Latest / Arizona Unscripted / Episode 4: 🌵 Arizona Unscripted - The Library Adventure: Lake Havasu’s Hidden Gem
Transcript
- Arizona Unscripted: Welcome to Arizona Inscription, the show all about Arizona, the people, the places, the food, the fun, and the stories that make the Grand Canyon State unlike anywhere else in the world. I'm Bart, joined by my my co-host Diane. Hello. Other co-host. Hey Diane. Yes, good to have you, Diane. We're also joined by by other co-hosts. Jim. Hey Jim. How you doing? Good to be here. Good to see you, man. And Katherine, our and our new co-host, Catherine coming in from hobby. Hi everybody. ⁓ Hey Katherine. How are you, Jim? How are we doing today? We're doing good. I heard it was kind of windy though in certain places. Is that correct? Is that my true is that correct? Yeah, it's like living in a jet airline or here. Awesome. I mean, that's what I heard. Gotta make wind power. Yes. It'd be nice. It would be nice. Today we we you know, Catherine's joining us today because she has some an excellent thing. We talked about last time a bit. We touched on libraries. ⁓ and this, you know, rising economic cost of living stuff going on. We thought it'd be good to get together and talk all about libraries and and all the f the free resources they have for the community out there, communities in general. ⁓ and I, after our little pre-discussion before the show, I was shocked by all the things that libraries do. So I am I'm I'm anxious to learn about ⁓ is it Lake Lake Havasu, Katherine? Yeah, I'm what I'm gonna talk about is the Lake Havasu City Library, which is part of the Mojave County Library system. ⁓ if ⁓ if we talk about libraries again sometime, I would like to do some research and see what the other libraries in Mojave County offer. But I went by my library last week. I I'm a big big library user. I go to the library probably three to four times a week. Wow. And well, I'm either checking books out or returning books or, you know, I check out probably eight or nine books at a time and see see what's interesting to me. I don't read them all, but I check them out. But anyway, I picked up this May youth events ⁓ sheet of all the activities and I was really surprised to see how many activities are available for ⁓ families at the library and every single one of them is free. So that is really the wonderful part of it. All you gotta do is sign up. There's things like they have preschool playtime ages ⁓ preschool is two to five but they have baby they have a baby jamboree every Tuesday from zero to twenty-four months. And they go in there, they have the ⁓ a separate room where they have the the parents and the babies. I want to say moms, but it could be dads too, or even grandparents at this stage of the game. But to think of a place that you can bring your child for ⁓ two hours and just and it's free, you can interact with other parents, your kid gets to interact with. kids their own age. I just think it's a fabulous ⁓ thing for the community that maybe not everybody knows about. But libraries have there's programs every single day from, like I said, ages zero all the way up to they have lots of programs for adults as well. And they're all free. There's a lot of after school stuff. ⁓ Thursday and Friday they've got Teen trivia after school. They've got teen crafts. They've got ⁓ something called Lego League, which is age 12 and under. So I'm not a parent, so I don't know what a lot of that stuff is. But if I were a parent and in these kind of tough economic times when you're crunched to take your kids to someplace where you have to spend money. I think it's wonderful to know that our Mojave County libraries offer free programs every single day of the week for both kids and adults. That's awesome. And it's it's probably a little cooler inside the library, I imagine. Much, much unless windy. Yeah. Out here, you notice the difference as soon as you walk into a building from outside. It's just you get this blast of cold air. ⁓ but then you're inside for 10 minutes and Then it starts feeling odd. Yeah. We we talked about less of the offer, you know, f free internet for you know available for there. Yes, yes. They have free internet that anybody can use. ⁓ it's to me, there's there's also a lot of local periodicals and magazines that are just sitting there for anybody to borrow. You don't even have to check them out as long as you keep them in the library. ⁓ I just I'm a big proponent of the library. Yeah, no, we should have them on. We have we should have them come on and talk about some of their programs, their upcoming programs, what their, you know, their plans are to kind of get a get a sense from even more in depth. Let's do that for sure. Yeah, I would love to hear from libraries across Arizona. How cool would that be? Let's do it. Let's bring them on. Do a let's let's do a PSA for them. Bring them on. Let's talk about their programs. ⁓ I wonder what in Lake Havasu library, is there anything special that's that struck you as being something so unique you didn't even realize it? Catherine. Well, I really didn't realize that they have a baby ⁓ activity. I I just so I never have been there at that time. I've never been gone back to that room where they have all these babies. I think maybe I've avoided it. But I I was I knew that they had programs for like after school programs for kids, but they have so much for ⁓ infants and toddlers. And preschool. There's just tons and tons of programs. Wow. You know, when so I did foster care for a lot of years. And when we had our little one that was under two, we would go there and they would have like cookie decorating while they did story time. And I'm all about the cookies ⁓ and the story time. ⁓ and it was wonderful. So it's a really great place to hook up with other people, yeah, that have similar interests. Yes, they've got story time and baby playtime for part as part of the baby jamboree every Tuesday. So I just I think it's great for parents who need something fun to do with their kids that's free. Check out the library. And I think last week somebody mentioned how they have the craft area. That you can go and do crafts and they've got all of the machines and everything and the supplies. That is so cool. Yeah, there's this one event that's it's called Teen Craft Slime. I think slime is something that teenagers are into these days. I love slime. So, and then they have teen book club, they got teen trivia, the graphic novel club, teen game board, and DIY crafts. And yes, they have all the supplies for all those craft activities. They provide that. That's awesome. I think that's like a great team building thing. We could just go do that at the library. Yeah, I just did a quick check too. They they're doing a a First Friday coloring. It's for adult. It's a social time. Adult coloring coloring is a deal. It