Our last 3 reads were The Borrower by Rebecca Makkai, Euphoria by Lily King and The Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford. We’d LOVE to hear your thoughts on any of these titles!
Blog
April is National Poetry Month
Not a favorite subject in schools,
students might roll the eyes and argue strong,
but Angelou and Frost are tools,
that give to us life with a song.
Writing a poem is not easy,
nor are they always meant to be cheesy,
unless its a limerick you look for.
Poems, to another world, can be a door.
We start off with Prelutsky and Seuss,
and then delve into Silverstein and Dahl.
In youth, we might think of them there is no use
as Shakespeare or e.e.cummings we read in study hall.
Then, we happen upon Topsham Public Library
nestled in a quiet corner of town,
and our hearts expand and will tarry
when, poets read and, with their magic, get down.
So, on April 30, 2016 at 1p.m.
join us as we hold our Fifth Annual Poetry Festival.
I promise, none of my poetry that day will be heard.
Have your Forest and Eat it too!
Volunteers and Master Gardeners Dana Cary and Dave Reed spread woodchips over one of the forest garden sites.
Have you noticed two small clearings in the woodland edge out behind the library? Last fall & summer, did you see folks chopping up branches, laying out cardboard, and raking out piles of woodchips? If you did, you were witnessing the beginnings of a food forest.
Food forests, also known as edible forest gardens are just what they sound like: gardens that look like forests, but that are designed to provide more of things people need, such as food, fuel, fiber and medicine.
Here in New England, our native forests are extremely productive in terms of supporting wildlife, helping to clean our air & water, and providing wood for heating and construction, yet no one needs to water them, fertilize them, or weed them. Most forests also lock up enormous amounts of carbon in the soil. If this soil stays relatively undisturbed by clearcutting or tilling, the carbon may remain locked up indefinitely. In fact, many scientists believe that changing agricultural practices to limit soil disturbance may be the single best tool currently at hand to fight global warming.
Work in progress: notice logs in the back left – those will be covered along with everything else. They will provide, organic matter, increase water holding capacity, and kick-start healthy biological activity.
What if we could create a landscape that mimics the structure of the natural forest, with a high canopy, mid-level layer, shrub layer and ground cover layer, but substitute in plants that are even more useful to people? What if this landscape could be similarly low maintenance and similarly good at providing “ecosystem” benefits such as wildlife habitat, clean air & water? This is the goal of the edible forest garden.
Growing food in this way has been identified as a possible significant factor in addressing world hunger. Forests are far more resilient to climate change, pests, droughts & diseases than typical one-species agricultural crops. See, for example, a recent study by the Global Network for Forest Science: http://www.iufro.org/science/gfep/media-information/gfep-ffs-assessment-press-release/.
In 2015, the Topsham Public Library received a Norm Steel Memorial Seed grant from the Maine Master Gardener’s Association for the purpose of starting a food forest garden. During the 2015 growing season, a dedicated group of volunteers identified two already disturbed sites along the woodland edge behind the library to start the garden. The first site had been used as a compost/utility area, and the second was infested by a massive tangle of invasive oriental bittersweet.
Both areas were cleaned up, all available organic material was spread around (e.g., brush, decaying logs, sod leftover from creating new pathways, leaves, and compost), the plots were covered with cardboard to suppress weeds, and finally topped with a heavy layer of straw & wood chips, the latter generously donated by WellTree.
One of many garden signs, a joint effort of volunteer Joan McDuff, her husband, and library director Susan Preece.
Over the winter our group has planned an initial phase of plantings. We chose a mix of edible plants, plants that support wildlife, and plants that fill different roles in the ecosystem, such as building soil, providing shade, improving fertility, repelling pests or attracting pollinators. Most attractive were the plants that do more than one of these things at the same time. Native groundnut, for example, provides an edible tuber, suppresses weeds on the forest floor, and helps add fertility to the soil.
Our plant list includes ramps, cherry dogwood, serviceberry, chokeberry, wild ginger, edible ferns, hazelnuts, rhubarb, elderberry, groundnut and blueberry, among others.
