Halloween in a Pandemic

So, I’m sorry for going all “Winter holidays” there before enjoying the Fall. Halloween is probably my favorite holiday of all and I shouldn’t short change it like that. How rude! So I’m here to talk about candy, costumes and what’s going on instead of trick-or-treating and in-person parties this year. First, I love this idea for little kids or pretty much anyone:

How fabulous is this? Obviously, I think those with sensitive little ones should play fast & loose with the word “scary.”

Decorate for Halloween, make Halloween themed snacks, and have everyone in your household dress up in costumes. Then mix & match from these ideas:

Take out some Halloween themed books or collections of ghost stories from your local library and have a read-aloud by candlelight or flashlight.
Make a Facebook group and ask friends and family to dress in costume and post pics or do a Zoom gathering to show off costumes and socialize.
Hokey monster movie marathon. (Godzilla and that era or any of the wondrously bad/hilarious sci-fi channel monster movies.
Create and decorate a Halloween Tree. My middle daughter started this when she was 3. We were getting ready for a little Halloween party and she asked; “What about the Halloween Tree?” I was like; “whaaat?” and asked her if she meant the tree with the lights and decorations because that was definitely the Christmas Tree… yep that’s what she meant alright but it was a Halloween Tree and she obviously thought I was suffering from extreme early-onset dementia or something because i was clearly misremembering. SO, I made a Halloween Tree. All you need is some smallish dead branches and something of sufficient weight to hold them up. I used a vase full of stones. Just arrange the branches to look like a dead tree, add some lights and spooky decorations and you’re done. Our first tree had a small string of white lights but you can now buy orange or purple Halloween lights. For decorations We make ghost out of Kleenex and string with faces sharpied on them, and some pumpkins and cats cut out of colored paper. Ours is usually sized to make a great centerpiece.
Bake some Halloween themed sugar cookies, the kind you cut with cookie cutters, and let the kids decorate and eat them. You could make this part of a Facebook group w/without costumes. Have friends and family share their kooky cookies.
Find out what, if anything in these crazy times, your local library is offering for Halloween. I am having a Make-Your-Own Monster event with a randomly drawn prize, and offering take-home crafts of Fall lantern kits, shadow puppet kits, and friendship bracelets. My counterpart in children’s services is offering several take-home kits for the little ones. Some libraries might be having costume contests by having patrons submit photos.
Some radio stations are definitely having costume contests w/submitted photos. One in my area is offering a prize of $100 or $200 on a debit card. (I can’t remember the amount)
Make a round layer cake and decorate it to look like a Jack-o-lantern.
If you and your kids or housemates play tabletop RPGs (Role Playing Games) run a special one-shot Halloween game. The possibilities here are nearly endless and can range from a child-friendly, goofy Scooby Doo vibe all the way to a Creepy, gritty, gorey Walking Dead/horror movie vibe. Call of Cthulhu is my go-to. One shots are perfect for it as player characters generally go insane when exposed to the Mythos anyway.
Create a LARP, if you’re feeling ambitious, and have enough people in your household. LARP stands for Live Action Role Play and it can be a lot of fun. This one takes more prep than any of these other ideas because you need to have a plot, props, maybe an accomplice, etc. The simplest way to do this is to get your hands on a boxed Murder Mystery game that contains all the characters, clues, etc. A few years back I created my own LARP for my youngest when that’s what he wanted to do for Halloween. I had 3 days and no money to spend so it was unpolished to say the least. But it was fun. It involved splitting our group in 2, a scavenger hunt for one group so they could find a book about Halloween that contained clues as to what they had to do, and the other group had to come up with 2 word clues to try and help the first group when they got stuck. The second group had accidentally been pulled into the afterlife and were stuck in a waiting room with a booklet of their own outlining their situation. They also got snacks and hot cocoa. The first group had to find the clues, figure them out, and conduct a ritual to get group 2 back through the veil between worlds. I wrote the booklets and decorated them with woodcuts of skeletons and such from online and set up the afterlife waiting room in our shed.

I have a bit of a headache so that’s all I’ve got for right now. Please feel free to add your awesome ideas in the comments. Or your really dumb ideas, those can be a ton of fun! ^_^

Just a couple of pics I dug up: goofy jack-o-lantern idea and one of our Halloween Tree centerpieces.

