Twice a year mankind is forced to reckon with balance. The day and the night meet in perfect unison as the sun sits right over the equator. Summer ends and everything falls into autumn. The trees feel it and drop their leaves. Animals begin prepping their dens with winter shutters and aluminum siding backed by pink fluffy insulation. Everyone waits for darkness to fall.
As the library is more blessed by the members of the unseelie court, we welcome winter. Hell, we even named our monthly role playing game "The Branch Library" to honor the pact we made with creatures of the wild years ago. Please come and play with us, but be cool or you may find yourself at the real branch library. The staff may have certain protections, but we cannot vouch for your safety.
Speaking of safety, we're so excited that it is state fair time! Hellishly unsafe food, rides that rattle the fillings out of your teeth, and dark smiling carnival workers are back and ready to give everyone a good time. The library will have a booth offering free wifi as well as answering general questions all day Friday. Come say hi!
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Join the Friends of the Banned Library!
If you join the Friends today, enjoy a special discounted price of $1 per month! Okay, it's the same as it's always been, but you got excited for a deal, huh? Patreon.com/bannedlibrary
Events at the Library
Story Time
Monday - Friday, 12pm, 3pm, 5pm - Join Children's Librarian Natalie and staff the week of September 21 for books and songs dedicated to the autumnal equinox! We'll read stories like "When Everything's Equal" and "Equality: It's Good for the Bottom Line" and sing songs like "Brown Squirrel, Brown Squirrel" and "We Shall Overcome."
The week of September 28 begins the spooky time of year with tales (and maybe a visit from) The Mothman!
Snacks and Themis Worship Workshop
Tuesday, September 22⋅16:00 - Have you found balance and justice out of line in your life? Come down to the library and let the Reverend Silva DocMartain teach you about the ancient one known as Themis. Snacks will be served, seating is limited.
Autumnal Equinox Celebration
Tuesday, September 22⋅18:00 - A cosmic balance will be struck and day and night will be as one. Join us as the light fails and the darkness prevails once again as we plunge into the abyss that is Fall and Winter. Please bring your own robe.
Harvesting for Profit: Gardening Program
Wednesday, September 23⋅13:00 - Local gardener Ed "Powertool" Langer will be at the library to teach you the basics of gardening for fun and profit, but mostly profit. Whether you wish to do a small amount for the farmer's market or scale up to do business with out of town distributors, Powertool will be available to answer all your questions after a small demonstration.
Terry Pratchett Book Club: Hogfather
Wednesday, September 23⋅1800 - It's not the holidays quite yet, but the book club has made it to the 20th Discworld Novel! Join us to talk Death and other Anthropomorphic Personifications!
Library Legally Distinct Roleplaying Game
Wednesday, September 23⋅18:00 - Ever wanted to be a wizard or a thief or just a guy with a big sword? Come down to the library and join the Branch Library, a group of adventurers like you ready to do battle with the forces of evil! Or join them? Each session is a one-off adventure so feel free to jump in at any time. We will have several game masters available for multiple groups of every adventure level, character sheets will be kept by the library to continue further adventures, and yes, you can come in costume (no weapons of any kind, even made of jello).
Teens: Super Crushing Uncles Video Game Competition
Thursday, September 24⋅16:00 - Once again we do battle in the area of the mind, teenagers! This week we are playing Super Crushing Uncles, the premiere battle simulator set in the magical world of New Jersey! Come pick your favorite uncle (mine's Randy the Janitor) and your favorite arena (Diner Parking Lot is the best), and take down your friends in epic one-on-one combat!
State Fair Booth
Friday, September 25 - Come find us at the state fair all day in a booth over by the fried cotton candy and the bathrooms. We'll have the wifi that doesn't track you.
TS Eliot Birthday Poetry Reading
Saturday, September 26⋅10:00 - To bid a happy birthday to the long dead Thomas Stearns Eliot, the library is having a poetry reading. Come with original material or just a favorite (yes, you can bring music lyrics just don't sing them!) and stand in front of others to be judged. Enthusiasm is welcome but it's all ages so watch your f**king language.
Turtle Races
Saturday, September 26⋅14:00 - For the 52nd year in a row, the Turtle Races have returned to the library.
