Offhand Reference

Thoughts from the Reference Desk of the Valley Cottage Library.

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Newspaper gems

Today, while trying out our new microfilm reader for the first time, I was looking at the New York Times from January 1, 1974.  Somewhere buried deeply in the  paper from that day was a segment where the rich and famous were asked to share their new year's resolutions in terms of "Management By Objective," (M.B.O) a trendy-at-the-time goal-based business management practice.  The article was titled "The Rich, Famous, Talented and Powerful Resolve."

In the dead center of the page, was an image of an elderly woman in a huge brimmed hat.  She was identified as Alice Roosevelt Longworth, daughter of Theodore Roosevelt.  Her response to the request to share her "objective" for the year was:

"Objective?  I don't have any.  I don't even think about it.  What perfect nonsense." 

I hope that at the ripe old age of 89, I would have the experience and confidence to dismiss trends and goals.  I would hope to trust my gut in the same way. 

This is one of the many reasons I enjoy looking backward, especially in a more random manner.  I love the ability to feel a connection with someone of the past or to discover a little gem of wisdom that is so completely unexpected.  It is why I work with a historical collection on my day off.  It is those surprises. 

With our collection at the Valley Cottage Library, these discoveries can be made in a multitude of ways: by perusing our book collection, by looking at some of our holdings in the local history collection or spending some time with our databases. 

We subscribe to the Historical New York Times, which gives our patrons in-house access to every New York Times article from 1851 to 2007.  It can be searched using a keyword, and these little tidbits of the past are easily uncovered. The articles are scanned in, so they are shown in their original typeface.  By doing a quick search for Valley Cottage, I have learned about car accidents on Lake Road from 1910, buildings that were burned down and rebuilt, and the comings and goings of various families that lived here.  It makes me keep my eyes always searching for a small reminder of what was here before. 

I invite anyone to come into the library and give this a try.  It is enlightening and interesting and always full of surprises. 

-Katie Karkheck

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We should treat our minds, that is, ourselves, as innocent and ingenuous children, whose guardians we are, and be careful what objects and what subjects we thrust on their attention. Read not the Times. Read the Eternities.

Henry David Thoreau, from Life without Principle 

A patron shared this quote with me yesterday in response to a discussion we had about the ways we get information. I had ashamedly admitted that I tend to seek out information that confirms my worldview and that my interest in current events and politics has been waning.  These days, I read the Sunday Book Review section, and pass by just about everything else in the New York Times. I suppose I've been heeding Thoreau's advice and have been acting as the careful guardian of my mind. So why, even with Thoreau's endorsement, am I reluctant to admit to my news fast?

My reluctance because I recognize what might be perceived as a conflict between my personal information cocoon and my professional commitment to the openness of information. As a librarian, I believe in the power of information and fully support every person's (including a child's) right to access information.  I bristle at patronizing library policies that censor information, even in a benevolent attempt to protect minds. I will help you find any bit of information you'd like, but I'll stick to my book reviews, maybe browse through the the arts section, or mostly like, get lost in a novel.

Like Thoreau, I've traded the Times for the Eternities, which I find in literature. I love a novel that expands my worldview and offers a fresh glimpse at humanity.

Here are some books that I've read within the past months that were impactful, truthful, and humane:

So Much for That by Lionel Shriver.  This book articulated some my own deep anxieties about health care and insurance. It made me rethink my notions about treatment for terminal illness.  It offered insight into my grandmother's fight with cancer and the end of her life. 

Home by Toni Morrison. This book, about a broken Korean War veteran who must save his sister, made me confront the grim reality of racism in 1950s America. It made me consider the responsibility of a nation to help heal its wounded citizens, not just those wounded by war, but also those wounded by racism and injustice.

What We Talk about When We Talk about Anne Frank by Nathan Englander. This collection of stories offered me a glimpse at the complications of finding a contemporary Jewish identity.  Reading this book was a fascinating experience. 

-Lauren Moore

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Early today, Amazon announced an "exclusive license with Pottermore" to make it possible for Kindle users to read all seven Harry Potter Books through "The Kindle Owners' Lending Library."  The press release, which you can read by clicking the link above, frustratingly misrepresents its "Lending Library" while negatively portraying the eBook lending model used by actual lending libraries.

Amazon, if you're going to pick on libraries, you should as least play fair. Here's my answer to Amazon's press release.