Some Sort of Update

Apparently I don’t blog so much when it’s boiling out. We finally brought up the air conditioners and we’ve been running them enough to keep sane. I’m still uncomfortable a fair bit of the time but I can sleep so I won’t complain.

Berry harvests are still way down right now. There are TONS of immature blackberries on the bushes but they are ripening so slowly I wonder if they will ever be ready. The sumac berry, /pink-lemonade reportedly came out weird, I think I jumped the gun and they weren’t ripe yet, everyone still liked it but said it did not taste like lemonade. I need to find my foraging book and check when they are supposed to be ripe.

So, the camp-out went well. Five kids showed up and three stayed until midnight. We read spooky stories, talked about and showed off our pets, and the kids thanked me multiple times for putting it together. They asked me if we might be able to have similar events on some kind of regular basis and I’m thinking about it. I think I’m zeroing in on something, maybe the ideal sort of job for me, something that takes advantage of all my strengths and talents. I enjoy creating events, parties, planning activities, and running craft and other workshops, contests, book clubs etc. So, teen librarian is phenomenally close, my current job is phenomenally close, to what I feel I should be doing. But…

Other things I want to do just aren’t allowed in that box, not the way I want to do them, not on the scale I imagine them. Like the “All Hallows Read” where I wanted to run an overnight campout in the library. I thought we could do a sleepover with pop-up tents, sleeping bags etc. The plan was to have toaster oven s’mores, cocoa, etc, read aloud some spooky stories or Halloween related stuff, play some games and let the kids have the unusual experience of sleeping in the library. The teens loved this idea and my boss thought it was great and was willing to split the night with me so each of us could get a little shut-eye but the trustees didn’t feel comfortable with it. They also don’t allow us to show PG 13 movies even if we would limit the attendees to 13 and up and obtain explicit parental permission for each child attending. They won’t even allow PG 13 movies for adult audiences at the library. It’s just weird that I can show the first two Harry Potter movies but not the others.

That is all for now. I’m feeling ill and overwhelmed.

Wow. Kids These Days.

I’m a teen librarian because I love teens and I feel like they get, and have always gotten, such a bad deal. They get blamed for causing trouble, being idle, hanging out in public, being lazy, etc. If they are in public people are upset that they take over a booth in a restaurant but don’t buy enough, or are too loud or troublesome. If they stay home and play video games they get blamed for being lazy or addicted to the games. I feel like they get judged all the time and have no place to BE. They tend not to have much money so there’s not much to do in public that they can afford. It’s an absolute tragedy that we have commodified every public space, activity, and everything about life. In a non-pandemicky world there is still the library. Public libraries are one of few spaces people can go and just BE and aren’t expected to spend any money. I like being a teen librarian because I am curating and overseeing books they can read, computers they can use, space they can just spend time in. I also get to come up with programming, free programming they can take part in.

Yeah, so I appreciate teenagers, maybe more than most, and I super hate how boomers seem to feel about all the generations under them and their especial disdain for Millenials who are pretty awesome and got a super shitty deal. And now we have Gen-Z, and they are clever, and quirky, and feel like something altogether new. I can’t imagine growing up as they have in a world on the brink of obvious ecological disaster and spreading fascism. Do we wonder that their humor is nihilistic? They look at the world and they see what is… and they have to deal with it as children. But look what they can do: Teens and early 20-somethings registered in Droves for the rally in Tulsa OK under, apparently, raunchy fake names and such. The campaign of hate and willful disease spreading thought they had a million people showing up and they got less than 7,000 because a bunch of tech-saavy kids punked them, hard. We ought to be sending massive quantities of burn ointment to the white house, seriously, send in the trauma docs. Savage. Brilliant.

“And these children that you spit on
As they try to change their worlds
Are immune to your consultations
They’re quite aware of what they’re going through”

And they are amazing, wonderful, and fierce as hell. May the gods old and new bless these clever, brave, and noble kids.

