The Annual Meeting of Craig County Library was held at the Old Brick Hotel, New Castle VA on May 18.
Board members in attendance: Linda Calderon, President; Marge Lewter, Vice-President; Martha Dillard, Secretary; Anita Martindale, Treasurer; Jay Polen, Virginia Duggins and Carla Ritzler, Director. Six other people were also attended.
Reports fromthe Board
1.Linda Calderon welcomed everyone, introduced the board and summarized the past year’s accomplishments.
- Purchased two lots next to the library from TDS
- Applied for and received a grant from DHCD for $30,000 to develop a plan for a new library. The first meeting of the grant committee is May 23, 2017.
- Bought another ‘annex’ shed to house used books for sale
- Partnered with Roanoke Valley Gives and raised $1065 for the library
- Joined Smile. Amazon.com to raise money from Amazon sales
- Joined Kroger’s sales program for a percent of sales by supporters
- Received a telescope from Roanoke Astronomical Society and plan to have night sky programs beginning this summer
2.Carla Ritzler shared the strong statistics that show growth of the library in various ways. Her report is attached to the minutes.
3.Ginny Duggins, membership chair, reported 66 members in the past year and encouraged everyone to pay $5 dues for the 2017-2018 year.
4.Anita Martindale reported $6,392.41 in Net Income. The full report is attached to the minutes.
5.Martha Dillard said the Barn Quilt Project has raised almost $8500 in the past three years. There are about 35 Barn Quilts visible from the highways and a new map is in the works. Of the 95 that have been ordered, 90 are complete.
Election of New Board Members
Marge Lewter, Martha Dillard and Jay Polen have another year on their term. Ginny Duggins is going off the board in July. Anita Martindale has been serving as an interim to fill out the term of the treasurer who retired from the board last fall.
Norma Frango, Linda Calderon, and Anita Martindell were nominated to serve a new two-year term. Marge Lewter moved and Lee Greiser seconded a motion that these people be elected to the board beginning July 1, 2017. The motion carried.
Drawing for a new Kindle
Gary Anderson of Catawba won the Kindle. Carla will notify him.
Photo Contest
Four submissions were received for the first “Spring in Craig County” photo contest. Gary Greene will judge which one will win the prize of having their photo printed and framed and hung in the library.
Program
Jay Polen introduced Dr. Diana Christopulos, our guest speaker. She is President of Roanoke Cool Cities Coalition and Roanoke Appalachian Trail Club. She loves to hike, canoe, kayak, and raft. She is a writer of both non-fiction and fiction.
Diana talked about the importance of reading and remembers learning to read in first grade and “how exciting it was that those squiggly lines made sense.” She likes to read things that take her out of her usual life. A professor of history and a business owner, she wrote journalism, history and other non-fiction pieces for decades.
When hiking a section of the Appalachian Trail a few years ago, she and her hiking companions talked about how the experience of the trail was different than anything they had read about it. The trail forms a very linear community. If something happens there, word travels the length of the trail in a matter of a week or so, even before cell phones and internet came along. Later she looked for a work of fiction that might better tell the whole story of the trail but could find nothing. She is now writing that book of fiction about the trail.
Diana quickly discovered that fiction writing was quite different from non-fiction. For four years she attended a week-long writers’ workshop at Hollins University, taught by a professor there and by two editors from a major publishing company. She learned that when writing non-fiction you try to create order out of chaos. In fiction writing, you make chaos out of order and take the reader on a trip that will be unexpected.
For her novel, she has invented four characters, two young and two older, who are typical of hikers. The older pair are half-brothers, one retired and living in Roanoke and the other who is much younger and just getting out of the military after several deployments. Part of her presentation was a reading about these two interesting men. The meeting was adjourned at 7:30.
-Submitted by Pam Dudding-Burch
