By Pamela West-Finkle
An early four days of frost in September jumpstarted our brilliant Fall season, but as with every Fall here in the Catskills, the leaves leave us too soon and the Winter cold arrives too early.
This month, of course, brings us three important dates for Americans: Election Day, November 3rd; Veteran’s Day, November 9th; and Thanksgiving Day, November 26th. For me, these three dates are really connected. We can be thankful that our veterans fought for our freedom so that we might take part in a democratic vote to decide our future leadership. Because of this, I ask you to be grateful and thankful for your blessings and for our freedoms, I encourage you to thank a Veteran, and I urge you to vote. Hopefully, by the time Election Day rolls around, many of you will have already cast your vote in one of the many early voting dates offered by our county.
BOOK TALK WITH LOCAL AUTHOR/PHOTOGRAPHER: After the election, however it turns out, we will need to find unity again. Regardless of liberal or conservative, Republican or Democrat, I think many of us look to the American Flag as a symbol of our unity; however, there are as many meanings to this symbol as there are definitions of the abstract concept of Patriotism. A local author, Beatriz Schiller, has written a book called Beyond the Flag—Iconographies of Patriotism. Schiller delivers a thought-provoking collection of images and interviews regarding this American symbol. I will be interviewing Beatriz and will make the link to the interview public via our library Facebook page, website and YouTube page.
KIDS’ COOKING PROGRAM – SATURDAY NOVEMBER 21st: We are very excited that Chef Jodie Fitz of the Price Chopper Kids’ Cooking Club will also be providing a free live Zoom cooking class program for local families with children in grades K-6 at 10 am on Saturday, November 21st. Registration will be required, so please provide an email and children’s names and ages who will be participating.
A week prior to our event Jodie will provide a shopping list to share with our participants that matches the recipe we have chosen together. A few days prior to our event we will send out an event reminder along with a suggested kitchen set-up that’s specific to share with our registered participants. A link to the Zoom class will be sent the day before or the day of our program. Afterwards, participants will receive a thank you email with links to printout recipe cards and a cookbook cover so that participants can begin to build their own cookbook at home. If you would love to join us, please email me at an.ill@4cls.org or call 845-676-3333. For more information on Jodie, please visit her website at https://www.jodiefitz.com.
Donations have surpassed the $10,000 mark and continue to trickle in. Thank you again to everyone who has been so generous this year and to board member Diane Lockspeiser and everyone who donated a baked goods item to benefit the library. We have discovered that we need to install a dehumidifying unit in the crawl space that ties into our sewage line, in addition to the air conditioning unit that needs to be replaced. I hope to write a matching funds grant to help cover these costs. We just received confirmation of an operations grant from the Community Foundation of South Central New York. If you have not sent in a donation for 2020, please consider supporting our library with your contribution. Donor packets are available on the porch, or you may send your tax deductible donation to The Andes Public Library, PO Box 116, Andes, NY 13731.
The Andes Library will be closed in observance of Veterans Day on Wednesday, November 11th; however, I will still upload a story time video that day. We will also be closed on Thursday, November 26th in observance of Thanksgiving.
Please stay safe and vigilant, especially as we head into flu season. Many may be suffering from COVID-19 Caution Fatigue, meaning you might be easing up on your pandemic precautions. A simple comparison of COVID statistics is a sobering way to remind ourselves to continue to take precautions and be socially distant. For instance, from August 4th to October 18th, in a period of about ten weeks, there have been 66,000 new cases in New York State alone. The US has gone from 4.8 million to 8.14 million cases during that time, and the worldwide infection rate has increased from 18.2 million to nearly 40 million. The worldwide death rate jumped from 692,000 deaths to 1.11 million deaths…all in ten weeks. I do not see these statistics being talked about much these days in social media and on the news, so as your friendly neighborhood librarian, I took it upon myself to remind you that the virus is not going away and we must do our part to curb its spread.~