Uncle Sam's Canteen, in Hyde Park, NY, is not a Valley restaurant, but it is on the itinerary of the only food-adjacent ticket worth flagging this fortnight: the Friends of Forbes Library bus trip to the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt historic sites on Friday, May 8. The trip is already sold out. The reason to write it up anyway is that the lunch stop is the working café inside the FDR Presidential Library visitor's center, and that is a more interesting destination meal than most day-trip bus lunches.

What the Forbes listing tells us: the bus leaves the library lot at 9 AM and returns around 6:30 PM, the $130 ticket covers the ride, lunch at the canteen, all entry fees, and guided tours of the Roosevelt sites. Free parking at Forbes during the day. Lunch is built into the ticket, so there is no à la carte mystery to navigate once you arrive. For a Valley reader who has done the Springfield museums and the Clark and is looking for the next presidential-archive day out, this is the package.

The practical note: since the May 8 run is gone, the move is to get on the Friends of Forbes mailing list (413-587-1011) and watch for the next trip. These bus days tend to repeat. If you want a closer, walk-in version of the same impulse this week, the Coolidge Museum exhibits at Forbes are free and open during regular library hours, and there is plenty of lunch in Northampton within a two-block walk of the front door.

The Mass Kids Lit Fest Picture Book Fair lands at the South Hadley Public Library on Saturday morning for its first edition, with seven picture book authors (one of them an author-illustrator) reading their newest titles in what the library is billing as a long, rolling storytime. Odyssey Bookshop sets up on site to sell the books, which means the signing line is the part your kid will remember. Seven authors in one room is more than most picture book events pull together in a year, and the format favors a kid who can sit through one reading, wander the Community Room, and come back for another.

Geared toward roughly ages 3 to 8, though older siblings will be fine if they like illustration. It runs out of the Community Meeting Room and the Storytime Room, so there is space to drift. Free, no registration noted. Parking at the library off Canal Street; bring a tote for the books you will end up buying, and cash or card for Odyssey. Indoor, so the forecast does not matter.

Bombyx Center for Arts and Equity, the former church on Main Street in Florence that has become one of the Valley's most reliable rooms for live music and conversation, has started infrastructure work under a campaign it's calling The Little Dig. The name is a wink at Boston, but the work is real: upgrades to the bones of the building so the programming inside it can keep growing. For a venue that has spent the last few years quietly turning a 19th-century sanctuary into a working performance space, this is the part where the back-of-house catches up with the front-of-house.

The campaign is ongoing, and Bombyx is still booking through the spring while the crews work around them. If you've been to a show there and walked out wondering how a room that good ended up in Florence, this is the moment to throw something in the hat. Details and donation info are at the Bombyx Center site, 130 Pine Street, Northampton.