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Candidate Forum: Johnson County Community College Board of Trustees Candidates – Tuesday, Sept. 26, 6 – 7 p.m.

The Shawnee Mission and Blue Valley Post will be hosting 11 nights of local candidate forums ahead of the Nov. 7 general election at the Central Resource Library, giving Johnson County voters a chance to hear directly from the candidates who want to represent them in city government and on school boards. The full list of events is here.

Candidate Forum: Fairway and Roeland Park City Council Candidates – Thursday, Sept. 28, 6 – 8 p.m.

This forum will be held at the Cedar Roe Library and the Roeland Park candidates are at 6 p.m., the Fairway candidates are at 7 p.m.

Candidate Meet and Greet: Blue Valley Board of Education Candidates – Saturday, Sept. 30, 10 – 11 a.m.

Interested in learning more about the school board candidates on your ballot? Join us at the Blue Valley Library for a meet and greet with the candidates. You'll have the opportunity to introduce yourself, ask questions, and learn more about their stances on the issues impacting your local schools over coffee and donuts. We invited every school board candidate to participate in the Candidate Meet & Greet. Johnson County Library hosting these events does not constitute an endorsement for any particular candidate or issue.

Women’s Bike Summit – Saturday, Sept. 30, 9 a.m. – 12:30 p.m.

The Women’s Bike Summit will be held at the Central Resource Library and is a gender-inclusive event for people of all ages and backgrounds to come together to celebrate bicycling, discuss issues that are relevant and important to people on bikes, and get practical biking information and experience. Come meet new bike friends and participate in a day of free and interactive hands-on activities, workshops and rides that support, enhance and uplift women’s bicycling experience.

Nothing But the Page: A Workshop Led by Diana Goetsch – Saturday, Sept. 30, 9 – 11 a.m.

Some writers write better than they speak. Using free-writing exercises we’ll learn how to write more profoundly than we think or speak—with surprisingly quick results. Perfect for all genres and levels, this two-hour session, with acclaimed writer and renowned teacher Diana Goetsch, is for people wanting to elevate their freedom and creativity on the page. This program will be hosted using the meeting software Zoom. A Johnson County Library staff member will contact you via the email you registered with to provide more information about the program and instructions on how to access the Zoom meetings. You do not need to download any software or create an account.

And much more happening this week … 

Johnson County motorists recognize 87th Street as a key thoroughfare, but it’s also a vital corridor that connects residents to the Central Resource Library and many other nonprofit services.

That’s one reason people like Johnson County Commissioner Janeé Hanzlick are thrilled about the new bus route that Johnson County Transit launched in early August. Another proponent is Lisa Womack, senior manager of mobility innovation for Johnson County Transit.

Route 487 runs between the Lenexa City Center on the west and the Mission Transit Center on the east, traveling through downtown Overland Park and Prairie Village along the way and bringing riders close to the Library’s Corinth and Cedar Roe branches. The zero-fare route runs from around 5 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday through Friday, with buses scheduled an hour apart.

As the county commission’s liaison to the Library Board, Hanzlick knows the importance of making Library services available through public transit. Providing computer access is especially important.

“For some of us, we love having the library, love having the programs,” she said. “But for some people, it means whether they can find a job, it means whether they can access the internet, it means whether they can have their kids do their homework.”

One only needs to look at the strip center across 87th Street from the Central Resource Library to see a couple of important resources along the new route. Catholic Charities has a family support center there and Johnson County Community College runs adult education courses in office space at the center.

Hanzlick served for many years as the CEO of Safehome, a domestic violence agency in Johnson County, and the establishment of Route 487 fulfills one of her longtime goals.

“To not have transit in this area just did not make sense to me,” she said, “and I am thrilled that we now have this route.”

The county commission is piloting Route 487 with federal COVID-19 relief funding. It costs about $325,000 a year to run the route, and Womack is confident the county can finance the route long-term if it proves as popular as transit officials believe it will be.

The route logged 452 riders in its first 30 days. Womack said the goal is to increase ridership by 10% per year. Peak ridership has come on Wednesdays. The new route is a great partnership opportunity for the Library and Johnson County Transit, Womack said.

“I think it will open up some doors if we collaborate together and remind people that we're both still here,” Womack said.

She would like to borrow an idea from Kansas City, Missouri, where the library has read-alongs on the bus. Womack also envisions some programming using children’s characters from the Library.

Womack agreed with Hanzlick that Saturday service would be a big improvement for the route, allowing riders more access to farmer’s markets. Having the bus run later would also benefit workers who work nontraditional hours, she said.

Womack said transit planners love it when they can connect community resources, and as a “library girl” who grew up in suburban St. Louis, she is personally pleased that the route serves several branches.

She has carried a passion for libraries into adulthood from a time when summers meant books and the pool.

“I like all the digital and I like all the technology,” Womack said, “but to me, there's something kind of special about being able to touch the books and use your imagination and go into the library and hear a story or see the characters.”

On Wednesdays we put a spotlight on a book on our Adult Fiction New Release shelf that's absolutely worthy of your attention. We call it #NoWaitWednesday, and we hope you take a closer look at any of our New Release shelves at your local Library branch the next time you come in, as there's always tons of great titles just waiting for you to check them out. 

