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Reference & Information line: 704-INFO in Olympia area or toll-free 1-800-562-6022. 
TRL Web site: http://www.timberland.lib.wa.us  

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Media Contact: Leanne Ingle, 360-704-4508, or outside Thurston County calling area: (877) 284-6237, ext. 2508; e-mail: lingle@timberland.lib.wa.us.

Professor William Woodward discusses baseball as a view on our nation in his presentation, "Baseball in America: A Cultural Epic of Biblical Proportions," at 7 p.m. Thursday, May 29 at the Montesano Timberland Library (W.H. Abel Memorial Library), 125 Main Street S in Montesano. The program is free of charge and intended for a high school to adult audience.

In this sometimes serious, often humorous talk, Dr. Woodward traces the history of America’s national pastime—and thus America—through six eras. He offers the near-religious character of baseball as a link to what was going on both in baseball and in the culture at large. In a society no longer rural and no longer insulated from the rest of the world, he proposes that baseball frames our seasonal consciousness and exhibits some of our more charitable spirit toward people from other countries.

Dr. Woodward is a professor of history at Seattle Pacific University. With a Ph.D. in American Diplomatic History, his research interests focus on the Militia and National Guard of Washington Territory and State, and aspects of American popular culture.

For more information, call the library at (360) 249-4211. The Friends of the W.H. Abel Memorial Library are sponsoring this Inquiring Mind series presentation.

Timberland Regional Library serves Grays Harbor, Lewis, Mason, Pacific, and Thurston counties at 27 community libraries and 6 school-based cooperative library centers. For information on any subject, the public can telephone Timberland’s Central Reference Service librarians at 704-INFO (704-4636) from Thurston County, Shelton and Oakville or 1-800-562-6022, toll-free, from all other areas in the district. Or they can "Ask a Librarian" online at http://www.trlib.org/asklib.htm. Anyone needing special accommodations to participate in a library’s program may contact the library 4 days in advance.

Revised 05/23/03