GCL to Host Downloadable Audiobook Demonstration

image from Wikimedia Commons

If you're curious about how our new downloadable audiobooks work, be sure to come to an informal demonstration we're holding Friday, February 4th from 11 til 1. If you have an Ipod or other gadget you'd like to experiment with, bring it. We'll brew a pot of coffee and you're welcome to bring a brown bag lunch. Hope to see you there.

Arkansans in History: Hattie Caraway

image from the Library of Congress archives

On this week in Arkansas history, Hattie Caraway became the first woman elected to serve as a United States Senator. Although Jeanette Rankin was the first woman elected to the House of Representatives and Rebecca Latimer Felton was the first woman appointed to serve in the Senate—for one day—Caraway is important to state and national history because she earned her place in government and history.

Born in Tennessee in 1878 as Hattie Wyatt, Hattie Caraway was a schoolteacher by profession. She received a bachelor’s degree in 1898 and taught until she married Thaddeus Caraway in 1902. The two moved to Jonesboro, Arkansas, where her husband pursued his legal profession. Thaddeus Caraway was voted into the US House of Representatives in 1912 (and not long after became the namesake of Caraway, Arkansas). He later successfully ran to become a US Senator in 1931.

When he died in that year, it was common practice for congressmen's widows to be appointed until a special election could determine the next congressman. Hattie Caraway was sworn in as a Senator on December 9, 1931. A special election was held on this week in 1932 in which Caraway won; she completed her husband's term. Caraway became the first female senior Senator to her state in 1937, and she continued to win her Senate seat until 1945. While in the Senate, she was the first woman to chair a committee. She was a member of the agriculture committee, a role relevant to the interests of her state.

Hattie Caraway passed away in 1950. In 2001, Caraway was the first person from Arkansas to appear on a US postage stamp. The library does have a book specifically on Hattie Caraway’s election campaign. Caraway played one of many roles instrumental to Jonesboro and Craighead County development as well as Arkansas government and history as a whole.

Paranormal Activity in Arkansas?

photo courtesy Wiki Commons

"Two possibilities exist: Either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying." - Arthur C. Clarke

On New Year's Eve, 2010, 5,000 red-winged blackbirds fell from the sky over Beebe, Arkansas, generating widespread media coverage. Theories range from fireworks, hail, thunderclaps, etc.

One of the theories, which most skeptics will brush off their shoulders, is that a high-flying spacecraft slammed into the flock.

Let's take a look at some eerie facts and questions:

1) The birds died of "acute physical trauma."

2) Their stomachs were empty and no poisons were found in the autopsies.

3) The weather was very, very strange for late December and there were no storms in the sky over Beebe.

4) There has been a major spike in mass sightings of UFOs lately in such places as China, Sweden, Israel, United States, Scotland, Chile, etc. - and that is to say, Unidentified Flying Objects, not flying saucers with little green men waving a peace sign.

5) On a poetic note, blackbirds are often seen as an omen of "death, havoc, destruction" (and it was the night before the new year).

6) The strike occurred at 11:00 pm, and blackbirds are not nocturnal. Why were they out flying around?

Even a grumpy skeptic like me has to wonder, if this wasn't some military test or operation that was muddied by the People in Charge with the not-really-possible theories (fireworks, hail, poisoning), then was the cause of these mass deaths, in fact, an alien spacecraft?

Alien existence has never been proven (or if it has, it has been kept from the masses). Many people, from whack-jobs, average citizens, and even highly regarded professionals have claimed to have witnessed UFOs, and some have sworn to have been kidnapped and experimented on aboard spacecraft. Many of these stories are strangely similar, some identical.

Either way, if you'd like to further investigate UFOs, aliens, and other paranormal phenomenon, we have a great section here at the Garland County Library in the 001.942 section in Non-Fiction (books, audio books, VHS tapes, and DVDs).

While I'm fairly certain like all strange phenomena, we'll never know the real truth behind the blackbird massacre, and most likely in 20 years it will be a mere footnote in UFO literature.

Unless it keeps happening.