{"id":35317,"date":"2026-06-09T08:49:35","date_gmt":"2026-06-09T13:49:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/?p=35317"},"modified":"2026-06-09T08:22:23","modified_gmt":"2026-06-09T13:22:23","slug":"brian-j-and-the-summer-reading-program","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/2026\/06\/09\/brian-j-and-the-summer-reading-program\/","title":{"rendered":"Brian J. and the Summer Reading Program"},"content":{"rendered":"

As you know, gentle reader, I have been doing the Springfield-Greene County Library’s Winter Reading Challenge for, what, six years now? Yes–2021 was the first year. Each summer, too, the library has a Summer Reading Challenge, but I’ve shied away from them because they weren’t a reading challenge–instead of reading five books in fifteen categories in two months (or in all fifteen categories, as I am a stretch goaler), you read five books in three months but do five activities as well<\/em>. Kid-kinda activities, even in the adult program.<\/p>\n

So I’ve avoided it. Except for this year.<\/p>\n

My beautiful wife mentioned it in passing, and so I looked at the flyer for it.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Activities included going to a different branch of the library than you normally do, going to the First Friday Art Walk…. downtown, I think?, downloading the library app, attending a book discussion, going to the Missouri Institute of Natural Science, or doing you own activity (up to three out of five can be your write-ins).<\/p>\n

I would have dismissed it again, but….<\/p>\n

Well, a couple of things. First of all, my youngest is also at a loose end. He graduated from high school, separated from his high school job, has been slow to hunt for another job, and is prone to spending all day playing Minecraft unless someone shanghais him into leaving the house. I had just done the thing last week, and we went to the co-op to pay our electricity bill, when (second of all) we passed right by the Missouri Institute of Natural Science. <\/p>\n

It’s a small museum of paleontology and geology; when a road crew blasted its way into a cave (in the 21st century), they found fossils and whatnot and decided to preserve them. When I say it’s a small museum, I mean two rooms, essentially. When the boys were young, one summer I had free reign (I mean reign<\/em>)–I was between contracts, and they were out of school for the summer in a time before I was not between contracts, and they spent their summers in daycare<\/strike> “summer camps” at various churches and whatnot. So that summer (after they spent a month in their own school’s “summer camp”), I took them to a lot of local attractions, museums, hiking trails, and bowling–lots and lots of bowling. When we visited then, MINS was only a single room. Ah, but where has the time gone?<\/p>\n

I dragged the boy<\/strike> man to MINS, briefly–our visit was but thirty minutes, maybe, and part of that was me swapping old man stories with the old man volunteer who lives nearby. I have, what, three pictures from the trip? Different from the first one, but our digital photography strategy has changed. When the boys were young, we copied all the photos from the digital camera and later from the iPhone. But now, we take a couple of photos when we remember to, and we save only the best to conserve space on gigabytes and terabytes of hard drives. Mostly to save space on the backup devices, which are likely a decade or so behind current storage, although with the trends in current prices, soon they’ll be parate again.<\/p>\n

So I started my Microsoft Publisher document for tracking books and activities (Publisher will live long enough for me to finish this reading challenge, as Microsoft is sunsetting it and making it impossible for me to access 30 years of .pub documents–ask me how I feel–but you can probably guess). And then…<\/p>\n

The next week, we took a trip to ABC Books (not that one<\/a>, but the one we mentioned in it. Since we were going to that corner of the city, we could hit another branch of the library–we chose the Midtown Carnegie Branch (can you tell where it came from?). I checked out a book, to be reported on when I finish it. After that, we went to the baseball stadium in town, formerly known as Hammons Field but now called Route 66 Stadium (or is it?<\/a>) to get a photo by the public mural on it. Bang! We were already three activities in<\/em>!<\/p>\n

Over the weekend, we went to the Pickwick Street Fair. Well, briefly. I finally got to see Kristi Merideth, whose CD I got in in 2016<\/a> and whom I mentioned in 2018<\/a> had a child in school with mine. I say briefly<\/em> because the crowds agitated the oldest, and neither of them was impressed that their elementary and middle school colleague was on the stage. Also, they had no seating within the event boundaries to enjoy the music–although we could have gone to the coffee shop next door and sat on the patio, but they were ready to go.<\/p>\n

That’s four already, and it’s only the second week of June. Strangely, I am further behind on the books than the activities. And we will finish the activities for the summer reading program this week, probably. Which means I will turn in my “game board” next week and get the unnamed prize.<\/p>\n

I have encouraged my youngest to participate as well since I’m dragging him along to the events. And, you know what? I’ll probably find activities for the both of us to tear us away from the computer on the days until he gets a job, I get a job, or he starts his in-person college classes. It will be good for both of us. Mostly me, as it also allows me to return to a summer with two knockabout boys that we spent doing things together.<\/p>\n

Now, what should we do today? Plant a summer flower (or flowers) together to complete the reading challenge? Go bowling and to the nature center, just like the old days but just the two of us? The summer reading challenge has suddenly prompted us to the possibilities.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As you know, gentle reader, I have been doing the Springfield-Greene County Library’s Winter Reading Challenge for, what, six years now? Yes–2021 was the first year. Each summer, too, the library has a Summer Reading Challenge, but I’ve shied away from them because they weren’t a reading challenge–instead of reading five books in fifteen categories […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3334,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35317","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35317","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3334"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35317"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35317\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35321,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35317\/revisions\/35321"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35317"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35317"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35317"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}