STORY BY KAREN BOSSICK
PHOTO COURTESY of HONEYGUIDE
It’s Suddenly Sunday! And that means Ketchum’s Community Library will be open on Sunday.
The library is experimenting with opening occasionally on Sunday, and it’ll kick it off this Sunday—May 19—from noon to 5 p.m.
“We look at it as a way to reach a wider audience,” said Director Jenny Emery Davidson. “Maybe we’ll get kids doing homework, families that can’t come on other days. This Sunday we’ll have a puppet theater and snacks in the teen room. We’ll show two movies and then we’ll have a presentation about Tanzania.”
The lineup:
Noon-5 p.m. Kids may try their hand at pretend play with the puppet theater playscape, while teens have the opportunity to hunker down in the teen lounge to finish end-of-school-year projects, with study break snacks provided.
1 p.m. The library will screen “Lon Po Po: A Red Riding Hood Story from China” from its new video streaming service Kanopy. That short film will be followed by “Mulan,” Disney’s animated musical action adventure film about a young girl who disguises herself as a male warrior in order to save her father.
3:30 p.m. Tanzanian conservationists Damian Bell and Sam Shaba will offer a presentation on Honeyguide’s work to reduce elephant poaching in Tanzania.
Honeyguide has a core of 50-plus Tanzanians who support more than a hundred rangers, Maasai elders and warriors and others to reduce poaching in six wilderness areas covering 1.3 million acres, including the Amboseli-Kilimanjaro, Serengeti-Mara and Tarangire-Manyara.
Patrollers have used canine dogs to cut poaching by 90 percent. They’ve also rescued elephants trapped in mud holes. And conservation leaders work with local communities to help humans live peacefully alongside elephants, while capitalizing on nature for livelihoods.
In one case, a baby elephant was found wandering alone, tired and exhausted. The patrol team linked the baby with a mother elephant who had been killed, her tusks removed. The baby could not recover from exhaustion and trauma—dying 10 days later so, in effect, the poachers killed two elephants.