Little Update from Quarantine

We’ve been holed up for quite a while now. We are very lucky in that both my husband and I can work from home so far. I’ve never had a job where that was possible, or a boss that would fight for staff to be able to do so, before. We’re also lucky that my daughter and son are able to continue their classes from home and hopefully get full credit for everything so they can graduate and/or advance. We’ve also been lucky enough to get a few orders of groceries through Instacart. I can’t tell you how disgusted I am in the people who are abusing Instacart drivers by offering big tips then revoking them. Those delivery drivers are risking their health and their lives and it is utterly cruel to steal from them like that.

Anyway, we’re very lucky, but we’re also stressed. Our house isn’t huge and having everyone home and not having friends over is wearing on us. I am sure you know what I mean. The underlying annoyances between the kids seem much bigger, it gets weirdly tense, my husband’s issues with the my daughters … there’s just no breaks, no nights off. He gets moody and tense. I sit here in the middle of it all feeling nervous and stressed. Good times. I don’t want to make it seem like things are bad, they aren’t, things are medium which is pretty good these days. We’re all able to game together and mostly keep things mellow, mostly.

I am trying and failing, so far, to get anything off the ground with the young adults from my library. I suggested gaming online and a virtual book club and got 1 response to each, not enough, so I am trying a quick, creative contest: design your own “Would you Rather” card. I sent the email 2 days ago and I have… 1 response so far. I’m really hoping I can get just a handful of entries. I would love to be able to tell my boss at least one program attempt was successful. Yeah, our library is so small and rural that 3-4 teens participating is considered successful. Maybe I will mail the contest rules to the school librarian so she can send the idea to a wider audience. Or I could actually send the info to my boss to post on the website. Gosh it’s fun having such a sluggish brain lately. I blame the pandemic. ~_^

my example card. sorry the image is so big and sideways I can’t find where to change that!

Games and Goals @ the Library

I spent yesterday at the library with my husband. He runs a Pathfinder RPG for the tweens and teens once a month, usually while I’m working, I fetch snacks and print things for them because I’m almost always on the clock. Yesterday we reset the game to level one in the new Pathfinder 2.0 and started the new one shot module designed to teach players the new rules. It’s the same module we ran at home and the kids at the library jumped right in and did a better job sorting it out than the we did. ^_^

Progress is going slowing on all fronts around here. I’m not tending to my goals very well, except my reading goal which I’m still ahead in, I haven’t had time or money yet to get it together to work on things like soap or lotion making and it’s not exactly gardening season here in the North East. I’m also spending more time working on the upcoming Summer Reading Program than I’d have thought I would at this point in the year. The Cultural Council grants came through and it looks like I will get to offer both the stained glass and teen paint night workshops I wanted to. Yay! I thought I hadn’t gotten the painting grant but it was just late because of a typo or something in the council’s answer. For those 2 things I’ve just dashed off some emails to the instructors. What I’ve really been working on are my plans for other activities. I plan to run a Fairy Tale Writing Contest, plant some sort of fairy garden, offer a workshop on Wee Folk house-making, and hopefully a few other things as well. Last summer’s Book Cover Contest was a complete and utter bust and I am going to do my best to make sure the writing contest is a success. I definitely made some mistakes! (it was my first time running an SRP and my first time running a contest so it was inevitable I would mess it up pretty big time) How I will improve this year’s contest:

RULES: I will NOT leave things wide-open. It turns out that saying “do whatever you want!” is not the best way to inspire creativity. I will make sure there are clear guidelines for what I want submitted.
Examples: I will absolutely make sure I have at least 2-3 examples of what submitted tales could be like. Last year I had no examples whatsoever because I was swamped and kept putting off working on it.
Publicize the contest outside the library with flyers in the local middle schools and high schools, with a press release and with a very nice flyer I have been working on for ages already.
Prizes: I will tailor the prizes to the contest and not offer the generic one-size-fits-all prize I attached to last year’s book cover contest.

Sometimes it’s a little overwhelming learning this job as I go but I think I’m really starting to get the hang of it after a whole year. The collection is coming along. I’m starting to find areas of nonfiction to focus on that I think will interest local teens and be of help to them, I’m still working on getting more clear direction from them on what sorts of fiction they want in the collection. I put out surveys and got a far number of responses that were pretty diverse so I can only make sure I try to order a wide selection of books across all the genres at this point. The budget is such that I can’t really order more than 1 or 2 of any genre each month but I am able to supplement that with donated books sometimes. People who love books are so generous to the library, I often get books that have just come out within a few months in perfect condition, it really helps. I’m making progress in the programming I offer too. After each one I sit down and sort out what worked and what didn’t and why. I think about what I could change to make it more successful or about why it failed.