Amazon: "We've purchased an exclusive license from Pottermore to make this possible."

LM: I'm sure it is legally true that Amazon has "an exclusive license" to the Harry Potter books, but the spirit of the statement is misleading.  All seven Harry Potter books are already available for libraries to loan to their patrons through OverDrive, libraries' digital book catalog.

Amazon: "The Kindle Owner's Lending Library now features over 145,000 books to borrow for free... "

This Amazon service is not free.  It requires an Amazon Prime account, which costs $79 per year.

Amazon: "...including over 100 current and former New York Times best sellers."

LM: 100 current and former NYT best sellers really isn't that many! Our library's OverDrive collection includes current and former best sellers, too.

Amazon: "The Kindle Owners' Lending Library has an unusual feature people love- unlimited supply of even the most popular titles."

LM: Although users will not have to wait to access the titles included in the Kindle Owners' Lending Library, supply is, in fact, limited. Participants in the Amazon program can only borrow one book per month, from a limited offering of books.

Amazon: With traditional library lending, the library buys a certain number of e-book copies of a particular title.  If all those are checked out, you have to get on a waiting list.  For popular titles like Harry Potter, the wait can sometimes be months."

LM: Yes, waiting for high-demand items is one of the drawbacks of using a public library. But ultimately, this sharing of resources is what makes public libraries work! A community pools its resources to create a collection for everyone to share.  It's a simple, elegant, beautiful model, really.

And oh, there is currently no wait to borrow a copy of Harry Potter through the Valley Cottage Library's OverDrive collection. We buy several copies of very popular titles like Fifty Shades of Grey, so the wait is rarely (never, probably) months.

Amazon: "With the Kindle Owners' Lending Library, there are no due dates, you can borrow as frequently as once a month, and there are no limits on how many people can simultaneously borrow the same item..."

LM: "You can borrow as frequently as once a month." Really?  One book a month wouldn't even come close to satisfying many of our readers.

Amazon's "Lending Library" seems like a nice perk for Amazon prime members.  Once a month, folks get the opportunity to pick a book from their collection and read it.  But for "library people," people who love and count on the library's shared resources, it's not an alternative to borrowing books from the library. It's maybe a supplement to library e-borrowing. It's definitely not a solution to the eBook lending problem. 

By charging libraries exorbitant prices for eBooks and by simply not making eBooks available for libraries to purchase, publishers are making it very difficult for libraries to make eBooks available to our patrons.  We want to buy more eBooks (we want to buy lots of eBooks, actually), but publishers won't let us.  It's crazy and it feels unfair. 

This morning's press release feels like an attempt by Amazon to kick libraries while they're down. But the truth, Amazon, is that you're not really competing with public libraries because your lending model isn't for "library people." People who consume lots of books and believe in the value of a library's shared resources will continue to go to libraries for their books, in print and digital formats.  And btw, library people are smart people, so you won't be fooling any of them with your silly press release.

-Lauren Moore

B

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What is this?!!  For as long as I can remember, I have been puzzled about this structure every time I had gone to Memorial Park in Nyack.  "Is it a boat that was wrecked?  It looks like a boat!  Why is it there? Why would anyone make a boat out of concrete?  It would surely sink!"  This is what would go through my head every time I walked by.  I finally decided to try to dig up a little history on it, which proved to be surprisingly difficult. 

I first did a quick Google search for concrete ships in Nyack, only to come up with a number of other people asking the same questions I was.  I then scouring the Valley Cottage local history collection, where I found nothing on this particular subject. 

My next step was to turn to the Nyack Village Historian.  She gave me a lot more information.  According to excerpts of the Nyack Village Board minutes, after the building of the Tappan Zee Bridge, John Kilby, the mayor of Nyack, planned to extend Memorial Park, build a restaurant and a marina.  Apparently,  barges and concrete were intended to be sunk at the perimeter of the park extension and the rest was to be filled in.  The restaurant would have been too expensive, so it never came to fruition. 

Unfortunately, while trying to make the extension of the park, someone miscalculated on the measurements and sunk the barges too far out into the water, so that the land couldn't be appropriately filled in.  While this told me why the barge was there, it still didn't tell me what it was and why anyone would build a concrete boat in the first place!

