Welcome everybody to Midday Magazine for this July 15th, 2024.
I have your host James J. Mailov here.
At 430 we're to welcome Peter and Lisa from Two Hearts LLC.
We're going to talk about their music benefit coming up.
Friend never forgot an honor flight.
Right now we have in the studio our great friend,
Catherine Eckhart, Library Director with our McMillan Memorial Library.
Catherine, it's good to see you.
I know, it's been too long James.
And Catherine, I appreciate it.
Yeah, thank you for playing along.
It's always great to talk with you.
Always great to talk McMillan.
Yes.
There's so many great things going on over there.
Let's dive right in.
Yes, oh my goodness.
We are, I mean, summers always are busiest time
because kids are out of school.
We want to help with that.
We've got summer reading for all ages
and we have a ton of cool programming happening.
Pretty much every day.
Yeah, looking forward to diving into that with you.
If you don't mind, I wanted to start off
with this buzz trip that you guys do on Fridays.
Yes, so this is such a cool partnership.
This is the second year of our collaboration
with the Mead Wildlife Area up north, a little ways.
So basically every Friday, patrons can sign up,
meet us at the library for a free bus trip
to the outdoor center and an activity out there
with the wonderful Mead staff.
How cool is this?
It's so cool.
I mean, it's such an amazing resource for us here
in Central Wisconsin, but sometimes getting out there
is hard, right?
It's a lot of gas, it's a lot of time.
So we want to take all the hassle out
and make it just a fun family event for everyone.
It's a great way to, like, really hitting two on two things
where you're getting kids in the libraries,
then you're getting kids out and outdoors
and really being able to interact with all of this
and pull it all together.
That's a very cool idea.
Well, and it's amazing the skills that people are coming away
with, my children's librarian learned basic archery
earlier in the summer.
I know, how fun.
Very cool.
So this Friday is lumberjack can.
And I got to say, how fun does that sound?
Oh, it sounds great.
I'm pretty sure they get to practice using the two-person saw.
That, oh, that is pretty neat.
I mean, it might be too hot to wear flannel,
but maybe you should just kind of dive into the whole vibe.
Most of us grew up with a bit of Paul Bunyan stories
and us and everything.
100%.
It's going to be a bit of a dream.
Yes, just missing a blue box.
That's all we're missing.
We got to find that blue box.
It's a fun one.
I know.
And this is something that you guys are in your second year?
Yes, yes.
So this is the second year we're working with the Mead.
And it's just been great.
Last year, we moved between Mead and Sand Hill,
but right now, Sand Hill doesn't have an educator.
So that's on hold for now.
But we've been really enjoying it.
I get to go on the 29th.
And we're going to learn about animal tracking, James.
Oh, that's awesome.
I know.
I'm wondering if there's going to be scat involved.
You might, yeah, probably.
You might not be alone on that trip.
I've always wanted to be able to do that.
Well, yeah.
Come on the bus.
Yeah.
I mean, we bring water.
You just bring yourself.
That's all you got to bring.
Yeah, that's fantastic.
I know.
And we'll tell you how you can find out more about this
and some of the great things that Catherine and I
are going to be talking about today.
Just a little bit, but that's a great one.
And if you're not everybody involved in that event,
it's a great team, team effort.
We like to remind parents and kids out there
about your summer reading program.
Yes.
So actually, James, we have summer reading programs
for all ages, including grown up.
Yes, that's true.
You got to track your reading.
It's a handy app.
You could win sweet prizes.
Yeah, I mean, are you prize motivated?
Yes, yes.
Very much.
You get badges.
You get prizes.
We've got programs for all ages.
And I know it's middle of summer, but don't worry.
There's still tons of time to participate.
Definitely.
And you know, it's been a weird kind of weather summer.
So I understand if you want to get kiddos out of the house,
come to the library, run around a little bit,
check out some books, bring some things home.
So you are a little less stork crazy.
I can't promise no stork crazy.
