Blog entries for Latest News

‘Find Your Flow’ Healing Arts Presentations – Myofascial/Scar Tissue Release and Healing with Sound, Caleen Pagel

Exploring alternative/complementary methods and tools for healing body, mind and spirit, Caleen, a seasoned physical therapist and well-known Tai Chi instructor, will share a few of her fun and intriguing “ tools” of her trade from swimming noodles to tuning forks, slow release stretching, movement and breathing techniques to entice your body to move to a new level of healing … physically and emotionally. Come for the fun with an open mind and heart.  This presentation is one of a series. The remainder include: May 14 – Deb LaRue- Reiki May 16 – Suzanne Dunlap – Neuromuscular Massage and Essentrics...

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‘Find Your Flow’ Healing Arts Presentations – Cranial Sacral Therapy, Becky Schmertman

Becky Schmertman will introduce you to Cranial Sacral Therapy, a gentle-touch whole-body reset. It works by finding & addressing the restrictions on the spinal cord caused by various traumas. When cerebral spinal fluid flow is restored, nerves and tissues begin to revitalize and find their intended rhythms. This helps the entire body relax and normalize. Becky is a licensed massage therapist and registered yoga instructor. She’s been doing Cranial Sacral Therapy for most of her 19 years as a therapist and now takes new clients only for this modality. Catch her yoga classes early mornings at the YMCA or live...

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Wood Carving Demo

Expert woodcarver Matthew Johnson of M.L. Johnson Woodworks will bring his hand tools and several types of wood to demonstrate how to hand carve spoons. All are welcome to come watch, but the demonstration will be of particular interest to those who would like to try this art in both the May 22 and 23 classes Johnson will lead at the library. See calendar entries for more details.

Blog: Sloyd, or the art of spoon carving

  By Bobby Fiedler, Library Director I started woodworking as a hobby in 2009. In my job as a librarian, I spend a lot of time at the computer screen using technology for a variety of tasks. I’ve always been interested in technology and the ways that it can be used to accomplish any number of things, let alone the ability to connect to people and access and share information from all corners of the globe. But I also immensely enjoy working with my hands to create utilitarian, real-world objects. Enter woodworking. When most people think of a woodshop, they...

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Blog: The essence of the library’s purpose shines through in tragic times

Betty Collins Children’s Librarian The story I want to relate for this month’s blog did not take place in Muscatine, but in a public library I worked at in the San Francisco Bay Area back in September of 2001. This story is from September 12, 2001, to be exact. Like that of many other Americans, my sleep had been troubled the previous night because of the tragedies in New York, Washington DC, and Pennsylvania. I had always pictured the map of the United States smiling–not unlike the illustrations in picture book author Holly Keller’s Scrambled States of America–but now it...

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What I’m excited about right now: Backyard bird feeding and the fall migration

Rod Peck Library Technician I’ve always enjoyed bird watching, and when my wife and I bought a house with a bigger back yard, I was setting up bird feeders even before we had the furniture all arranged. While this has definitely been a fun and rewarding venture for us both, I have learned some lessons that I feel compelled to share at this time.  While we have had many beauties like Northern Cardinals, Blue Jays, five different species of woodpeckers and numerous others, we haven’t had quite the variety of birds I expected. What we have had droves of are...

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What I’m excited about right now: My ‘aha’ moment with Toxic Positivity

Kathy Kuhl Marketing & PR Coordinator Recently I found myself stunned into silence by a friend who declined to share her troubles with me, instead making veiled references to them. I couldn’t put my finger on why this bothered me. At the time, we just changed the subject. Long ago, I felt I “dumbly” listened to a friend as she cried to me upon being diagnosed with breast cancer. I felt uneasy about my lack of advice, but after her first two years of remission, I was one of the few people with whom she stayed friends. I had no words for...

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What I’m excited about right now: Celebrating 400 years of Shakespeare

April is an important month to the literary world. It is recognized as National Poetry Month and includes National Library Week  (April 24-28) which gives us a lot to celebrate. Additionally, fans of literature also recognize the birthday of one of the world’s most famous and influential writers. April 23 is known to be the date of William Shakespeare’s death, and it is also traditionally celebrated as his birthdate. In 2016, we celebrated 400 years since his passing, but this year marks 400 years since the publication of the First Folio in 1623.  Originally published as Mr. William Shakespeare’s Comedies,...

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What I’m excited about right now: Learn-to-draw instructional books

Kimi Mendoza Library Assistant   Art surrounds each of us and demands to be front and center every single day of our lives. One might not think so, but you may be surprised at the amount of art that you have purchased or consumed without realizing it. Artists designed furniture in your home, they created your clothing – and even the logo of the company for which you work. Your favorite movie poster had to begin somewhere in a conceptual stage. An artist or team of artists created the layout for the poster and chose what colors and fonts would...

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What I’m excited about right now: ‘Truth’ in movies is how they resonate, how we relate

    Truth in the movies, like truth in fiction, is not about facts portrayed, but about revelations of value, significance and meaning. Movies depict themes, roles, dilemmas and struggles that we recognize in very personal terms and can identify with. Though not real in fact, they are real in relating back to us experiences, present issues, and life themes in dramatic fashion.  They reflect back to us realities we ourselves have experienced—loss, grief, unrequited love, longing, regret, guilt, joy, the elation of falling in love, kindness, courage. They also portray hard choices that at times we must make, paths...

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