By OLIVIA BERGMEIER
Salina Post
Many people connect through shared media, literature and activities to build community, and at the Salina Public Library, staff aim to continue bringing Salina residents closer together.
The Salina Public Library will kick off its month-long Salina Reads event this weekend with multiple presentations and bee-themed children's programs in the library.
"Our whole goal with this is to bring our community together," said Katie Zey, the head of marketing at Salina Public Library. "We want to do that through literature and reading, but also all the programs and opportunities we're trying to give the public for free."
"We want people to come together and learn some really cool stuff and have fun with it."
Presentations and coinciding children's programming will begin at 10:15 a.m. and conclude at noon throughout the library.
"Lab Girl" by Hope Jahren has set this year's theme around science, technology, engineering, math, nature and mental health. Each event will feature a different aspect of the book, a memoir of Jahren's life as a woman in the STEM industry.
The kick-off event will feature multiple keynote speakers, including Esther Kency from the Central Kansas Mental Health Center, Laura van der Pol from The Land Institute, and Sabrina Rosario from the Kansas Wesleyan University Community Resilience HUB.
While adults listen in on the conversations upstairs, local beekeepers from AJ's Honey Farms will entertain the children with a new coinciding program.
"The first one is just a general program on beekeeping and how that works and why we do it," Zey said. "We also have one following that, called 'DIY Bee Hotels,' and it talks about what the colony looks like and some of the different biological processes involved."
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Local artists will join the stage between presentations and perform music by Ann Zimmerman and poetry by Aubrey Streit Krug.
The library will also hand out free copies of "Lab Girl" to attendees to join in on the literature that centered this year's Salina Reads.
Throughout the rest of the month, the library's local partners will host various events covering more aspects of science, nature and mental health.
The next event to continue Salina Reads is scheduled for Thursday, Feb. 8, at the Salina Art Center Cinema, 150 S. Santa Fe Ave., where attendees will watch the film "Picture a Scientist" directed by Sharon Shattuck and Ian Cheney.
Kansas Wesleyan University Biology Professor Elizabeth Tharman will lead a discussion following the documentary.
Multiple community partners, including Ad Astra Books & Coffeehouse, Red Fern Booksellers, and KWU, will host book discussions over "Lab Girl" throughout the month.
The only paid event throughout the series is a Mental Health First Aid class with a ticket price of only $5.
"We don't want anything to cost any money if we can," Zey said. "We received two grants that helped us fund most of this month."
The two grants that supplied the funding for these events include one from Humanities Kansas and another through the Salina Arts & Humanities Horizons Grant program.
The month-long endeavor will conclude with a presentation from the Up Guys covering mental health for children.
