IT'S HERE! Wild, Wonderful, Weird, West Virginia Week!

GET WEIRD!


If you enjoy exploring the wild side of wild, wonderful, West Virginia without the risk, the Ohio County Public Library’s Lunch With Books program has an adventure for you. In celebration of the wonderful weirdness of our home state, we are offering two quality programs in one weird week.

First, on Tuesday, June 5th at noon, author, raconteur, and University of Pittsburgh creative writing professor Chuck Kinder will return to his home state to share stories about mothmen, family feuds, and dancing outlaws. Kinder will discuss his sometimes hilarious, sometimes painful, and always controversial book Last Mountain Dancer. The book chronicles the author’s sabbatical in the hills and hollers of his home state as he immersed himself in the wonderful weirdness of “Planet West Virginia”. A book sale and signing will follow.

Then, on Thursday, June 7th at noon, learn more about the wild, wonderful, weirdness of West Virginia as award winning author Jeanne Mozier visits. Named by Graffiti newspaper as the Best Author in West Virginia, Mozier will discuss her book Way Out in West Virginia: A Must Have Guide to the Oddities and Wonders of the Mountain State. The book, which includes information on West Virginia hauntings, curses, mummies, and even pepperoni rolls, was voted Best Book of the Year by Graffiti. Mozier also wrote the text for a beautiful coffe table book. Entitled Wonders of West Virginia, the book features 160 color photographs of West Virginia by photographer Steve Shaluta. A book sale and signing will follow. Please call the library at 304-232-0244 for more information.

Ken Sullivan Visits Lunch With Books

Yesterday, Dr. Ken Sullivan, the executive director of the West Virginia Humanities Council, traveled from Charleston to visit the Ohio County Public Library for a Lunch With Books program. Sullivan was the editor of the West Virginia Encylopedia, a massive, one volume reference for the mountain state sporting the slogan, "All there is to know about West Virginia." Sullivan discussed the saga of the making of the three pound book, which began ten years ago and cost nearly one million dollars to complete. Nearly six hundred freelance writers from numerous fields of expertise, including several from the Wheeling area, contributed to the more than two thousand articles contained in the book. Topics range from archeology to history to culture and even trivia. Yo-yo tycoon Donald Duncan, for example, grew up in Huntington. Sullivan told the crowd of 34 people that the encyclopedia contains hundreds of entries having to do with Wheeling and Ohio County. He closed by reading from a poem by Phyllis Wilson Moore that appears in the book's opening pages: "God, in a playful mood, Piled up West Virginia, Then patted her down again. Pile, pinch, press, punch, On a hunch he left her that way. And it was good..."

SUMMER MOVIES ARE BACK!

This summer the Ohio County Public Library is hosting the second annual Summer Monday Movie Matinee series. The theme for this summer’s series is "Books to Film." All of the films shown will be examples of books converted into motion pictures. Beginning June 4, most Mondays at 2 o’clock in the library’s air-conditioned auditorium, a movie will be projected onto the big screen. Drinks and popcorn will be provided for patrons free of charge. The movies to be shown include:

June 4 The Da Vinci Code (book by Dan Brown)
June 11 The Motorcycle Diaries (book by Che Guevara)
June 18 East of Eden (book by John Steinbeck)
June 25 To Kill a Mockingbird (book by Harper Lee)
July 2 Memoirs of a Geisha (book by Arthur Golden)
July 16 Il Postino (book by Antonio Skarmeta)
July 23 Night of the Hunter (book by Davis Grubb)
July 30 Sea Monster Double Feature (noon): Moby Dick & Jaws (books by Herman Melville and Peter Benchley)
Aug 6 Behind the Sun (based on the book Broken April by Ismail Kadare)
Aug 13 Alfred Hitchcock’s Birthday Double Feature (noon): Stage Fright & Notorious
(books by Selwyn Jepson & John Taintor Foote)

Like all library programs, the movies are free and open to the public. To confirm start times and for more information, please call the library at 304-232-0244.

Chess Puzzle

This intermediate chess puzzle will be solved and discussed at the next OCPL Chess Club meeting on Monday, May 21 at 6 PM.

Hint: White to play and win in 2 moves.

Lunch With Books Poll

Please Post Your Preference as a Comment!

We've got a lot of great guests booked for the summer of 2007. In order to best serve you for the fall and winter programs, we’d like to know what topics interest you.

Please post a comment listing any specific guest or guests you would like to see invited to a future Lunch With Books program.

You may also list your favorite categories, such as local history, historical portrayals, local authors, sports, art, poetry, self-help, cooking, gardening, law, music, etc.

Thank you.

Chess Club News

The OCPL Chess Club has acquired a new chess demo/teaching board and tripod like the one pictured at left.

The demo board will be used by club members to teach chess strategies, including opening moves, midgame tactics, and endgame strategies. The board will also be used to set up and solve interesting chess puzzles. In the long term, it may be used during future tournaments to track and analyze games for those interested.

The OCPL Chess Club will begin distributing new chess puzzles at each meeting for members to work on, solve, and discuss at the following meeting.

The next meeting of the Chess Club is scheduled for Monday, May 21st, at 6 PM. The club is open to players of all skill levels, and instruction is available for beginners. Call the library at 304-232-0244 for more information.

Next Lunch With Books May 22: West Virginia Encyclopedia Editor Ken Sullivan

On Tuesday, May 22nd at noon, join Ken Sullivan at the Ohio County Public Library’s Lunch With Books program. The executive director of the West Virginia Humanities Council and the editor of the West Virginia Encyclopedia, Dr. Sullivan will discuss the first one volume Mountain State reference work to be published in many years. The West Virginia Encyclopedia contains the contributions of over 600 freelance writers, including journalists, folklorists, archeologists, naturalists, geographers, historians, university professors, public servants, and others. The editors packed 2,200 alphabetical entries into the pages of the West Virginia Encyclopedia, justifying the Encyclopedia slogan, "All there is to know about West Virginia.” Copies of the book will be available for sale. Please call the library at 304-232-0244 for more information.

Ken Sullivan is the Executive Director of the West Virginia Humanities Council. Working with the Board of Directors, his big accomplishments at the Humanities Council include the restoration of the 1836 MacFarland-Hubbard House in Charleston and the recent publication of the West Virginia Encyclopedia. In less than a decade he has seen the Humanities Council’s operating budget double, with a comparable increase in the organization’s assets.
Ken joined the Humanities Council in 1997. He previously worked as editor of Goldenseal magazine, serving concurrently as Folklife Director of West Virginia Division of Culture & History. Ken is the author or editor of several books in addition to the West Virginia Encyclopedia, and has written many articles. He has a BA from the University of Virginia, an MA from the University of Rochester and a PhD from the University of Pittsburgh, all in the field of American history. He is married to Debra Sullivan, the principal of Charleston Catholic High School, and his son Benjamin practices law in Charleston.

Karges Performs Feats of Intuition and Memory

An illusionist, mentalist, and twice published author, Wheeling's own Craig Karges appeared at the Ohio County Public Library's Lunch With Books program on Tuesday, May 1st. In front of an enthusiastic audience of 70 people, Karges performed several impressive feats, including identifying objects while triple-blindfolded and correctly predicting a word chosen randomly from a 200 page book. Karges then demonstrated techniques for improving memory through vivid visual associations. He closed the show by guiding the audience through an exercise that demostrated the power of group intuition. The author of two books, Ignite Your Intuition and The Wizard's Legacy, Karges said he is currently at hard work on a third book. For more information, visit his website here.