Volunteer planting session at the edible forest garden: Friday, April 8 at 9am. This is our first round of planting in areas that were prepped last year. Please contact Sarah Wolpow at sweetferngarden@comcast.net or 721-0941 if you are interested in helping.
Writer’s Block
I have writer’s block. Usually, after I finish one blog post, I begin brain storming for the next. It only takes a day or two, well, sometimes three, to come up with an idea. If I need to do any research, and I use the term ‘research’ lightly, I get that done. Then I sit down Tuesday morning and bang it out.
That is not how it has gone this week. Last Tuesday, I submitted my blog post and then nothing. Nothing on Wednesday. That was fine though. Nothing on Thursday. That bothered me a little, but still nothing to worry about. Something would present itself, or perhaps I would wake up Friday morning with ideas that were revealed to me in the night. Friday arrived and nothing. Now maybe I should panic. Saturday was spent watching my son play basketball and all thoughts of the blog were pushed to the dark recesses of my mind. Sunday, the pressure tried to seep out, but I refused to acknowledge it as I had a delicious ham to eat, because we all know that if you ignore a problem it will go away. But then Monday came, and it was time to get into gear. Nothing. I made a pan of brownies.
I like to let an idea simmer in my mind; it grows and changes and morphs into something better than when I first thought of it. But I had no idea to grow and morph. Even if I thought of something so late in the game, it would just be a caterpillar, not a butterfly. Nothing against caterpillars, but I am more partial to butterflies.
So, it’s Tuesday. I’ve got nothing except an empty brownie pan. I thought it might be fun to do a stream of consciousness writing, but then I thought maybe I shouldn’t: I like my job.
Writer’s block. It happens. It’s part of writing; all writer’s must deal with it. Now I can say I have something in common with the best writers. My new line at the next cocktail party will be, “Stephen King? Oh, Stephen and I go way back! We’ve been best buds ever since that case of writer’s block.”
Excuse me now as I go scream into my pillow.
Jiffy ToPLe Live
The following is the continuation of the series in which I interview staff members of Topsham Public Library.
The scene: standing room only at the Orion Performing Arts Center. Brass band playing, crowd clapping, whistling, and screaming. The excitement is electrifying as the audience is waiting the beginning of Jiffy ToPLe Live – the late night talk show hosted by Topsham’s one and only Jiffy ToPLe. Let’s join them now as Jiffy has walked on stage.
“Welcome! Welcome! It’s great to see you all here! Wow! We’ve got a great crowd tonight! You guys look fantastic! You sir, yes you, in the front row with the overalls – welcome! You are looking especially lively! What’s your name? Ed? Well hello, Ed. Where are you from? You just moved up from New York! Wow. Really!? That is quite the change of pace. Well, we’re glad you’re here.”
“Let me tell you about tonight’s show, folks. We’ve got some great people lined up for you! All the way from England, ladies and gentlemen, Dame Maggie Smith is joining us! I know, I know! You’re glad you paid the outrageous prices for those tickets now, aren’t you? Also on board is Carol Burnett – truly America’s first lady of comedy! But to start us off, we welcome for the first time to our show, our very own local funny man and librarian, Dave Mosley!”
Audience goes wild.
“Calm down! Calm down! Before Dave comes out here let me ask you a question. Ready? No, no that’s not the question, smart aleck. Here goes: why didn’t the thief rob the library? Because he was afraid the judge would give him a long sentence!”
Audience groans.
“Okay, okay. How’s this one: Why did the librarian slip and fall in the library? Because she wandered into the non-friction section!”
Audience groans, and a few angry shouts are heard.
“Oh, alright. Let’s get started! With no further adieu, ladies and gentlemen, Daaaaave Mooooselyyyyyyy!”
Brass band plays, crowd whistles, screams and goes wild!
Dave, in casual sweater, jeans, and sneakers (Dave is not one for dress shoes) appears onstage, shakes hands with Jiffy and takes his seat in the red chair.
“Welcome, welcome!” Jiffy says.
“Thank you. Wow. This is great!” Dave responds, nodding at the audience. Jiffy and Dave smile at each other and look at the audience as they wait for the crowd to calm down.
“It’s nice to finally meet you! I’ve really been looking forward to a one-on-one with you since you have settled here in Topsham and now, you are working at Topsham Public Library. And we will get right to it after this from your local sponsors!” Jiffy says.
