Michael Jackson's "Thriller" This is another across-the-street video that shows most (about 70%) of our Halloween Light Display. We have added more "monsters" to our graveyard—including some that become activated/animated when they detect motion and/or loud sounds. We have also made our yard more fall/harvest-oriented with the inclusion of cornshocks, straw bales, cartoonish-"scarecrow" manikins, and more pumpkins and other gourds. The majority of our visitors so far say M.J's Thriller is their favorite Halloween Song, and we agree!! It was the most fun and challenging to animate representations of Michael Jackson & Vincent Price to "Lip-Sync" the lyrics! We may not have time to produce another video of our Halloween Light Show since we are now extremely busy with planning, designing, constructing, and programming our 2010 Holidays/Christmas Musical Light Show! We hope it is not a distraction to you that we do not regulate traffic or visitors during the filming. Please tell your friends and relatives to visit our YouTube Channel by simply Googling: kimball ne halloween

"This is Halloween" by Danny Elfman from the Disney film "The Nightmare Before Christmas." This video of our entire front-yard Halloween display was videographed from across the street (Adams) and therefore emphasizes our short, orange-purple LED fence and the seven-foot tall purple/orange/green LED Leaping-Light Arbor/Arch. Just beyond the fence is a 16-Tombstone "Cemetery" (each LED spotlit) with a motley assortment of "scary" creatures -- from the left/north they are as follows: a 5-foot hanging pumpkin-headed "Scarecrow Kicker"; a 9-foot raggedy Scarecrow; a 6-foot Ghoul with a Python Snake (fake, of course) around its neck and holding a scythe, a 12-foot white-gowned Ghost, a 7-foot Demon with a trident, a 14-foot black-robed big-red-eyed spook with a chain hanging from its neck. South of the arbor are the following: a 6-foot gray-haired, black-gowned old wizard with a raven perched on its right hand, a 12-foot huge-faced clawed Zombie with very tattered clothes. There are other monsters that will be shown in our last video. The graveyard is also "littered" with many skulls, other bones, and several kinds of "remains" and "corpses." Closer to Halloween, there will also be two fog machines operating to produce an eerie, cloudy mist. Tonight we are having several dozen spectators slowly driving/walking by, and some even sit down in our up-close seating area to view the entire 30-minutes musical light show. The majority of "guests" are young children and "Kimballites" -- but a few are from surrounding towns. Judging from their responses -- the viewers favorite animated Halloween tunes are Thriller, Tubular Bells and This is Halloween (this very song!) Their favorite set-piece is, by far, the AD -- the Animotion Disk! Please visit our YouTube Channel again -- simply by Googling: kimball ne halloween Our ghosts, zombies, ghouls, skeletons and monsters would like to see you IN PERSON!! So would the Meyers!

The Addams Family Theme Song by Vic Mizzy. This very short video (45 seconds duration) mainly emphasizes the left/north half of our home frontage, as viewed from the west. The videography especially spotlights Carol's vertical "Pumpkin Patch" and Don's "Rooftop Singers!" The rhythm/beat of this theme song is also highlighted by the Light Towers, The Halloween purple and orange trees, the gutter curtain lights, the porch garlands, and the Drumming Skeleton. In case you want to learn the lyrics to this sixties TV sitcom theme song, here they are: "They're creepy and they're kooky, mysterious and spooky, they're altogether ooky, The Addams Family. Their house is a museum, Where people come to see 'em, They really are a screa-um, The Addams Family. (Neat) (Sweet) (Petite) So get a witch's shawl on, A broomstick you can crawl on, We're gonna pay a call on, The Addams Family." Why do you suppose that many people in Kimball refer to us as the Addams Family? It must be because we live on Adams Street! Right!? We don't have any decidedly mysterious, creepy, spooky or macabre interests -- especially in hyper-celebrating Halloween!! Our next videos will be Adams Street panoramic views of our entire house and front yard with its waterfall, Leaping-Light Arbor, LED-illuminated fence, Eerie Graveyard and Tombstones, and a dozen large, ghastly critters. Remember you can visit us again by Googling: kimball ne halloween

Celebrations in October

 Wow! I can hardly believe it is October already. The months seem to fly by faster and faster every year, but it’s nice to see that our patrons still take time out of their busy schedules to curl up with a book or listen to one of our audio books.

                October has a lot of fun holidays and events including Columbus Day, which we will be closed for, and Halloween, which is another post all on its own! But a little known fact about October is that from the 17^th to the 23^rd it is Friends of the Library Week.

                The Kimball Friends of the Library do so much for our library that it’s nice to take a week just to honor them. Every year they raise money through book sales and donations. This year in particular they have used the money they raised to help pay for new large print books and a new shelf some of you might have noticed!

                So the staff of the library would like to give a big thank you to the Friends of the Library for everything they have done and will continue to do!

Tubular Bells -- Theme from "The Exorcist" by Mike Oldfield This video is a view primarily of the right/south half of our Halloween Light Display. Since the music is the instrumental soundtrack/theme of the Exorcist movie, we did not program our main "singers" for depicting this horror movie theme. As you might notice, we use most of our set pieces and display units to illustrate the repetitive beat, especially the Animotion Disk, the Drumming Skeleton, and the eave's purple, orange, and green curtain lights. You have also witnessed the easiest way to decorate your house for Halloween -- by using large window-poster transparencies or "window clings." On the front of our house, we have used two cat eyes, a very large vampire, a werewolf, and a haunted Jack-O-Lantern. Also, in some of the smaller windows we have placed some small LED set-piece "ornaments" that are regulated by independent fader controllers. In our next uploaded video, we will emphasize the left/north half of our house frontage. Please remember that we only use energy-saving LEDs for our "celebrations" of life!! Besides using your computer's history/bookmark aids, you can also visit us again by Googling: kimball ne halloween Thank you for waiting and watching!

