How to Camp Like a Pro by Jeff Burlingame

Spend some time under the stars. Camping is a fun and inexpensive way to get outdoors. This book is part of the outdoor sport skills series. It gives you basic information for beginner campers. You will be able to select and set up a campsite. The book will even help you with cleaning up and heading home. You’ll find lots great tips to help you make your night under the stars a successful and enjoyable experience.

How to Canoe or Kayak Like a Pro by Ashley P. Watson Norris

Take some time at a river or lake and try out some kayaking. This book will give you some pointers. Also part of the outdoor skills series, this book is full of  helpful information for the beginning Kayaker or Canoer. You’ll start by learning basic watercraft terms. Then you can learn which gear and supplies you need. Most importantly you will learn safety instructions. This book will help you get started on your paddling adventure. Throughout the book you will find excellent tips and “Did you know” facts to teach you how to make the most of your day on the water.

101 Cool Pool Games for Children by Kim Rodomista

If your water activities tend more to the pool than a lake or river check out this book. It’s full of fun for all group sizes and for children of different swimming abilities. Activities are marked with visible symbols at the top of the page for both group size and swimming ability. It also lists if any additional accessories necessary. Make your day at the pool even more fun by adding new activities to your play.

Run, Jump, Hide, Slide, Splash by Joe Rhatigan

Some outdoor games are timeless. This book has plenty of fun suggestions that will keep the kids moving. I picked up this book thinking it would be full of games from my childhood. I was not disappointed. There are so many games I remember playing in the parks and on the school grounds. However, this book has so much more.

There are games requiring no supplies at all to games that need certain supplies. Each game is clearly labeled for the number of players, supplies, where you should play and the main point of the game. If you’re looking for a certain group size or game type, there is a handy index to help you narrow down your options.  This book would be very helpful for a summer party, family reunion or any gathering of friends.

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“Willie Foster & Young Fans,” Kadir Nelson, Oil on canvas

Experience the traveling art exhibit from the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum Shades of Greatness February 25 – May 7, 2023, in the Alice C. Sabatini Gallery. The critically-acclaimed exhibit features 35 original works of art produced by 28 diverse professional artists from across the country who interpret the Negro Leagues experience on-and-off the playing field. Renowned artist Kadir Nelson headlines the talented roster of artists in Shades of Greatness.

Kadir Nelson’s paintings are in the permanent collections of several notable institutions including The National Baseball Hall of Fame, the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery, and the National Museum of African American History and Culture. Nelson is the recipient of multiple awards including the 2020 recipient of the Caldecott Medal and Coretta Scott King Award for illustration, New York Times Best Illustrated Book Awards and several NAACP Image Awards.

This exhibit is made possible by The Library Foundation through contributions from The National Endowment for the Humanities: Democracy demands wisdom.

Featured Artists

For this exhibit the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum worked with artists to explore deeper stories and themes within the history of Negro League baseball. Shades of Greatness honors and celebrates African American history and sports.

“Catch Me A Ball Player,” Bonnye Brown, Oil on canvas

Larry Allen | Norm Barrister | Terry Beavers | NedRa Bonds | Eric Brace | Bonnye Brown | Henry Dixon | John Ferry | Raelee Frazier | Rob Hatem | Anthony High | Ed Hogar | Kevin Hosley | Robert Hurst | Jared Kraus | George Merris | Steve Musgrave |  Kadir Nelson | Frank Norfleet | Ramon Olivera |Lonnie Powell | Johne Richardson |Keith Shepherd | Kenneth Stanford |  Veronica Sublett | Cortney Wall | Larry Welo | Steve Wilson

Related Events

Opening Reception

Take Me Out to the Ball Game

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Queens of Pain

As a small child in Chicago, I remember watching (without my mom knowing) roller derby. I was secretly wishing I could grow up to be a Roller Derby Queen. Follow one of the world’s most renowned derby stars through her career in Queens of Pain. If you want to have an in-person experience, follow Topeka’s own Capital City Crushers and catch a competition. There is also a Junior Roller Derby if you have a youngster interested.

