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Im a big fan of humor. Whether Im watching TV, listening to a podcast, or reading a book, I prefer comedic entertainment to anything else. The funny thing about humor (no pun intended) is how, despite being a universally recognized feeling, the things we actually find funny vary drastically across and even within cultures. For example: the kitten mittens scene from Season 5 of Its Always Sunny in Philadelphia is, to me, the absolute pinnacle of hilarity. Ive never laughed harder. However, Im sure there are probably some (though nobody I know) who could watch it with a completely straight face. No matter what your style of humor is, the library has something to make you giggle.

Some of the most popular humorous books are collections of essays, many of which are also available through eBook and audiobook. One of the most prolific essayists is David Sedaris, whose recent work includes Happy-Go-Lucky (2022) and A Carnival of Snackery (2021), in addition to many others. In this same section of the library, youll find compilations by authors like Jenny Lawson (Furiously Happy) and Samantha Irby (Wow, No Thank You), who are well-known for making readers laugh out loud page after page. I personally recommend Solutions and Other Problems, an illustrated collection of autobiographical essays by Allie Brosh, who also wrote Hyperbole and a Half.

If youre into stand-up, theres a good chance your favorite comedian has penned a book! Jim Gaffigan, Mindy Kaling, Tom Segura and Jerry Seinfeld are a few that come to mind, but there are plenty of others available through the consortium. We also have a great collection of biographies and autobiographies by and about comedians, like Comedy Comedy Comedy Drama: A Memoir by the wonderful Bob Odenkirk, and Don Rickles: The Merchant of Venom by Michael Seth Starr. Theres even a brand-new biography for children (part of the Little Golden Book series) by Andrea Posner-Sanchez about the legendary comedienne Carol Burnett! On the flip side, you can also check out the stand-up specials and/or television series by these same comedians, if thats what youre into.

This is obviously nowhere near an exhaustive list there are hilarious books and movies for every offbeat sense of humor out there, which is saying something. True-crime junkies may like Grave Humor: A Photo Tour of Funny, Ironic, and Ridiculous Tombstones by M.T. Coffin. Bird aficionados could appreciate The Field Guide to Dumb Birds of North America (followed in 2021 by The Field Guide to Dumb Birds of the Whole Stupid World). For those who prefer to approach humor through a more analytical lens, you may enjoy On Humor, originally published in Italian by Luigi Pirandello. In it, he declares that Comedy and its opposite lie in the same disposition of feeling, and they are inside the process which results from it. Not quite kittens in mittens, but it might be just what youre looking for!

Top Requested Books

1. Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus

2. Hello Beautiful by Ann Napolitano

3. Spare by Prince Harry

4. Happy Place by Emily Henry

5. Pineapple Street by Jenny Jackson

6. Simply Lies by David Baldacci

7. The Five-Star Weekend by Elin Hilderbrand

8. Small Mercies by Dennis Lehane

9. I Will Find You by Harlan Coben

10. 23rd Midnight by James Patterson

Top Requested DVDs

1. 80 for Brady

2. Triangle of Sadness

3. Living

4. Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania

5. All Quiet on the Western Front (2023)

6. Champions

7. Marlowe

8. Maybe I Do

9. The Whale

10. A Man Called Otto

This Week

MONDAY 9 a.m.-8 p.m., Crafternoon To-Go This month, were making Yarn Wall Art. Pick up your kit in our first floor Makerspace while supplies last; 2-4 p.m., Quilting Group Bring your supplies and practice your crafting skills with others; 4-4:45 p.m., Couch to 5k Run Club Our running group is designed to help almost anyone go from a non-runner to a 5k distance runner in 8 weeks, following the C25k program.

TUESDAY 1-2 p.m., Tuesday Afternoon Book Discussion This month, we will meet on Zoom AND in person to discuss After I Do by Taylor Jenkins Reid. Email Caroline at cbadowski@westerlylibrary.org for meeting details; 1-4 p.m., Community Resource Advocate Visit our volunteer Community Resource Advocate, who can help connect you with local services/resources; 4-5 p.m., Tabletop Tuesdays Ages 8-12 are invited to join us in playing various tabletop role-playing games, like Dungeons and Dragons! Snacks provided; 4-5:30 p.m., Spring Dungeons and Dragons This program is for teens in grades 7-12, and preregistration is required; 5:30-7:30 p.m., Knit and Crochet Group A friendly knitting, crochet, needlework, and yarn craft club; 6-7 p.m., Author Talk and Signing with Gesine Bullock-Prado | My Vermont Table In partnership with Savoy Bookshop & Caf, please join us for an author talk with Gesine Bullock-Prado and her book My Vermont Table. Registration is required to attend.

