Keeber's Kolumn

Library News, by David W. Keeber
Red Rock News
Date: July 27, 2007

He’s here! After much ballyhoo and waiting, the final volume of the Harry Potter series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling is here. There has been endles speculation about its outcome, about the quality of the writing, and on and on and on. With so much media attention about what is ostensibly a children’s book, its may be hard to remember that readers of all ages actually do love the books. What is it about this series of tales depicting a young boy wizard growing up and battling evil that has so captured the imagination and hearts of people? I have some suspicions, at least as far as this culture goes. Allow me…

If one goes back to Joseph Campbell and his book The Hero with a Thousand Faces, as well as his fascinating video interviews conducted by Bill Moyers, our culture is bereft of myths. For many reasons that would take more than this column to list, we have tended to see them as artifacts of less advanced societies and in so doing we have abandoned them. But, the myths and stories told around the fire served important functions in all societies that created them. They explained how the universe worked and the role each person had to play in that mystery. They offered instructions as to the manner in which to live and the choices each person faces in life. They were guides to life, essentially.

That our culture has abandoned them has lead, in the opinions of greater minds than mine, to many problems in our society - crime, the dissolution of the family, eternally adolescent behaviors, lack of responsibility and more. The Harry Potter series are, for all intents and purposes, myths similar to those told around the campfires of ages past. The stories tell of mysterious forces in conflict in the world and the need by the young protagonists to choose what path they will take as they face that uncertain world.

What has been most rewarding for many of the youngest readers is they can easily identify with the characters, allowing the reader to see him- or herself faced with the same choices between good and evil. Certainly, the spectacle of wizards, magic and sharply defined darkness and light have allowed the series to be more than morality tales. They are rollicking fun and exciting, to boot! But, in the main, they are one of the few guides about the decisions we all make in life for children from all walks of life, for a wide array of beliefs to envision themselves within.

Certainly, some will say that books like the Bible and other religious books do the same thing. Some churches feel that to read these tales is bad for young minds for their being about witches, wizards and magic. But, there are few stories in any of the variety of faith texts that I have read that so fully flesh out the characters in their pages. There are few stories with which children can so easily identify. There are few stories that are so much fun to read.

For many readers, young and old alike, there is an easy sense of personal identification with the challenges and choices Harry Potter, Ron Weasley, and Hermione Granger must face. That all of them are pouting teenagers only makes them more realistic to the teens who read the books. Their distrust of the adult world and their fears of what the wide world holds for them are no different than the distrust and fear that all children address as they grow up.

For many, the television has replaced the campfire as the focal point of family evenings. The many questionable messages told at that “campfire” have done much to confuse and alienate our children. There is no consistent, positive message at that fire that guides our children as they grow. In fact, the skill of telling the stories that guide us has been all but lost.

The Harry Potter series offers its readers of all ages with well drawn moral choices, made both correctly and incorrectly by the actors, but easily recognized as such. The Potter stories capture the imaginations of readers just as those fireside tales did in ages past and their resolution is such that readers can clearly find a higher sense of purpose for the characters and themselves. There should be, in my opinion, more stories of a similar nature to guide us all. Whether the stories come from the popular press, from religious corners or, (and wouldn’t this be nice) from one’s elders around a campfire under a night’s starry sky, those lessons are needed and sought.

Keeber's Kolumn

Library News, by David W. Keeber
Red Rock News
Date: July 20, 2007

One of the most common images of summer is the man of the house dressed in an apron with something like “Kiss the Chef” emblazoned on the front, standing next to a barbeque grill belching smoke is if it were fogging for mosquitoes. As the charred meal comes off the grill, the man basks in everyone’s adulation and the wife, who shopped for everything, prepared everything, and will clean up everything sits quietly by, biting her tongue.

We can only hope that the scene, while probably not too different from the one described, would not include “charred meat,” but rather, the food would be more than just meat, and it would be done to perfection, healthy and eagerly anticipated. That sort of result doesn’t happen by accident, though. This is where the Sedona Public Library can help. Searching our catalog for books on “barbeque” will reveal more than one hundred in the Yavapai Library Network and almost 20 within the walls of this Library. These range from the basic how-to books, to tomes on how to build a backyard barbeque to last the ages. Heck, there is even a sewing book that tells you how to sew a cover for your grill!

Personally, I have one barbeque cookbook that serves as my standard text. Steve Raichlen wrote How to Grill. It contains basic recipes for meat, chicken, pork, fish, vegetables and lots of inventive and tasty rubs to apply. More than anything, it teaches the basics of grilling to ensure that you get the work of actually cooking the food done right. It is only after that when you need to learn fancier recipes.

