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Gratitude and thankfulness

According to the American Heart Association, “expressing gratitude can improve sleep, mood and immunity, can decrease depression, anxiety, chronic pain and disease.” Consistently combining gratitude observation with the performance of acts of thankfulness can help raise your positivity, too. If you want to begin or up your gratitude practice, the New Ulm Public Library has books to help guide and inspire your plan. Here is a list of books—with descriptions from the publishers—to get you started. Gratitude by Oliver Sacks. “Gratitude is Sacks’ meditation on why life ...

Explaining the use, history of mother-of-pearl

The art of adding mother-of-pearl inlay to lacquerware has been practiced in Korea for more than a thousand years. The Korean term for it is Najeonchilgi, from the words najeon, meaning mother-of-pearl, and chilgi, lacquer. It is a lengthy process that requires skill and patience the artisan builds through years of training. The artisan must prepare the mother-of-pearl shells, cut them into delicate slices or intricate shapes, lacquer to the object to be decorated, apply the shells, add more coats of lacquer and finally sand and polish the object. Even today, artisans prefer using ...

Recent read

Here are few of my favorite recent reads. Library staff would be happy to help you place requests on these or any other titles. If you’d like to place your own request, visit www.newulmlibrary.org and choose Library Catalog. Billy Barringer disappeared while camping in Ethan Marsh’s backyard when they were both ten years old. Ethan still dreams of that night, including the sccrrriiiiiiiiitch noise as the tent’s side was slashed. Did someone take Billy or did he wander away on his own? What about the mysterious camouflaged man who was seen in the neighborhood that same week? Or ...

Not just for winter weather, gloves are collectable

By this time of the year, most of us in cooler climates have started wearing gloves. But gloves weren’t always relegated to wintry weather. In medieval Europe, they were a fashion accessory and status symbol. The fashion continued for hundreds of years. The finest gloves were made of luxurious materials like silk or delicate leathers and often had decorations like embroidery. And such beautiful accessories needed equally beautiful storage. This glove box, which sold for $1,722 at Soulis Auctions, was made by Moser, one of the most famous Bohemian (Czechoslovakian) glasshouses. It ...

Cooking with Kids

I love to watch cooking shows. No cuisine is off limits for me and there is not age restriction for the contestants. I really like watching kids cook and bake. I am amazed at the skills I have seen these young chefs and bakers display. They are far more talented than I am in the kitchen. At times I wish I had spent more time with culinary arts. I also wish I had spent more time in the kitchen with my children learning how to cook and bake. One of my fondest memories with my kids is making sugar cookies at Christmas time. They weren’t the most beautifully decorated and probably tasted ...

“Calamity” banks are rare and expensive

Football fans might consider it a calamity if their favorite team loses. The calamity bank made by J. & E. Stevens in the early 1900s depicts a different kind of football disaster: Insert a coin and the three players’ heads collide. Frequent collisions over time often damaged the figures, ...