What's New @ the Library

Fort Bragg Library Summer Reading Event!

2009-07-12T14:32:00.000-07:00

From Trash to Toys!
Thursday July 16th
Fort Bragg Public Library
11:30 a.m Library Community Room
499 Laurel St. Fort Bragg 964-2020

Come and hear the magical story Galimoto by Karen Williams. It's a contemporary tale of a child who makes his own toy from items he finds in his village. Then design your galimoto from recycled items we've collected!

Fort Bragg Library Summer Tunes!

2009-07-01T10:11:00.000-07:00

Jug Band Tunes and Tales Thursday July 9th 11:30
Come to the Fort Bragg Library for jug band tunes and tales
with Fran and Robert Crawford.
Make a musical instrument of your own from recycled materials!
Fort Bragg Library Community Room
499 Laurel St.
For information: 964-2020

Fort Bragg Library Special Event:

2009-06-24T15:49:00.000-07:00

Fort Bragg Library Summer Event:

Origami Spinning Tops

Come make colorful tops! Supplies provided free.

Teens Encouraged!!

11:30 a.m Saturday June 27^th

Fort Bragg Library Community Room

707 964-2020

Thank You, Thank You

2009-06-11T14:43:00.000-07:00

I just came back from a union meeting filled with doom and gloom and
found a pile of brand new books given to the Library. Oh anonymous
person, I truly thank you. Keeping all of us running through the next
two years will definitely be a group effort and I truly appreciate new
books to offer our community.

So thank you so much for A Darker Place by Jack Higgins, Long Lost by Harlan Coben, The Scarecrow by Michael Connelly, Just Take My Heart by Mary Higgins Clark, Mounting Fears by Stuart Woods and Run for Your Life by James Patterson & Michael Ledwidge

Looking for young farmers at the Ukiah & Willits Libraries

2009-06-11T13:28:00.000-07:00

All children who help grow food can sell it in front of the Willits and Ukiah branch libraries during our Summer reading program series. Ukiah starts Wed July 8 at 4 pm, Willits starts Thur July 9 at noon. Sign up at the libraries. Children should bring a small table and chair, a sign with the items and the prices, a money box, some change, bags, sun screen, water to drink, hats.

The Quilts are back!

2009-06-02T09:44:00.000-07:00

Quilts from Grandmother's Attic

10th Annual Library Quilt Show
Mendocino Quilt Artists Guild

at the Ukiah Library
105 N. Main St, Ukiah CA
463-4493

Saturday Book Sales at the Ukiah Library

2009-05-20T11:26:00.000-07:00

The Friends of the Ukiah Library
are holding two Saturday book sales
of coffee table books.

Saturday, May 30th
Saturday, June 20th

From 10 to 2

Ukiah Library
105 N Main St
Ukiah CA
707 463-4490

Booksale at the Willits Library

2009-05-20T11:22:00.000-07:00

The Friends of the Willits Library are holding a "special" booksale
May 20 - 23rd, 2009
Thursday, Friday, 10 - 6
Saturday 10 - 4

Willits Library
390 E Commercial St
Willits CA
707 459-5908

Uncertain Waters: a community forum on California's water priorities

2009-05-16T15:10:00.000-07:00

The Mendocino County Library, National Issues Forums, California Center for the Book, California State Library, Water Education Foundation & Ukiah Daily Journal present:

Uncertain Waters: navigating California's water priorities
A forum at the
Ukiah Library
105 N Main St, Ukiah
Wednesday, May 27th from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m.

This will be a non-partisan conversation about water from three different approaches, focusing on positive actions. Please join us and our moderator, Craig Paterson in navigating this important issue and providing your feeling and thoughts on:
What needs to be done?
What are drawbacks and acceptable trade-offs?
What kind of leadership is needed.

"Thousands have lived without love, not one without water". -W.H. Auden

"When the well is dry, we learn the worth of water". --Benjamin Franklin

Water in Mendocino County

2009-05-16T14:59:00.000-07:00

A special, fun, fascinating & educational program for children.
Rebecca Kress, The River Lady & water education specialist
will present this great program for children

Saturday, May 23rd at 10:30 a.m.
The Ukiah Library
Children's Room

Bring your children and learn about watersheds, the water cycle,
properties of water, surface runoff & storm drains. This will
help explain why some families are being allotted 175 gallons
of water per day. There will be a video, games, prizes & snacks.

