I told you so

If anyone ever had a reason to say, “I told you so” it was the woman in Bangor, Maine  who, in April of 1911, wrote a poem warning the city of Bangor that their indecision over building a new library, not made of wood, was putting the collection of 70,000 books at risk.

Thanks to Ryan R. Robbins’ detailed history in Bangor in Focus we can feel her pain and frustration...

We oft have dreamed of a library fair
That with other cities would well compare,
But our dreams alas! are but castles in air.
And our Bangor library is where -- Oh! Where?
Fair spring is come, 'twill soon be May,
The workingmen -- they need the pay --
The public wait from day to day
Still the trustees dally and delay.
And yet we wait tho' a year's gone by
And Bangoreans still for their library sigh.
Oh! Will the time then ne'er draw nigh?
And the question asked is, "Why, oh, why?"
Why should our books be allowed to burn?
Why should the trustees our wishes spurn?
The answer, alas! We have yet to learn
But the frailest worm will sometimes turn
Let the people then rally and no longer wait
Let them honor themselves and the Pine Tree state
With a building that's fair both for lowly and great
A blessing to all, free from discord and hate

- April 13, 1911

Can you imagine finding such eloquence in a letter to the editor in your morning paper?  

A photo of the fire from the Maine Memory Network

Three weeks later, on April 20, 1911, the library was engulfed in flames.  Only 29 volumes were rescued.   The entire collection was reduced to ashes, a complete and absolute loss.  My guess is that the poem’s author took no satisfaction in her accurate prediction or the loss of $300,000 worth of books.

The crushing blow might have discouraged other cities but in Bangor they packed up their one box of books, picked up 49 that were out getting bound and three weeks later were doing business in the basement of the Penobscot Court House.  The Portland Library, Maine State Library, Bowdoin College Library and a library in Medford, MA generously sent books to begin the collection once again.  

By January they already had 7,000 books (1,000 books had been checked out at the time of the fire).   Not surprisingly, the trustees decided to stop procrastinating and hired Peabody and Stearns to design a new brick and stone building.

Perhaps guilt was responsible for the decision to make the new library an “architectural showcase”.  Ryan Robbins describes the space that opened to the public on December 20, 1913 as “a copper-framed dome and rotunda, glass ceilings and floors for the second floor, and large fireplaces on the first floor. The trustees also voted to inscribe the names of 12 distinguished, New England-born writers on the rotunda: Aldrich, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Fiske, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Henry Longfellow, Lowell, Palfrey, Parkman, Prescott, Whittier and Bryant.”  

Librarians used the occasion to update their catalogue system to the new Dewey Decimal card catalog.  By 1920 the collection had returned to pre-fire size and six years later, at 120,000 volumes it would be the largest in the state of Maine.

The library was at full capacity by 1927 but there was no money to expand, it wasn’t until 1959 that a 30’ x 100’ addition relieved some of the pressure.  But that didn’t last long, as the library continued to grow the stacks became unsafe for patrons to walk through and librarians had to fill requests on demand.  It was clear that something had to be done about the library, but who would do it?  

None other than the most famous resident of Maine (and I don’t mean Andre the Seal)

Crying over...the library?

Have you seen the youtube video of the man crying over the library closing?  

Turn on the news, any day of the week, and you’ll find something to cry over; war casualties, famine, lost jobs, foreclosed houses.  Just yesterday my daughter and I got teary over a story of a 71 yr. old man fighting with a coal mining company to save the property his father and grandfather grew up on.

Sure there are plenty of things to cheer about as well but the news is determined to point out despair and desperation, just in case we start feeling too hopeful.

With so much misery at our fingertips why cry over a lousy library closing?

• libraries are physical reminders of our community’s past and the commitment our ancestors had to learning and improving themselves.
• libraries teach kids to read.
• libraries are free public spaces were everyone is welcomed equally despite their life circumstances.
• libraries are places to gather, talk and learn from each other.
• libraries are beautiful.
• librarians help people get jobs, find a recipe, go to college, learn to knit or learn languages.
• libraries offer books that teach skills, provide hope, offer escape and inspire.
• libraries are free.
• library programs introduce us to people, places and experiences we have never imagined.
• libraries are safe, warm and welcoming.
• libraries are in no hurry to rush you out the door.

A town without a library is like a person without a soul.
 
Sure you can look up the weather on the Internet, print out coupons, read the paper and waste hours of your life on Facebook and I Tunes - IF you have a computer, but don’t confuse that with the soul of a community.  And don’t imagine that we can eliminate libraries and books from our society without destroying our democracy and the people in it.

That thought is enough to make anyone cry, I hope.

Good Will-Hinckley

Photo from Good Will-Hinckley

The Good Will-Hinkley Carnegie Library opened its doors in Fairfield, Maine in 1907 to a group of orphan boys.
They must have thought they died and went to heaven.  First, George Will Hinkley takes them in off the street, feeds them, educates them and gives them a safe, warm place to sleep at night and then, with $15,000 from Andrew Carnegie, builds a perfect gem of a library.  

Rev. George Hinckley started life in Connecticut, where he was deeply affected by seeing boys who were homeless, hungry.  As a student at Guilford Institute in the 1860s, he befriended an orphan boy named Ben Mason, who ran away from his temporary slave labor conditions and was hiding out in Guilford.  George took him home to live with his family.