Yes, but hey, the library can take care of some of that.
A little bit, yeah.
And it's a great point to bring up
and I can piggyback off of, too, where over at the library,
they want to encourage you to stop by for any reason
or any point, really.
And that includes the AC.
Exactly.
Yeah.
I mean, you can practically cut the air
with a knife right now.
The humidity is just horrible.
But we'd love to see you at the library just
to take a breather from the oppressor bear, especially
if you don't have air conditioning.
It's something to keep in mind.
And you just never know.
You go in there maybe to cool off a little bit
and you're like, oh, I wonder if they have this book.
Exactly.
And go ahead and look, one of the other things
that I think we've sort of kind of normalized
with our libraries.
But it shouldn't be lost is if there's a book,
they can probably find it for you.
Oh, yeah.
All of our libraries are connected now.
So maybe it might not be here in rapids,
but it's at the Madison library or something like that
and they can get it to us.
Yeah, even if it's like a super esoteric book,
and it's only say at the Library of Congress in DC,
we can probably still get that for you.
Libraries love sharing.
So that's what we like to do.
It's a great thing to keep in mind.
And again, anything to get you to McMillan,
we appreciate it.
We appreciate the community coming
from supporting the library.
This summer reading program you mentioned for all ages.
It's something, as adults, we do this all the time.
Well, this is a great idea because it keeps kids in line
during the summer.
Oh, this keeps kids in line during the summer.
Well, who's watching us?
Who's keeping us in line?
That's exciting.
Do you know what?
I mean, 15 minutes of reading a day
is shown to have such great benefits.
I know it's easy to get distracted and you're just tired.
But 15 minutes reduces your stress, helps you sleep better,
you become a more empathetic human being.
I mean, who doesn't need all of those things?
It's a great point to bring up, Catherine,
especially considering more and more
we're learning more and more about dementia and Alzheimer's.
And so much of the research we're reading
is things that we can do in now, in the real time,
to prevent those things or to stave them off.
One of the major things they talk about is reading,
is keeping your brain active.
That's an exercise for your brain.
Yes, exactly.
Just like a walk is great for your body, reading a book,
listening to a book, magazine, whatever,
is good for your mind.
Yeah, and you just never know what fun adventures
might be waiting for you in that book.
I know.
Go ahead and dive right in.
Also wanted to get to the digital recreation area
you guys have.
Yes, we have so many amazing resources.
So these are all free and accessible
with your McMillan Library card.
So if, say you're interested in doing some family history,
we have an ancestry account that you can use.
If you're in maybe your air conditioning broke down
or you need a new washer and dryer,
we have access to consumer reports, a database
that you can kind of do that research.
All free at your library, just with your library card.
We have digital materials like books and audiobooks
that you can play on your phone, listen on your phone,
read on your computer, which I couldn't do,
read in the browser.
My dad does that all the time.
He loves it.
Yeah, I want to break from my screens.
But so all of those things, oh,
when we just started a new subscription service called Canopy,
basically it's like a Hulu or Netflix,
but free with your library card.
Oh, wow.
Yeah, that's great.
Tons of cool children's programming, especially,
and a lot of like read-along books.
But also, I know we've got a lot of like British murder
mystery fans.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
That's a huge, like they have a huge acorn collection.
Very cool.
Yeah, is that me?
I gotta check that out.
Yeah, you do.
So you just download the app and you need your card.
One of the things that I love about what McMillan does
is any topic we're talking about, there are layers to it.
And I love that because we could stop right there,
but I do want to encourage the audience,
especially to our senior members out there and everything.
If you are, if you would like to get involved more
into the tech world, and you would like to,
and I don't mean necessarily having a blog,
but maybe you want to get your own email account,
or you want to know how to get an email account.
You want to know how to check any of this or that,
or look into things.
The gang of McMillan wants to help you out
with those things.
Yeah, we help people all the time,
never feeling embarrassed about coming to the library.