Ghostbusters by Ray Parker Jr. This video shows the 10,000+ LED lights that we have on the central part of the front of the house and roof. If you look closely, you will notice a dozen "creepy critters" that appear to "sing" the lyrics of "Ghostbusters." The primary lead/main "singer" is the large, simple roof face on the upper left. Most of the faces, however, are just temporary, background, or chorus "singers." Most of the set pieces/LED panels such as the "singers," large Jack-O-Lanterns, "flying" bat, Animotion Disk, Light Towers, Tombstones, Drumming Skeleton are made from sheets of a fluted, corrugated plastic called polypropylene. We buy this Coroplast in 4 foot x 8 foot sheets from sign companies in the Cheyenne, Wyoming area. You can buy these for about $16 per sheet in various colors such as white, yellow, black, and red. We usually choose white, and if we want some other color, we first spray on a "primer"/base layer of Krylon Fusion spray paint, and after this durable coat dries we brush on one or two coats of exterior latex enamel (such as Valspar) of the final desired color. We leave the back/rear of the sheet white so we can sketch an easily visible design of our intended creation. Before we start reaming the design with various different-sized scratch awls (to make holes for plugging in the lights), we frame the edges of the Coroplast with a wood frame -- lath on the front edges and 1" x 2"s on the back. The frame is held together by using 1" panel nails (every 3 inches) with the plastic sheeting "sandwiched" in between the front and back wood frames. For a detailed "rest of the story," Google: belardolights.com where you will find an excellent "How To" procedure, by Randy Schimka, for using Coroplast to make dancing/singing set pieces! We will release another video as soon as we do some "tweaking" or reprogramming to correct some "errors" in the behavior of some of our "performers." You can visit our YouTube Channel again -- soon we hope -- by Googling: kimball ne halloween

Monster Mash by Bobby "Boris" Picket and the Cryptkickers -- shows three spooky "singing" faces. The Alien Ghoul on the left is made with 225 LEDs. The simple Pumpkin Face in the center is the lead "singer"/vocalist and has only 194 LEDs. The Jack-O-Lantern on the right is lit with 200 LEDs, and with the Alien Ghoul, forms the supporting, background "chorus." The surrounding purple-orange-green garland is built with 210 LEDs. As you will eventually witness on our videos, these three "scary critters" are the smallest and simplest of our ten "performers." The three set pieces only took about seven hours to construct, but it required over 10 hours to program their LED lights to the song. As you can readily imagine, the most difficult task was trying to synchronize the mouths of the 3 faces with the words/lyrics of "Monster Mash." It took a lot of trial-and-error repetitions and "tweaking" to approximate/simulate the vocalizations. We are still beginners in this time-consuming hobby of speech mimicry -- but we're getting better and faster. We probably will NOT have any singing reindeer, elves, Santa or Elvis in this year's Holiday Musical Light Show! -- Maybe for Christmas 2011. No! We are not Scrooges this year!! Wait and watch our videos in early December! To get on our YouTube Channel again, please Google: kimball ne halloween

Beware of The Blob by the Five Blobs -- LED lights of 33 Jack-O-Lanterns "dance" to the beat of the music. This four-shelf set piece is Carol's invention and custom creation -- her pride and joy. Twenty-five of the Jack-O-Lanterns (JOLs) were hand carved by her from craft pumpkins obtained at Hobby Lobby, Michaels and Menards. It required several weeks of "recreation time" to construct this JOL set piece and to program its LEDs to "flashdance" with the rhythm of ten different spooky tunes. By the way, as you will eventually witness, there are many more JOLs in Carol's entire collection!! The LED bulbs used in the pumpkins are 1 to 1.5 Watts with standard bases and were purchased at Sams and Wal-Mart. Other retail sources for LEDs—especially in strings --have been LEDgen Lighting, Action Lighting, Menards, Target, Home Depot, Lowe's, K-Mart, Family Dollar, Big Lots, Walgreens and Pamida. Some of the larger JOLs contain more than one LED bulb! In future Halloween videos, you will see/hear much larger JOL-faces "sing" the vocals of the music! You can get on our YouTube site again by simply Googling: kimball ne halloween

OVERDRIVE Audiable Books

 Beginning in early October, the library will be offering a new service for our community and patrons.  You will need to be Kimball Public Library Card Holder to take advantage of this service. 

Patrons will be able to log into Overdrive and download audio books to read on the screen or to save to a portable device.  If interested, please stop in at the library for more information.  More information will also be posted on this site and in the Observer.  To view the site go to www.overdrive.com

Painting Class for beginners

 Coming Saturday, October 16, 2010

Rachelle Eversole of Broadwater is a Bob Ross Painting Certified Instructor and will be teaching a class at the Kimball Public Library Cultural Room from 9:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. 

Students will not need to buy anything for the class except a roll of paper towels.  Canvas, paints, brushes and 6 hours of instruction are included in the fee of $60.00.  If you wish to sign up for this class, please bring contact information and the money to hold you place to the staff at the library.

Rachell has graciously donated a painting to help raise funds for a new microfilm reader/printer.