I love this job and I want to make sure my boss feels like I am worth the chance she took hiring me. In my job description it states that I am to run at least 2 programs per month, one being the Teen Advisory Board and one other of my own devising, and that attendance should ideally be 3, 4 or more teens (we are a small, rural library, larger libraries probably get a lot more participants). Starting this month, with the new year and all, I am offering every month:

Teen Advisory Board: pizza, small projects, and talking about what interests those who show up. I usually get 4-8 teens for this.
Pathfinder Role Playing game: 4 hour session, snacks provided, usually attended by 3-4 players.
Monthly Movie: tied to the summer reading theme, this year fairy tales, with free popcorn. My first and only screening so far had 7 attendees.
Book Boot Camp: a book club where we each read whatever we want within a certain genre and discuss them over cocoa and baked goods. (I’ll switch that up if I’m still running it once it gets warm out) This month will be Mystery and it happens next weekend. I believe I have 5 sign ups but we’ll see if anyone shows up.

Last year at this time I was running TAB and attempting to continue the Young Writer’s group started by my predecessor. Unfortunately the writing group fell apart in short order and it took me a few months to begin to offer my own programs. So, progress! I am definitely doing better than I was a year ago and I’m still working on it so I have to be happy with that.

Events, Food, Etc.

Bad news: I’m ill. Good news: I finished the house scarves for Saturday’s Harry Potter party at the Library. ^_^ I’m really looking forward to it. The Festivities:

Watching Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone
Drinking home-made Butterbeer
Doing word-jumbles, word-searches, and Crossword puzzles
4 teens winning a house scarf by random drawing!
Happy Holidays, Teens! ^_^

My ornament workshop was cancelled due to snow so it’s the only thing on this month, pretty much.

In other news I stumbled across a book and then 3 videos by my high school art teacher. I was just browsing the gardening section and found her book on foraging and wild foods. I checked to see if there was anything else by her and found we had 3 videos in our library! It’s lovely watching her after so many years and her recipes look delicious so I will be trying them out in the Spring. I took a class on wild foods a few years ago but these videos seem more comprehensive and being able to watch the foods being harvested and processed it helpful too.

We got our latest credit card bill and it is, as is somewhat usual this time of year, High. Ugh. It’s so hard to stick to a budget when buying gift for people I love. I want to do so much and sometimes I do too much. So I am now clamping down on spending to make up for this extravagance. I only have a couple more things to get and holiday shopping will be done. That leaves the feast shopping and some of that has been done already so we should be good. When I clamp down on spending I rely on my pantry more than usual. I lean on my supplies of pasta, rice, and dried beans etc. I cut back on using meat and focus on using up winter squashes and whatever else is on hand. I recently found that I can make a killer mac & cheese with about 1/2 the cheese by adding in mashed winter squash. My husband LOVED it. I added a few new spices to it too. My son wasn’t as big a fan of it but he needs to eat more veg anyway… and he did eat it. I’ll dig down in the freezer too and use any meat we have on hand. Casseroles will make more of an appearance too as I go through all the frozen veg, pasta and so on.

I’ve been working on not wasting food anyway. It’s such a problem and it’s ridiculous with the prices we pay for the stuff that any should be wasted. I’m thinking of putting together a big entry on eliminating food waste sometime soon.

Successful Programs & Future Plans

The Teen Advisory Board is growing. When I started last December there were 4 or 5 members it has grown to 9. They are talking about programs they’d like to run; a Ukulele club, an LGBT support group, etc. It’s very exciting to see them realizing that they have the power to steer Y.A. programming at the library.

I just had 12 kids show up for an Interactive Graphic Novel workshop this past weekend. Not the most I’ve ever had show up to something but a very encouraging number for our small, rural library. I think we had 9 show up for the Sumobots workshop last month which is a good number as well. My Bullet Journal workshop only had 2 teens but they were enthusiastic.