What to save in your garden when the well runs dry

2009-05-16T14:39:00.000-07:00

This Wednesday, May 20th at 6 p.m., Local landscaper, Michael Maltas will talk about our gardens, drought, water restrictions and what to save and how to save it.

From lush to dead?
Michael Maltas
At the Ukiah Library
105 N Main St., Ukiah CA
707 463-4493

Ukiah Library Water Series--How to do a home water audit

2009-05-05T13:24:00.000-07:00

City of Ukiah declares Stage 1 of a local water emergency.
Stage 1 is a voluntary reduction of water.
The State of California Water Resources Board has suggested
a 50% reduction in water usage for Mendocino County.

Mendocino County Library & Water Agency

How to do a water audit on your home or business

A special presentation by Joe Scriven

The Ukiah Library
105 N Main St
Wednesday, May 6th, 6:00p.m.

An hour or two of your time, a few simple tools and a friend or family member to help, will give you the necessary information
to reduce your water use painlessly.

463-4493

April is Poetry Month--a poem for each day we are open

2009-04-30T11:12:00.000-07:00

Last day of April. Poetry though will remain with us.

Ukiah Library's Poem of the Day for National Poetry Month
April 30,2009

Water by Philip Larkin
If I were called in
To construct a religion
I should make use of water.

Going to church
Would entail a fording
To dry, different clothes;

My liturgy would employ
Images of sousing,
A furious devout drench,

And I should raise in the east
A glass of water
Where any-angled light
Would congregate endlessly.

Willits Library National Poetry Month Poem of the Day – April 30, 2009

Last day of poetry month – As Loreena McKennitt says,
“Let’s leave the last word to Shakespeare”

Sonnet 115

Those lines that I before have writ do lie,
Even those that said I could not love you dearer:
Yet then my judgement knew no reason why
My most full flame should afterwards burn clearer.
But reckoning Time, whose millioned accidents
Creep in ‘twixt vows, and change decrees of kings,
Tan sacred beauty, blunt the sharp’st intents,
Divert strong minds to the course of altering things –
Alas, why, fearing of Time’s tyranny,
Might I not then say, ‘Now I love you best’,
When I was certain o’er incertainty,
Crowning the present, doubting of the rest?
Love is a babe; then might I not say so,
To give full growth to that which still doth grow.

April is Poetry Month--a poem for each day we are open

2009-04-29T16:32:00.000-07:00

Well we did not make a poem a day--too few hours and much too much to do, but I hope you have enjoyed our choices.

From Ukiah's new Poet Laureate: Theresa Whitehill

He Brought Me Chocolate for my Hair

He brought me chocolate for my hair.
I spoke to him of power and loneliness.
I began to have qualms about the cornichons
how little they were, and sparkly with salt.
We slept under our felicity.
At every intersection, a tomato, a regret.
Morning began to develop cracks in its armature.
The gifts of drunkenness,
the long path to the sea.

Willits Library National Poetry Month Poem of the Day – April 29, 2009

DIANE ACKERMAN

SCHOOL PRAYER

In the name of the daybreak
and the eyelids of morning
and the wayfaring moon
and the night when it departs,

I swear I will not dishonor
my soul with hatred,
but offer myself humbly
as a guardian of nature,
as a healer of misery,
as a messenger of wonder,
as an architect of peace.

In the name of the sun and its mirrors
and the day that embraces it
and the cloud veils drawn over it
and the uttermost night
and the male and the female
and the plants bursting with seed
and the crowning seasons
of the firefly and the apple,

I will honor all life
- wherever and in whatever form
it may dwell – on Earth my home,
and in the mansions of the stars.

April is Poetry Month--a poem for each day we are open

2009-04-23T10:32:00.000-07:00

Sorry to have missed so many days: Imagine too much to do and not enough time for poetry--urghhh

Willits Library National Poetry Month Poem of the Day – April 23, 2009
Paper, Scissors, Stone
by Tom Wayman
An executive's salary for working with paper
beats the wage in a metal shop operating shears
which beats what a gardener earns arranging stone.

But the pay for a surgeon's use of scissors
is larger than that of a heavy equipment driver removing stone
which in turn beats a secretary's cheque for handling paper.