quilts quilting things. Although quilting sounds a little bit like, you know, that's good for winter, I guess. And that's maybe not maybe not. Quilt is a wonderful wonderful art to art thing. Well it's it's good for summer here because it's so hot outside. Well true, they can come in and they could quilt and have those. Yeah, yeah. So those type the indoor activities are that are free ⁓ are a valuable commodity here in the desert in the summertime. Yeah, I think that's awesome. Jim, is there a so where you're at? Is it is there local library somewhere near you? ⁓ yeah, we have one. ⁓ it's all it's pretty new. They've just built it not a a few years ago. I know there's a men's group that goes out bowling. Maybe y'all can find some bowling books at the library. They got a women's wellness yoga chair yoga in our library here. I need to do that. Every couple of weeks or yes. Tuesdays and Maybe Friday, something like that. Yeah, note to self. So at no, this was April. See, we had the the 250th an ⁓ anniversary of our country, we had the traveling museum ⁓ go to a lot of the libraries in Arizona. And apparently all many cities requested to be part of that. And for Mojave County, they chose Lake Cabasu City. And they had a big event on April 11th where we had the Liberty Bell. And as a matter of fact, I just received a letter from them today thanking me for my help with that, which is kind of funny because I volunteered, but they never called me back. So but you're welcome. But ⁓ yeah, so they're participating in things on a national level as well as just local. I'm gonna I'm gonna give them the shout out to that. It's Mojave County Library dot us. Lake Havasu City branch. Lake Havasu City branch. Yeah, Lake, yeah, hyphen, Havasu, Hyphen City, Hyphen Branch. And I think we have one in Kingman, one in Bullhead. There's the I think there's one in Colorado City. There's libraries in lots of little towns. I just on the Citizens Advisory Committee, we have our meetings at different libraries. So ⁓ in January I went to the library in Dolan Springs, which was a one Room building. ⁓ I didn't even know they had a library there. And then in in ⁓ last month I went to the library our meeting in Meadview. ⁓ wow. You talk about rural. Wow, that's rural. Yeah. It took me it was a two and a half hour drive for me to get up there. But ⁓ did you know that in Meadview they have the largest Joshua tree forest in the world? It's amazing. Y'all gotta get out there and see it because it's absolutely amazing. And their library was actually a little bit more of a normal size. But ⁓ yeah, it's kind of fun being on that ⁓ committee because I get to go to all the different libraries. Jim, I went to the Bullhead City Library a few months ago when I was up there and it's really big. That's a nice library. It's brand new too. Huge that's awesome. I got I'm gonna make my way there for chair yoga. Yeah, there you go. Yeah. That sounds good. Looks looks like they've got they got a just dance too. I don't know what that's all about, but it probably Dance. Something to do in the summertime. When it's we could all go and learn how to dance. Well, I don't I I think when they say just dance, they're not gonna teach you. They want you to just dance. Okay, well that's okay too. And I've been doing like a little I did a little quick in the background here checking on this library. There's like jobs and career stuff going on. There's a whole list. If you look at if you go on the website, including like book ⁓ ebooks, even have ebooks, audiobooks. ⁓ my gosh. And there's and you've even got resources for popular websites the library recommends. I mean gosh, I I am ⁓ I'm I tell you repeating. And in Bingman has a chess club. At the library? At the library. Chess club for kids. So what's cool, it's I mean, from it sounds like every little town in Mojave County does what their community wants at their library, which is so cool. You know, do what you the people aren't asking for. I see in Bullhead City they have a teen center, Jim, and they're open every day of the week from nine to six. So what a well, no, they're closed on Sunday. I correct myself. But what a great place for your teens to hang out where they're less likely to get into certain kinds of trouble, probably. That's awesome. Nice safe environment, they say they got something called the manga club, whatever that is. That's that's a graphic novel. Manga is a graphic novel. And actually that series, is one of the books that was recently banned by our board of supervisors. One of the donated books was part of that series. So ⁓ for some reason ⁓ our board of supervisors was not crazy about that. Not a shining moment for Mojave County. No. No. No. So you know what? The community showed up and said, No, we don't want book bands. And that was really beautiful to see. Actually, I did a survey of ⁓ people, many of my friends, but other people ⁓ at different meetings that I have been to. And I was the only one on the board who had actually ⁓ on the committee, we're not a board, that had done some research. But ⁓ one of the questions that I asked was You know, do you think elected officials should be in charge of determining which books go on the shelf? And my response to that was ninety-nine percent said no. There was one person who said yes that was okay because you could just vote them out of office. However, here in Mojave County, a lot of offices go uncontested. Yep. So I don't think that's really a valid argument. for saying it's okay for elected officials to ban books because it's not always as easy as you might think to vote them out of office. A hundred percent. Well, I would love to see us on a future podcast invite some of our friends from across Arizona to talk about what's going on in their libraries. Cause as the temperatures heat up, we need ⁓ good places to go. And as the economy gets more and more expensive, that's a great opportunity. Mm-hmm. So we have homework. Gotta go out and check out with those libraries and trying to bring some like bring ⁓ on the podcast, talk about 'cause you know I I you can just I know I've talked to our local library and they have so much passion about it that they really get into things and they get into more depth even and talk about and then they like feedback. How was that crafting? How is that crafting? Is that good? What should we do differently? So they really want to feedback, they want to get engaged with the community because that's their whole world engaging the community, helping the community out. So let's just promote ⁓ for sure. Wonderful. Well, thank you all for being here today. Yeah. Thank you. Another podcast Thank you, Catherine. Thank you, Catherine. Really appreciate it. All right. Everybody have a great rest of your week and we will see you at the next Arizona Unscripted Podcast. Thanks so much. Take care.