The Community Library is a polling location for precincts 1, 3 and 4. Precinct 1 is in the Betty Olsen Carr Reading Room, and precincts 3 and 4 are in the John A. and Carole O. Moran Lecture Hall. 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. 

Celebrate the end of summer during the Library’s annual open house with fun for the whole family.

We’re booking around and inside the Library with activities for kids and adults, including a photo booth, Chihuly Cylinders Exhibit, Banned Books Bingo, book giveaway, chalk, bubbles & dragonflies, bites & beverages, music, and more.  

Join us Thursday, August 25 from 4:30-6:30pm to Book Around the Library for literacy, history, community, and fun! 

Why? We all make history! 

What in the heck is going on in America? And what can I do to begin to envision a better world? There is perhaps no better way to investigate these questions than to write about them through the form of the American sonnet. The American sonnet is a looser, more musical and inventive variation than its traditional counterpart. Having no required rhyme scheme or specific meter, the poet has freedom to innovate their own constraints within 14 lines. We will compose anywhere between one and three sonnets.

This workshop will be taught by Diane Raptosh, whose collection American Amnesiac (Etruscan Press), was longlisted for the 2013 National Book Award in poetry. A native Idahoan and the recipient of three fellowships in literature from the Idaho Commission on the Arts, she served as the Boise Poet Laureate (2013) as well as the Idaho Writer-in-Residence (2013-2016). In 2018 she won the Idaho Governor’s Arts Award in Excellence. She teaches literature and creative writing and co-directs the program in Criminal Justice/Prison Studies at the College of Idaho. Her seventh collection, Run: A Verse-History of Victoria Woodhull, was published by Etruscan 2021. Her newest chapbook, Hand Signs from Eternity’s Yurt, was published in June 2022 (Kelsay Books).

Registration is required, as space is limited for this workshop.

Composers Kevin Puts and Gabriela Lena Frank

Sun Valley Music Festival Music Director Alasdair Neale will be joined for this special summer program by two special guest speakers: Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Kevin Puts and Grammy-nominated composer and pianist Gabriela Lena Frank. Both guests will share their creative experiences and musical influences and provide previews of their works to be performed during the Festival’s 2022 Summer Season.

Upbeat with Alasdair talks provide a unique, behind-the-scenes view of Festival programming. In this case, it will be an opportunity to explore two pieces to be performed this summer from each composer’s perspective and learn more how contributions from contemporary composers help the art form continue to evolve. 

Award-winning composer Kevin Puts has been hailed as one of the most important composers of his generation. He has written operas, symphonies, and concertos which have been performed and recorded by eminent orchestras and soloists throughout the world. Sun Valley audiences may be familiar with Puts’s work. His Hymn to the Sun was commissioned by the Festival for the opening of the Sun Valley Pavilion in 2008. His latest work, a concerto titled Contact, was co-commissioned by the Festival and features the beloved string trio, Time For Three. Puts formed a hands-on alliance with the trio to create the four-movement piece. Contact premieres in Sun Valley during the Festival’s August 13 concert. 

Gabriela Lena Frank is on the forefront of creating music inspired by cultural diversity and was recently listed as one of the 35 most significant women composers in history by The Washington Post. Her music explores multicultural influences and folk music from Latin America, the United States, and beyond. Her works have been commissioned and performed worldwide, and she has been recognized for contributions to both music and the humanities, including honors from the United States and Latin Recording Academies and a 25th-anniversary Heinz Award. Her Three Latin American Dances for Orchestra will open the August 13 concert.

Reservations are required to attend in person and can be made online at svmusicfestival.org or by contacting the Festival office at info@svmusicfestival.org or 208-622-5607. Reserve your seats early, as space is limited.  Once reservations are full, you can join the waitlist by contacting the Festival office.

The one-hour program will also stream online and be available to view later. Watch online here.

Ever wish you were in a book club, and whether you might be if you weren’t spending so much time watching addictive TV shows? The Community Library’s TV Discussion Group is a place where TV obsessives and skeptics dissect and debate one season of a prestige TV series, analyzing it much in the way a book group critiques a novel.

Beginning August 10th, the focus will be on the eight half-hour episodes of The Bear, a Hulu dramedy set in a frenetic, failing, blue collar Chicago sandwich shop. At the center of its chaotic, fragrantly authentic kitchen is Carmen, a prodigy chef who walked away from one of the best restaurants in the world to take over his family’s old school joint. He’s instantly immersed in challenges that would flatten a superhero and thanks to the show’s breathless pace, superb writing, acting and directing we, the viewers, are thrown into the cauldron too, rooting for the flawed, blessedly human crew who work beside him. 2022 is barely half over, yet The Bear has already been lauded as the year’s best new series.

Ketchum resident Mimi Avins, who covered pop culture in her years as a staff writer for The Los Angeles Times, will lead the discussion. The group will gather outdoors at the library at 5:00 p.m. on August 10th, 17th, 24th and 31st and explore two episodes at each session. Attendees are asked to watch the first two episodes before the first discussion on August 10th. (In case of inclement weather, the group will meet indoors in the Idaho Room.)  

Advanced registration is requested. To sign up please email Martha Williams at mwilliams@comlib.org