And, a geologist's hours with stone
nets more than a teacher's with paper
and definitely beats someone's time in a garment factory with scissors.

In addition: to manufacture paper
you need stone to extract metal to fabricate scissors
to cut the product to size.
To make scissors you must have paper to write out the specs
and a whetstone to sharpen the new edges.
Creating gravel, you require the scissor-blades of the crusher
and lots of order forms and invoices at the office.

Thus I believe there is a connection
between things
and not at all like the hierarchy of winners
of a child's game.
When a man starts insisting
he should be paid more than me
because he's more important to the task at hand,
I keep seeing how the whole process collapses
if almost any one of us is missing.
When a woman claims she deserves more money
because she went to school longer,
I remember the taxes I paid to support her education.
Should she benefit twice?
Then there's the guy who demands extra
because he has so much seniority
and understands his work so well
he has ceased to care, does as little as possible,
or refuses to master the latest techniques
the new-hires are required to know.
Even if he's helpful and somehow still curious
after his many years—

Without a machine to precisely measure
how much sweat we each provide
or a contraption hooked up to electrodes in the brain
to record the amount we think,
my getting less than him
and more than her
makes no sense to me.
Surely whatever we do at the job
for our eight hours—as long as it contributes—
has to be worth the same.

And if anyone mentions
this is a nice idea but isn't possible,
consider what we have now:
everybody dissatisfied, continually grumbling and disputing.
No, I'm afraid it's the wage system that doesn't function
except it goes on
and will
until we set to work to stop it

with paper, with scissors, and with stone.

Ukiah Library Poem of the Day
VISITATION
Jabez W. Churchill
I smell a hearth
long cool from use,
a draft
between the unstained sky
and still pungent dark.
The smoke of many fires
condensed,
frozen on the stones like stars.
Too strong
for only memory to sustain.
Whose presence may announce
I will not know
until the shadow
and its anguish pass.
Until the pictures flow.

April is Poetry Month--a poem for each day we are open

2009-04-11T08:24:00.000-07:00

Ukiah Poem of the Day for National Poetry Month
April 11, 2009

Se dice/ It is said

que el drbol
lo reconoce su fruta
that you know a tree
by its fruit.
El ave,
or us plumas
a bird by its feathers
y el aqua
and water
quizds por lo que lleva
encima de sus corrientes
perhaps by what it carries
on its currents
El viento, asi mismo
the wind likewise,
por el rastro de lo que trae.
by the scent of what it brings.
La primavera,
Spring
por el brote
for blossom
y el verano
and Summer,
su follje espesisimo
en el calido atardecer
its foliage
thickest on hot after noons.
El otono por cosecha,
su borra y deshoje
Autumn, for the harvest,
its dregs, and the fall
y el invierno
and Winter
no tanto por sus quejas,
berrinches y tormentas
not so much for its whining,
tantrums, and storms
sino como el hombre
but like man
por su vacio
for his emptiness
y silencios indiferentes
and indifferent silences

Jabez Churchill

Willits Library National Poetry Month Poem of the Day – April 11, 2009

MARY OLIVER

The Journey

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice –
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
“Mend my life!”
each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do –
determined to save
the only life you could save.

April is Poetry Month--a poem for each day we are open

2009-04-09T13:00:00.000-07:00

Willits Library National Poetry Month Poem of the Day – April 9, 2009

Featuring
California Poet Laureate AL YOUNG –
Here tonight 7 PM Mendocino College Little Theater

UP JUMPED SPRING

What’s most fantastical almost always goes
unrecorded and unsorted. Take spring.
Take today. Take dancing dreamlike; coffee
your night, creameries your dream factories.
Take walking as a dream, the dearest, sincerest
means ofconveyance: a dance. Take leave
of the notion that this nation’s or any other’s earth
can still be the same earth our ancestors walked.
Chemistry strains to connect our hemispheres.
The right and left sidelines our brain forms
in the rain this new world braves – acid jazz.
The timeless taste her tongue leaves in your mouth,
stirred with unmeasured sugars, greens the day
the way sweet sunlight oxygenates, ignites
all nights, all daytimes, and you – this jumps.
Sheer voltage leaps, but nothing keeps or stays.
Sequence your afternoon as dance. Drink spring.
Holding her hard against you, picture the screenplay.
Take time to remember to get her spells together.
Up jumps the goddess gratified, and up jumped spring.