The 2010 fictional roller derby movie Whip It is also pretty entertaining.

Girls Can’t Surf

Oh, to be on a beach enjoying the sun and water then look up and watch a surfer ride the wave to the shore. It is truly amazing to watch. Being in landlocked Kansas, I can grab a couple of our surfing DVD’s and be awed.

Girls Can’t Surf is about a group of women who take on the mostly male world of surfing in the ’80s. “Like totally” big hair and neon colors aside, these woman can surf really well. Hang ten and watch how these surfers held their ground and caught the big one.

Unbreakable: The Western States 100

Running is the punishment coaches use when you mess up in practice and, aside from square dancing, the most hated exercise most of us remember from P.E. I absolutely abhorred running until I really gave it a try. It was a struggle, but I have seen the benefits – better overall cardio fitness and a great stress reliever.

Ultra-runners are an intense group of athletes who push themselves to run unbelievable distances. The 100 up to 200-mile races tax runners mentally and physically. Unbreakable follows a group of ultra-runners in their quest to finish Western States. They show how it not only takes physical stamina but mental stamina to continue to put one foot in front of the other. These athletes have relentless forward progress.

Ride Till I Die

Rodeos bring the old west to the present, showcasing the skills cowboys needed to work cattle. Along with Cheyenne, Wyoming; Winfield, Kansas is one of the first places to hold a rodeo in the United States. Of the many events, bull riding is my favorite. Like all sports, the activity takes a toll on the athlete. Ride Till I Die takes you on one rider’s journey through his career.

Next time you visit the library, amble toward the Sports Movies and you’ll find more than 300 DVDs and Blu-rays. Find a new sport to watch or even a new athletic past time for yourself.

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My daughter Ava and I are moving a playhouse by cargo bike

Cargo bikes have been compared to the minivan or trucks of the bicycle world. Racing bikes may be the sports car. Cruiser bikes may be the convertibles. Cargo bikes fill that catch-all niche when you can’t quite fit what you’re bringing in a backpack or on a rack.

A cargo bike is used to carry stuff (kids, groceries, tools, a playhouse). It can be a standard bike with an additional rack for bags. In this article I’ll talk about bikes built specifically to haul other items. If you’re not familiar with cargo bikes, read on and you may want to watch this quick video.

Cargo bikes work well in Topeka

Katrina Shaw and Theo Alford-Shaw

Riding a cargo bike in Topeka is useful, functional and fun. Topeka is mostly flat and has a relatively good network of side streets and neighborhood streets that allow you to ride a cargo bike to the store or to grab kids at school or daycare without getting on a highway.

No all neighborhoods in Topeka work as well for biking due to how our community developed. This is why Topeka’s Complete Streets Advisory Committee is working on improving that. (The link is to a document this group helped put out in 2019.)

Connecting to your community & nature

Karl Fundenberger

Cargo bikes enable the rider to grab a chair, some snacks or a beverage and any kids and head across Topeka in 15-20 minutes or over a few blocks if your friends are in the neighborhood to have a fun evening without a car. It makes an average day into an adventure.

Cargo bikes bring the short travel experience back to a human scale. On a bike you smell the air, see new things your neighbors are doing with their gardens and feel closer to your community. You can even grab the chair your neighbors 3 blocks over are pitching on the way home, because you have a bungee cord to attach it to your bike.

Back row: Me, Zach Snethen, Matt Messina | Front Row: Ava Fry, Oliver Snethen, Wheeler Benson-Ross, Theo Alford-Shaw in July 4th parade

Cargo bikes are that flexible middle ground between driving and having a car, or riding your 10-speed or mountain bike to work everyday. They allow life in Topeka’s random spur of the moment inclinations to still continue and don’t make riding a bike force you to concede and not do something “because I rode my bike today.”

