Celebrating Volunteers, Poetry, and Your Generosity!

Today is the first day of a new month, and there is much to plan and anticipate, with hope and optimism, as we move slowly towards reopening Arizona, Sedona, and your library. Likewise, it is a great time to review the past month and all the exciting things that April brought our way, even while our doors are closed. We’ve had opportunity for celebration.
 
First, and foremost, last week was National Volunteer Week, and all we can say is THANK YOU! We are truly grateful for our 120 active volunteers who committed a total of 16,735 hours, completing any of 30 different tasks at the Library and Friends of the Library bookstore last year. Their commitment helps keep the Library running smoothly and with a smile! The value of those hours? An amazing $425,571. Now, that’s worth celebrating! We can’t wait to re-schedule our official celebration, but in the meantime, we celebrate all of you, always, in our hearts.
 
Secondly, as April was National Poetry Month, Sedona Public Library celebrated with a first ever digital poetry festival: “Pop-Up Poetry Online” presented on our Facebook page. On April 23 we posted poems by poets and readers from as far away as Brooklyn, New York, and as close as the Library itself, where two staff members recorded themselves reading a poem in our very, very quiet library. We are grateful to all 25 participants.
 
A poem was posted every 20 minutes over eight hours on our Facebook page. Poets read from greats like Shakespeare and Yeats, or well-known children’s poets like Hilaire Belloc and Laura E. Richards. A couple of poets read their own work including the well-known former Tucson poet laureate, William Pitt Root, and Sedona’s own Roger Blakiston. Poets and readers, ranging in age from 11 to 76 years old, joined the fun and provided hilarious, and serious, poetic perspectives. Now that’s worth celebrating.
 
And if you missed it, feel free to visit Sedona Public Library’s YouTube channel, where you can see all of the poets and readers. And stay tuned as we will soon post these poems to our website and to our upcoming BilbioBoard collection.
 
And, last but not least, we celebrated the Library on Library Giving Day! Thank you to more than 150 donors for making this national day of library giving a success, especially in light of our library being closed!
 
We are grateful for more than $52,000 contributed to Sedona Public Library, and we are especially grateful to our two matching donors, Gordon Reiter from the Village of Oak Creek, and an anonymous volunteer. Your gifts served the campaign well as our donors loved doubling their money. And special thanks to Rayna Griffin who again donated beautiful, hand-painted bookmarks that were gifted to donors of $75 or more. Thanks everyone for another successful Library Giving Day!
 
Our lives changed significantly last month, and Sedona Public Library offers its condolences and best wishes to those who have, and continue to, struggle during this pandemic.
 
As we move into a new month, we are grateful, and we are hopeful. Please take care of yourselves, and each other. Hug those you can often. Thanks to everyone for celebrating with us despite the difficult times.
 
We’ll see you online, 24/7, and we’ll see you back at the Library soon. Remember, it’s never too late to support your library at sedonalibrary.org/donate.

Sedona Public Library
Column for May 1, 2020
Written by Anne Marie Mackler, Development Director