Does the cold damp weather have you clutching a mug of cocoa and gazing out at  the gloom wishing for a little inspiration?  Scoot up to your computer and take a virtual poetry tour of Washington, DC (available as visuals with audio or downloadable as an mp3) produced by The Poetry Foundation.

From their web site:  “Whether they were perusing the stacks of the Library of Congress, walking the U Street Corridor, or visiting the National Zoo, some of our greatest poets have been intertwined with the history of our nation’s capital. The DC Poetry Tour features poems by legendary American poets who have called DC home, including Georgia Douglas Johnson, Robert Hayden, Walt Whitman, May Miller, Sterling Brown, Robert Frost, Robert Lowell, and Randall Jarrell. In addition to these seminal voices, you’ll hear contemporary poets—including A.B. Spellman, Jane Shore, Naomi Ayala, Reb Livingston, Reuben Jackson, Yusef Komunyakaa, Myra Sklarew, E. Ethelbert Miller, Sarah Browning, and Linda Pastan—talk about the ways in which DC inspires their writing today.”

Headed to DC later this month?  Download the mp3 AND a map so you can walk in the path of poets…

Books recently added to the library’s collection – check them out today!

• The Photographer: Into War-torn Afghanistan with Doctors Without Borders
• The Reagan Diaries
• Dorothea Lange: A Life Beyond Limits
• True Compass: A Memoir
• Triangular Road: A Memoir
• Following the Water: A Hydromancer’s Notebook
• Have a Little Faith: A True Story
• Bicycles (poems by Nikki Giovanni)
• Marcelo in the Real World
• The Human Brain Book

Just in time for the holidays – 15 minutes to a snap-happier you!

Bring your lunch to the library on Tuesday 12/8, Thursday 12/10, or Tuesday 12/15 for a Library Tech Byte Workshop about how to get more from Picasa, Google’s free app for photo editing and sharing.

Organize photos by the faces in them, geotag photos, crop photos to handy printing sizes like 4×6 and 5×7, create photo collages, and make movies that you can upload to YouTube (like this poetry video).

Power up your Picasa skills at your library!