Ava Fry is ready to go after a bakery pickup.

Riding a cargo bike leaves your day open to a little unknown. You could stop by the bakery on the way to work for a few dozen doughnuts to share with coworkers. Grab a to-go meal from downtown for an impromptu backyard picnic when you get home. Pick up your kid and a friend from daycare for a play date.

Meet local cargo bike owners & watch documentary

Motherload is an award-winning documentary that uses the cargo bike as the vehicle for exploring parenthood in this digital age of climate change. Having cycled everywhere until she had twins in 2008, filmmaker Liz Canning felt stifled by the idea of transporting her babies via car. She Googled “family bike” and uncovered a global movement of people replacing cars with cargo bikes: long-frame bicycles designed for carrying heavy loads. Liz set out to learn more, and Motherload was born. 86 min Runtime

This event is a collaborative offering from the Topeka Community Cycle Project, City of Topeka Neighborhood Relations and the Topeka and Shawnee County Public Library.

Attend Sept 14 library event and you may win this bike! Free to enter. Must be present to win.

More cargo bike resources

Miles and Matt Messina

If you’d like to learn more about cargo bikes in Topeka or talk to some Topekans who currently own a cargo bike, feel free to email the Topeka Community Cycle Project at topeka@cycleproject.org!

The Bike Shop Girl: Awesome resource on many cargo bikes and accessories and practical ways to use them.

G & O Family Cyclery: A favorite amongst bike shops

Clever Cycles: Another reputable bike shop that is fluent in all things cargo bike

Pedal Parents Facebook group: Good dialogue and product improvisation for families wanting to haul kids in their daily routines.

Written by
Andy Fry member of Topeka Community Cycle Project

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So how can the library help you catch the good feelings? Here are a few ideas. If you’re planning a Super Bowl party, visit the cooking neighborhood in person or browse our cookbooks online. We have many cookbooks full of ideas about how to spice up a Super Bowl watch party.

There are plenty of books and DVDS  in the Sports and Leisure Neighborhood on the topic of the Super Bowl. Sadly, there are not as many about the Chiefs, but the ones that are there are good. One excellent new book is ’69 Chiefs, which recounts the Chiefs’ last Super Bowl season. The book is full of great pictures and stories that brought to life that generation of football heroes.

Lived in Topeka and played in the Super Bowl

In writing this I wondered how many Topeka natives have played in a Super Bowl. There aren’t that many but there are a few. Billy Kilmer, a quarterback who led the Washington Redskins to the Super Bowl in the early 70s, is from Topeka. Michael Wilhoite, a graduate of Highland Park High School, played in the 2012 Super Bowl for the San Franciso 49ers.

This years Chiefs team features a defensive lineman named  Mike Pennel. Pennel lived in Topeka for some years as a child and still has family living here, who no doubt are excited.

Excitingly there are two players from Topeka who are veterans of the Super Bowl and are members of the of the Shawnee County Sports Hall of Fame. You can read about them and see pictures in the Sports Hall of Fame display in the library’s west wing.

Tom Dinkel, is a 1974 graduate of Shawnee Heights High School. Dinkel was a member of the 1982 Cincinnati Bengals who played in Super Bowl XVI.

Troy Wilson, a 1989 graduate of Shawnee Heights, played as a member of the 49ers in the 1994 Super Bowl XXIX.

Wether you’re a diehard fan, just gather with friends to watch, or are someone who watches for the commercial or the half-time show there is plenty to celebrate this year.

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a grainy video of astronauts of Apollo 17 kicking a moon rock like a soccer ball.

Could we play sports on the Moon? How different would it be? How difficult would it be? Granted there is unlikely to ever be a sports franchise on the moon. But just for speculations sake, how difficult would it be to play a sport in lunar gravity? I came across an article on this subject by Steve Healy, a physics student from Rutgers University.