“Welcome back, Everyone! Let’s get right to it, Dave. You are living in Topsham now, but where do you hail from originally?”
“Well, Jiffy, I’m not a Topsham native, but I was raised here in Maine in a little town northwest of here – Norway.”
“So, you work at Topsham Public Library. You must love books, then. Tell me, what are some of your favorite books?”
“Oh, that’s such a hard question. I do love reading. Okay, my favorite books. Let me see. I will say, my first favorite book that I remember is Horton Hears a Who! by Dr. Seuss, but the book that changed the way I read is The Prince of Tides by Pat Conroy.”
“Now, Dave,” Jiffy says, “I have done my research, and your co-workers tell me, you never stop. That you are always on the go. What is up with that?”
Dave rolls his eyes, and smirks, “When something needs to be done, there’s no sense in waiting around, I just have to get it done. I will tell you, however, if you ever go skiing, I will be the guy in the lodge with my eReader in one hand and a beverage in another. I do like my down time. I like canoeing (at this Jiffy looks to the audience with a “can we imagine Dave in a canoe?” kind of look) more than biking, I would rather take in a hockey game than a football game, but I prefer a night in to a night out.”
“I’ve also heard you’re quite the foodie,” Jiffy says.
“Well, obviously. I would much rather cook than clean any day, and tell me, who doesn’t like good food?”
“I’ve heard you know how to throw a dinner party,” Jiffy says with a wink.
“There’s really nothing to it – good food, good times. I’m actually hosting a little after party tonight. Carol and Maggie are coming, you should come by too.”
“I’d LOVE to! I’ll be there! Who else is coming?” Jiffy asks.
“Well, Dame Judi Dench, Ina Garten, Julianna Margulies, Sarah Lancashire, Trevor Eve, and Sue Johnston. I would have loved to have had dinner with Margaret Chase Smith, but death got in the way of that. And I did invite Graham Norton but, well, he was a little upset when I told him I was doing your show tonight, so he said maybe another time.”
“Graham hasn’t forgiven me for the Daniel Craig incident,” Jiffy explained, “Two Dames on your guest list – you really are something! So, tell me Dave, I hear you have your next cruise lined up.”
“Yes, this fall. We are heading out again. We really like cruising. We took a cruise to Norway once and loved it. The fjords are just breathtaking. Of all the places I’ve been I would say Norway and New Zealand are my favorites. I would return to New Zealand in a heart beat.”
“And we’ll be right back for more with Dave, after these words from our local sponsors,”Jiffy says.
Audience applauds and Jiffy says, “Welcome back. If you are just joining us, I have the privilege of talking with Dave. So Dave, evidently America cannot get enough of the superhero movie. Which do you prefer, DC or Marvel?”
“I’m more of a Marvel man, myself,” Dave answers, “and I will tell you, if I had a superpower I would rather be invisible than be able to read minds. And I’d rather be a dragon than have a dragon. Jiffy, you mentioned Daniel earlier. I do like the James Bond series and Matt Damon in the Bourne movies. Those are really well done.”
“Dave, can I just say it’s been a pleasure to have you on this show. Really! Please do say you will come back, right, ladies and gentlemen?” Jiffy asks.
Audience goes wild.
“Next up, Dame Maggie Smith will join us and discuss the ending of one of our favorite’s Downton Abbey.”
As an aside, Jiffy says to Dave, “I hear from the crew, Maggie’s not too happy to be upstaged by someone such as yourself. She said, ‘It always happens when you give these little people power, it goes to their heads like strong drink,’ so you might want to sit her at the other end of your table tonight. Just a friendly warning, old chap.”
Audience applauds, Dave waves and exits.
“When we return, ladies and gentlemen, Dame Maggie Smith and all her wit will join us, but right now another word from our local sponsors.”
We don’t bother watching the rest of the show as Dave is the brightest star in our books.
Disclaimer: the jokes are not my own.
Check Up Time
It seems like ages ago, but back on December 8, 2015 I told you about a reading challenge I am participating in this year. Well, it’s time to check up and see how I’m doing. In a nutshell, if my reading life was connected to my physical life, they would tag my toe, zip the body bag over my head and push me to the morgue.