On a whim, I decided to look at Google Earth to see if I could see anything else sunk under the water.  There was another structure there, but what was far more interesting was the fact that it was labeled "Erie Canal Concrete Boat."  I had a new direction!  Upon searching for Erie Canal Concrete Boats, I found several sources. 

According to the blog of Don Rittner, the Schenectady County Historian, these concrete barges were made during WWI as an experiment in using materials other than steel to move cargo through the Erie Canal.  The pictures on his site matched our local concrete barge!  He mentioned that these barges ultimately failed, and weren't very well planned.  While concrete was inexpensive, it was extremely heavy and those that constructed these barges didn't really know how they would hold up under constant use. 

I came across the memoir of Richard Garrity, a former Canal Boatman, entitled Canal Boatman: My Life on Upstate Waterways.  He wrote a bit about these concrete canal boats.  It seems that the Nyack Barge was probably one of only 21 concrete barges that were made during this experimental time.  They were 150 ft long, by 21 ft wide and could hold 520 tons of cargo.  On their incredible failure he stated:

"The concrete barges were not much of a success commercially or otherwise.  They drew 4 feet of water when empty compared to a wooden or steel barge's 18 to 22 inches.  The sides were holed and sunk when they struck a solid object with a moderate force that would not have damaged a steel or wooden barge.  And many of them were damaged or sunk along the canal between Albany and Buffalo.  To the best of my knowledge, none of them had a useful life of more than three or four years."

It is so much fun for me to dig up weird, obscure bits of information about my surroundings and this kind of research makes me love what I do.  I will no longer look at that barge with confusion, but will look at it knowing its bizarre history and the experiment intending to make concrete float.

-Katie Karkheck

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Now that the weather is getting warmer, it's the beginning of gardening season.  While digging in the dirt and getting everything planted is so much fun, I truly enjoy having fresh veggies all summer.  Here is a selection of books that can help you to start and maintain a vegetable garden, as well as books geared toward cooking or preserving fresh, straight-from-the-garden foods. 

-Katie Karkheck

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R.I.P. Adrienne Rich

I was really saddened to learn of Adrienne Rich's death last week.  The work of this brilliant poet, activist and essayist, I believe, shaped me in my most formative years. 

I first encountered her work my freshman year of college, while I was simultaneously taking an Introduction to Women's and Gender Studies class and a Women's Literature class.  She showed up in my literature class first.  We read her poems.  I admired the simplicity of the language, but her words carried weight. 

In my Women's and Gender Studies class, we read Compulsory Heterosexuality and the Lesbian Existence,where she argues that women have the right to define their own identities outside the pressures of societal expectations.  She encourages women to embrace the complexities of their identities and sexualities. 

While her work was considered radical for its time, it was exactly what I needed to hear at that moment in my life. 

At the Valley Cottage Library, we have the following volumes of her writing:

Adrienne Rich's Poetry and Prose

The School Among the Ruins

Tonight No Poetry Will Serve

Fox: Poems

-Katie Karkheck

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A guide to erotica and steamy romance at the Valley Cottage Library. 

When does a book cross the line from romance to erotica? Add that the list: "Things I Didn't Learn in Library School."

-Lauren Moore

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Sleepy Hollow Family Almanac by Kris D'Agostino.

No Surprise. I loved it!

I recently came across a book reviewer listing surprise as a determining factor in her enjoyment of a book. (I'm acting casual, like I can't remember that I encountered that idea less than 24 hours ago, in the comments section, here.) I agree with that reviewer that it's the unexpected that makes a book engaging, memorable, and enjoyable. That might be why I enjoyed The Sleepy Hollow Family Almanac so much; it was constantly suprising, on mulitple levels.

I know Kris. He's in a band with my husband.  He was at my wedding reception. He's friendly and funny. He's really smart. He knows a ton about books, movies, and music.  He always has super cute, nice girlfriends, which says something else favorable about him.   That being said, I understand that my entire knowledge of Kris D'Agostino is the the equivalent of like one tiny side of a polyhedral Dungeons & Dragons die and who knows if my impression is even accurate? To me, he's one of Steve's guys from Brooklyn who get to stay out late, go to shows, see every movie, and remember every record they've ever heard.