So what sport would be the most difficult to play? Obviously they all would be hard to play with low gravity. In his article, Healy outlined his thinking about the level of difficulty to play soccer, football and basketball in lunar gravity.

Soccer

According to Healy, “Soccer would be the most difficult to play.” A beautiful part of the game is watching a great player like Lionel Messi move the ball down the field using only his feet. Balls that merely bounce and skip on the earth’s gravity would be uncontrollable on the moon.

Healy points out that “in soccer many shots, passes and moves involve the ball being airborne in a very controlled manner. Players would take quite a while to get used to the low gravity of the moon.”

Football

Healy said that football would be the most interesting and most fun to watch under low gravity. I agree. It would be fun to watch a strong armed quarterback like KC Chiefs Patrick Mahomes throw a long pass to a wide receiver on the moon. How far would it go? There is not an aspect of the game that wouldn’t be impacted. For example a running back often tries to leap over the defense. Healy said, “A running back who already tries to jump over the defensive line here on earth, is going to take a flying leaps on the moon.”

The dimensions of a football field is 100 yards long and 53 1/2 yards wide. Perfect for here on earth. I suspect on the moon that size football field would get a little cramped. All the more fun to watch players try to adjust.

Basketball

Healy said, “basketball players would have the most enhancement added to their game on the moon.” Basketball is  already a game of height and jumping. Without the earth’s gravity to hold them down basketball players would be able perform some unimaginable dunks on the moon.  Just imagine seeing Labron James soar from mid-court to dunk the ball, or Steph Curry take a full court jump shot and make it with ease.

Other Sports

How would your favorite sport be played? How difficult would it be to play tennis or volleyball? How far could an olympian throw a shot put or javelin? Maybe someday we will get those answers. Till then we can only apply some science and speculate. Check out these materials to get you started.

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It took 16 years but the American women did it again and won the World Cup in 2015 in Canada against Japan. That team was led by Carli Lloyd, who is the only woman to have ever scored a hat trick in a World Cup final. In fact she scored her three goals within the first 16 minutes of the game.

Now, four years later, the 2019 team is fairly young and inexperienced. However, with Alex Morgan and Carli Lloyd returning they are the odds on favorite to repeat as champions. The 2019 World Cup looks to be the most competitive yet.  There are a handful of teams with a legitimate shot of winning it all. These include the United States, Japan, Germany and the host country, France. Great Britain and Australia have an outside chance at making the top three if they can make it out of their respective groups, but they would be a long-shot. The first game kicks-off on Friday June 7, 2019, so put on your red, white and blue, or the colors of whatever country you root for and get ready for some great soccer games.

United States World Cup Schedule (Group Stage)

US vs Thailand 6/11   2pm

US vs. Chile 6/16       11am

US vs. Sweden 6/20   2pm

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First, how many people follow through and actually parachute jump each year? According to the United States Parachute Association (USPA) 3.3 million jumps were made in 2018. They estimate more than half a million of those were first time jumpers.

Safety

The USPA listed 13 fatalities in 2018, a rate of 1 death in 254,000 jumps. The average person’s lifetime chance of being struck by lightning is 1 in 3,000. If you don’t worry about lightning, parachuting should be even further down your list of concerns. When you learn more about the training and professionalism of those involved in keeping the activity safe, you will be greatly reassured.

Skydiving or Parachuting?

What is the correct term for the act of exiting an aircraft in flight and returning to ground level with a parachute? Skydiving or parachute jumping? USPA uses both terms interchangeably, so either is correct. There was no “skydiving” until the latter part of the 20th century. “Parachuting” was done for work (the military, fire jumpers, etc.) and “skydiving” was for fun or sport.

