Here’s what’s happening at the library!

A worldly traveler, I am not, but this past week took me to St. Louis and Wichita, a day’s trip each. Both places were visited for totally different, but important reasons.
I began to wonder what these two cities had in common besides being big, loud, and busy. I did some Goggling and found out their populations were fairly similar with the number being within 70,000 people and Wichita is the larger of the two. The male to female ratio is equal. The median age of 34 years is alike. The water area is the same even with St. Louis having the Mississippi River with its border. Wichita has the Arkansas River and numerous lakes.
They both have interesting sites to see like the Gateway Arch, the St. Louis Zoo, and the Anheuser Busch Brewery to name a few. Wichita has Old Cowtown Museum, the Chisholm Trail Cattle Pen and trail markers, and the Original Pizza Hut.
The reasons for visiting these two similar cities?
St. Louis is the site of the Children’s Shriner’s Hospital in which I had the highest privilege of being asked to go with my great niece and her mother for her biweekly checkup. She was born with a very rare, 1 in 40,000 birth defect. She had a hemimelia of the lower limb which required surgery in July and a Taylor Spatial Frame was placed on her lower leg. She goes for x-rays to see how the bone is growing, physical therapy, and exercises to be done at home every day.
Wichita hosted the annual Kansas Library Association Conference. They reiterated how important our public libraries are to our communities large and small. They also stated that libraries anymore are more than books, but also technology and employment opportunities on the web. The chance to talk to fellow directors is always a bonus.
For both trips, books were taken to fill the travel time lulls. I am happy to report that the art of conversation is not dead. The niece prepared for the trip by bringing 2 pages of 40 conversation starters. We got through 3 questions before going off on our own topics. She may need it next time with her uncle, or just to be safe, maybe take along a book!
Happy Reading!