Next month I am having a Breakfast Cereal & Cartoons Saturday Morning slothfest, and December will have a Harry Potter theme featuring an ornament making workshop and a showing of “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” with butterbeer, puzzles and prizes. In January 2020 I will be starting a year of monthly fairy tale movies in keeping with next summer’s theme and I will be starting “Book Boot Camp” a book club of monthly shifting genre’ to get readers out of their comfort zones. Laser Tag at the Library is also on the table but we need to check the equipment first to make sure it still works. I am feverishly working on all things fairy tale for next summer and hope to offer some amazing workshops for the local teens & tweens.

I’ve never had a job like this before. It’s so interesting and exciting planning and bringing off programming for this age group. (11-18) I feel so lucky to have this job, to have a supportive and wonderful boss and coworkers who are helpful and encouraging. It is impossible for me to leave work at work, I find myself thinking up ideas for programs and “quickly looking up one thing” for work that turns into me designing posters and brochures for a couple of hours. When I can finally use my studio I’m definitely going to have a space for working on programs and planning events for the library.

Slacker

OK, it’s official, I’ve been slacking off on this little blog. I got sick and busy and lost in my own head, a problem I suffer from from time to time. I’m quite prone to getting lost in my own labyrinth of a mind.

Let’s see… I’m ok with the new hair, it’s meh but it is pretty much for a Halloween costume so … whatever, it’s fine. I’m going to re-dye it soon, go lighter. got most of my costume worked out and now need some parties to go to. I have a couple of friends throwing parties so it shouldn’t be a problem. I’m no longer sick, just still tired and dragging, so improvement!

I’m a teen librarian, as you probably already know, and I run a Teen Advisory Board Group every month. This past Monday I had 9 kids show up! I usually get 3-4 so this is a big deal to me. My programs haven’t been super well attended but I think I am having some small impact. The kids love my ideas but showing up is a whole other thing, it’s tough I know, they have to have the motivation/energy and most of them need their parents to drive them, another hurdle, so I get it. (NINE!!! ^_^) They are very excited for the Harry Potter movie showing I have planned for December with Butterbeer and word puzzles which can be completed for a chance to win hand made house scarves …which I REALLY need to get working on. I have kids interested in staring an LGBT club, kids who want to get together for arts and crafts, kids who want a book club and …wow, that’s already a LOT of stuff for me to manage on top of all the other things we’ve got going. (TAB, Pathfinder and 1-2 random programs per month)

It’s kind of amazing having a job I care about and where I am making some kind of difference. I love it.

Lessons from the Summer

Summer Reading is over. This year was my first attempt at running a Summer Reading Program. I became a teen librarian in December and felt like I started out several paces behind where I needed to be. It’s been pretty challenging managing the collection and running the teen programs. The first couple of months I barely managed to run the Teen Advisory Board and a craft or two. The YA writer’s group, which had run for a couple of years, was the first casualty of my inexperience. We floundered for a couple of months but couldn’t make it work. I think it might be something that could be started up again at some point.

I thought I was prepared for Summer Reading. I’d helped manage an SRP before as a Library Assistant but being in charge was a whole other thing. The theme this year was Space, more specifically it was: “A Universe of Stories.” So I made a schedule of six sci-fi movies showing one a week during Summer Reading. I also planned six craft workshops, roughly one a week as well. The movies were an abject failure. Virtually no one came to any of them. I think Friday was a bad choice of day and 6pm was an even worse choice of time. Four of my craft workshops were very successful and two were an adventure in frustration and disappointment. The two that failed were knitting and crochet. Tons of kids signed up, and they were very well attended but they were still failures. The kids did NOT learn to knit or crochet. If I ever try either again I will hire a professional instructor and block out more time. OOF. Four workshops went well, 2 of these I hired outside instructors for and 2 I ran myself.

I had a woman come in and teach some hand sewing to which I added suggestions for decorative touches that the kids were very enthusiastic about. We had some neat projects come out of that. The other instructor taught the kids to make some artistic sorts of books and the kids did amazing work. Heads down, working away, making beautiful art. I ran the Galaxy Ts and Space Mug workshops and it was fun, the kids were creative, they left with wearable art and everyone asked for more programming like that. Yay.

