Employee Spotlight: Meet Our Superstars!

Branch and Title: Johnsonville Branch Manager
Work History: I’ve had the pleasure of working here since January 2017!
Favorite Book or Genre: I couldn’t pin down a single favorite book or even genre of books, but I’d like to hereby state for the record that picture books are for EVERY AGE; you never outgrow them! Now that that is cleared up, I might add that a book I recently read and loved is Clare Pooley’s How to Age Disgracefully. I absolutely plan to continue doing that. (Aging disgracefully, that is!)

So many things…especially after having found my way here to FCLS after working a significant number of years in a MUCH different library system. My staff here have heard a “few” true (horror) stories from those years and know I am not exaggerating when I say the difference is like night and day. I am grateful to be the steward of a beautiful facility in a welcoming community. I am grateful to have a fun, funny, and supportive team to work with and laugh with every day. I am grateful for the wide variety of creative things I get to do in my role as branch manager and the lovely people of all ages I meet while working. I am grateful for a thoughtful director who has never made me feel inadequate for things I don’t know. I am grateful for a working environment that encourages opportunities for continued learning in all areas because I’d like to be here in this role for a good while longer.

Let’s just say that my grown children’s inheritance will consist primarily of the “three P’s”…Picture books, Puppets, and Plush storybook characters. Luckily, all of these things are very useful on the job and bring me a lot of joy.

No. The classic book Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbitt was definitely a cautionary tale for me about being careful what you wish for. "Living’s heavy work, but off to one side, the way we are, it’s useless, too. It don’t make sense. If I knowed how to climb back on the wheel, I’d do it in a minute. You can’t have living without dying. So you can’t call it living, what we got. We just are, we just be, like rocks beside the road."

The first is definitely lilacs. We had a back yard full of them in my childhood home in PA. I miss that smell so much. One spring when I was in college I visited Carl Sandburg’s home in Flat Rock, NC. There were lilacs! I hadn’t smelled them since I was 13. I didn’t want to leave.
A second favorite is fresh-cut grapefruit. I would wear it as perfume if it wasn’t sticky and didn’t attract bees.

A third favorite scent is Christmas. Ah, but what is the scent of Christmas you ask? It involves fresh evergreen and morning snow and a particular bayberry candle sold by my middle school band as a fund-raiser, as well as midnight mass at the church of my childhood. Even more elusive than the lilacs I’m afraid; it is the scent of memories.

I love to laugh. So, in no particular order I heartily recommend: The Wallace and Gromit stop motion animated films from the late 80’s/early 90’s (“we forgot the crackers Gromit”), The IT Crowd (“Ladies and Gentlemen, I present to you, the INTERNET”), Keeping Up Appearances (“Boo-KAY residence, lady of the house speaking!) Miranda (she is me; if only I could marry Tom Ellis!), and the 1995 miniseries version of Pride and Prejudice, (best Mr. Darcy EVER!) Why, yes! I am a big fan of PBS broadcasting.