Teen Movie Night
Dead Novelists Society (1989)
Saturday, September 26⋅17:00 - The children of an elite private school are shaken up when the dead rise and begin to teach classes and eat brains! Follow a classroom of students attempting to survive the challenging curriculum, the zombie invasion, and their finding passion in their lives while being entrenched in a suffocating boarding school environment. Popcorn will be served.
Adult Movie Night
Equinoxed (2004)
Saturday, September 26⋅19:00 - A family alone in a mountain cabin. A hunter in the snow. Two squirrels huddling in a tree against the cold. These figures will be forced to contend with equal daylight and moonlight in this contemplative French drama that forces you to ask the question: What is equal? Popcorn will be served.
Coming next week!
Astronomy: See the Ancient Alien Homeworlds - Sunday, September 27⋅20:00
Preteen: Mothman Costume Contest - Tuesday, September 29⋅16:00
Mothman and You - Wednesday, September 30⋅13:00
Cooking with the Mothman - Wednesday, September 30⋅18:00
Teens: Mothman Makerspace - Thursday, October 1⋅16:00
Reading Mothman Omens - Saturday, October 3⋅10:00
Zoo Visit: Eagles: Big Ass Birds or Mothmen? - Saturday, October 3⋅14:00
Doctors and Gerbils, the New Frontier - Sunday, October 4⋅12:00
Movies - Adult: Mothman Omens (2004), Saturday, October 3⋅19:00 and Teen: Moth Man (2023) - Saturday, October 3⋅17:00
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Circulation Station
What we've been reading/watching
Ghostworld (2001) - If you want to know what it was like graduating from high school before the internet and being a little too smart for your own good, here's Ghostworld. Follow Enid as she grows apart from her best friend and attempts to adopt a middle-aged man.
Road House (1989) - In the world of professional bouncers, Dalton is king. Now he's been hired to clear out a Kansas City road house while also battling an evil land developer. You'll believe a man can do tai chi and rip out dude's throats.
Amazing Spider-man (1963) #121-122 (1973) - Death of Gwen Stacey (and Green Goblin) - While comic storytelling has grown leaps and bounds, these seminal two issues mark a turning point in comics with two fairly serious deaths.
Lanterns (season 1, episode 5) "Lights Out" - Hot damn. While not the space-faring, wild ride that the comics can be, this television show has something going for it: a gritty realism based around character. It appears all the plotlines have wrapped up save one: who killed Hal Jordan?
Serial Mom (1994) - Do you like Leave it to Beaver, but also Friday the 13th? This John Waters classic skewers the 90s view of suburban life with the gleefully malicious Beverly played with delight by Kathleen Turner. Great showing at SIFF Uptown for their monthly Movie Club. If you are in or near Seattle, join in!
Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil by V. E. Schwab - Lesbians? Check. Vampires? Check. A centuries spanning story that starts in early modern history Italy to current day Boston following the life and unlife of a series of vampires? Check. At times moving and otherwise gripping tale of the long lives and what a human life can hold.
Follow the library on Letterboxd and Goodreads for what we're watching and reading!
Tech Serv's Stewpot
Could be a recipe or a random rant from a crazy person shoved in the back of the library and left alone too long!
All things being equal, I never liked olives. Just slimy little things with a taste like a boiled shoe soaked in wet hair. But I realize that's just me. Plenty of folks around the world eat olives, drink olive oil, bath in the shadows of olive groves, and fight vicious street battles over olive branches. I remember being young once and ordering a muffaletta at a New Orleans shop called "Sandwiches." I thought I'd be getting ham and cheese with some olive salad on the side but what I got was half an olive grove with a pig wandering through. I took a bite because you never know, hated it, and stomped it flat right there on the street. When a small child attempted to pick the sandwich from between the cobblestones, I threw a can of beans at the creature. That sandwich deserved to lay there broken and think about what it had done.
All that remembering New Orleans made me want jambalaya. Take a small onion, two bell peppers, two jalapenos, and whatever else you want to get rid of (carrots and celery work okay), chop them up and let them get warm on medium heat in some olive oil for a few minutes. Until the onion is a little see through. Then mix in some chicken cut small with some oregano and wait for it to get cooked, around 5 minutes. Then mix in andouille sausage, some garlic, and tomato paste and let that get good and smelly. After about a minute, sprinkle in some spices or a spice mix along with a can of crushed tomatoes and rice. Don't mix it or it'll burn. Turn that down for a simmer. Some folks eat it after twenty minutes after the rice cooks. Some let it go all day. Eat it with cornbread or whatever.