challenge can also bring frustration, anxiety, confusion, and annoyance along the way; it’s the process of facing those challenges that brings the “atmosphere of growth” so important to happiness. (It’s the First Splendid Truth: to be happy, you must think about feeling good, feeling bad, and feeling right, in an atmosphere of growth.)

I have to confess that I’ve tackled just a few of Brande’s mental exercises – #6 and #10 – and only because they come naturally to me, which is hardly in the spirit of the exercises. I keep toying with the idea of trying the others. Maybe I’ll do them for Happiness Project II.
Here are Dorothea Brande’s twelve mental exercises. Note: she wrote these in 1936, so you need to adapt of few of them.

1. Spend an hour each day without saying anything except in answer to direct questions, in the midst of the usual group, without creating the impression that you’re sulking or ill. Be as ordinary as possible. But do not volunteer remarks or try to draw out information.

2. Think for 30 minutes a day about one subject exclusively. Start with five minutes.

3. Write a letter without using the words I, me, mine, my.

4. Talk for 15 minutes a day without using I, me, my, mine.

5. Write a letter in a “successful” or placid tone. No misstatements, no lying. Look for aspects or activities that can be honestly reported that way.

6. Pause on the threshold of any crowded room and size it up.

7. Keep a new acquaintance talking about himself or herself without allowing him to become conscious of it. Turn back any courteous reciprocal questions in a way that your auditor doesn’t feel rebuffed.

8. Talk exclusively about yourself and your interests without complaining, boasting, or boring your companions.

9. Cut “I mean” or “As a matter of fact” or any other verbal mannerism out of your conversation.

10. Plan two hours of a day and stick to the plan.

11. Set yourself twelve tasks at random: e.g., go twenty miles from home using ordinary conveyance; go 12 hours without food; go eat a meal in the unlikelist place you can find; say nothing all day except in answer to questions; stay up all night and work.

12. From time to time, give yourself a day when you answer “yes” to any reasonable request.

May New Books

Summer on Blossom Street by Debbie Macomber (5/1)
Knitting and life. They're both about beginnings—and endings. That's why it makes sense for Lydia Goetz, owner of A Good Yarn on Seattle's Blossom Street, to offer a class called Knit to Quit. It's for people who want to quit something—or someone!—and start a new phase of their lives.

But as Lydia already knows, when life gets difficult and your stitches are snarled, your friends can always help!




Brimstone by Robert B. Parker (5/5)
When we last saw Virgil Cole and Everett Hitch, they had just put things to right in the rough-and-tumble Old West town of Resolution. It’s now a year later, and Virgil has only one thing on his mind: Allie French, the woman who stole his heart from their days in Appaloosa. Even though Allie ran off with another man, Virgil is determined to find her, his deputy and partner Everett Hitch at his side. Making their way across New Mexico and Texas, the pair finally discover Allie in a small-town brothel.

Cemetery Dance by Douglas Preston (5/12)

William Smithback, a New York Times reporter, and his wife Nora Kelly, a Museum of Natural History archaeologist, are brutally attacked in their apartment on Manhattan's Upper West Side. Eyewitnesses claim, and the security camera confirms, that the assailant was their strange, sinister neighbor-a man who, by all reports, was already dead and buried weeks earlier. While Captain Laura Hayward leads the official investigation, Pendergast and Lieutenant Vincent D'Agosta undertake their own private-and decidedly unorthodox-quest for the truth. Their serpentine journey takes them to an enclave of Manhattan they never imagined could exist: a secretive, reclusive cult of Obeah and vodou which no outsiders have ever survived.

Wicked Prey by John Sanford (5/12)
The Republicans are coming to St. Paul for their convention. Throwing a big party is supposed to be fun, but crashing the party are a few hard cases the police would rather stayed away. Chief among them is a crew of professional stickup men who’ve spotted several lucrative opportunities, ranging from political moneymen with briefcases full of cash to that armored-car warehouse with the weakness in its security system. All that’s headache enough for Lucas Davenport—but what’s about to hit him is even worse.

Gone Tommorrow by Lee Child (5/19)
Susan Mark was the fifth passenger. She had a lonely heart, an estranged son, and a big secret. Reacher, working with a woman cop and a host of shadowy feds, wants to know just how big a hole Susan Mark was in, how many lives had already been twisted before hers, and what danger is looming around him now.

Because a race has begun through the streets of Manhattan in a maze crowded with violent, skilled soldiers on all sides of a shadow war. Susan Mark’s plain little life was critical to dozens of others in Washington, California, Afghanistan . . . from a former Delta Force operator now running for the U.S. Senate, to a beautiful young woman with a fantastic story to tell–and to a host of others who have just one thing in common: They’re all lying to Reacher. A little. A lot. Or maybe just enough to get him killed.



The Sign by Raymond Khory (5/19)
In Antarctica, a scientific expedition drops anchor for a live news feed. As the CNN journalist begins her report, a massive, shimmering sphere of light suddenly appears in the sky, enveloping the ship in luminous white light before disappearing as mysteriously as it arrived—the entire event witnessed by an incredulous world audience.