WEDNESDAY 10-10:30 a.m., Family Storytime Geared towards ages birth-11 years; 2-3:30 p.m., Virtual Tech Social We meet on Zoom every Wednesday to address your tech questions. Preregistration is required; 5-6 p.m., Pride Club Meet other LGBTQIA2+ teens and allies while enjoying snacks, playing games, and hanging out; 6-7:30 p.m., Cookbook Club Well be talking about Alison Romans book Nothing Fancy while enjoying recipes weve prepared! Contact cskobrak@westerlylibrary.org to register.

THURSDAY 1-2 p.m., Homeschool Hangout Meet other homeschooled teens in grades 7-12; 4-5 p.m., Crafternoon Thursday Stop in for weekly crafting activities and snacks; 5:30-7:30 p.m., Chess Club Players of all skill levels are welcome; 6-6:30 p.m., Tween Advisory Board Hang out with our Tween librarian and let him know what you want to see in the library.

FRIDAY 10-11 a.m., Project Outreach Veterans Assistance Members of organization are on site to aid veterans in navigating available benefits and other services.

SATURDAY 10-11:30 a.m., Walking Tour of Wilcox Park | Native Flowers and Trees URI Master Gardeners will lead you around one loop of the Park during the tour, beginning and ending on the park Esplanade; 11 a.m.-12 p.m., Sensory Saturday Join us for open play with different sensory items to stimulate the senses; 1-3 p.m., Esports and Tabletop Games - Enjoy an afternoon of gaming with both tabletop and video games; 12-3 p.m., Friends Mothers Day Tea Party Join us for a traditional tea party (with the addition of virgin or standard mimosas) to honor the mother in your life. Tickets are $20 and all proceeds benefit the library.

Cassie Skobrak is an adult services librarian at the Westerly Library & Wilcox Park.

See the article here:
At Westerly Library & Wilcox Park: Quench your comedic thirst at the ... - The Westerly Sun

Fergie is still ready to par-tea.

Sarah "Fergie" Ferguson, ex-wife of the monarch's brother Prince Andrew,may not be attending King Charles III's coronation May 6, but that doesn't mean she wasn't celebrating the big day.The A Most Intriguing Lady author took to Instagram May 5 to share photos from the tea party she hosted withMuick and Sandy, the late Queen Elizabeth II's beloved Pembroke Welsh corgis.

"I hope you have got the bunting out ready for the Coronation tomorrow," Sarah wrote. "I certainly have. Today I assembled a tea fit for a King which I shared with the residents at the Manor Care Home in Windsor to help them celebrate. Enjoy the weekend!"

The photos featured theprecious pooches enjoying tea, named after Queen Camilla, and pastries, including "Charles' Crunchy Cream Cake," at a beautifully decorated table fit for a king.

Leading up to the coronation, a source told E! News that Sarah would not be asked to attend Charles' coronation, which her ex-husband will be attending, per the BBC.

Read this article:
Here's How Sarah Ferguson Is Celebrating the Coronation At Home After Not Being Invited - E! NEWS

Far from the pomp and circumstance in England, many places in New Zealand will be taking part in celebrations on the eve of King Charles III's coronation.

One of the far-flung locales is a shop in Ashburton's town centre.

"We've sold a lot of memorabilia for the Queen and the royal families," Homestead's Rachael Redmond told 1News.

"We've also sold a lot of crystal people are having their little whiskies and little drams at night."

From high tea to coronation quiche, a right royal tea party is proving popular with the locals.

The local council will be taking part in the festivities with a tree planting in the royal garden at Ashburton Domain.

"It pays homage to his precedence over the country," Ashburton Mayor Neil Brown said.

"We've got trees in here for the Queen, we commemorated Princess Diana when she passed away. The Queen Mother we've got trees here for that."

Melissa Stokes and Daniel Faitaua will host 1News Presents: Their Majesties' Coronation from 7pm on TVNZ 1, TVNZ+ and 1News.co.nz.

(Source: 1News)

Go here to read the rest:
Festivities for King Charles' coronation well underway in Ashburton - 1News

Tree plantings, purple-illuminated buildings and a tea party are among the events planned.

