Kansas Center for the Book

2008
State Librarian's Luncheon

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033 - Hatman Jack's - Tilley Hat

Donated by Jack of HATMAN JACK'S (www.hatmanjacks.com) located in Lawrence’s; Delano district at 601 W. Douglas. This hat retails for $74.  Jack said if the hat is too big or too small to just bring it in and he will provide you the correct size.  The hat also comes with a registration form to insure against loss! 

Hat details:

• it's really comfortable

• guaranteed for life not to wear out

• insured against loss

• unshrinkable

• rain repellent

• certified as an excellent form of sun protection

• it floats, tie it on in the wind

• machine washable

• crushable & packable

• it has a secret pocket (for a key, $)

• comes with a 4-page owner's manual

• AND, looks great on men and women!!!

039 - Andrea Sobba - KU Cap
 

Autographed by Bill Self and includes certificate of authentication

082 - Iris Jones - Crocheted Tam Hat

 
...a Third-Time's-a-Charm Hat Story -- My maiden name is Hull. It's an English name, but Grandpa was the oldest of seven children raised by a proper German patriarch. (You can read that as Stubborn-Old-Man-Who-Knew-He-Was-Right.) Grandpa married a fine Irish girl who had her own brand of stubbornness and it came down through the family. Hull stubbornness is legendary. We alternately lament it and take pride in it, and I am truly a Hull, even if I am now called Jones.

I am also an avid knitter, so the call for Hats for the State Librarian's Luncheon sent me to the yarn store. I was going to make a hat for the luncheon. I could see it -- a fine knitted fedora, sitting next to the Maltese Falcon that has resided in glory in the SEKLS office. I'd snap it's picture, just as if Sam Spade had tossed it there, then send the hat and the picture off to the luncheon.

The hat was finished two weeks ago. There was no way it would even begin to take the shape of a fedora. It had decided it was a nice warm stocking hat, and stocking hat it would be... and a rather plain, shapeless stocking hat at that. It wasn't anything I wanted to send to the luncheon.

Okay. I'd make something else. I'd make the chenille hood that I've always enjoyed wearing. Back to the yarn store, get more yarn, and I'm off and running. I carried the yarn with me to KLA Legislative Day and was spotted Knitting in Public in various places as I waited to speak to legislators. By the time I got home, I was on a roll. It was half finished. I was going to finish it before the weekend was out. I worked most of the day Saturday. It was really going good. I WAS going to have it finished before I went to bed. (Nothing quite like a goal driven stubborn Hull.) I finished it, too. At 4:00 AM. The next morning I tossed it in the washer to tidy it up. It would be ready to send off on Monday.

No. It wasn't. Something happened in the washer. Some stitches tightened up. Some hung out like Mick Jagger's tongue in a Rolling Stones logo. This was another terrible, ugly hat.

By this time, most folks would have quit knitting and bought a hat to send to the State Librarian's Luncheon. Not me. At 6:30 Sunday evening, I ripped out the hood, rewound the yarn and started over. This time it would be my classic crocheted Tam-o-Shanter. That pattern has never failed me. I finished it at 1:00 Monday morning. I'm NOT putting it in the washer to tidy up. I'm not photographing it next to the Maltese Falcon, but I am going to package it fast -- while it still looks like a Tam and send it to the State Librarian.

We Hulls are stubborn. Sometimes it pays off.
 

103 – Will Shields – Shrine Bowl Hat
Will Shields, former offensive right guard with the Kansas City Chiefs wore this hat when he helped  coach the 2008 East-West Shrine Bowl Game, January 19, 2008, in Houston, TX.  Renowned in the NFL, Will played his entire career (1993-2006) with the Chiefs. He started all but one game (his first regular season outing as a rookie) in his illustrious 14-year NFL career, totaling 230 consecutive starts. With 12 Pro Bowl appearances, a Chiefs team record. Shields was arguably the finest player at his position and was regarded by many as the NFL’s top offensive lineman. He is widely considered a first-ballot hall-of-famer once he becomes eligible.  Shields is also well known for his charitable work throughout the Kansas City Metropolitan area and is the Founder of the Will to Succeed Foundation www.willtosucceed.org.  (An autographed action photo of Will playing with the Chiefs accompanies this hat!)