I have a pile, or two, or three, of books that I’ve been wanting to read. The piles have only grown larger so I decided I needed to put a dent in them. The piles are positioned in various places throughout my house so I am always within reach. To Serve Them All My Days by by R.F. Delderfield has languished for quite some time in one of these piles. In January, I decided it would be the first book I would read this year, and it would fulfill “a classic from the 20th century” category.
The book started off rather promising: a recently returned veteran of World War I, David Powlett-Jones, is hired on as a teacher at a boys’ boarding school in England. By the middle of the book, it had bogged down with the political goings on of the day and the inner reflections of Powlett-Jones. Don’t get me wrong, I am interested in the political landscape and the inner thoughts of any character, but it just dwelt on that for too long. I also wanted more interaction with the students, but you only get stories of them sprinkled throughout here and there.
I did manage to get through its entirety and thought I would reward myself by watching the TV series based on the book. It was probably a great production for its time (1980), but it is quite dated and I only made it through the first two episodes. Maybe at the end of the world, when I have nothing better to do, and find myself with time on my hands having survived the apocalypse, I will try to watch it again.
After finishing To Serve Them All My Days, I moved on to An Instance of the Fingerpost by Iain Pears. I had not read anything by Pears before. I have not finished it yet, reason forthcoming, but I have not been disappointed. It is a combination of a historical novel and a mystery. Mr. Pears has certainly done his research, and the I get a real sense of the time (1663 England) without feeling like I’m sitting in history class. Not only am I schooled in the political climate of the time but also the medical, scientific, and religious climate without it becoming bogged down; these details are neatly woven in with the story line and the characters. An Instance of the Fingerpost is quite lengthy, it will fulfill “a book that’s more than 600 pages” requirement, and it is quite dense, but it is humorous and enjoyable so far.
My opinion of Mr. Pears’ book may change as I have not yet completed it. And “why haven’t you completed it,” you might ask. Well, my reading of An Instance of the Fingerpost was interrupted by the release of No Shred of Evidence by the mother/son writing team Charles Todd. I enjoy the Inspector Ian Rutledge series and this is the newest release. I finished it within a few days, and for the most part it was fine. For those of you who may not be familiar with this mystery series, Rutledge is haunted by the ghost of Hamish who was a soldier he commanded in World War I. In this newest book, I don’t think Hamish played a big enough part, and he certainly was not as menacing as he usually is and should be. I was not as emotionally engaged in this story as I can be with this series, and I found that to be a bit disappointing. It has, however, filled “a murder mystery” category.
I guess I haven’t made it very far in my challenge: 3 out of 40 read. But it’s a start, and I have some pretty good books lined up. How about you? What are your reading goals, and how are you doing in meeting them?
There is Music in the Air
One of our popular programs at Topsham Public Library is our Music in March Concert Series. Concerts take place on the first four Saturdays of March, and they all begin at 1pm. This year’s line up is just as promising as prior programs!
The fun started on Saturday, March 5 with Pejepscot Station. They are a bluegrass band based right here in Topsham. If you missed it, you missed a foot-stomping good time. But don’t worry – there are three more performances you won’t want to miss. (And you can watch a clip of Pejepscot Station’s performance by clicking here.)
On Saturday, March 12 Annegret Baier, a German born percussionist, will perform a variety of ethnic music styles using instruments from around the world.
String Tide will join us on Saturday, March 19. They are a Folkgrass/Americana cover band who perform boisterous bluegrassy arrangements.
And to wrap it all up, on Saturday, March 26, Candelia will perform. A flute ensemble with 250 years of combined playing experience, they will play a selection from classical, contemporary, jazz, and show tunes.
The audience always leaves the performances glad they attended and raving about what they heard. Don’t miss out! Come on down, relax, and be entertained by some great local musicians!
Gardening for Little People
Looking out across the purple catmints
In 2007, a group of boy scouts constructed an elegant spiral path from the back door of the the children’s reading room. A few years later, the library approached me to design a children’s garden around this spiral.