Meanwhile in a dusty bar in Egypt, a dozen men are lazily discussing the state of the world when the brilliant, glowing symbol on the television stops them cold. One man breaks out in a sweat, crosses himself repeatedly, and rushes out of the bar muttering the same phrase over and over again: It can’t be.

The Scarecrow by Michael Connelly (5/26)
Forced out of the Los Angeles Times amid the latest budget cuts, newspaperman Jack McEvoy decides to go out with a bang, using his final days at the paperto write the definitive murder story of his career.

He focuses on Alonzo Winslow, a 16-year-old drug dealer in jail after confessing to a brutal murder. But as he delves into the story, Jack realizes that Winslow's so-called confession is bogus. The kid might actually be innocent.Jack is soon running with his biggest story since The Poetmade his career years ago. He is tracking a killer who operates completely below police radar--and with perfect knowledge of any move against him. Including Jack's.

Mr. and Mrs. Anonymous (5/28)

College senior Lily Madison is on her own and desperate to pay for her last semester of school. With nowhere to turn, she makes the difficult decision to donate her eggs to a fertility clinic. Sam Parker is also a penniless student who supplements his tuition money by visiting a sperm bank. One day, Lily and Sam meet at the clinic and talk about their secret. They agree that the clinic gives them an odd feeling, as if all is not as it seems. Despite their obvious attraction, Lily and Sam go their separate ways. Twenty years have passed and Lily often wonders if she has a child somewhere in the world. She also thinks a lot about Sam. Now a wealthy entrepreneur, Sam never forgot Lily either, and when he sees her in an airport one day, he falls for her all over again. But while they enjoy their unlikely reunion, a story on the news has them riveted. Two teenage boys are missing and their disappearance may be linked to the fertility clinic Sam and Lily visited in college.

What Would You Save in an Emergency

I was looking at one of my favorites blogs http://sites.menashalibrary.org/. One of her olders blogs especially intrigue me: what would you save in an emergency and only had a few minutes to gather them up? Tasha stated that she was not a doom and gloom naysayer, but as many folks can testify, floods, fires, and disasters are a fact of life. Like her I found it an eye-opening experience and walked around my place to really think about what I would take with me.

So the question is: what three non-essential things would you save in an emergency? Your family, friends, pets, and any medical needs are considered essential for this question, so we’ll assume you’ve already got those. For me, I’d like to save:

Photographs. While I have digital copies of lots of these, there’s something about the b/w photos and especially when my children were young and so were my husband and I.

My computer. My whole life somehow is contained on the computer, no more sheets of paper to shuffle though or lose.

Important documents like the abstract to the farm, my teaching license, and passport.

Now I’ll leave it up to you. What three non-essential things would you save in an emergency? Love to hear from you, click on the comment and tell me what you would save or your stories

RadioTime Online Radio Stations

I’m a big online radio fan and was given a great tip (thanks Tasha) to try out Radiotime. It offers a lot of stations you can’t find elsewhere with a special emphasis on local radio. You register for free and give your zip code and then you can discover all sorts of local radio that you had been unable to listen to before. They also have categories that will lead you to radio stations and radio shows from across the country.
The site offers presets that let you either set a preset for a radio station or for a specific show. This is one of the best interfaces I have found with lots of functionality and choice, but even better it just works well.

Planting Seeds 4/21-22

This week's storytime talked about Spring and planting. The children decorated their cups and Children's Librarian Ingvild planted some seeds for the children to take home and watch grow.
Flikr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/kassonlibrary

Wednesday, April 22nd

Tuesday, April 21st

8 Tracks

This weekend I spent some time purging some items I no longer use and one of the items was eight track tapes-oops I just dated myself. This morning while checking one of my favorite blogs, I ran across her blog on 8tracks. This is a wonderful site-be forewarned that you will get lost in it. Have fun!


Sites and Soundbytes from Tasha Saecker, April 10, 2009. Tasha Saecker, who is the director of the Menasha Public Library in Menasha, WI.


As I have mentioned before, I’m a bit of an online music nut. 8tracks offers a service I haven’t seen before. They do playlists or mixes that their members put together. You can listen to a mix, create your own, or happily browse around the site dipping in and out of mixes.
To get a sense of how much fun it can be to listen to a mix, try out Music that Makes You Feel Important. Perfect for when you need a pick-me-up or when you are conquering that next online dungeon.

http://sites.menashalibrary.org/2009/04/10/8tracks/

Seven Tips for Making New Friends

Gretchen Rubin is working on a book, THE HAPPINESS PROJECT--a memoir about the year she spent test-driving every principle, tip, theory, and scientific study she could find, whether from Aristotle or St. Therese or Martin Seligman or Oprah. THE HAPPINESS PROJECT will gather these rules for living and report on what works and what doesn’t. On her daily blog, she recount some of her adventures and insights as she grapples with the challenge of being happier.
http://www.happiness-project.com/happiness_project/2009/02/friendship-seven-tips-for-making-new-friends.html

Ancient philosophers and scientists agree: strong social ties are the KEY to happiness. You need close, long-term relationships; you need to be able to confide in others; you need to belong; you need to get and give support. Studies show that if you have five or more friends with whom to discuss an important matter you’re far more likely to describe yourself as “very happy.”
Not only does having strong relationships make it far more likely that you take joy in life, but studies show that it also lengthens life (incredibly, even more than stopping smoking), boosts immunity, and cuts the risk of depression.