For those fancier recipes, try Taming the Flame: Secrets for Hot-and-QuickGrilling and Low-and-Slow BBQ, by Elizabeth Karmel. One thing that appeals about this title is how Karmel quite easily pushes past the “glass ceiling” that seems to keep the barbeque domain a strictly male environment. She even sports a button calling her the “BBQ Queen!” She does teach the basics, but also has dishes that might more naturally come from the pages of “Gourmet” magazine. This is almost a Joy of Cooking for the barbeque and presents women as a fait accompli at the barbeque.

Some cookbooks we offer are type specific such as the Chicken on the Grill, by Cheryl and Bill Jamison, or The Great Big Burger Book, by Jane Murphy and Liz Yeh Singh (two women, I might point out!). If you have a hankering for a certain type of meat, but have run out of new ideas, these books offer some simple or complex new ideas that will turn heads and build your reputation as a Grill Master.

There are concerns about whether or not grilling is the healthiest form of cooking. It should be understood that anything cooked to a cinder has the potential to be unhealthy, but there are good cookbooks that provide healthy recipes for your summer fare. Bobby Flay’s Grilling for Life offers 75 healthier ideas for big flavor from the fire. His is not the only title that addresses healthier grilling, so you need not think that only the most tasteless foods could be cooked on the grill and still be good for you.

We should recognize that cooking on the grill is just the most obvious part of a general lifestyle that involves good food, outdoor activities and, quite often, friends and socializing. If you see your grill as the centerpiece of a larger set of activities, consider some of the many titles that provide instructions for building a grill in your backyard or even how to construct an entire patio area that serves as your summer, outdoor living room. There are many such titles throughout the Network and any book that is located at another library in the county can be placed on hold and set to either the main Library in west Sedona or the Village Service Center on Cortez Drive in the Village of Oak Creek.

Once you spend a bit of time with any of these great cookbooks, hopefully you won’t end up being the butt of a comment like the one my mother used to say whenever Dad brought in another sacrificial “something” off the grill. “Oh, he treats me like a Greek god. I get burnt offerings every day!” Visit the Sedona Public Library for books on grilling and let your prowess at the grill stand you in good stead.

Keeber's Kolumn

Library News, by David W. Keeber
Red Rock News
Date: July 13, 2007

We love them and we hate them. Like mice caught in cages left in the sun, we gasp for their arrival and then hang on tenter hooks as they loom larger and larger. Summer monsoons have arrived and while we are thankful for the cooler temperatures, the shade the clouds afford and the moisture, we also rue the lightening that causes fires in our forests.

It really cannot be denied, though. There is a real thrill each day as we look outside in the morning to see if the cloud cover has remained from the afternoon before (usually, it hasn’t). The first sign of the buildup of the massive moisture heads offers promise of an afternoon of spectacular views. The thunderheads rear their heads as the airflow from the south forces what moisture it carries to condense when it is forced up and over the rim country.

If we would abandon our hectic pace for just one day and instead spend the time watching the lifecycles of these majestic clouds, we might well be able to put our small worries into a worthwhile perspective. Like elder day gods slowly standing up to reveal themselves before us, we are amazed at the forces within the brilliant white masses overhead. Great billows form and sweep ever higher, reaching their maximum height and then spreading across the “ceiling” with which they collide.

Then, what was initially white and fluffy, turns darker, more ominous, rapidly showing the real intent of this old god – to bear down on the world below and sweep before its sheeting rains all that needs to be cleared away.

Yet, even though we recognize that there is real danger in the downpour, if it happens “over there” and not where we are, we feel a pang of loss – “But, we need the rain over here!”

When the thunderclouds do station themselves above us and deliver their double-edged gift, business as usual stops. We marvel at the flinty smell of the initial drops. We revel in the coolness of the cloud cover and the coldness of the rain itself. As the leading edge of the rain wall sweeps towards us, we watch with a perverse pleasure, almost as if a tsunami were rushing towards us, at once struck by both the beauty and the destructiveness within the wall of water.

Some of us rush out in the downpour like reawakened children to absorb that which we have hungered for. Others find a comfortable place to sit and watch as the world darkens and all of nature suddenly turns its mouth upwards to drink, to gorge upon this true manna.

The rain often can become frightening in its intensity and destructiveness. We watch in horror as streets and driveways fill to overflowing and gardens that represent hours of sweat equity are swept away. Gullies and washes fill fast, rocks rolling downstream before the water’s force clash together, surprising us that their sound rises above the rain, the thunder and the wind. It would be no place to be caught unawares. If you didn’t drown, you would be pummeled to death by the bones of the earth crashing into you.