What makes a garden a “children’s” garden? Without doubt, engaging all the senses is high on the list. Such a garden might include whimsical plants with unusual shapes, or plants with interesting smells, color, or textures. It should certainly attract the little creatures, such as birds, bees and butterflies, that bring the garden alive and that so delight the little people.
Plant materials should be suited to their location and not require large inputs of water or chemicals to maintain. Nor, in most cases, should they require the use of herbicides or pesticides. I include these last items because it seems to me that our overuse of resources and toxins today leaves a debt of damage that will be paid by none other than these same little people.
Fuzzy lamb’s ear, prairie dropseed grass, and yucca in the foreground, with yellow tickseed & orange butterfly weed in the back.
The Topsham Public Library Children’s Garden was designed with all of the above features in mind. It is a rainbow garden, roughly mimicking the sequence of colors in the rainbow. The garden starts at one end of the spiral with reds and pinks, moves through the warmer colors of yellow and orange, continues into the green section (with many white-flowering plants), and ends with cool blues and purples.
Here, I must point out that my children felt adamantly that I should put the purple coneflowers in the pink section. I have to admit that they are rather pink, but I contended that anything called a “purple coneflower” has to be with the purples, regardless of its color, and that’s where they wound up.
The garden is filled with plants of different textures, smells, and shapes. The flowering panicles of the prairie dropseed grass smell like vanilla. Leaf forms range from the soft and fuzzy leaves of lamb’s ear to the spiky smooth leaves of the yucca. Bright blue spheres of globe thistle dot the top of the garden in mid summer, while gayfeather sends out long shoots of flowers resembling fireworks.
You would be hard-pressed to visit the garden without seeing butterflies and bees busy at work. One plant, commonly known as butterfly weed, is among the only food sources used by monarch butterfly caterpillars. In fall, goldfinches devour the dried seed-heads of coneflowers and black-eyed susans.
The plants in this garden are, with very few exceptions, highly drought tolerant and tough – necessary features for this hot, dry, windy site with poor, sandy soil. During a typical summer, the garden receives no supplemental water, with the exception of newly established plants. While this benign neglect works for most of the plants here, some of the less rugged species will not look as spectacular as they otherwise might with extra water. We think this is a reasonable trade-off for a garden that uses less of the precious resources around us.
Rose campion in the front, with red daylilies, tall yellow false sunflower, pale yellow tickseed & Korean feather reed grass in the back.
Over the years, this garden has battled a variety of pests. Most noteworthy was a fearsome attack of Asiatic garden beetles in the garden’s second year, which severely damaged almost half the planting. Faced with the possible ruin of the garden it was tempting to spray a pesticide. Instead, we replaced a number of plants with ones the beetles were less attracted to, and we waited to see what the next year would hold. The following year there was virtually no beetle damage. One horticulturalist I spoke with at the time suggested that the dramatic increase in beetle damage in the second year might have resulted from beneficial conditions for beetle larvae created by all the watering we did in the first year when we were establishing new plants. In subsequent years there has been minimal watering… and minimal beetle damage.
We continue to work and learn in this garden, and I am always gratified to see that when children come out of of the library, more often than not, they run to the garden, pad around the spiral path, and pet the fuzzy lamb’s ear leaves.
Please come visit us next spring; we always welcome volunteer involvement!
Sarah Wolpow
Spring Cleaning
It wasn’t until high school that I realized not every mother spring cleans their house like my mom did. My mother went through every room, every closet, every box and organized stuff and got rid of stuff. She gave her children the task of sorting through their own clothes and discarding anything that they did not want anymore. She washed the walls, scrubbed the floors, and every window was cleaned inside and out. Like clockwork, this happened year after year after year. It was during this time that I was allowed to rearrange my room: shift the bed this way, move the desk over that way, and put the dresser over there. It made everything seem new again and the sense of change, no matter how small the change was, made me feel happy.
