Part Three - Videos on Park and Recreation Guide

Find this video and other embedded videos on the video tab of the Park and Recreation Guide!

On the main landing page, you will find videos about TVA Raccoon Mountain that includes a video around the TVA lake and includes a video about a fast-paced, downhill bicycle ride on a Raccoon Mountain bike trail!

Other videos on the main landing page include Russell Cave, Fall Creek Falls, and Presidents Teddy Roosevelt and Barack Obama on the importance of national parks.

In addition to the main landing page under the video tab, there are four sub-tabs. The sub-tabs are North Chick, Enterprise South, Old Stone Fort, and More Chattanooga and Tennessee Videos and Library Film Playlist.

The North Chick tab has the video seen above plus kayaking videos - one in calm water and one in rough water.
 
The Enterprise South tab includes bicycle videos on paths found inside the park.

The Old Stone Fort Park tab describes the enclosure found in Manchester. The park is bounded by the Duck River on one side and the Little Duck River on the other side before the two rivers merge. Videos on this tab include the Duck River, waterfalls, and the importance of summer solstice at the park. 
 
The More Chattanooga and Tennessee Videos and Library Film Playlist tab includes more local and regional embedded videos.  The tab also has a link to the library database Films on Demand playlist. Videos include Signal Mountain's Rainbow Lake and Sparta's Virgin Falls.

Peruse the videos on the video tab in the Park and Recreation Guide and enjoy!

Video link on guide: http://library.chattanoogastate.edu/parks2017

July is Park and Recreation Month - Library Staff Pictures - Part Two

Part two of a three-part blog series on the Park and Recreation Month guide

A popular page on the Park and Recreation Month guide each year is the library staff page. Our KLIC staff members enjoy visiting parks and seeing cool places. 

We have staff who hike, have a rose garden, people who love beaches, people who travel all over the country, people who kayak.

We asked the KLIC staff to submit pictures of their favorite activity, or their favorite park, or favorite vacation spot. And we created a video out of the pictures!

Check out the Library Staff page!

Visit a park!

Library Staff page (http://library.chattanoogastate.edu/parks2017/KLIC)

July is Park and Recreation Month - Find Your Park - Part One

By Dwight Hunter

One of my favorite guides to work on and to update each year is this guide: Park & Recreation Month Guide. 

This is part one of a three-part blog series about this guide.  It is a fun guide to find park and recreation resources, and to view embedded videos, and to explore links and much more.
 
In my senior year in high school, I decided to take what I thought was an easy course called Recreational Sports. It wasn't easy. In that course, I learned how to play racquetball & volleyball, how to bowl, do archery, practice rifle target shooting; and I learned slow pitch softball, trampoline tricks, rappelling, golf, and disc golf. Those lessons are still with me today!

Use the information in the guide to find a park near you! As always each year, there are pictures submitted by the library staff that can be viewed -- more about the KLIC staff pictures in part two of the blog series!

Enjoy a fun summer - discover a park, see how people have recreational fun, and get your play on! 

Guide link: http://library.chattanoogastate.edu/parks2017

Book Review: Holy Ground, Healing Water

By Dwight Hunter

Perhaps, this is a book too old for a review as it was published in 2010. However, the appealing thing about non-fiction books in electronic format within the library catalog is that if you stumble across an intriguing one, review it.

Well, this was certainly an intriguing one.

Holy Ground, Healing Water: Cultural Landscapes at Waconda Lake, Kansas was written by a cultural anthropologist, Donald Blakeslee. I was going to do what I normally do with non-fiction books: skim around and read the good parts. I ended up reading most of the book. The book appeals to learning about Native American history, Western expansion, economics, and spiritualism.

To be honest, I chose this book because of the subtitle: cultural landscapes at Waconda Lake, Kansas. I grew up knowing about Waconda Lake. My grandmother's house was just a few miles from the lake's shores. I remember being incredibly sad as a 10-year old boy upon first learning that a great spring, Waconda Spring, was buried by the waters of the new, man-made Waconda Lake.

It was this sadness, that curiosity of what was, that attracted me to this book subtitle. But I learned so much more; this book wasn't just about Waconda Spring and the lake bearing its name. The book was about the clash of cultures, about spirituality versus economic gain, about the ignorance of cultural identities. A person with critical thinking skills could extrapolate so much from this 2010 historical anthropology book.

The early chapters explored the history of Native American trails, that they were really a series of short trails connected together, and the early explorers from the French, the Spaniards, the Americans and their cultural interactions with Native American tribes.  I was wondering why all of this information and then saw the connection. Despite the warfare among tribes and despite the historical changes in culture, one thing remained constant: water flowing out of a cone-shaped rock 30 feet tall, and 30 feet in diameter, was so revered, so sacred, that no one tribe dared to fight near it.

It was called Kitzawitzuk and anglicized to Waconda. For the Native Americans, the cone-shaped spring was holy ground. By the 1950s, a great need for flood control was required. Floods had damaged property and towns downstream. Waconda Lake was created.

I recommend this book, if nothing else, to learn about a lost culture and the importance in remembering.