Last week we looked a title that's a bit moodier and darker to match the approaching fall season. We're continuing the trend this week with an atmospheric psychological thriller, The Forgetting, for patrons who love novels from authors like Alice Feeney or Ruth Ware - novels with intricate plots that often involve hidden secrets in a domestic suburban setting written with compelling prose that keeps pages turning until well after bedtime.

"The Forgetting" by Hannah Beckerman involves two women who are each victims of gaslighting in their own way. Anna, a London housewife,  wakes up in a hospital bed with a severe concussion from a car accident. She doesn't recognize the man at the end of the bed who introduces himself as Stephen and who gently informs her that he's her husband. As Anna recovers and undergoes physical therapy, he fills her in on her entire life, including their twelve-year marriage, a career as a librarian, and a nice home. Anna feels disoriented and confused as she remembers absolutely none of this and begins to wonder if Stephen - her seemingly perfectly supportive husband - is being completely truthful to her.

Meanwhile, in a city not that far away, another woman, Livvy, is going through a different situation. After six months of maternity leave after having a newborn, she's eager to get back to work, however childcare is proving difficult to find, since her husband Dominic frequently goes out of town for work. Dominic's estranged mother suddenly pops back into the picture, wanting to connect with a family she's never known, throwing Livvy's life into chaos. Is there something Dominic isn't telling her?

The novel bounces back and forth between these two storylines until about halfway through, when the novel pulls a shocking and devious twist and links the two together. (No spoilers!)  

The best domestic thrillers work when they scrape away the surface layer of seemingly perfect suburban lives to reveal the rotten foundation underneath. The perfect house, the perfect marriage, the perfect career, the perfect relationship - all of them at risk under the unbearable weight of secrets and lies that, if exposed, brings the whole facade crashing down. Characters must decide if knowing the truth and tearing down the image of what they knew so well is worth that risk, and readers are, of course, along for the ride.

Do you like domestic thrillers? Love the roller-coaster ride of secrets, lies, betrayal, and gaslighting? Strap in, then, and enjoy "The Forgetting" by Hannah Beckerman. Get these and more domestic thrillers at your local Library branch!

Johnson County Library and BikeWalkKC have cultivated a positive partnership for more than five years, educating patrons about how to maintain bikes and enjoy the health and environmental benefits of bicycling.

Now that partnership is blossoming into even more enriching programming, leading up to a day-long Women’s Bike Summit Sept. 30.

The summit, offered free of charge with the Library’s support, will feature activities, workshops and rides to encourage and enhance women’s bicycling experience and to help promote networking and a supportive biking community. Participants will gather in the large Carmack Community Room at Central Resource Library.

Participants are also encouraged to attend the keynote address 6:30-7:30 p.m. August 15 in the Carmack Room. Registration is required and is available here. The keynote event will feature Sarah Farsace, an inspiring advocate who has overcome physical challenges and is a tremendous mentor to her North Kansas City School District PE students.

The Library and BikeWalkKC have also collaborated on warm-up classes and events, which have resulted in short YouTube videos that people can revisit, highlighting bike handling skills, group rides and helpful technology.

BikeWalkKC has sponsored these summits in the past, but this will be the first one since 2018, and the first one that’s free of charge and hosted with Johnson County Library. Nick Ward-Bopp, a Johnson County Library MakerSpace facilitator who commutes by bike and helped forge the relationship with BikeWalkKC years ago, was delighted for this summit to come to fruition.

“It’s the culmination of all these educational programs we’ve been doing,” Ward-Bopp said. “It made so much sense to bring it here.”

Johnson County is an ideal summit location, Ward-Bopp said, because the county leads the region with 98 miles of already-built bicycle infrastructure and 315 additional miles planned. Meanwhile, e-bike sales are exploding, up more than 250 percent from 2021 to 2022, according to market research. Sustainability and healthy living are core Johnson County values, which the bike summit certainly supports.

Johnson County Library’s bicycle maintenance classes, offered in conjunction with BikeWalkKC in recent years, are quite popular. A bike fix-it stand outside Central Library is well used.

The Library is all about access, Ward-Bopp said, so empowering people through education to get bikes into their hands and to provide bike maintenance skills and information about safety and safe routes is all part of that mission.

Laura Fox, BikeWalkKC Director of Education, agreed the partnership has been excellent. “We have very clear communication,” she said. “We have set expectations and the Library is super easy to work with. I think they are setting the standard for resource sharing among all Libraries.”

BikeWalkKC’s Development Director, Amy Scrivner, noted that the organization’s membership actually grew 60 percent from 2019 through 2021, as people turned to biking and walking to cope physically and mentally during the pandemic.

“BikeWalkKC’s goal is to provide activities like the Women’s Bike Summit that encourage more people to ride so they see the benefit of supporting an organization like ours,” she said.

Fox observed that women often safeguard the health of a family, so the Women’s Bike Summit is a catalyst for getting even more women involved in this wholesome and fun activity. Men are very welcome at the summit, but it is geared to women.