Currents: News from the Library on the River ... in Leland
JULY 2019
A Note From Mark
I was recently reviewing our annual report (available on our website at lelandlibrary.org) and we have some impressive numbers such as 27,919 people used our facility in 2018 or 36,193 items were checked out.
When I look at these numbers we are justifiably proud of them, but I always like to drill down and see what they represent. In our case, like most libraries, they mean things like a young family who can check out a big stack of children’s books so they can read to their kids on a continuing basis using new and classic books that are curated to provide both education and entertainment. They represent the dozens if not hundreds of readers who come in to browse our new shelf on a regular basis to get the latest best sellers. They also represent a meeting space where events are held that are as far ranging and varied as Leelanau County itself.
These numbers can mean so much more to me as Director, our staff, and volunteers, when you look at the core of the services we provide. They represent being able to help someone get online to find resources on how to fill out a resume. They embody the family that is working hard to make ends meet so that “stack of books” for their children means so much more than just convenience. They equate to someone who is struggling with technology who can stop by and ask a question and be saved a long trip and a large bill for what turns out to be simple problem. They can also mean access to large print books, so those who are lifelong readers can continue their favorite pastime. The list goes on and on.
So when we see over 8,000 people used our Wi-Fi or 7,767 visited our website, what the numbers are really reflecting are the services we are so gratified that we can provide to a group that we do not quantify but strive to make as large of number we possibly can - those that need, appreciate, and depend on our services.
- Mark
Below you will see some information about events and programs from around the Leland Cultural Campus (Leelanau Historical Society, the Old Art Building, Fishtown Preservation Society, and the Library). We are working together to help get the word out for some of our events happening here in our special little neighborhood on the river.
MARK YOUR CALENDARS! Upcoming Events
Thursday, July 4 LIBRARY CLOSED for the FOURTH of JULY
Thursday, July 4 from 1:00-3:00pm Decorate your wheels on the lawn before the parade at the Old Art Building
Friday, July 5 between 10:30am-11:30am The People in Leland: An Outdoor Art Workshop
with the Old Art Building, Fishtown Preservation, and Leelanau Historical Museum
Wednesday, July 10 at 7:00pm Night Photography with Mark Morton
Friday, July 12 at 10:30am Children's Summer Reading Program: Science Bunny Workshop with Brianne Farley
Saturday, July 13 from 10:00am-2:00pm The Friends of Leland Township Library Book Sale
Saturday, July 13 from 10:00am-5:00pm Artist's Market at the Old Art Building
Saturday, July 20 at 9:00am 2019 Friends of Fishtown 5K
Monday, July 22 at 2:00pm Understanding Alzheimer's and Dementia
Thursday, July 25 at 11:30am-3:00pm Versiti Blood Center of Michigan Blood Drive
Friday, July 26 at 10:30am Children's Summer Reading Program: Musical Storytime with Merri Lynn Bouckaert
Friday, July 26 from 5:30-8:00pm Art Leelanau, Benefit and Exhibit at the Old Art Building
Monday, July 29 at 6:00pm An Evening with Contributors to Elemental:A Collection of Michigan Nonfiction
Wednesday, July 31 Harry Potter's Birthday Party
Wednesday, July 31 at 2:00pm Local Authors at the Library: What Did You Do in the War, Sister? with Dennis Turner
For more information on Programs and Events at the Library, please visit our website.
Special thanks to the Carlson and Campo families for the ice cream following our Leelanau Summer Storytime on June 14.
Programming Update
We are very lucky in Leelanau County to be the (summer) home of so many talented authors. This month we will have the distinct honor of hosting some of them. On Monday, July 29 at 6:00pm, Anne-Marie Oomen and several other contributors to the Michigan Notable Book Elemental: A Collection of Michigan Creative Nonfiction will be in the Munnecke Room reading their essays and signing the anthology. The following is a letter Anne-Marie wrote about the program:
- Laura
Friends of the Leland Township Library Book Sale
The Library is bulging at the seams with gently used books and we need a little help from our Friends. On Saturday, July 13, The Friends of Leland Township Library will host a book sale, coinciding with the "Artists Market" at the Old Art Building. Stop by the Munnecke Room between 10:00am and 2:00pm for some great deals on great books. Almost every item will be $1.00. If we haven’t slimmed the “bulges” by 1:30pm, come back for a bag of books for $5.00!
Robert Macfarlane is among the most rhizomal of writers. That is to say: he plants himself in one topos and from there extends out in a multiplicity of directions; his thoughts and observations threading discursively from, for instance, nuclear waste disposal to the Finnish legend-cycle called the Kalevala, or from Neolithic cave-paintings on the far-northern shore of Norway to Edgar Allen Poe’s classic story A Descentinto the Maelström. And like a rhizomal plant, Macfarlane is difficult to enclose or define. At the level of genus, we can comfortably call him a writer of non-fiction, but the species denomination gets trickier. Like Jon McPhee, he’s often the recipient of the vague epithet Nature Writer, but his work is far more ranging, curious, and vibrant than that, reaching intomyth, glaciology, literature, feminist ecocriticism (!), archaeology, art, architecture, and more yet. Macfarlane reads like an explorer in the best sense of that word; the stories of his travels are shared generously and with an attitude of wonder.
In Underland, he delves into the rarely experienced—or even considered—worlds below our feet. Dividing the book into three main sections entitled Seeing, Hiding, and Haunting respectively, Macfarlane selects specific places to which he’s travelled and takes an almost orbital approach to them, moving with an ease of analogical thought from one subject to another and writing a species of history that is at once cultural, geological, contemporary, and future-oriented. Whether he is in a chamber designed for studying dark matter in a potash mine miles below the North Sea, descending into a glacier in Greenland, or crawling on his elbows through a narrow, wet passage in the catacombs of Paris, Macfarlane’s descriptions are as precise as they are evocative—paradoxically so as he travels through spaces of near-absolute sensory deprivation. Incidentally, I wouldn’t necessarily recommend this if you’re highly claustrophobic.
This is by no means an indifferent history. Underland acquires a sense of urgency throughout the text as Macfarlane takes the topic as a locus for meditating on the legacy our own time is leaving in the underland. He does this by examining historical atrocities such as the deposition of mass graves in the Slovenian karst during the Second World War, as well as more prospective examinations of the geological traces we are leaving in the form of nuclear waste buried miles beneath the earth.
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