It was surprising and compelling to me how far removed Sleep Hollow Family Almanac is from that world.  Sure, Cal, the narrator, is a smart, music-obsessed, film school dropout, but he's solidly in a place where those interests are worthless cultural capital.His struggles to grow, to find himself, to identify as an adult, are all occurring in a domestic space, amongst his family, which he loves more than anything else. To me, that priority on family seems authentic and a move into adulthood seems impossible without a reconciliation within the context of your family. So why can't I think of another coming-of-age book that goes there, or rather stays there?  Thanks, Kris, for doing it! It was refreshing, unexpected, and really resonated with me.

Kris does a great job, too, of intertwining the ordinary and the extraordinary and juggling tragic and comic story arcs, so that they bump into each, interrupt one another, become indistinguishable, and diverge suddenly.  All this happens effortlessly and naturally, making the effect on the reader even more powerful and poignant. The ominous line, "We have no idea", casually slipped in on page 218 is more devasting for its offhandedness. 

-Lauren Moore

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I love working on the Local History collection at the library.   For me, learning the history of a place makes me feel much more connected to my surroundings.   While it helps me get acquainted with our community's current and past events, sometimes I find little unexpected gems in the collection.

Tuesday, while indexing our file on local poets, I came across one of those rare gems.  Among the obituaries and photocopied chapbooks, were several postcards with the handwritten poems of Berenice Heaton, aka Beren Van Slyke!  Berenice Heaton was the wife of well-known glass artist, Maurice Heaton.  Berenice and Maurice lived in Valley Cottage for many years.  Berenice died in 1977, at age 86.  Her poems were published in several journals, including Poetry Magazine, The Saturday Evening Post, and The Saturday Review. She also published a few full-length books and chapbooks. 

What a nice surprise to find a poet's work in her own hand almost 35 years after her death!  I believed that the Heatons sent these postcards as their Christmas cards each year.  I wonder if she wrote a new poem for each card for each person, or if she wrote one poem a year for her cards.  Was she that prolific?

- Katie Karkheck

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One of the best things about working in a library is that even the most tedious projects, like changing the labeling system of the entire CD collection, include the potential to unearth really interesting items. 

While lost in the repetitive task of relabeling the D section of our pop collection, I was jolted form the monotony by the cover of this Betty Davis album. Who is this sassy woman in the platform boots?! Why haven't I heard of her? I had to borrow the CD and find out.

Who she is- Um, probably the funkiest, sexiest woman in rock history! Her lyrics are smart and confrontational;  she's not afraid to do crazy things with her voice; her grooves are SO funky.  What is most striking about the music is its fearlessly and unapologetically unladylike quality.

It turns out that she's also the ex-wife of Miles Davis.  (She wrote an amazing, though not particularly flattering, song about him called "He Was a Big Freak" which is not on this album, but is a must-listen.)

Why I hadn't heard of her- Although I'm embarrassed by this hole in my musical education, I gather that her overt sexuality kept her from having mainstream success. She was a woman ahead of her time. 

My record collector friends tell me that crate diggers are always on the lookout for her albums.. Until I can get my hands on an LP for myself, I am thankful to have the library's CD to borrow!

-Lauren Moore

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Vaclav & Lena by Haley Tanner Dial Press, 304 pages.

Vaclav & Lena is the story of two Russian children living in Brighton Beach, who dream of performing a Coney Island magic show. Booklist says in a starred review, "...marvel over first-time novelist Tanner's exceptional skills in capturing both the outer and inner worlds of her damaged but determined characters in a sleight-of-mind entwinement of a grittily realistic tale of Russian-immigrant suffering and a subtly imagined and incisively funny drama of emotional symbiosis, maternal heroism, and true love. The magic Tanner makes is as dazzling as it is profound."

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New to DVD.

The Illusionist (2011) Directed by Sylvain Chomet

Here's what Mahola Dargis had to say in her review in the New York Times: "Directed by Sylvain Chomet and based on a short sketch of a script by [Jacques] Tati, who died in 1982, “The Illusionist” is both a modest homage to its writer and a melancholy look at a lost world. Tati was a music-hall mime before turning to film directing, and it is the dusty stage world of magic and dancing girls that this film recalls with a delicate visual style, tender humor and a sense of loss."

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This is the new book I'm most excited to read.

The LA Times says, "If Cormac McCarthy had a sense of humor, he might have concocted a story like Patrick DeWitt's bloody, darkly funny western 'The Sisters Brothers."

The Sisters Brothers by Patrick DeWitt Ecco: 366pgs

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