Elizabeth Woodworth: National Library Week is a time to celebrate reading

Japanese beetle grubs move to the surface of the ground to feed. Just what we need: grubs now, plant eating pests in a couple of months.

Good new, bluegills and rock bass look for worms. Must mean the water is warming, maybe not too long until fishing weather. As the moon wanes, dig in new strawberry, raspberry and blackberry plants. Dust roses as new leaves emerge. Put in early sweet corn, head lettuce and peas. Peas still are not in, too cold and wet on St. Paddy's day, and the weather hasn't cooperated since. Crabapple and cherry blossom time begins in the lower Midwest and all across the East, and it usually last into the last week of the month. (Countryside)

It's the first day of spring. It is dark, it is dank, it is cold, nothing spring like now or in the future. I am angry, fussy, as mad as a wet hen. I pull myself together to leave in time for my Tuesday job. I back out of the driveway and there starting me in the face are campaign signs. Yes, not only is it the first day of spring it is primary Election Day.

I whip around the corner, jump out of the car, yank the signs out of the ground and throw them on the porch. When I get back in the car, I discover there are signs at the other end of the property. Down the block, whip around another corner, park on the wrong side of the street, tear signs out of the ground and throw them in the yard. Now my day is really ruined and I am in a rotten mood.

I have stewed most of the day, mad about the weather. I have lived through Easter snows, but I really want some sign that the season has changed on the first day of spring; could have lived with sun. Have ranted to anyone who will listen about the campaign signs. They are illegal, they are annoying, I don't know some of the people they are for and mostly I have only allowed three people to put signs in my yard.

I feel that for the most part, it is no business of those driving down the street who I am going go vote for. I have decided that I am going to take account of those who win the primaries and in September call their headquarters and ask that they not clutter up my yard. Tomorrow has to be better! Don't have to worry about those signs, they didn't win.

April 3 is National Walking Day. Take advantage of the extra hour of daylight to walk 30 minutes in celebration of the American Heart Association's Lace Up and Go campaign.

National Library Week is April 8-14 with the theme, "Libraries Lead." The Friends of the Harrisburg District Library annual meeting will be Sunday, April 8. A short business meeting at 1:30 will be followed at 2:00 by speaker Kay Ripplemeyer. Her topic is CCC camps. I have heard her speak on the subject, very informative. Might be of interest to those having had father or grandfathers in a camp. Light refreshments will be served. Tuesday, April 10 is National Library Workers Day. Come by and thank our staff for the fine job they are doing.

Notes on books. "Good books, like good friends, are few and chosen; the more select, the more enjoyable." (Louisa May Alcott) Though she wrote hundreds of play, novels, stories and poems during her lifetime, this Massachusetts author is best know for Little Women. That novel, which turns 150 this year, definitely qualifies as one of the more select in U.S. literature; a recent Harris Poll of Americans' favorite books put Little Women at No. 8 after "The Catcher in the Rye" and just ahead of "The Grapes of Wrath."

For Better or Worse. Mother, "Elizabeth is this your book? Look at this. You've folded the pages. When you want to save your place, you use a book mark!" Father, "Oh, don't worry about it." "But she's damaging the books, John. How can you say don't worry about it?" Elly, she's READING!!!" I do not turn down the pages in library books, or those borrowed from friends. My own, sometimes. Magazines always. Ron used pink or blue sugar packets. Always knew which books he was reading at breakfast. Occasionally I still find a book with his marker in it.

Any more I read more for pleasure than for education. I am in the middle of "The Hidden Lives of Trees, What They Feel, How They Communicate." Not sure I believe everything, but then I have never studies trees and their lives. Interesting to try something new now and again.

"I always carry a couple of books. There's the book that I'm going to read and the backup in case the book is terrible." Stephen King, on traveling.

"Education is when your read the fine print; experience is what you get when you don't. (P. Seeger)

READ!