916 - Beverley Olson Buller – Made-from-scratch Hat

I own two very functional hats and use them both, so when Vikki Jo asked me to donate a hat for the state librarians’ luncheon, I decided to create one from scratch—with the help of one of my artistic friends.

You’ll see that this hat can be multi-functional.  While it certainly can be worn, it would also add charm to any library setting.

The hat reflects my Kansas roots and my love of reading with a nod to Baum’s Dorothy and to William Allen White, who was more than once compared to a Kansas sunflower.

You’ll also find a couple of extra items which were just too cute to not include—although reading is definitely not something we want to keep under our hats!

Author of FROM EMPORIA:  The Story of William Allen White

921 - Tina Stropes & Friends of Kansas Libraries - Butterfly Hat
Hi! My name is ; I began working at Hutchinson Public Library on November 19, 2001.  I didn’t know that my adventure of working for a library was going to be so invigorating or the staff that I work with would become my second family.

After working at the Hutchinson Public Library for six months I was starting to feel like I knew what I was doing.  I was 34 years old, felt great, loved my job, and my children were doing well in school.  On April 9, 2002, I went to a doctor’s appointment for a yearly physical.  He told me that he wanted me to have a mammogram.  I did what the doctor said and boy, am I glad I did.  It was breast cancer.

This was the beginning of a whole new chapter of my life.  With my wonderful co-workers at Hutchinson Public Library, Friends of Hutchinson Public Library and Friends of Kansas Libraries, I am doing great!  My hat is one of many hats that I wore during chemo “daze”.  I decorated my hat with butterflies.  I feel I have been reborn due to the people and family in my life.  They gave me their friendship, understanding, strength and encouragement.  Now it’s my turn to give my friendship, understanding, strength and encouragement to others.

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927 - Diane Z. Shore - Fan Hat
"While visiting my in-laws in upstate New York, my then 4 year-old daughter spied Gran's hat, in folded form, in her office.  My daughter picked it up and started fanning herself with it.  "You need to ask Gran if its OK to play with that," I told her.  Gran said it was fine and that the neighbor had been doing a little spring cleaning and the "fan" had been in a box of things she had given to her.  "I don't have much use for a fan," my mother-in-law said.  I asked my daughter if I could look at it and upon further inspection I noticed the clasp.  I unfolded it into a hat and put it on my daughter's head.  My daughter walked up to Gran and tapped her on the leg.  "Look, Gran," she exclaimed.  "Look at my hat!"  My mother-in-law was floored.  That is a hat?!  All along she had thought the neighbor had given her a fan!  My mother-in-law did let my daughter keep the hat fan, and at 16, she doesn't have much use for it either, (as a hat or a fan!).  My mother-in-law and I still laugh about the "fan hat!"
 

929 - Hat story by Jane Kurtz
When people find out I spent most of my childhood in Africa, they commonly say, "How was it being hot all the time?" 

Well, I grew up in misty mountains where the fog rolled up the valley and sometimes drifted over our home so thick that my sisters and I couldn't see each other as we played and made up stories with my mother's flowers.  Most mornings, we woke up to a fire crackling in the living room and ran out -- bare feet cold on the cement floor -- to get warm.  We wore sweaters many days for at least part of the day.  But we never had snow.  In fact, after reading about snow in books, my sisters and I created sleds out of pieces of cardboard that we polished with dried grass.  We tried to capture the magic of snow by sitting on these cardboard slabs to slide down the hill at the edge of our compound.  The sizzling savannah where we spent vacations has made its way into my writing-- in Water Hole Waiting (Greenwillow/HarperCollins)-- but far more of my books are set in the high and beautiful mountains of Ethiopia.

Nontheless, Ethiopia is close to the equator, so thought living 8,000 feet up in the mountains kept things cool, the sun could be sunburn-producing intense.  Thus, when I return to Ethiopia to work on the nonprofit I helped found, Ethiopia Reads, I almost always wear a hat.  We are planting the first children's libraries and publishing the first children's books, and I have traveled from the relative heat of Awassa, where the donkey mobile library operates, to the highlands of the northern mountains where we visited with a woman who manages a public library.  LeAnn Clark, a Kansas teacher who was along for the trip, asked her, "Do you have books for children in your library?"  Without a flicker, she replied, "Oh no.  Because if we had books for children, children would come into the library."  LeAnn says it was her ah-hah moment about what Ethiopia Reads is trying to change.