I probably helped three people last week
set up email addresses.
I helped someone take a class that they needed to do
to get their license renewed through the DMV.
Much of our life is moving online,
and that's both good and bad, particularly
when we have the digital divide we see in rapids
and central Wisconsin in general.
The library is always happy to help you
kind of navigate those situations.
We all started it in this process,
kind of in the same light, the majority of us,
age-wise out there.
So all of us had these questions at one point,
and there is no bad questions,
especially when it comes to this.
And keep in mind, I'm in my 40s
and I still have to ask questions, everybody.
So you're not alone there either.
Well, often when I'm helping a patron,
I'm learning right along with them.
I mean, I just have that skill set
of finding those answers quickly
and then hopefully explaining in a helpful way.
That's really what I see my job is doing
is kind of filtering all of the information out there.
Both good and bad and providing it to our patrons
in a helpful, reasonable way.
Because I don't know how to use everything,
but I can try and figure it out
and usually I have a pretty good success rate.
So we just love to help our community members.
Yeah, and we want you to be a part of this going forward.
There's just so many wonderful things
about being able to have something as simple
as an email account.
And sometimes just having that email account
can help you get in, open the door for certain things
to just having the account.
You may never even use it,
but just having an email account can go far.
Many places you need an email to sign up
for resources these days, which is both frustrating
but also understandable because there's a cost savings there.
Yeah, yeah.
So find out more, ask your questions
toward the gang over at McMillan Library.
Yeah.
Also wanted to mention just a couple
of other things real quick, the four on the floor,
one of our favorite bands.
We love our friends over at four on the floor.
They are going to be performing Thursday, July 25th,
638 over at the Fine Arts Center.
Yeah, we're so lucky they come once a month
and just play their hearts out.
It's always a favorite night on Thursdays when they come.
So we love having the gang.
If you love music, come on down.
I know for my mom for many years that her,
some of her favorite nights were when they're alive music
in the theater, in the library.
And it's something that we guys love over there.
Yeah, we usually have live theater,
at least two, three, four times a month.
So also what's really fun in the theater
is our Monday movies.
Yes, yes.
So I know everybody is listening to us
right now in the afternoon, but at six o'clock,
come down to McMillan, watch a free movie.
Yeah, I mean, that sounds great.
Get out of the heat.
One of the things I wanted to mention about that too
is you're taking in a movie and getting a bit
of that movie theater experience.
Well, also that drive in theater experience
kind of feel to it.
It's so fun.
And again, you could be exposed to a movie maybe
when C, but hey, it's free.
And you can just, you can walk right out.
We, it's hard to hurt our feelings of the library.
You guys are pretty, you guys got pretty thick skin over there.
We're speaking with Library Director Catherine Elkhart
with McMillan Memorial Library right now.
And Catherine wanted to talk about,
I should mention journalistically, I have some,
this one's important to me, but Legos.
Yeah, I want to talk a little Legos with you.
And I mean, to make the conversation so serious,
but I take Lego building very serious.
You look like a Lego guy.
You look like you stepped on Legos in the middle of the night.
He's size 12 feet, man, I can't miss it.
I mean, no, we love Legos because it's just like
such a great time for kiddos to play
and do that kind of open build, creative,
imaginative world building.
That often doesn't really happen.
Either, you know, we're busy, they're scheduled,
but we're really, who doesn't like Legos?
Oh, yeah.
And you mentioned a couple of really good notes there,
Catherine, about kids these days,
and how much they, with video games,
they love the open world concept.
They love the building concept.
Minecraft is still almost as popular as it was
when it first came out.
Oh my gosh, yes.
So this is just that in reality.
Exactly.
I mean, I think that's a really smart way
to kind of navigate that.
Video games get a bad rap,
but hopefully we are growing a lot of computer engineers
and structural engineers through these programs.
But again, if your kiddo is little,
start with the building blocks.
Yeah, yeah.
