VOTE! The Community Library Lecture Hall is a polling location for precincts 3 and 4. Polls open at 8 a.m.
To find your precinct and polling location, or for any other information, contact the Blaine County Elections Office by calling (208) 788-5510 emailing election@blainecounty.org, or visiting https://www.co.blaine.id.us/196/Elections.
Protectograph Check Writer
This Todd Protectograph Company check writer was used in the Griffith Grocery store. The store was opened around 1926 and was located on the corner of Main Street and First Avenue in Ketchum, where Sun Valley Culinary Institute is today. The Todd Protectograph Company advertised that the protectograph check writer protected businesses from fraudulent changes because the machine printed precise amounts across the check.
From the Mary Jane and Dave Conger Collection (2003.58.03), Center for Regional History.
Handmade Rolling Pin
A rolling pin that was handmade by the donor’s grandfather, “Grandpa Hallis,” in his shop. The pin was brought over the plains in 1853. From the Delaurice Moser Collection (1996.28.04), Center for Regional History.
Book Review: Prisoners of Geography
Kelley Moulton, Regional History Librarian, recommends Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps That Explain Everything About the World by Tim Marshall.
I love maps. A map can tell us the political boundaries created by conquerors or leaders and at the same time show the natural boundaries and history as told by the rivers and mountains. One of the most memorable classes I took in college was a geography class. It involved memorizing physical attributes like rivers and mountains. The professor also encouraged us to think about geography beyond the lines representing the natural barriers, and to look at the political geography of the continents.
According to Merriam-Webster, political geography is “a branch of geography that deals with human governments, the boundaries and subdivisions of political units (such as nations or states).Political geography plays a huge role in the politics and cultures of each and every country, throughout history and to this day.
Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps That Explain Everything About the World by Tim Marshall examines several scenarios in which geography has played a role in both the political history of various countries and continents as well as the impact that can still be felt because of the boundaries created by nature. Each of the main chapters looks at either a different continent or set of countries, tied together in some way.
“In the end, we might all be prisoners of geography. For better or for worse, only time will determine.”
For example, Western Europe covers a whole chapter and within those pages, Marshall does a small dive into why Europe was able to boom and at the same time have so many different cultures and languages develop in a relatively small area. Other chapters focus on the African continent, India and Pakistan, and the Arctic to name a few.
Marshall admits that geography is not the only element in play regarding any of these countries and continents. Trade, technology, and politics all play a huge part in the world in which we live.
In the end, we might all just be prisoners of geography. Geography, people, politics, and countries are all constantly changing. For better or for worse, only time will determine.
2023 Community Speaker Series
The 2023 Community Speaker Series presented by The Community Library and the Sun Valley Writers’ Conference invites you to join us for two free lectures at The Community Library. Advance registration is required to attend. Both events will also be livestreamed and recorded for later viewing.
Javier Zamora
Wednesday, July 19
6:00 p.m.
The Community Library
Learn more & Register to Attend
Watch Online: Live & Recording available until September 19
Click here for the 2022 Summer Speaker Series in Forest Service Park featuring:
Click here for the 2021 Summer Speaker Series in Forest Service Park featuring:
“Wonder Travels”
with Writer-In-Residence Josh Barkan
Join us for a conversation with Josh Barkan, Writer-In-Residence at the Hemingway House, who will share selections from his forthcoming memoir Wonder Travels (Roundabout Press, September 2023). He’ll be joined by Martha Williams, the Library’s director of programs and education, for a conversation about his new memoir and the craft of writing. A book signing with Iconoclast Books will follow.
Can we ever really know another person? When, after fifteen years of marriage, his wife has an affair with a man she meets on the beach in Morocco, writer Josh Barkan grapples with this question. In this fearless, breathtakingly candid memoir, he maps a painful odyssey from New York to El Paso to the Apache Kid Wilderness to Mexico City, where he falls in love with a painter who begins to heal him. But two years after his wife’s affair, questions still haunt him. Why did she betray him, and with whom? With no more than a cell phone number, Barkan travels to Morocco to find his wife’s lover and confront his own past.
Josh Barkan won the Lightship International Short Story Prize and was runner-up for the Grace Paley Prize for Short Fiction, the Paterson Fiction Prize, and the Juniper Prize for Fiction. He is the recipient of a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, and his writing has appeared in Esquire. He has taught creative writing at Harvard, NYU, the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa, Hollins University and MIT. His books include the novel Blind Speed and short story collections Before Hiroshima and Mexico (Hogarth/Penguin Random House)—named one of the five best story collections of 2017 by Library Journal. He lives in Boston.
