A is for Almost August! Amazing!

This year is flying by! I can hardly believe that it's almost August! Amazing!

It's also Annual Appeal time. Thank you to everyone who has kindly and generously donated. We appreciate every dollar. We quite literally could not survive without your donations. We must meet state staffing and collection standards in order to receive state aid, but less than a third of our needed funding comes from all the combined state and other government sources -- for the rest, we depend on donations, grants, fundraisers, etc.

I have panels ready for a new Story Stroll. It is Sunkissed with words by Elissa Kerr and illustrations by Zoe Saunders. My plan is to begin distributing pages to their locations on Monday, July 31. It will probably take a few days to have the entire story put in place. I wanted to have a new story posted in July, but the month has flown by! There will be one change in location this month. Due to the closing of the Little Italy Trattoria restaurant, the page that would have been located there will be at Successful Beginnings daycare at 145 Center Street

July was extra busy. Good things happened here.

• Our Friends of the Library sold ice cream at the Meyersdale Independence Day event.

• Our Summer Quest children's program has been meeting every Friday at 10 AM at the Paul Fuller Playground (or the Community Center gym in bad weather). July 28 features a visit to the fire department!

• Chopper, the mascot of the Johnstown Tomahawks hockey club, kicked off the first Summer Quest session.

• We finally received our new printer, funded by a grant from the Meyersdale Wind Farm Fund of the Community Foundation for the Alleghenies.

• With the new printer, we expanded our Got News?? newsletter.

• Heritage House Coal Yard donated numerous loads of mulch, which a trio of fine volunteers (who asked to be anonymous) used to beautify our corner of town!

• We've offered book-to-movie clubs for tweens and teens.

• Our book discussion group for adults enjoyed reading and discussing the book Girl Waits with Gun by Amy Stewart, and received copies of The End of Your Life Book Club to read for next month's discussion.

• Independent reading challenges for teens and adults have proceeded.

• We had a program about how to find health information, with a Center for Population Health presenter.

• The Area Agency on Aging presented a program about safety as we age.

• Another productive planning discussion for the 2024 Meyersdale150th Anniversary Celebration was held.

• LEGO club has been meeting every Wednesday at 4:30, and is going strong!

• The Way We Were Club has enjoyed identifying and organizing old photos from The New Republic.

• Volunteers continue to scan/digitize old photo negatives from The New Republic.

There are good things ahead in August:

• The final Summer Quest session and "picnic" will be held August 4 in the gym at the Community Center, sponsored by Somerset Trust.

• Our archivist Jen Hurl and Foy family historian Randall Frye are busy helping to plan a great off-site event. During the afternoon and evening on August 16, they will lead tours of the Olinger/Foy house at 125 Broadway Street, and share the fascinating history of this interesting home. The current owners, Vickie and Gene Brown, have graciously offered to host this fun event for the library on Wednesday, August 16, before the property changes hands. Freewill donations to the library will gratefully be accepted at the event. Watch our Facebook, Instagram, website, and the Got News?? newsletter for details.

• The Tween book-into-movie group will meet on August 9 at 2 PM to watch the movie The One and Only Ivan, after reading the book.

• The Teen book-into-movie offering will be The Maze Runner on August 16 at 2 PM

• The adult book discussion will be The End of Your Life Book Club by Will Schwabe.

• The Teen Reading challenge will have its pizza party at 6 pm on August 4.

• There will be another Meyersdale 150th Anniversary planning meeting on Monday, August 14 at 6 PM.

Of course, there are always new books and DVDs for you to check out! I hope we'll see you soon here at the library!