Library News and Views

By Rachel Rawn and Kristen Kindle

We have a lot of fun stuff going on at the library right now, and of course it’s all free, so come check it out.

Saturday at 2 p.m., the library is hosting B. D. Harris, a Montana State University-Northern alumni to talk about his recent book titled “I’ll Spell It Out.”

The book is a fictionalized story based off his 20 years of experience in law enforcement. Harris was born and raised in Havre and moved to Seattle, planning to pursue a career in defending the law. He had grown up in a family involved with several parts of law enforcement, including a judge and U.S. Border Patrol agent. He started in a women’s prison in Washington and then a maximum security men’s prison in Spokane, then he held a position in the Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office in Eastern Washington. Finally in 2005 he was hired on to the Kalispell Police Department where he served until his retirement in 2012.

After retiring he went back to school to earn a master’s degree in order to teach criminal justice at the college level.

He also had the chance to write an autobiography in one of the classes and decided to finish it and have it published. The book was released in June and is at the library for check out.

Wednesday at 7 p.m. the library will host Montana Speakers Bureau program “Nike’s Echo” with Chrysti Smith.

Like most library programs, the presentation is free and open to the public. Partial funding for the Speakers Bureau program is provided by a legislative grant from Montana’s Cultural Trust and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

There are linguistic footprints left in our language by the gods, goddesses, monsters, and mortals of ancient Greece and Rome. Thousands of stories were crafted around the exploits of such characters as Achilles, Hermaphrodites, the Muses and Narcissus, who ultimately loaned their names to the English anguage with terms such as Achilles’ tendon, hermaphrodite, music and narcissism.

In “Nike’s Echo,” Smith revives the myths of the ancients and explains how those stories live on in dozens of common English words. Combining images of Western mythological characters and contemporary culture, Smith reveals an often forgotten world of words.

Smith is writer and host of the radio series “Chrysti the Wordsmith,” produced at KGLT-FM at Montana State University in Bozeman. The series is carried on Montana Public Radio and on the Armed Forces Radio and Television Network. Smith is author of “Verbivore’s Feast” and “Verbivore’s Feast, Second Course,” compilations of word and phrase histories.

Thursday at 7 p.m. we will discuss Laura Esquivel’s “Like Water for Chocolate,” the final book in our Fall Reading Series. We will be guided in our discussion by Cristina Estrada-Underwood. “Like Water for Chocolate” follows the story of a young girl named Tita, who longs her entire life to marry her lover, Pedro, but can never have him because of her mother’s upholding of the family tradition of the youngest daughter not marrying but taking care of her mother until the day she dies. Tita is only able to express herself when she cooks. We have several copies of this delightful book available to be checked out at the library, please come pick one up and join us in the discussion. Treats will be provided by the Friends of the Havre-Hill County Library.

Thank you to all of the wonderful organizations and individuals who make the Havre-Hill County Library such a magical place: Friends of the Havre-Hill County Library, Humanities Montana, Will Rawn, Peggy Safely, April Snyder, Cristina Estrada-Underwood, Bonnie Williamson, Francine Brady, Margaret Stallkamp, the Havre-Hill County Library Board of Directors, the Havre-Hill County Library Foundation.

Thank you, you make our library and our town great.