Books

The place to start is Parachuting: The Skydivers’s Handbook by Dan Poynter. From the book jacket: “Skydiving! It’s not just falling but the thrill of unencumbered horizontal flight. Sport parachuting today is not rough and tumble. New equipment and the latest training techniques let you advance quickly to graceful free fall, swift and controlled canopy flight, and smooth and easy tip-toe landings. This all-new, revised edition covers every phase of skydiving from beginning to advanced.”

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The 2007 Rob Reiner comedy film Bucket List stars Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman as two cancer patients who decide to do the things they always wanted to do before they die. Not surprisingly, skydiving is on the list.

In perhaps one of the best-known parachute-related moments in history, a man calling himself D.B. Cooper hijacked an airliner, demanded $200,000 in cash and two parachutes, then jumped out into the Pacific northwest, never to be seen again. Or was he?

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How Pickleball Started

The game was invented for bored kids by three dads on Bainbridge Island, Washington, in the summer of 1965.  At first glance the game seemed to appeal primarily to senior citizens. But I also noticed the passion and the energy the games required. I soon discovered the game has a broad appeal. To learn more about an activity that has two dozen people at the YMCA playing at 6am, I contacted a local pickleball expert. Andrew Evans a.k.a.the pickleball librarian.

Pickleballers

A group of local pickleballers from the Pickleball Librarian’s Facebook page

Evans first addressed the stereotype of pickleball being a game played by senior citizens. He said it’s actually  played by all ages and all levels. Tennis was extremely popular in the 1970s and 1980s. It was hard to find an empty tennis court back then. Nowadays, tennis courts are often empty and even growing weeds.

Those same tennis players are now discovering that pickleball is easier on their bodies and rediscovering their love for racquet sports. The pickleball court is smaller and doesn’t require as much running. This is great if the player has knee or back problems. The paddle is also lighter than a tennis racket. This is helpful if you have shoulder or arm problems. Thus a lot of players are senior citizens.

Evans said, “regular players say the game is a fast-paced adrenaline and to beware the game is highly addictive. The more you play the better you will want to become. If you happen to see people enjoying the sport you will see a diverse and vibrant crowd enjoying the sport.”

“Pickleball is not just a sport for the retired and it is economical.”  A good racket costs around $50. It is recommended to use court shoes rather than regular gym shoes.

Get Started

Pickleball courts at Hughes Park, 8th & Orleans, Topeka

If you are looking to try pickleball, there is a growing number of courts and facilities in the our area. Some of the better places to play include the Sports Pavilion Lawrence and the Topeka Country Club. Outdoor courts include Hughes Park near 8th and Orleans in Topeka and Lyons Park near 7th and Lincoln in Lawrence. Find more details from Shawnee County Parks and Rec.

Just like in any sport, learn the basic rules before you start. We have some books on pickleball with rules and tips. The USA Pickleball Association (USAPA) has videos to teach you the rules. People who you play are more than willing to give you advice and encouragement. They will still want to beat you when you play them, but at least they will give you a pat on the back and some pointers after. Just have fun!

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My favorite time of year is when the calendar turns from February to March. There’s the promise of better weather, longer days and basketball.  Unfortunately this year the weather has yet to cooperate, but I can guarantee NCAA basketball tournament will go on as planned.

If you’re looking for a place to watch some of the games, we will be showing them here at the library starting on Thu, March 21. All games will be shown in Marvin Auditorium on our big screens. The schedule is:

Thursday | March 21 | 11:30am – 9pm
Friday | March 22 | 11:30am – 9pm
Saturday | March 23 | 11am – 6pm
Sunday | March 24 | Noon – 9pm

Another way to participate this year is to fill out a bracket in our NCAA Bracket Challenge. Just click on the link below.  The winner gets a $20 gift card to Dick’s Sporting Goods and their name permanently on a plaque in the library’s Sports Neighborhood. You don’t have to be a die-hard college basketball fan to join the challenge. You could know next to nothing and still have a decent chance to win. You have until the start of the games on Thursday March 21 to get your picks in.

Fill Out a Bracket

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