Ukiah Library Poem of the Day for National Poetry Month

Love Poem With Toast
Miller Williams

Some of what we do, we do
to make things happen,
the alarm to wake us up, the coffee to perc,
the car to start.

The rest of what we do, we do
trying to keep something from doing something,
the skin from aging, the hoe from rusting,
the truth from getting out.

With yes and no like the poles of a battery
powering our passage through the days,
we move, as we call it, forward,
wanting to be wanted,
wanting not to lose the rain forest,
wanting the water to boil,
wanting not to have cancer,
wanting to be home by dark,
wanting not to run out of gas,

as each of us wants the other
watching at the end,
as both want not to leave the other alone,
as wanting to love beyond this meat and bone,
we gaze across breakfast and pretend.

April is Poetry Month--a poem for each day we are open

2009-04-08T19:10:00.000-07:00

Willits Library National Poetry Month Poem of the Day – April 8, 2009

Sweet Voices

C.P. Cavafy

Those voices are the sweeter which have fallen
forever silent, mournfully
resounding only in the heart that sorrows.

In dreams the melancholic voices come,
timorous and humble,
and bring before our feeble memory

the precious dead, whom the cold cold earth
conceals; for whom the mirthful
daybreak never shines, nor springtimes blossom.

Melodious voices sigh; and in the soul
our life’s first poetry
sounds – like music, in the night, that’s far away.

Ukiah Library, Poem of the Day, National Poetry Month

Introduction to Poetry
Billy Collins

I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem's room
and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author's name on the shore.

But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.

April is Poetry Month--a poem for each day we are open

2009-04-07T10:49:00.000-07:00

April 7th

Willits Library National Poetry Month Poem of the Day – April 7, 2009

April Prayer

Stuart Kestenbaum

Just before the green begins there is the hint of green
a blush of color, and the red buds thicken
the ends of the maple’s branches and everything
is poised before the start of a new world,
which is really the same world
just moving forward from bud
to flower to blossom to fruit
to harvest to sweet sleep, and the roots
await the next signal, every signal
every call a miracle and the switchboard
is lighting up and the operators are
standing by in the pledge drive we’ve
all been listening to: Go make the call.

Eliza's Choice

Eating Poetry
Ink runs from the corners of my mouth.
There is no happiness like mine.
I have been eating poetry.

The librarian does not believe what she sees.
Her eyes are sad
and she walks with her hands in her dress.

The poems are gone.
The light is dim.
The dogs are on the basement stairs and coming up.

Their eyeballs roll,
their blond legs burn like brush.
The poor librarian begins to stamp her feet and weep.

She does not understand.
When I get on my knees and lick her hand,
she screams.

I am a new man.
I snarl at her and bark.
I romp with joy in the bookish dark.

-- Mark Strand

April is Poetry Month--a poem for each day we are open

2009-04-07T10:39:00.000-07:00

For Saturday April 4th

Three Dog Neighborhood
Chosen by Eliza (Why I will always have a Rottweiler)

By Daniel Barth

Pretty Straightforward this one,
About my friend Pete and his wife Susan.
They bought an old house in Denver
Down on the Platte River.
Shortly thereafter their tv got stolen.
They bought a dog, a good-sized dog,
To keep an eye on things.
But it didn't help, they were burgled again.
This time the investigating officer said:
"You live in a three dog neighborhood."
"Huh?" said Pete (not in a good mood)
"One for the front yard, one for the back yard,
One for the house," explained the cop--
Three dog neigborhood,"
"Yeah right," said Pete, "Now I'm hip."

Donna's Choice
Willits Library National Poetry Month Poem of the Day – April 4, 2009

Anniversary: One Fine Day
by Walter McDonald

Who would sit through a plot as preposterous as ours,
married after years apart? Chance meetings may work
early in stories, but at operas, darling, in Texas?
A bachelor pilot, I fled Laredo for the weekend,
stopping at the opera from boredom, music I least expected.
Of all the zoos and honky-tonks south of Dallas,
who would believe I would find you there on the stairs,

Madame Butterfly about to start? When you moved
four years before, I lost all hope of dying happy,
dogfighting my way through pilot training, reckless,
in terror only when I saw the man beside you.
I had pictured him rich and splendid in my mind
a thousand times, thinking you married with babies
somewhere in Tahiti, Spain, the south of France.

