THOMASVILLE LIBRARY:

Our libraries are open! The all 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); genealogy by appointment; 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…

What is something that you have become curious about lately?

I, for one, have had my awareness increased of the plants and animals inhabiting our bioregion. What species of sparrow are those little, twitting birds fluttering around my chair outside the coffeeshop? How many different songs do they have in their repertoire? How is it that I have never noticed that all the “green trees” I adore so much are actually a collection of numerous different types? Are they native? How long does it take for each to reach those heights?

I guess you could say I have an increased curiosity in the world I inhabit and how I interact with said world. And I couldn’t be in a better place in which to explore my curiosity and inspire those to do the same. The library is ground zero for the curious, the inquisitive, the knowledge seekers, the explorers. We seek to breed such people; to plant the seed of curiosity in all those who enter.

No matter how large or small your interest is, recognize that you had the urge to be inquisitive and think about something beyond yourself.

Join us and enter into a state of curiosity.

— Samantha H

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 to 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:

In June 2017, Argentine art icon Marta Minujin created a to-scale Parthenon made of banned books, plastic wrap, and metal grills. However, instead of building it at the Acropolis in Athens, Minujin built it at a historic Nazi book burning site in central Germany. The “Banned Book Parthenon” consisted of 100,000 copies of 170 titles.

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

“To Raise a Boy,” by Emma Brown

“In the Quick,” by Kate Hope Day

“Abundance,” by Jakob Guanzon

“Good Eggs,” by Rebecca Hardiman

“Been There Prayed That,” by E. N. Joy

THOUGHTS

“Every manmade disaster begins when one man thinks for another. However benevolent they begin, the ultimate outcome is tyranny.” — John Kramer, Bythe

4 MINUTE STORY FROM OUR SHORT STORY DISPENSER

“America the Green”

By Sunny Lancaster

We drove south on York Road, passing the large brick house that always stole my attention. I peered past my mother’s arms and the steering wheel, to take another long, unblinking look. The exterior was almost completely hidden by overgrown trees and vines, also hiding acres and acres of unseen farmland. If someone didn’t know it was there, they would probably miss it the first twenty times they drove by. 

“What’s that on that house?” I asked. I was a nine-year-old, chubby cheeked girl with sloppy hair in a tight ponytail. Despite many repeated questions, I was still unable to hold back. 

“What do you mean?” spat my mother. Her eyebrows flexed downward and pointed at her nose.

“The glass thing on the side?” I half-asked back.

The brick house had a two-story greenhouse attached to the side of it, but it was empty.

Mom wouldn’t talk about it though. All I got out of her once was: “bad things happened there.” And when I asked about it again, she denied ever saying so much.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she told me, and “I never said that,” she lied, when I asked about what bad things could ever happen in a house so big and so different from what everyone else had. To my tiny brain, the glass walls made it feel magical, and an unknown part of me longed for it.

We drove down dark pavement. In the center was a bright, yellow double line with very few and far between breaks for passing. I was once told the original roads were built with logs, and that the hills were flat on top so the horses who pulled carriages had time to rest before climbing to another steep height.

From my window, the road cut straight through the landscape, past beautiful historic homes of rock, siding, or wood. There were giant fields belonging to old family farms, ones with silos and old abandoned barns, taken back by nature and weeds. We drove by stands of trees and private woods, down towards the city, but not quite. We never really went into the city, just the edges of it.

The powerlines hung on poles high above us, like a link to civilization or a rope to follow to find our way, both in and out.

Our town was small. It was a one stoplight town, and despite all of the side glances I got when I was little, at the time, it felt like home. I loved how the limbs hung over the cars, creating tunnels of vibrant, green leaves and strong, arm-like branches. I loved hiking by the Gunpowder or swimming in creeks and streams. I loved it all.

It wasn’t even on the map for the longest time, but that all changed after the 90s ended and housing development after housing development sprang up like Pop-Tarts from some kind of impossible toaster. What was once rolling grasslands of serenity and a patchwork of hues, a radiant aura of crisp autumn smells, and meticulous apple orchards, became giant, boxy homes on tiny plots, and hill after hill of orange dirt. They came like chicken pox: after one development marred the earth, two followed in tow. The dotted land looked cheapened, while men somewhere else lined their pockets.

Now, it’s on the map. It’s turned more outsider than insider. The farms are gone and the oak trees with them. 

And what of the brick behemoth with the two-story greenhouse? I never knew it then, but in the early 1990s it attracted its own, outside evil.

It wasn’t that late. I think nine, maybe ten at night. A man and woman, young, early 20s, knocked on the front door. They said their car broke down and needed a tow truck.

Without a second thought, at least not one we’ll ever know, the older couple let them in. 

The world was so different then, and new things were new for longer. The woman who lived there got the cordless phone from the base. With one hand on the plastic box and a gentle touch, she explained how to make a call on the machine, so the young lady would be able to use it with ease.

POP! The shot echoed throughout the room.

The young man gripped a small handgun. It’s not known what passed between him and the husband, only that the two invaders sped out of there, frantic, into the dark, moonless night.

The husband died there, on the carpet, gut shot.

A tremendous wave washed over the newly widowed woman.

Newspaper articles were short. No real descriptions were given of the couple who murdered the man for what appeared to be nothing, except that the woman wore a leather jacket and that they seemed normal enough, whatever that means.

The widow moved out of the county and settled close to the coast in a condo. Her son, a good lawyer in Baltimore, investigated the case that had killed his father, but in thirty years, it’s remained ice cold.

The town never really talked about what happened, at least not where my family circled. Though we were only ten minutes away, it might as well have been another state or another world. By the time I started watching the news or reading articles, the vast murders in Baltimore consumed the headlines. Many of those cases remain frozen as well, with murderers walking free all the time in Maryland, no skin off their backs.

Our tiny town saw bodies dumped in ditches and speeding teenagers impaled on poles. We saw pot growing farmers uncovered by helicopters and helicopters airlifting victims to hospitals, at least an hour’s drive in traffic.

I do know, when I was four, my mother threw out her leather jacket.

I also know America isn’t red, white, and blue; it’s green. And not green for the beautiful prairies and forests that once gave life and oxygen in abundance. No, the green isn’t a new, verdant, fresh start. The land isn’t young. This world belonged to many others before it became Americanized, by both force and invasion.

America is green, rather, from the bills, the Benjamins, and the great cash that continuously feeds the money machine. They said it was a robbery gone wrong, but we wonder, what about a robbery ever goes right? The machine starves and we feed it either with money or the blood of our neighbors.

The two-story greenhouse has a new life now. The overgrowth was cut back and the grounds are groomed. Some beautiful outsider, with a large supply of cash, bought it. And she feeds the machine from her very own Instagrammable paradise.