Dunedin Mayor Jules Radich, mana whenua representatives and other dignitaries will gather for the planting of a rimu sapling in the lower botanic garden at 11am.

Mr Radich said a rimu tree was selected in consultation with mana whenua as the most ecologically appropriate native species for the site.

The Dunedin planting ceremony will be just one of many to be carried out in Otago and Southland today.

In Invercargill, there will be a planting of a rimu tree in Queens Park at 11am; Southland Mayor Rob Scott will plant a tree in Otautau at 11am; and Queenstown-Lakes Mayor Glyn Lewers will plant a tree in the Queenstown Gardens at 11am.

In Waitaki, there will be tree plantings at Oamaru, Omarama and Palmerston.

In Gore, 2500 trees will be planted next week near Hamilton Park.

Prime Minister Chris Hipkins announced a donation of $1 million to the New Zealand charity Trees That Count, which will partner with the Department of Conservation (Doc) to plant 100,000 native trees nationwide.

"The donation will create a living legacy to benefit all New Zealanders, provide more resilience against climate change and align with King Charles lifelong interest in environmental conservation," Mr Hipkins said.

Other events include a pre-coronation "Right Royal" tea party in the Larnach Castle ballroom at 3pm.

The Tainui Croquet Club is hosting a fancy dress and raffle event at 11am to celebrate the royal sport, which arrived to New Zealand in 1864.

In royal style, two corgis will make an appearance at the club about 12.30pm.

Dunedin residents can also catch Toit Otago Settlers Museum illuminated in the royal colour of purple over the weekend.

St Pauls Cathedral will host a coronation civic service tomorrow.

9.20PM NZ time (10.20am UK time):King Charles and Queen Consort Camilla will travel to Westminster Abbey from Buckingham Palace in the Diamond Jubilee State Coach, which was built in 2012.

10pm (11am UK time):The procession is set to arrive at the abbey just before 10pm NZ time when the coronation starts. The coronation is expected to last about two hours.

The ceremony will include King Charles anointment by the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby.

The King will then wear the St Edwards Crown for the only time in his life. The crown was made for Charles II and has been worn by six previous monarchs.

The King will then take the throne, after which Queen Camilla will be anointed, crowned and enthroned.

In the final part of the service the King and Queen will take Holy Communion.

Midnight NZ time (1pm UK time):The King and Queen will then return to Buckingham Palace in the less comfortable 260-year-old Gold State Coach. They will be joined by other members of the Royal Family on the Buckingham Palace balcony to wave to crowds, which signals the end of the ceremony.

7am Monday NZ time (8pm Sunday UK time):The Coronation Concert is being held at Windsor Castle. It will feature performances from Take That, Lionel Richie, Katy Perry and opera singer Andrea Bocelli. It will also include a joint performance from The Royal Ballet, The Royal College of Music, The Royal Opera House, the Royal Shakespeare Company and The Royal College of Art. It will be broadcast in New Zealand on TVNZ 1 at 8pm on Monday.

You can tune in to watch coverage of the coronation on TVNZ 1 from 7pm NZ time tomorrow. There will also be coverage at odt.co.nz and make sure to pick up a special coronation edition of theOtago Daily Timeson Monday.

titus.lambertlane@odt.co.nz

Excerpt from:
Events across South to mark coronation - Otago Daily Times

For the better part of the last 170 years, the Democratic Party and the Republican Party have been the prominent voices in American politics.

But in the 2024 cycle, a pair of new national third parties, the No Labels Party and the Forward Party, are hoping to buck trends, asking Americans to consider ignoring the loudest entrenched voices dominating politics on each side and throw in their lot for a centrist approach.

Moving 'forward' from the ground up

The Forward Party, the brainchild of former Presidential candidate Andrew Yang, recently announced plans to not run a presidential candidate this cycle and, unless something drastically changes, they may not do so next cycle, either.

Instead of looking at the White House, Forward has its eyes on city councils. The party is looking to work from the ground up, seeking to establish a party brand and solid base by supporting local elected officials who they hope will graduate to higher office within a few election cycles.

Andrew Yang announced the formation of the Forward Party in 2021 in the final chapter of his book Forward: Notes on the Future of Our Democracy.

The two sides will be trapped in a war that both sides will win they will still be hovering in one of the most affluent areas in the country trading power but the people will lose, Yang wrote.

