Paul Szmal: Good morning 839. It's FLX Morning Wednesday. It's our monthly visit with the Geneva Public Library at a brand new URL and a new look to the website gplny.org. Director Frank Sykes is with us. Good morning and welcome back.
Frank Sykes: Good morning. Thank you for having us.
Paul Szmal: So that's the first thing. I talked about this with Jessica last month but I don't think I've discussed it with you. The new URL gplny.org. Easy to find. A new look and a new functionality and a great looking website.
Frank Sykes: Thank you so much. Yeah, we put some time into it. Obviously an easier URL to remember and yeah the website has a lot more information but it's streamlined and a lot more user-friendly than past versions for sure.
Paul Szmal: So probably one of the most popular holiday events all around Geneva is the Mingle with Kringle. That's coming up a week from Saturday, December 14th from 10 to noon. Tell us everything happening that day.
Frank Sykes: Yes, it's our fourth annual Mingle with Kringle on the 14th from 10 until noon. This is a partnership with Geneva Rotary Club, Geneva 2030, Geneva Reads and the Historic Geneva Organization. There'll be a special visit from Santa. You'll be able to get your photo taken. There'll be special crafts and holiday snacks. That's just a great event that a lot of families come out for and enjoy the holiday.
Paul Szmal: That'll be lots of fun on Saturday, December 14th from 10 to noon. And then we're going to talk in a moment about the next Musical Moments performance, but remind us about that program and the support that it gets. You've had a private donor who stepped up and of course the foundation for the Geneva Public Library that we always talk about with the book sale.
Frank Sykes: Yes, our fantastic foundation. Very supportive of the library mission and all of our events and programs and Musical Moments is a series of different musical evenings on Friday and historically has been supported by the financial gifts from Jane Crumlish as well. So it's been fantastic to have different types of musical groups and acts come in to perform here in our historic reading room and just it's a wonderful evening. The next one's coming up on December 13th at 7.30 and again all these events are free to the community.
Paul Szmal: Yeah, tell us about this. Sounds like fun. So noted.
Frank Sykes: It's a Finger Lakes a cappella group and they're going to go through a whole history and a whole gamut of musical eras.
Paul Szmal: Yes, so if you know what a cappella is, obviously there's no musical instruments, but oftentimes they recreate the musical instruments with their voices and the will be holiday-themed and if you ever heard of pentatonics it's sort of like that from what I hear. So I am really excited about this. This is a slight change from some previous acts that we've had in the past.
So the day before that Thursday, December 12th, I had Spanish in school, not German, so tell me how we say this this German name for paper cutting.
Frank Sykes: Scheren schnitt, I think is how it's pronounced.
Paul Szmal: I'll go with that. Yeah, sure, why not? I was gonna butcher it anyway and I actually took German. So it actually translates to paper cuts and it's a craft for adults on Thursday the 12th from 1 to 3. You can sign up on our website at gplny.org and again this is all free, but it originated in Switzerland and in Germany and involves creating delicate designs with just a pair of scissors and paper and obviously all materials are provided.
So does that involve, do you do a lot of folds so one cut does all kinds of work?
Frank Sykes: I think so, from what I saw it looks like that, but one of those crafts where you get into it and you probably can't stop and it seems to be a lot of fun. Carol Steele leads that class, that's Thursday December 12th from 1 to 3 p.m.
Paul Szmal: And then your Euchre Club, I guess we've come full circle where we've gone from video games, now card games are big again. Monday's at 1 o'clock.
Frank Sykes: Monday's at 1 o'clock, we get a pretty good crew in here and it's almost like a pickup Euchre game. Anybody is welcome. It says club, but it is definitely not a club, it's just you walk in and enjoy and you play a couple games and you move around from different tables. We provide some coffee and tea for people and it's just a great place to to enjoy the comfort of others for sure and to learn too. You don't have to know how to play Euchre, you can learn when you come.
Paul Szmal: Obviously we have a large Spanish-speaking population in and around Geneva and it's a valuable skill in the workplace. A lot of jobs now require that you know more languages, so you can learn Spanish. It's Let's Learn Spanish Together on Wednesday, actually this afternoon at 5.30.
Frank Sykes: Yeah, at 5.30 this has been great for families and individuals to come and join Morales, who was a fantastic addition to our staff, to come and learn Spanish. She takes you step by step and you can join us for one of the lessons or for multiple lessons. This is great for people if they want to either catch up on maybe they took Spanish in high school, like some people, or if you're starting from scratch. It's really for anybody.
