Good news Thursday: Small libraries become popular, seniors graduate on race tracks

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Big art, small package: Tiny plays offered to stage at home

Playwright Tre’von Griffith appears in a self-portrait. Griffith is part of a national initiative called “Play at Home,” a push by not-for-profit theater companies from New York to California to keep people connected to live theater. (Tre’von Griffith via AP)

Theaters across the country had to cancel plays and musicals when the pandemic hit, so one woman, Stephanie Ybarra, decided to start “Play at Home,” a national initiative to provide playwrights with work and the public with entertainment. The initiative commissions playwrights to write 5-10 minute plays, and then people at home can download them and perform them on their own.

Salt Lake City resident Tito Livas wrote a short play about a child who burns ants with a magnifying glass before suddenly becoming bug-sized and changing his behaviors. Livas told the Associated Press he was looking for “something that is joyful and fun and it can make us stop thinking about all the chaos happening out there.” 

Seniors get diplomas on racetracks, chairlifts amid virus

Faith Lutheran High School principal Scott Fogo hands out a diploma to a student during a drive-thru graduation for Faith Lutheran High School at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway, Friday, May 22 in Las Vegas. The school held a special drive-thru graduation amid the coronavirus pandemic. (AP Photo/John Locher)

Seniors across the country are still graduating in the midst of a pandemic, and school districts are getting creative with how to hold the ceremonies. In Las Vegas, seniors get to celebrate their graduation by crossing the finish line at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.

Here in Utah schools have held drive-thru graduation parades and spread out their ceremonies over multiple days.

Small free libraries offering solace amid virus shutdowns

Kerri Kaplan, a fifth-grade teacher, stands next to a small library she has in her front yard in Phoenix, Ariz., on Friday, April 17, 2020. As government orders shuttered public libraries to slow the spread of coronavirus, some have turned to official and unofficial book-sharing means to satisfy their desire for new reading material. (AP Photo/Michelle A. Monroe)

Libraries were not immune from the nation-wide shutdown, so makeshift libraries have become more popular during the pandemic. Many of these small libraries can be found in people’s front yards where they’ve built a little box containing books. The Little Free Library group is one program that helps people setup their libraries. The group encourages library visitor’s to take a book and leave a book.

“I used to have to stock it more myself and now it runs itself,” Kerri Kaplan told the Associated Press.

Lunch ‘heroes’: 5,000 daily deliveries becomes vital part of education in hard-hit San Juan County

School district employees in San Juan County have come together to provide lunches and school materials to students in rural areas. (Photo illustration by Denisse Leon on Unsplash)

Many K-12 students rely on their schools to provide them at least one meal a day, and when schools shut down due to the pandemic, these students faced not just a loss of educational opportunities but also food. The food service workers in San Juan County stepped up to deliver lunches to the students in their schools no matter how far away they lived.

The food service workers prepare the food, teachers put together packets and school materials, and then the bus drivers deliver the packages two times a week. According to the Deseret News, members of the community have also volunteered to help prepare these packages.

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