Join us for Yoga Classes on Thursdays @ 7:00 PM and Saturdays @ 10:00 AM. We sell passes for 5 classes for $25 and the passes do not expire. If space permits, walk-ins are available for $8 per class. This is one of our efforts to become healthy in 2009. Yoga is a great exercise for mind, body and spirit and is a gentle way to increase your health and vitality.

Traveling Exhibit Tells Unknown Story of German POWs Held in Camps All Over the U.S. During WWII

By the end of World War II some 425,000 German, Italian and Japanese prisoners of war (POWs) found themselves imprisoned in over 660 base and branch POW camps in almost all of the then-48 United States and the territory of Alaska. Millions more Axis and Allied POWs were held in other camps in Europe, the Soviet Union, Canada, Australia and Africa. While Axis and Soviet POWs were both the perpetrators as well as victims of dictatorial governments and state-sponsored violence, POW experiences on all sides embody ageless and timely themes of war and peace, justice under arms and issues regarding human rights, international reconciliation and future conflict avoidance.

The roughly 372,000 German POWs held in U.S Army-operated camps across the United States were sent out to harvest or process crops, build roads and waterways, fell trees, roof barns, erect silos, work in light non-military industry, lay city sewers and construct tract housing, wash U.S. Army laundry and do other practical wartime tasks. With the high rate of 19th-century German immigration to America, many of those who worked with POWs spoke to them in their native tongue; some even had relatives or former neighbors among them. In the process, they formed significant, often decades-long friendships with “the enemy” and underwent considerable changes as individuals and as a group – thus fundamentally influencing postwar German values and institutions, as well as American-German relations. A number of POWs even chose to immigrate to the United States after the war.

Using ten narrative panels and films about this story, TRACES’ mobile museum—a retrofitted school bus called the BUS-eum 3—will tour 26 states in the Midwest, South, Southeast, and Eastern Seaboard from Labor Day 2009 through June 2010, reaching schools, libraries and historical societies. We are fortunate to have this exhibit @ our library!

Bottles of homemade plum wine link two worlds, two eras, and two lives through the eyes of Barbara Jefferson, a young American teaching at a Tokyo university. When her surrogate mother, Michi, dies, Barbara inherits an extraordinary gift: a tansu chest filled with bottles of homemade plum wine wrapped in sheets of rice paper covered in elegant calligraphy—one bottle for each of the last twenty years of Michi’s life.

Why did Michi leave her memoirs to Barbara, who cannot read Japanese? Seeking a translator, Barbara turns to an enigmatic pottery artist named Seiji, who will offer her a companionship as tender as it is forbidden. But as the two lovers unravel the mysteries of Michi’s life, a story that draws them through the aftermath of World War II and the hidden world of the hibakusha, Hiroshima survivors, Barbara begins to suspect that Seiji may be hiding the truth about Michi’s past—and a heartbreaking secret of his own.

This is a web site that provides GED Test Preparation, Job Skills and Tips for Everyday Life. Check it out at fastforwardky.com !

If you, or someone you know are not able to enjoy books or magazines because you cannot see well or cannot handle library materials due to a disability, take advantage of a free service - KY Talking Books Library. You can call 1-800-372-2968 to sign up, or you can contact us at the library. You will receive books and magazines on casettes and a casette player - all delivered to your door.