Paul Szmal: So you have lots of great partnerships like you've talked about. We're going to talk about the cooking classes done by Simply Homemade. Tell us about them.
Frank Sykes: Yeah, they've been partnering with us for a while now and those cooking classes have just been amazing for the kids to come and learn new skills and maybe a different perspective on healthy living and healthy eating. And so we have different cooking classes for different age groups. So for grades 2 to 5, the next one is Monday, December 9th at 4.30. And then for grades 6 through 12, we have that for Thursday, December 12th at 3.30. And again, all this information and you can register on our website at gplny.org. And if you go to Facebook, search for Simply Homemade. They do all these kinds of things like this. They just had a class with some Girl Scouts and they do all sorts of educational cooking programs like that.
Paul Szmal: Again, kids cooking is Monday, December 9th, grades 2 to 5 from 4.30, and the teen tween class Thursday the 12th at 3.30.
You've got a whole holiday family bingo night coming up a week from Friday. That sounds like a lot of fun.
Frank Sykes: Yeah, bingo's back by popular demand. It was a lot of fun the first few times. And so we brought it back for December 13th at 5 p.m. It's really a holiday family fun, a bingo. You know, you actually get to win prizes. And I guess there'll be some twists with the bingo for this event. But it's a lot of fun. And again, all of these programs that here at the library are free to all, which has just been amazing.
Paul Szmal: And then the Friday after bingo, right before Christmas, Friday, December 20th, it's going to be a movie night with two short movies. One is Smurfs, A Christmas Carol. The other is Prep and Landing.
Frank Sykes: Yes. Yeah. So it's a little different. What? Two short movies, December 20th at 6 p.m. You know, the entire community room fills up. Some people bring pillows and blankets. We have kind of an old school popcorn machine. And so we provide popcorn. And then we have pizza as well for the families that come and join us.
Paul Szmal: I love that. That has been great. It's just been growing and growing ever since we kicked that off.
I was going to say, I just love the range of programming you're able to offer. Tell us about Creators Club for kindergarten through fifth graders on Wednesdays.
Frank Sykes: Yep. And so we have a lot of different activities that we want to, you know, get kids involved with. A lot of them are STEAM related or, you know, which is science, technology, engineering, arts, and math. And, you know, you kind of have fun developing and discovering different things. And the hands-on, these are all hands-on type programs. So Creators Club is Wednesdays at 4 p.m. That's for kindergarten to five. And then the other thing I want to mention is the middle school breakaway, which is on Thursdays at 3 p.m. for grades six to eight. And that's gained a lot of traction too. And really a cool place for kids after school to come and hang out and do different activities. And, you know, I'm sure Ms. Debbie provides snacks for them as well, which is a lot of fun.
Paul Szmal: Check the schedule, by the way, on the website for the holiday schedule of these groups. There's no middle school breakaway on December 26th, the day after Christmas.
And you've been doing more and more to support homeschoolers, which is great. The homeschoolers can use the resources of the library and you have a homeschool meetup on Fridays for grades K through five.
Frank Sykes: Yeah. And that's open to anybody who, you know, in the region wants to come and just meet other people who are going through similar situations and want, you know, that social connection. Homeschool meetup are Fridays at 1 p.m. That's for kids about kindergarten to five, or kindergarten to fifth grade. And that's been great. Again, there's different activities and fun things for them to do on those Fridays as well.
Paul Szmal: And despite the electronics generation, kids still like to do a lot of traditional things. So on Fridays, the 13th and 27th, you've got a youth knitting club, grades six through 12. Pretty neat event.
Frank Sykes: Yeah, yeah, exactly. And I think there's sort of a maybe a want or need to, like, a retrieve from some of the electronics sometimes. And kids really enjoy these hands-on things, like the crafts or knitting, you know. So this youth knit club is great. Again, you don't have to already know how to knit. You can just come and learn and hang out with others. And just to repeat, so those are Fridays, December 13th and 27th at 3 p.m. And this is really geared towards grades six through 12.
Paul Szmal: All right. Check the newly designed and newly named website at gplny.org. And by the way, at the upper right of that website, you'll see the Facebook and Instagram links to follow even more content from the Geneva Public Library. Frank, thanks for all the great stuff you've done and appreciate sharing with everybody.
Frank Sykes: Yeah, thank you so much. And make sure when you go on the website, you can sign up for a monthly digital newsletter and you can get all that information on there sent to you every month.