Finally, the deluge lessens and we again feel mixed emotions – happy to have the great scouring come to an end, and sad to remember that the respite from the heat and sun is nearly over. We venture out to survey the damage, ruing the work of mopping up and resetting our landscaping. Yet, we are thankful for the much needed water, the blessed coolness, the cleansed feeling that comes after the storm. But, the mixed emotions return as we scan the horizon and see the small columns of grey smoke begin to rise and build, signaling that the storm has also left its mark, not by water, but by fire.

We love the monsoons and we hate them. If you would like to better understand what is happening overhead in these storms, why not pick up a book from the Library that does just that? A quick search of the online catalog using the term “weather” produces more than 1300 titles, Network-wide, and more than 154 when you search this library only. Some are novels, some are even cookbooks, but there are a large number of titles that offer explanations of the weather in layman’s terms, that once grasped, offer a satisfying understanding of the forces at work, the cloud types, and much more. Pick one up today, before monsoon season is over.

Library News, by David W. Keeber

Sedona Public Library

July 6, 2007

Happy July 4^th week! Whew, it is HOT! Heck of a way to celebrate the birth of nation – go to ground and hunker down in the shade! But, if you find that it’s too hot to do much other than hide out, you might consider exploring a new genre of literature – graphic novels. Sedona Public Library, as well as the rest of the Yavapai Library Network, has a good size, and growing, collection of this “new” form of storytelling. There is plenty there to sink your teeth into with styles, storylines and genres within the overall genre bound to interest you.

“Aren’t graphic novels just comic books,” you might ask? To some degree, the answer is yes, but also no. Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, offers this description of the genre: “A graphic novel is a type of comic book, usually with a lengthy and complex storyline similar to those of novels, and often aimed at mature audiences. The term also encompasses comic short story anthologies, and in some cases bound collections of previously published comic-book series.”

Essentially, the major difference is the length and complexity of the storyline, as well as the “mature” nature. But, there are plenty of graphic novels that don’t have content considered to be mature.

One aspect of reading is the opportunity to allow your imagination to run off with the story, giving you, the reader, a large role in how the story “shows” on the screen of your mind. With graphic novels, much of the imagery is taken care of for you and therefore it is a much more active relationship between the author/artist and the reader, compared to that of the print only page.

Some readers may recall from their youth the comics called “Classics Illustrated,” great literature that was reduced to comic form. They may also recall Will Eisner, a comic artist who took a very pragmatic approach to getting people to better understand the genre of comics as storytelling. This often is the biggest hurdle - seeing the graphic novel as a “real” form of literature. After having read Donald Duck and Batman comics in our youth, many of us don’t take this material seriously.

One great way to better understand this fascinating form of literature is to read Scott McCloud’s book, Understanding Comics, available through the catalog from many libraries in the Network. He provides a wonderful discussion on the way the art form can so effectively tell a story through the use of light, dark, drawing style, the way the different panels are laid out on a page, and much more. After reading this book, of course presented in a graphic format, you will have a much greater appreciation of the genre. I strongly recommend it.

So what sort of graphic novels are there? “Classics Illustrated” books still exist and they cover all sorts of things, such Alexandre Dumas’ The Count of Monte Cristo or William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. For something lighter, try French author Herge’ and his The Adventures of Tin Tin. But, those recommendations are still basically comics in their form and storytelling style.

The wider popularity of the genre was kick started by Art Spiegelman with his book Maus. This story took the reader into the horrors of the Nazi concentration camps that his parents survived and the long term affects the experience had on his family. It was a huge success and a challenging read. More recently, he wrote, In the Shadow of No Towers, about the aftermath and effect of the attacks on the Twin Towers .

There are many contemporary authors who have had their work translated into this form such as fantasy writer Neil Gaiman and his Sandman series. Famed graphic novelist Osamu Tesuka has written a six volume, soon to be eight volume set entitled Budda, about the life of Siddhartha Gautama and the people around him. He wanders between a period relevant story and odd additions of modern

There are titles for teens in the Japanese style called Manga. They are even printed in the Japanese format, reading from what we call back to front, bound on the right side, versus the left.

Some stories are fantasy, some are non-fiction, some are just odd. There are storylines that will challenge your thinking and there are some solely throw away, fun reads. Just like in the printed only versions of novels, there is a wide variety of tales to read.

Summer is a great time to treat yourself to new reading experiences. Use the hottest part of the day to catch up on things you have long intended to read, or even to explore new genres, such as graphic novels. I hope that you take a bit of time to explore this form of storytelling as it offers a new form of storytelling too often overlooked. Give them a try!