Since I only moved to Lawrence last fall, this hat was buried in a box, but I dug it out and offer it as one of those I used in Ethiopia -- tucking into it the wrap I might well need when the evening chill came slinking in."

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931 - Nancy Pickard - Siberian Hat
"I will never forget the last time I wore this hat.  It was my last night with Omar Sharif, when we were sailing over the Siberian ice in the very sleigh from Dr. Zhivago.  We knew our love was doomed from the start...he was an international star...I was from Kansas...but we had to share one glorious night together under the Russian sky.

I remember how he gazed at me as the cold empty landscape rushed by, and how warm and beautiful his eyes looked as he breathed into the arctic night.

"Nancy, my darling.  I ust tell you what is in my heart."  "Yes, Omar, yes you must!"  "All right, I can hold in the words no longer."  "Say it, oh, say it. Omar..." 

He smiled.  His beautiful teeth gleamed in the moonlight.  Then he said the words I will never forget: "Nancy, my darling..."  "Yes, yes, Omar..."

"You look really silly in that hat."

I will treasure the memory always.  Especially knowing that whoever owns this hat next is guaranteed to look better in it than I ever did!  I know Omar, dear Omar, would agree.
 

940 - Debi Gliori – Walk-the-Walk Moonwalk Hat

"This hat, as you can see, has traveled a long way to reach you.  On the off chance that you're not familiar with the 'Walk the Walk' campaign, it's a worldwide women's midnight walking marathon to raise funds for breast cancer charities.  Walkers wear the hats, and also are required to wear rather fetching home-decorated bras, which, in our wonderful yet backward country gave rise to much banter and a certain amount of heckling from other Edinburgh citizens, all of whom were male and most of whom were riotously drunk.  Because the walk is called "The Moonwalk', you can imagine how many bare-assed blokes we encountered in our marathon.  It was mildly depressing how many of the men thought they were being wildly original by dropping their pants in front of us.

This particular hat was one of many worn on a June night back in 2006, when I power-walked through the streets of Edinburgh along with eight thousand others, some slower, most faster, all of us walking with a common purpose.

For Scotland, it was a beautiful night, and part of our route round the sleeping city took us through a park wrapped round a hill called Arthur's Seat.  There were no lights, save for our occasional torches and glow sticks, and we walked in a kind of murmuring hush, all eight thousand of us.  We walked up the Royal Mile, past Edinburgh Castle, along Princes Street, back along Queen Street, through onto Queensferry Road and then I cannot remember the route we took because by then it was beginning to hurt.  Just before we crossed the finish line, a bloke stepped out of the shadows and invited us to amire his naked rear.  We declined.  Oh, double sigh,.  However, we'd done it, we'd walked our marathon, and we knew that tucked in a cooler in the back of my car was an ice-cold quarter bottle of champagne and two chilled glasses as a reward for all our thousands of steps walked that night.  YESSSSSS!!!

I hope you enjoy the hat!!  Best regards,  Debi Gliori

942 - Dandi Daley Mackall - Military lid
"When I graduated from college, I wanted to change the world.  so when I heard that an underground movement behind the "Iron Curtain," in communist Eastern Europe, needed someone to teach writing, I siad, "I'll go!"

The next 18 months were the most amazing of my life.  I lived on the border of Poland and Czechoslovakia with 20 Poles (and no hot water).  My "students" took the year off to learn how to write "Information Bulletins" to report news not allowed by the State.  Our biggest fear was getting "taken" by the Militia, the Polish KGB, who wore military hats like this one.  Every time I saw one of these hats coming my way, I'd break into a cold sweat.

After the Wall came down and I was safely home, one of my old Polish students and friend sent me two Militia hats -- this is one of them.  And don't ask how my friend got it!

In Eva Underground, I created a girl who goes with her father to Poland to do what i did behind the Iron Curtain.  As you read about Eva and the Militia, remember that I did everything Eva AND her father did-- and more."

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