THOMASVILLE LIBRARY: 

Our libraries are open! The majority of our services have returned and are available to the public including: the Henry Flipper public meeting room; public use computers (with physical distancing respected); wifi free to all regardless of library account status or lack thereof; copying and scanning; and thousands of print and audio materials on hand for library patrons to borrow.  

Library hours are as follows: Monday-Friday from 9:30 a.m.-6 p.m. and Saturday from 9:30 a.m.-3:30 p.m. Our branch hours are: Monday=Thursday, 1:30-6 p.m. Curbside service is available upon request (call the library for more details).

A little food for thought…

“Extrapolating this into the realm of strangers, I worry that if we let our real-life interactions be corralled by our filter bubbles and branded identities, we are also running the risk of never being surprised, challenged or changed — never seeing anything outside of ourselves, including our own privilege. That’s not to say we have nothing to gain from those we have may things in common with (on paper). But if we don’t expand our attention outside of that sliver, we live in an “I-It” world where nothing has meaning outside of its value and relation to us.  And we are less prone to the encounters with those who turn us upside down and reorganize our universe — those who stand to change us significantly, should we allow it.”

— Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing

That is one of the monumental things about public libraries:  we are incubators in challenges of perception, the crossroad of every neighborhood, the vault of worldly knowledge. Not only do we welcome everyone, by definition, we do so in a Truly public setting; demanding nothing of you in order to enter, nor for you to stay; no purchase necessary and no need to pretend you plan on giving something back in order to be here. We strive to connect every member — strangers — of the communities in which we serve: young, old, struggling or stable, from the south or the north, etcetera. By doing so, we are working to open the minds of those who enter or use our services – we are introducing strangers (be it human, animal or book) that stand to change a person’s perspective and expand their attention outside of its value and relation to us. We are working to impart the fact of interdependence and necessity of learning further than what lies within one’s immediate world. We challenge everyone to rethink how they weigh the value of a space or being. We cultivate encounters with the unknown.

Friday, April 2: Noon

Enlightening Bites — A Community of Fire: Longleaf Pine and Red-cockaded Woodpeckers in the Red Hills

Grab a lunch and wander over to the Library for our monthly EB lecture featuring guest speaker Joe Burnam, wildlife biologist. The Red Hills Region of Southwest Georgia and North Florida contains some of the finest remnants of the longleaf pine ecosystem in the Southeast. Large, contiguous landholdings in the region managed for northern bobwhites have maintained excellent habitat for the endangered red-cockaded woodpecker and other important species. 

Mr. Burnam will discuss longleaf ecology and management from a cultural and ecological perspective, and how this management has been successful in maintaining an intact and diverse ecosystem, including the largest population of red-cockaded woodpeckers remaining on private lands.  

We are respecting needs for physical distancing — seating is limited, offered on a “first-on-arrival” basis. 

Thursdays, 10:30 a.m.

Toddlers & Tykes Story Time

Swing in for a fun story time hour with one of our cheerful Children’s staff!  We sing songs, recite rhymes and read a few delightful stories to tiny humans between the ages of 2 – 4 years.  All children must be accompanied by a caregiver.

Thursdays, 3:30 to 4:30 p.m.

Book Bike in Downtown

Find us out and about on Broad Street, Thursday afternoons (weather permitting).  We will be toting a small collection of new release adult, young adult and youth books available for borrowing!  We also willingly accept book returns, as well.  Look for the multi-color umbrella!

Tuesdays, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Friends of the Library Book Sale 

NewsBank Online!

Want access to thousands of local and national newspapers and sources for free? Check out our NewsBank database which gives you access to national and local newspapers from across the country, news magazines and more. Find it under “Using the Library” on our website.

Subscribe to our Podcast!

5 Questions From a Stranger is a monthly audio series that introduces you to a topic through the eyes of one with first-hand experience. This month, we sit down with Erika Wyatt and listen to her experience of immigration. If you are interested in sitting down with a stranger or would like to hear about a specific topic, contact us at marketing@tcpls.org.

Story Walk Thomasville

Grab a warm drink downtown and brave the chill for a refreshing nature stroll in Paradise Park!  Check out the newest story: The Kiosk by Anette Melece!

Our 2020-2021 Community Resources Directories are here!  Stop in anytime to grab your free copy full of useful and updated businesses and organizations to help you get what you need. These free directories are available thanks in part to Hurst Boiler.

A Little Bookish Fun Fact:

If you publish a book in Norway, the government will buy 1,000 copies.

