This coming week is the last one of March, already, and it's going to be a busy one at the library:

Today: The Nintendo Game Club meets at 4 p.m.
A Flower Pin Workshop for adults will be offered at 7 p.m. Come in and learn how to create a beautiful accessory for yourself or as a gift!

Tuesday: The Magic Tree House Book Club meets at 4 p.m. to discuss Afternoon on the Amazon and enjoy some crafts and activities related to the book. For ages 5-8.

 Book Talk gets together to discuss Kathryn Erskine's Mockingbird at 6:30 p.m.

Wednesday: The Art Club returns at 4 p.m.! Join Miss Christine for some fun and creativity and design your own special projects!

Grades 4 and up are invited at 5:30 p.m. to Rocks and Explosions, science experiments featuring chemist Terri Campbell and geologist Julie Craner.

The Quilters' Club meets at 6:30 p.m.  - all skill levels are welcome!

Entrepreneur Heidi Hill-Haddard will offer tips on using social media to promote your business at 7 p.m.

Thursday: A Decoupage Hat workshop will be offered at 4 p.m. for ages 5 and up. Bring in a photograph of your face and design a decoupage hat, following the technique of Ezra Jack Keats in the book Jennie's Hat.

The Knitting and Crochet Club meets at 6:30 p.m. - all skill levels are welcome!

The library has a lot going on in April, too - including Egg Decorating and Landscape Painting, so stay tuned to future newsletters for times and dates!

 If you haven't already purchased your Geek the Library Night tickets to see the Renegades play the Staten Island Yankees, now's the time!

The ticket sales for the June 30 game are open to the public at the end of March, and seats are sure to disappear fast. Right now you can buy tickets to the game and help us celebrate Geek the Library Night at Dutchess Stadium by going online to GadesGroups.com and using the password "wallpl." You can also call Corinne Aams at 838-0094, ext. 217.

The special $15 ticket price includes
general admission to the game, a Renegades hat, and post-game fireworks! Get yours soon before they're sold out!

A portion of each ticket sold will benefit the Wallkill Public Library. 

 Did the classic love story die with Jane Austen? Or have modern times merely reinvented romance, with a touch of prenup and divorce?

In The Marriage Plot, English major Madeleine Hanna is writing her senior thesis on just that - focusing on Austen and George Eliot as inventors of the theme that lies at the heart of the greatest English novels. It's while she's writing that Madeleine gets entangled in her own real-life romance, a love triangle that complicates everything just as she graduates and enters the real world. 

Jeffrey Eugenides (Middlesex) does a brilliant job of using a classic motif to tell a very contemporary love story, the differences and similarities between the two underlined by the main character's own writing. It's a clever and engaging read.

What encourages someone to volunteer?  Is it an altruistic feeling about giving back to the community?  Is it a love of "the cause?" Is it staving off boredom? Perhaps it's just a good way to get out of the house and meet people....or maybe it is all of these things. 

I moved a great deal in my twenties and thirties and I know that one of the first things I would do when I moved into a new town was to volunteer for a library (what a surprise!), or an organization whose mission I believed in.  I found it was a great way to continue to hone my skills while meeting people and making great connections in a new community.

 Here, at the Wallkill Public Library, we would be hard-pressed to continue effectively without the help of some truly dedicated volunteers. 

 Mike Grafe has put copious hours into developing and updating our website for over three years now.  Debra Fasce has volunteered twice a week doing everything from stamping bookmarks with our logo and information to reorganizing entire collections of books.  Adrienne and Jim Perine are spending a good chunk of their first years of retirement building and developing our Books Alive! children's theatre project, which would have been defunct if they hadn't stepped up to the plate and taken over the direction of it.

  Steve Landsman has performed a variety of much-needed roles for us over the years in his quiet and efficient way as disc jockey, sound guy, light guy, moving boxes guy, etc.  Lisa Rollo and Paulette Snyder took over the responsibility of creating the Friends' Used Book Shop as a viable and well-run facility that serves as a strong source of monthly income for our organization. Greg Thompson produced the DVDs for this season's Books Alive! performance.

 The dedicated members of the Friends group have spent numerous hours over the past couple of years putting on the Harvest Faire and other fundraisers.  All of our board trustees - while elected officials - serve without compensation.  Many of them put in lots of hours staffing tables at our events, working in the book shop, taking photos at programs, and building and fixing things around the library.

 This spring, the board will be hosting a "spruce up the library" event intended to beautify our building and front lawn in preparation for our busy summer program.  If we translated these volunteers' hours into compensated time, we would be out of business!  So, let me take this moment here, to thank each and every one of you - named and unnamed - who continue to make the Wallkill Public Library the special place that it has become - we couldn't do it without you.