Next up I’ve got Harry Potter crafts for August and December, some computer coding workshops run by Holyoke Codes coming up in September and October, also in October I hope to have a sleepover at the library for Halloween. November is a bit up in the air still. I might take it easy and just have a board game night. In December I’m planning on showing the first Harry Potter movie and serving butterbeer. Then 2020 will be upon us. I have been working on it, just a little bit, for months!

Next summer’s theme is “Imagine Your Story” a fairy tale theme. This will be much more of a hit than space/sci-fi with our local teens. Learning from my mistakes this summer, I am not going to have weekly movies, instead I am going to have monthly movies starting in January. Every month I will show a fairy tale themed movie and sort of extend the theme all year long. Also starting in January will be “Book Boot Camp” where we will read a different genre every month and get together to talk about what we liked and didn’t like about it, it’s basically just to challenge the teens to read outside their comfort zones. I’m planning a fairy tale writing contest for the summer as well as a themed escape room and a series of at least five crafts. (NO KNITTING OR CROCHET)

I’ve already written a “How to Write a Fairy Tale” brochure and almost finished my SRP flyer and write ups. I just need an actual schedule of events, and approval for all of it, and I can finish writing it and start working on organizing it. I am not going to be doing anything in a state of last minute panic next summer.

Things that are Good.

I’m going to write a more upbeat post this time. Looking back over my entries they have a very complainy tone and that’s a little sad because there is an awful lot of good going on in my life! So, on to talking about the things that make me want to get up in the morning.

First, I know I mentioned circumstances have put something of a strain on my marriage but it is still a really great relationship. We are both huge geeks and have had 20+ years of shockingly high compatibility. When we met we were both into LoTR, reading, and RPGs and have had a blast getting each other into new hobbies and fandoms over the years. He showed me Drizzt and Dragonlance, I showed him Doctor Who and Star Trek. We discovered Harry Potter together and GoT, and Firefly etc etc. We’ve been reveling in this amazing age where geekdom is having its day. Movies, TV shows, games, books, and merchandise galore. It’s a good time to be geeky. ^_^ We also share a great deal as far as worldview goes, where we have any differences we respect each other. We’re still crazy in love after all this time too.

Though my kids are a source of stress, and I worry about them constantly, they are also a source of joy. They are good kids, sweet, kind, generous and loving. They are funny and make me laugh and smile. Their progress, while slow, Exists, they are each moving forward and that’s not nothing. I know a few people who are not moving forward, who have basically fallen down, so to speak, and are refusing to get back up. I’m very glad and grateful that my kids are not in that position. They are also each clever and talented at various things. I’m not saying they could pay the bills with their writing, art, etc but they produce lovely things, disturbing pieces sometimes. Their art is not boring.

Our goofy pets. Our earnest, lovable mutt is our clown, confidant, protector and more. She is such a love and such a goofball. I am so happy she is part of our clan. Our 2 cats, one is the boss of everything and will slap us if we get out of line. She doesn’t like us… that’s why it’s sheer coincidence that she follows us room to room and wants to be pressed against us while we pet her. She’s not fooling anyone. Our other cat is just a big old mushy lovebug. climbs all over us, MUST be petted or she will lick you or use her paws to demonstrate how to pet. All of these little beings make me laugh and smile and want to be as awesome as they think I am.

My job. I have a job I actually love. I am so lucky. I work as a teen librarian and I absolutely love it. I manage the Young Adult book collection and run all YA programming at the library. I come up with ideas for workshops and seek out instructors as needed, I try out various activities, and so on. This summer I’m running a series of Arts & Crafts workshops as well as showing sci-fi movies and throwing little parties for the teens. We give out raffle tickets to encourage reading and then draw for prizes. I’m also running a book cover contest which may or may not result in any entries… that’s the nature of YA programming. A lot of the stuff I try might fail. Like my movie series, it’s been me and my family watching and almost no one else! But it’s all fun and it’s all a learning experience for me. I’m still quite new at it. I’ve only been working at this job for about 7 months. I met with the Teen Advisory Board last night and got to tell the kids about my ideas and get their opinions on future programs I might run. I also leave a lot of surveys out in the YA room. It’s hard to express how interesting and challenging and FUN this job is.

That’s probably enough of a sample of what is really good in my life right now. It feels nice to write about what’s going right for once. I’ll have to keep doing it.