He proposed a series of solutions: voting reform, more effective government, human-centered capitalism, a universal basic income, and grace and tolerance offering the benefit of the doubt to those we disagree with, rather than seeking to demean and destroy.

If you subscribe to these principles and ideas, you can consider yourself part of the Forward Party while keeping your current party affiliation, he wrote.

Platforms, priorities and policies

Theoriginal Forward Party platformhad plenty of tech-forward elements including calling for data as a property right, establishing a department of technology and creating a citizens portal for government information and services tucked alongside Yang's previously-announced policies.

That incarnation of Forward could charitably be called a first draft. In 2022, a new Forward Party was announced one that absorbed the Renew America Movement, formed by former Trump administration officials, and the Serve America Movement, formed by previous Bush administration staffers.

Yang himself moved to co-chair, alongsideformer New Jersey Gov. Christine Todd Whitman, formerly a Republican, and media executive Michael Willner.

In doing so, the party largely tossed away its old platform and announced it would move from having a national platform to a less-centralized bottom-up structure.

The way weve set this out is that our national party will set principles, the state parties will set priorities and the candidates will then run on policies, Joel Searby, Forwards national political director, told Spectrum News.

What that means is that thenational party will set Forwards core values collaborative solutions; multi-partisan thinking and conversations; and grace and tolerance rather than some national prescriptive platform of one-size-fits-all solutions.

What we dont believe in is prescribing a set of national platform ideas on immigration and guns and abortion and health care, when the solutions to many of our national platforms are really hyper-localized, Searby said. The solution to homelessness in Lubbock, Texas is different from the solution to homelessness in San Francisco.

And Forward, Searby said, is making what he calls real progress: party recognition in six states, and a "pathway toward recognition" in at least 30 more over the next two years.

Starting from the bottom

While the party has larger ambitions, they'vedismissed any 2024 presidential aspirations, seeking instead to focus on building a foundation in local and statewide government.

We believe that over the course of the next two to three cycles, the local elected officials that we recruit will then be prepared to run for state legislative and federal office. And we will be a real force to be reckoned with, Searby said.

Part of that effort includes affiliating the party with electeds who already have official party affiliations.Four Democratic representatives in the Arizona State Legislature sisters Consuelo and Alma Hernandez, of Tucson; Lydia Hernandez, of Phoenix; and Keith Seaman, of Casa Grande announced themselves as Forward Democrats.

Forward also endorses and supports candidates and of course is working to get party recognition, so members can drop the "Democrat" or "Republican" next to their name on the ballot, and replace it with Forward."

The classic political trap is to think that everything revolves around big national issues and national parties, when in reality, the policymaking that makes the most impact on peoples everyday lives is at the local level, Searby said.

To that end, Forward wants to build its brand on local officials and local affiliates one that, when a candidate flashes a FWD button on their blazer or touts a Forward logo among their endorsements, flashes the idea of someone who promises collaboration over partisanship.

As they experience how Forward candidates govern and actually get outcomes for people on the issues they care about in their own communities, that is how we will continue to build and show people that this is not just some kind of a flash-in-the-pan protest movement, Searby said.

Building a 'farm team'

The idea of building a movement from the ground-up in politics isnt necessarily new. The Tea Party movement within the Republican party used grassroots campaigning to great success during the Obama administration; experts argue that the faction contributed to the elections of then-Rep. Mike Pence as governor of Indiana, Sens. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, Rand Paul, R-Ky., and Marco Rubio, R-Fla., and, later, the ascent of Donald Trump to the presidency.

And even decades before the Tea Party took root, scholars tracked movement of Republican elected officials on everything from local administrative offices to school boards to county offices, keeping in mind that their gains were as important for the future as at the time.

County officials may constitute a 'farm team' which will provide the GOP with experienced campaigners for the growing number of state legislative and congressional posts potentially within their grasp, political scientist Charles S. Bullockwrote in the Journal of American Politics in 1991. From the ranks of county officials could come the personnel necessary to make the GOP competitive in the Georgia General Assembly, where it currently holds 20 percent of the seats. After a term in the legislature, Republicans with county officeholding experience may be more competitive in elections for Congress and statewide office than were most of the candidates put forward by the GOP in the past.

To wit, the Georgia General Assembly was essentially controlled by Democrats from the time of Bullocks article until 2003, when Republicans took control of the state senate. The GOP won the state house in 2005, and has maintained majority control ever since.

Read the rest here:
Multiple Choice: Forward Party seeks growth from the ground up - Spectrum News NY1