Tuesday, tomorrow, Tuesday, July 16th,
from one to two at my millen libraries,
all purpose room, enjoy them for their Lego free build.
Yes.
I love Lego.
You mentioned something there too,
about a spark that it could create.
Everything we talk about with the library,
it could involve that spark.
You just don't know what's going to happen
to where a kid is going to see something
and be like, oh, what's this?
And that fire begins to burn in their brain
and their heart for it to share it, chase down this passion.
Yeah, I love that so much.
I mean, there's not a lot of places right now
in the world where people can just kind of exist,
but also be weird.
And like follow those weird things that they're interested in
with no consequences, right?
Like you can get super invested in dinosaurs, for example.
Check out all of those books.
And then maybe one day you grow up to be a firefighter.
Or you grow up to be like, you know,
one of those amazing paleons.
It's just, there's a lot of different things.
You never know.
You don't know.
And that's what's so wonderful about the library
is everything is right around the corner there.
And there's no downside to this.
They experience it.
Maybe that spark doesn't happen.
Well, they still had fun.
They enjoyed themselves to get out of the house, did some things.
Exactly.
It's a win-win kind of situation.
Enjoying them for their Lego free build tomorrow,
one to two over at Macmillan Library's All Purpose Room.
Again, that's Tuesday, July 16th.
You guys are going to be in our stomping grounds here
in a little bit.
The library's going to the zoo.
I know how fun it is.
That's cool.
That's awesome.
We love working with our friends at Parks and Rack.
So this summer, we are going to the zoo a couple of times.
Next time is the 23rd.
That's next Tuesday from one to two.
And basically, we bring the fun in the games.
The zoo has the animals.
And everybody has an amazing time.
It's a win-win.
I mean, that is the definition of a win-win.
Is a library and zoo joining forces?
Have you seen the Prairie dog exhibit yet?
No, I haven't gotten to.
Oh my gosh.
I'm really excited about it.
They are crafty.
Last year, I was able to check out the kangaroo zoo
and that first blow up and everything.
And that's been a lot of fun.
That's super cool.
I'll shout out to all those workers and everybody over there
at the library doing such great work at the library.
You got a great team over there, too.
Yeah, I mean, we're really lucky.
And yeah, thanks to everybody at Parks and Rack
for working with us.
What kind of activities?
What kind of things will you be doing at the zoo?
We have lots of outdoor games.
I think we'll bring some crafts.
I think a bubble machine will be in the box.
Nice.
Nice.
So what else could you possibly want?
Yeah.
On a Tuesday afternoon.
You've got everything you could need over there.
It's going to be a blast.
Bubbles, kangaroos.
Yeah.
Need something more.
I mean, really, actually, that could be the name
of the event.
And that would be fine.
You're going to bring a droves of people over there.
I mean, yeah.
Next year, that's how we're going to market.
My feet.
My feet.
That would be a good idea.
We love these combinations of things that support our nonprofits
like our library, our zoo, taking both these events
and taking all the events going on at both of these locations.
We appreciate seeing those things.
I have a long time mentioned on the air here how important I think
our libraries are no matter where you're listening to this.
And I have also admitted that I am a little biased and that I grew up in a
reading family with my mother and sister being very adamant about reading.
One of the biggest, one of the earlier conversations about reading
I had with my mom was about a, this is back in Chicago where we grew up,
was about a book being banned.
And I remember the book being banned.
And I remember it was like a week and it was back.
It wasn't a long conversation or anything.
But I do remember coming up and how important it was to my mother
that that book stayed in the library.
And it's something that we kind of felt like, well,
we're not going to see that again.
Unfortunately, we have this back in our society.
And I'm speaking for myself here, but I believe speaking with the power
of a lot of this community, if not the majority of this community,
when it comes to we are not okay with this.
And we are not supporters of banned books.
We support the band around here.
And that's important to us.
And it's important to you all over there.
And of all the things we've talked about today, Catherine,
I think that this is the one that stands out to me so much
and I'm so proud of all of you for getting in doing.