If you publish a book in Norway and it passes quality control, the government will buy 1,000 copies. Furthermore, the government will buy 1,500 if it’s a children’s book and distribute them to libraries throughout the country.

Check us out online and on your phone!

Facebook – @ThomasCountyPublicLibrarySystem

Instagram – @tcpls

Website – www.tcpls.org 

YouTube – Thomas County Public Library System 

Podcast – Five Questions From a Stranger

GOOD READS

“The Bounty” by Janet Evanovich

“Danger in Numbers” by Heather Graham

“The Other Family” by Dean Koontz

“The Consequences of Fear” by Jacqueline Winspear

THOUGHTS

“Nature is painting for us, day after day, pictures of infinite beauty.”  — John Rushkin

3 MINUTE STORY FROM OUR SHORT STORY DISPENSER

“The Waiting”

By Kilmeny MacMichael

Near Paulo’s home, in the rich deep earth, dark eggs lay. They waited for decades, to be brought to hatch. When they hatched, they hatched death, or dismemberment, bursting forth with all the energy that lurked within.

These eggs were born in lands far away, and were placed by angry hands. Once, their placements were carefully plotted. Now those maps are long gone, that knowledge forgotten or unspoken in silent grudging vengeance. The eggs would wait a century to hatch if they must, as they slowly turned to rust.

In other lands, these eggs were known to elephants, who taught and rumbled warnings to keep away. Near Paulo’s home, all the elephants, matriarch keepers of memory, had long been killed or driven away.

The work of the eggs was seen in the town, in the bodies of those who had stumbled upon them, in the way that what had once been field now grew long, returning to bush. In this bush, cattle sometimes grazed and sometimes met an agonizing, slow, fate. So too did the antelope and the hyena, who did not have the memories of the expatriated elephant.

The poison of the eggs lurked behind the eyes of those who sat at the bar near Paulo’s home. They were men who would have grown sweet fruit from good earth but were now rendered purposeless and justified in their fear of their corrupted inheritance.

The eggs waited and lured. Early mornings their blood promises called out to Kasinda, spoke to the death which lay within her, as she waited for the last drunken man to leave the bar. She washed and combed the stink of the night out of her hair, when the music stopped, and the quiet dawn hugged the village. She sometimes asked her sisters to lock the door of their home, to lock her in, while they were away at school. The eggs pulled on her despair, but not yet, Kasinda told them, not yet. 

Paulo came to dance once a week. To see him dance was a wonder, and to dance with him was the closest to rapture Kasinda believed she would ever know.

He was different than the others who danced with her; he came to dance and nothing more. When he danced there was nothing more.

Each weekday morning, Paulo traveled to the old fields where the eggs lay, and donned armor. His workmates helped him cinch it tight so that it constricted his breath all the day long but perhaps would keep him safe, should he make a mistake. 

Progress came square meter by square meter, small white markers declaring safety, advancing across fields and years. He had the patience for it, the carefulness that others did not.

He walked among the eggs, swung the detector and marked where the eggs could be.

There were other ways of finding them — trained dogs, and rats, or special plants, to mark where the eggs waited. But always it came back to a person, probing and trenching the ground, setting explosives to unleash and kill the egg. Day after day, week on week, year on year. As long as the money to pay for it came, as long as one’s luck held. 

Paulo did not know if he would live to see all the land around his town clear, and the farms growing again. Children would be able to run free through the fields, a thing he had never done, if war did not return and the same mistakes not made again. 

He walked carefully, slowly, up and down, in the quiet of steady concentration, to the tick of the machine and the rustle of the grasses. Each foot he placed with slight trepidation. All day. Muscles humming in protest at their precision. Work, then sleep, then work again. All days but Saturday and Sunday.

Saturday nights, Paulo went to the bar and let his body expand, engulfed in the dance and the beat. His armor was protection, but it was no guarantee. What were the numbers? For every five thousand mines removed . . . one deminer killed? Paulo tried not to keep count and not to worry about getting closer. Anyways numbers and averages didn’t work that way, he was told. 

Saturday nights he tore off his armor, and he danced. He danced until there was nothing in his bones but the music and the thrum, every sinew popping with a glorious melody. He drew the songs into his lungs until he felt them crackle. 

And when Saturday slid to Sunday, when all that was tight in Paulo unwound, the woman Kasinda would seek him out and say to him, “Dance with me once more.”

On Sunday mornings they both rested, in exhaustion and repletion, unassailable, untroubled, for a moment immortal, while the eggs in darkness still slept.