When I saw the lucky devil I hated – only your date,
but I didn’t know – he stopped gloating, watching you wave,
turned old and bitter like the crone in Shangri La.
Destiny happens only in plays and cheap movies –
but here, here on my desk is your photo, decades later,
and I hear sounds from another room of our house,
and when I rise amazed and follow, you are there.

April is Poetry Month--a poem for each day we are open

2009-04-02T09:18:00.000-07:00

April 2nd

Donna's Choice

Meditation on Ruin
by Jay Hopler

It's not the lost lover that brings us to ruin, or the barroom brawl,
or the con game gone bad, or the beating
Taken in the alleyway. But the lost car keys,
The broken shoelace,
The overcharge at the gas pump
Which we broach wihout comment - these are the things that
eat away at life, these constant vibrations
In the web of the unremarkable.

The death of a father - the death of the mother -
The sudden loss shocks the living flesh alive! But the broken
pair of glasses,
The tear in the trousers,
These begin an ache behind the eyes.
And it's this ache to which we will ourselves
Oblivious. We are oblivious. Then, one morning - there's a
crack in the water glass - we wake to find ourselves undone.

Eliza's choice

Your grief for what you've lost holds a mirror
up to where you're bravely working.

Expecting the worst, you look and instead,
here's the joyful face you've been wanting to see.

Your hand opens and closes and opens and closes.
If it were always a fist or always stretched open,
you would be paralyzed.

Your deepest presence is in every small contracting and expand
the two as beautifully balanced and coordinated
as birdwings.

Jalaluddin Rumi (1207-1273)

April is Poetry Month--a poem for each day we are open

2009-04-02T08:56:00.000-07:00

Poems chosen by Eliza Wingate, Ukiah Library & Donna Kerr, Willits Library

April 1st
From Eliza

Wystan Hugh Auden (1907-1973)

Funeral Blues (Song IX / from Two Songs for Hedli Anderson)

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone.
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling in the sky the message He is Dead,
Put crêpe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever, I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun.
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

From Donna

SURPRISED BY JOY

Surprised by joy -impatient as the wind
I turned to share the transport - Oh! with whom
But Thee, deep buried in the silent tomb,
That spot which no vicissitude can find?
Love, faithful love, recalled thee to my mind -
But how could I forget thee? Through what power,
Even for the least division of an hour,
Have I been so beguiled as to be blind
To my most grievous loss? - That thought's return
Was the worst pang that sorrow ever bore
Save one, one only, when I stood forlorn,
Knowing my heart's best treasure was no more;
That neither present time, nor years unborn,
Could to my sight that heavenly face restore.

Closed on Fridays through March

2009-02-21T11:34:00.000-08:00

All the branches of the Mendocino County Library will be closed on Fridays through March.
Those that are open on Saturdays will be open. We are sorry for the inconvenience.

The Library is always open online. Place your holds, download audible books, use Live Homework Help, practice your skills on Learn a Test, finish your papers or homework using EbscoHost magazine and newspaper database or look up a product review: Consumer Reports is found there. Check out newspaper articles on Proquest newspaper database.

2009 Haiku Festival

2009-02-13T16:05:00.000-08:00

ukiaHaikukiaHaikukiaHaikukiaHaikukiaH

It is time to gather your Haiku for the 7th Annual ukiaHaiku Festival.
Check out the web at ukiahaiku.org

The Seventh Annual
ukiaHaiku Festival

An afternoon devoted to the Haiku form of poetry

Sunday, April 26, 2009
2 pm to 4 pm at the City Conference Center
200 School Street in Ukiah, California

Keynote speaker: Theresa Whitehill

Submissions are must be in or postmarked by
Friday, March 13th

Oh no, not today
triskadecaphobia
under the covers

Very BAD haiku, but when else can one use that word

Valentine's Day at the Ukiah Library

2009-02-10T12:29:00.000-08:00

The Mendocino County Library & The Waldorf School
present "The Frog Prince"
a program for ages 3 to 6 with stories, creating valentines and refreshments
Saturday, February 14th
10:30 to noon
at the Ukiah Library
105 N Main St
463-4493