A Tour of Our Amazing Library

 I've been side tracked lately by a lot of reading.  Reading that I needed to get done, but still, I haven't gotten as much else done as I would have liked.

I thought it might be nice to show you our amazing library.  This is the Sublette County Public Library, in Pinedale, Wyoming for any of you traveling through town on your way to Jackson Hole or Yellowstone.  It is well worth the stop.

I think we have the most beautiful, peaceful library.  It was built back in the mid 1990's, when I was a reporter in town, so I was very familiar with every step of the building process.  The main building is made of logs, with metal roof.  You should have heard the townspeople holler when they poured acid on the roof to age it.  It looked horrible at first - all streaky and ugly.  Now it is beautiful and fits the building perfectly.  They paid a lot of attention to landscaping too and there are many bronze statues all around it - inside and out, and a courtyard where you can sit outside and read.  I didn't get pictures of that.

They added a new section a few years back - made with a process called "rammed earth" - which is just what it sounds like - smashing dirt together super-tight, which is why there are striations in the walls.  It's very pretty.  The outside courtyard sits between the two, straight ahead and just a hint to the left in this picture.

This is the main entrance.  The posts in the front are for bicycles, but cleverly made to look like hitching posts.  And can you see the giant bronze rabbit to the left?  It's one of the many pieces of artwork the library has.

This is looking into the children's room -which is an entirely separate room.  I didn't have time to go in and take pictures of everything because they were about to close, but it's such a neat room.  Around the back and side walls - in the far left corner, which you can't see from here - they have bench seating with tons of pillows and a giant stuffed bear (which my four year old always has to go give a hug).  They have a box of dress-up clothes too, and three computers, as well as a kid-sized art table where they keep colored pencils, crayons and coloring pages out all the time.

This is the first thing you see walking into the main adult library.  It is the new books section - fiction to the left, nonfiction to the right, and several cushy seats in front of a fireplace.  Nice and cozy.  This section is my kryptonite.  I can't seem to walk past it without grabbing at least one (or five) new books, no matter how big my "to read" stack at home is.  I'm a little (or a lot) obsessed with books, which I'm sure you've already guessed if you've been around my blog for long.

Here's a better view of that area.  The doorway I took the first picture from is on the left side of this picture, just out of view.  Notice the concrete floors - heated and colored.  The windows behind this wall are to the reading room the children's program uses for story time.  And the actual children's room is out the door I took the picture from and just a bit to the left - it's a completely separate area from the rest of the library, which is nice.

This is the view from the new books section, looking across the length of the library.  There are short shelves in the middle and tall shelves to the outside edges - nonfiction on the left, fiction on the right, and reference down the center, with magazines and newspapers at the end, where there is another very comfortable reading area.

This is the reading area - the shelves here are full of magazines.

  There are tables and chairs along the walls to either side.  You can kind of see the reading area there in the middle, but it mostly goes out to the left of the picture.  Hopefully you get the idea of what the library looks like though.

 This is a view from the reading area back toward the front, where the new books section is (directly ahead, at the far end of this picture).

 I din't have time to take pictures of all the art work. This bronze is one of my favorites, along with the one in the picture below.  It's worth it just to see the library and take in the art work.  They have a hallway in the new section that they are constantly changing out, giving local artists and photographers an opportunity to display their work.

This was taken back at Christmas time when my one-year-old spontaneously started hugging the bronze of the girl reading a book - next to a boy laying on his stomach with his feet kicked up behind him.  These are adorable - and so well done.

The other part of the library I didn't take the time to photograph is the western history room - a completely separate area for local history and all things western - from Zane Grey and Louis Lamour, to bound book versions of our local weekly newspaper, dating back a very long time.  We had fun one day looking at my husband's birth announcement, and reading some of my old stories from when I was reporting.

 So the purpose of my quick trip to the library was to take a picture of the books I've read so far this year.  Problem is, most of them are in the "new books" section, so several are currently checked out.  I improvised by putting books of similar size in the stack backwards (binding toward the back).  

The other problem is that I took this picture Tuesday, and already it's out of date because I finished another book today which is not in the picture. So far this year I have read 19 books (I'm working on #20 now), alternating fiction-nonfiction-fiction-nonfiction, etc.  That amounts to a stack 23 1/2 inches tall (nearly 2 feet!  two-thirds of a yard stick!) and 5,269 pages.  

I read a book last year about a woman who read a book a day for an entire year.  I don't know how she managed to do that - apart from the fact that her kids went to public school, and she said she limited herself to shorter books.  Still, life happens and I would think it would be awfully hard not to miss a day here and there.  Most of the books I read are 250-350 pages.  I can't imagine limiting myself to shorter books.  I just pick the book that appeals to me most at the time and fits with what I need to read next (fiction or non-fiction).  I usually know the next 2-3 books I would like to read.  But I'm getting a backlog now and have at least 10 books in that line-up (and a good 30 of them on the shelf to read soon.)

This is the book that should be on the top of that stack - the one I finished today.  It was an interesting book (nonfiction) about a couple that decided to start up an organic farm that would supply everything you could need for your meals - including meat, veggies, fruit, maple syrup, eggs, milk, and even fresh flowers and meat products like lard and scrapple.  I thought it was interesting, and I connected with a lot of what they said, having grown up on a farm.

 Now I'm on to my next fiction book, which is another book club selection - this time for the daytime library club which I can only participate in via facebook. We're reading Peace Like a River by Leif Enger.  So far it looks like it's going to be a great book ... but I'm only on page 12, so don't hold me to that.

I got a little side-tracked when this arrived in our mail today. The Handbuilt Home is the book that has the building plans for the beds I want to make the boys - and it has so many other projects in it that I would love to make.  That was the problem.  I couldn't put it down ... thinking, planning.  I think the majority of these building plans will have to wait for warmer weather though!

 The other thing we've been working on is cleaning and prepping for the painting.  We were supposed to have painters here today, but it got moved to Monday.  I was scrubbing the entry way walls and baseboards and the four year old saw me, went to the kitchen and got a towel and came back and started rubbing the walls.

He worked very diligently.  It was sweet. :)

 The nine year old has been really enjoying his gear kit which I posted about earlier.  This project was called a Tennessee Time-Killer (or Time-Waster or something like that - I don't have the book on hand and he's already in bed ... or maybe I should say he's finally in bed!  It took him forever to get all his ski equipment rounded up, and I just noticed he forgot to grab the skis from the garage - lol.)

You wind it up and it spins back and gives kids a really good illustration of how gears work.

Okay, I'm off to bed.  This post turned much longer than I anticipated it would, and we've got a big ski race in the morning.