Thank you, James.
This is something I'm really passionate about.
I've spoken on the importance of the freedom to read for years.
I've done, I just think that this is something that's really complicated
in today's society.
We've, the number of banned or challenged books has quadrupled, I believe.
And in certain areas, there are really scary situations
about whole collections being removed, librarians being fired,
we're still at libraries being closed to their communities.
And I think what's so wonderful and unique about libraries
is there's something for everyone.
But that means you'll find things that you don't like as well.
And that's okay.
We need to kind of expand our tolerance for viewpoints that are not our own.
And I started the banned book club because I want to have really
interesting conversations about these works.
And so please, I hope everyone comes and joins us.
I have a meeting in coming up, but that's like next week.
So I'm not going to.
But August, we're reading a classic, one of my all-time favorite books,
The Handmaids 2.
Yeah, it's an important one.
A very well written book.
Very well written.
I think it's a work that you can kind of return to different points in your life
and really come away with.
I was a precocious teen, but I did not really understand the book
when I read it as like a 17-year-old.
You know, because it's just, yeah.
But when I came back to it in college, it blew my mind.
There's another important reason of why we don't ban these books completely.
Exactly.
What might have been, oh, when I'm 16, reading Old Yeller or Uncle Tom's Cabin
or something like that, I may have felt this way.
But as an adult, I've had time to learn and grow.
And okay, now this book hits differently.
Exactly.
And the idea, and I'm sorry to take it this route, but I can't help myself.
The idea of them being, there is one America, but there are different visions
of America throughout all of us.
All of us experience America differently.
Yes.
Oftentimes you will hear romanticized the 40s and 50s.
You don't hear romanticized by ethnic people.
No.
You don't hear romanticized by women.
Nope.
To America's.
Yeah.
These are examples of this.
Yeah.
And it's important, so vitally important, something you touched on earlier.
That I read books that give me not only some some relateability, but also some insight into that.
I don't know what it was like for white America in this time and age in that.
And vice versa.
For white America to read books like this and to find out more and more what it's like to be a woman,
what it's like to be a network person.
Having some more understanding of these things.
You want to know how we defeat hate knowledge.
Yes.
That's how.
And we can't do that if we ban these books.
I know.
We should just talk about this the whole time next time.
We should.
Books are windows and mirrors basically for people.
You can read to kind of learn about yourself or you can read to kind of see through someone else's window.
Yeah.
Their experiences.
And those are both so important.
We need representation of everybody in our libraries.
So we can kind of really get to know our community that exists right now.
So I hope everyone comes to join us.
Band books.
It's going to be August 17th from 330 to 430.
And the book is available at the library.
We will meet you there.
And again, a big tip of the hat to you and your team over there.
Thank you.
One of the wrap up at the Red Cross Blood Drive happening this Friday, July 19th from 10 to 3 at your all purpose room.
We love.
We love the Red Cross.
We usually have a blood drive around once a month.
Please.
Use our parking.
Use our air conditioning and give blood.
It's so important.
Yeah.
For those that didn't hear over the 4th of July weekend, the Red Cross was hit really hard.
A lot of the reserves were taken.
We need to resupply those.
You can be a hero without the cape or the bat tragic backstory or tights.
You can be a hero.
You don't have to be a superhero.
You can be a hero just by doing this.
It's a lot easier.
And that's that cape gets in the way.
It's too hot to wear tights.
Too hot.
It's too hot.
Be a hero this way.
It's a lot easier.
Okay.
Kathleen, thank you so much for joining us.
Thanks for having me.
Find out more at MillenLibrary.org.
MillenLibrary.org.
And be sure to follow them on social media and share their posts.
Keep up to date and support your library, everybody.
Thank you for the time, Kathleen.
Thanks.
We'll have more Midday Magazine coming up for you right here on 97-5 FM.
13-20 AM WFHR, locally grown radio.