We have been doing our own type of spring cleaning at Topsham Public Library. We have not gone to the extreme of washing walls, but Cyndi has been busy with reorganizing things in the Young Adult Room. The YA room has been bursting-at-the-seams and in an effort to make things more pleasing to the eye and easier to access, some things have been moved. If you remember correctly, the movie and audio book stacks are right outside the YA room, so we reorganized the movies and made enough room for the YA Graphic Novels to be shelved on the back of the last movie shelf. The audio books were also shifted, and now the YA Audio books are at the end of the other audio books. That allowed us to get rid of the behemoth of a bookshelf that was in the middle of the YA room. Not only did we get rid of stuff, but now there is a table for studying/group work and a comfy chair for relaxing/reading available, and the light from the windows is not blocked by that bookcase anymore. It really is a more pleasing atmosphere. (I would like to take this opportunity to remind adults that we definitely want you to check out the YA room and feel free to peruse and check out items from that room, but please remember this is a safe space for our teens to hang out in and be themselves in, so please, adults, if you need a space to sit and read or study we have plenty of other spaces available to you while you visit.)
Well, Cyndi’s reorganizing bug was caught by Emma. When Emma saw the spinny magazine holder was now available, she made use of it for the graphic novels in the adult collection. The graphic novels that used to be at the end of the fiction collection can now be found in the spinny thing in the middle of the stacks where the couch, chairs, and table are.
We have also moved the new large print books. They are still on the bookcase as you enter the library, but now they are on the front, top left shelf of that bookcase instead of on the back of the bookcase. You will also find that we moved the card catalog computer down to the end of one of the fiction book stacks so it can be closer to the books.
We hope the changes are easy to adapt to. As always, if there is something you need or want and cannot find it, just ask one of the library staff, and we will help you. We do take seriously the needs and wants of our patrons, and we are always striving to make our library not only functional, but also pleasing to the eye. We want you to get the information you need, but we also want to provide you with a place of refuge and escape from the day-to-day grind.
He’s One of Ours
The following is the continuation of a series in which I interview staff members of Topsham Public Library.
Dale is one of the few staff members who is a Topsham native. He was born here, he went to school here, and he works and lives here. Topsham is his home, and we are glad to have him. Dale is one of our technical wizards, but before he went into computers, Dale was a History major, so it is no surprise that one of his favorite books is Killer Angels by Michael Shaara.
Upon meeting Dale, it will not take you long to realize he is a sports enthusiast. He is up on whatever sport is in season, but hockey is his absolute most favorite sport and the Boston Bruins is his favorite hockey team. Football is a close second in Dale’s favorite sport category, and in the Peyton v. Brady match-up, he chooses Peyton.
What I find interesting is that though hockey is his favorite sport, when I asked Dale if he could invite any eight people in the world to dinner who would they be, he chose eight basketball players. In no particular order Allen Iverson, Michael Jordan, Larry Bird, Paul Pierce, Kobe Bryant, LeBron James, Shaquille O’Neal, and Kareem Abdul-Jabar would make his invite list. Knowing this, when asked if he would prefer to be 4’6″ or 7’7″, it is only natural that he answered 7’7″.
Dale always has snacks on hand. If you could peak behind the circulation desk while Dale is working, you would invariably see a bag of chips open beside a bottle of Dr. Pepper. The type of chips may change, but there will always be a Dr. Pepper on hand – a Cherry Coke will never be a welcome substitute – he’s a Pepper through and through.
Food is important to us all, and some of Dale’s preferences are pizza over a burger, BBQ sauce before honey mustard sauce, bacon over sausage, fried eggs instead of scrambled, and vanilla instead of chocolate. The only cake he’s interested in is an ice cream cake – best of both worlds: cake and ice cream all mashed into one.
If Dale could have a super power, he would prefer to be invisible than be able to read minds. He would also choose to run at one-hundred miles per hour than fly at ten miles per hour (I must confess, that would be a very difficult decision for me). And Dale would rather have a dragon than be a dragon – another difficult decision. But since Dale isn’t a super hero, although it feels like he’s one when he helps everyone with their tech questions on Wednesdays from 1-3pm, he would prefer Iron Man, not Captain America, to come to his aid.
PC over Mac, night owl not an early bird, Bourne over Bond, book before ereader, mountains over ocean, snowboarding instead of skiing, and android over iPhone are some of the other choices Dale made. Some of the questions were easier than others for him, but it was not a difficult question to answer when I asked him if he was not a staff member at the Topsham Public Library what would he like to be doing, his answer was almost immediate when he said an archaeologist in Egypt or Rome.