“Okay, okay,” you’re thinking, “I get it -- but it’s not that easy to make new friends.” Here are some strategies to try, if you’re eager to make friends but are finding it tough:

1. Show up. Just as Woody Allen said that “Eighty percent of success is showing up,” a big part of friendship is showing up. Whenever you have the chance to see other people, take it. Go to the party. Stop by someone’s desk. Make the effort.
Also, the mere exposure effect describes the fact that repeated exposure makes you like someone better – and makes that person like you better, too. You’re much more likely to become friends with someone if you see him or her often. I’ve seen this happen over and over in my life. I’ve become close to unlikely people, just because circumstances put us in constant contact.

2. Join a group. Being part of a natural group, where you have common interests and are brought together automatically, is the easiest way to make friends: starting a new job, taking a class, having a baby, joining a congregation, or moving to a new neighborhood are great opportunities to join a group. If those situations aren’t an option, try to find a different group to join. Get a dog, for example. Or pursue a hobby more seriously. An added advantage to making friends through a group is that you can strengthen your friendships to several people at once -- very helpful if you don't have a lot of free time.

3. Form a group. If you can’t find an existing group to join, start a group based around something that interests you. My children's literature reading groups – (yes, now I’ve helped start TWO of these groups -- the first one became so large that we had to close it to new members) are among the top joys of my life. Studies show that each common interest between people boosts the chances of a lasting relationship, and also brings about a 2% increase in life satisfaction, but I’m confident that my kidlit groups have given me a lift in life satisfaction much higher than two percent. Movies, wine, cheese, pets, marathon-training, a language, a worthy cause…I know people in all these sorts of groups.

4. Say nice things about other people. It’s a kind way to behave; also, studies show that because of the psychological phenomenon of spontaneous trait transference, people unintentionally transfer to you the traits you ascribe to other people. So if you tell Jean that Pat is arrogant, unconsciously Jean associates that quality with you. On the other hand, if you say that Pat is hilarious, you’ll be linked to that quality.

5. Set a target. This strategy sounds very calculating, but it has really worked for me. When I enter a situation where I meet a new set of people, I set myself the goal of making three new friends. This seems artificial, but somehow, this shift makes me behave differently, it makes me more open to people, it prompts me to make the effort to say more than a perfunctory hello.

6. Make an effort to smile. Big surprise, studies show that the amount of time you smile during a conversation has a direct effect on how friendly you’re perceived to be. In fact, people who can’t smile due to facial paralysis have trouble with relationships.

7. Make friends with friends-of-friends. “Triadic closure” is the term for the fact that people tend to befriend the friends of their friends. So friends-of-friends is an excellent place to start if you’re trying to expand your circle.

Kasson Library and Seniors

The Kasson Library and the Friends of the Library go monthly to Prairie Meadows and read stories, articles and poems to the seniors and talk about memories. Our outreach Books on Wheels (BOW) goes the third Thursday of each month.

This month Library Friend Pat Coy talked about Easter bonnets, hat pins, spring flowers, and birds. The seniors enjoyed the walk down memory lane and all of us learned some things we did not know. For instance, hat pins allowed women to take the bonnet ties off of their hats and with this came very elaborate hat pins, some were over 12 " long. Cities even made laws (which some are still on the books) regulating the length of hat pins because they were very dangerous to eyes and faces.

The seniors enjoy these sessions as much as Pat and I.

Silly Storytime 4/14-15

This week's storytime talked about being silly. Children's Librarian Ingvild read the throughly entertaining story about an old woman and a fly. She had a puppet that the children could put the fly and all the other items the lady swallowed. The to cap of the storytime the children played with homemade silly putty made from laundry softener and elmer's glue. The children had fun and lot of laughter could be heard throughout the library.

For additional pictures :
Flikkr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/kassonlibrary

Library website: http://www.kasson.lib.mn.us/.mn.us/.mn.us/

Wednesday, April 14th

Ingvild plays with the silly putty.

Tuesday, April 14th

National Library Week and Workers Day

Kasson Library Library Board

and the Friends of the Libray

honored Donna Kirchgatter as the 2009 honoree. Friends Chair Clint Patterson give Donna a gift certificate.

Hospitality Chair Fran Johnson had great goodies and punch for all to enjoy.

City Council Rep Chuck Coleman and Mona Draheim, Mary Mataitis, Ingvild,
Friends Secretary Mary Mataitis. Children's Librarian.