George grew up to become Reverend Hinckley and made his way to Maine where he followed his dream of opening a home for needy boys.  He settled in Fairfield, Maine on a farm he called Good Will Farm.   The farm expanded to Good Will-Hinckley School and became a haven for boys with no where else to turn.  Hinckley dedicated himself to creating a place for boys to improve their minds, spirits and bodies and become productive members of society.  

In 1905 he wrote to Carnegie, who agreed to give him $15,000 to build a library for his growing gang of boys.  Over the decades the Hinckley Library offered books and dreams to thousands of boys and when Hinckley died in 1950, at the age of 97 his vision had been fully realized.

But at the age of 102, the Hinckley Library was rudely awakened with the news that it was no longer needed.  The orphan boys had been moved to foster care or were working things out with the help of social services.  Policy changes in Maine had made the school financially impossible.  

Certainly there were children in need, but there was no money to operate a residential school and too much competition for donations.  Homes for wayward children had gone out of fashion.  The library doors were locked, the teachers fired and the campus ran dry.

Hinckley’s dream to “provide a home for the reception and support of needy boys and girls who are in need of a home and a helping hand, to maintain and operate a school for them and to attend to the physical, industrial, moral and spiritual development of those who shall be placed in its care; its spirit to be evangelical without being sectarian" seemed to have run its course.  

And then, divine intervention, or at least some good luck and timing.  The school’s next door neighbor, Kennebec Valley Community College needed some land for expansion.  Good Will-Hinckley happliy sold them 680 acres.  While every other state slashed school budgets, Governor Paul LePage wisely made the commitment to expand alternative, non-traditional schools for students who struggle to succeed in traditional environments.  He miraculously came through with $730,000 a year.

And finally, a re-invention...from “Good Will-Hinckley School” to the “Maine Academy of Natural Science on the Good Will-Hinckley Campus” (good luck getting that printed on a sweatshirt).  The school will become the state’s first magnet school to focus on environmental science and, in the process, support the state’s agriculture and forestry industries (Hinckley was also committed to agriculture and the school has an organic farm).

Glenn Cummings, the Academy’s new president and former Maine Speaker of the House, is leading the school through the change and is hopeful that they will be able to re-open the student residences.  

I just hope they wash their hands and take off their boots before tromping into the library.

Where Are the Neighbors?

Never look down on anybody unless you're helping him up.  ~Jesse Jackson

I was not surprised to hear that Adams Memorial Library in Central Falls, RI had closed.  Central Falls is in the middle of a devastating economic crisis that was a long time coming and libraries are first on the chopping block.   

The smallest, but most densely populated, city in the smallest state was a successful manufacturing hub 150 years ago, thanks to the power of the Blackstone River that courses through its heart.  Mills churned out iron, cloth and even chocolate that were used to create enough goods to make Walmart proud:  weapons, lace, cloth, brooms, snuff, webbing, candy, aprons, stationary, hosiery, etc..  

You name it, they made it.  The city prospered, grew and added infrastructure; like the beautiful Adams Library, a Greek Revival building designed by McLean and Wright of Boston and opened in 1905.
But in 2011 rivers don’t run factories and tiny New England factories are far and few between.

Today 20,000 people live in Central Falls. The average household income in the year 2000 was $22,000.  40% of the children live in poverty.  47% of the population are Hispanic and 21% of the families are led by single mothers.

Three years ago, when the city struggled to pay their bills they decided not to make the yearly pension contribution for the firefighters and police force and now the fund is running out of money.

Robert J. Flanders had recently been appointed as the state receiver and everyone is headed to court.  The city has slashed pensions, dramatically increased employee contributions to health care and closed the community center, pool and library.  Taxes are already as high as they can go - the citizens of the city have no more money to give.  And we haven’t even talked about the schools.  

While the lawyers, politicians and unions fight to the death, I think about the children, the elderly, the unemployed and the recent immigrants.  Where will they go?  Who will help them get services and jobs?  How will they learn the language?  How will they learn to read?  

The research is clear, if these populations are ignored, they will go on welfare & food stamps, dropout of school, be incarcerated, become isolated and depressed and turn anywhere they can for solace.  While there is no money to keep the library and community center open, there is a not much hope for the city if they are closed.

So while I am not surprised by a once thriving town struggling to recover from the loss of industry and the influx of immigration in our current economic downtown, I am surprised, maybe even stunned, by the lack of response from Central Falls’s neighbors.

According to the Pro Jo coverage, when the news came that the Adams Library was closing, RI libraries did not rush to open their doors to Central Falls residents, they did not welcome them into their air conditioned sanctuaries or invite them to story time.  In fact, the Ocean State Library consortium announced that they have a current policy of cancelling library cards if a town’s library closes.  

Pawtucket, as the closest city, grudgingly conceded to let Central Falls patrons borrow books at their library for a month or so and clearly stated that they would no longer be welcomed as of July 15th.  

They informed residents of Central Falls that they could then pay the $40 non-resident fee or the $115 fee to get books from the larger OSL system.  Most libraries require that patrons have an active library card before giving them access to computers.

In the Providence Journal, Doug Hadden (a spokesman for Pawtucket Mayor Donald Grebien)  said that they “wanted to help Central Falls out, but they were concerned that “city residents not be inconvenienced or displaced.”

Rhode Island is a tiny state, I lived there for 20 years and it takes about an hour to drive anywhere.  It’s hard to believe that libraries in this tight knit state would not come together to help their neighbors in Central Falls, to offer the limited resources they have or to organize a bookmobile, mobile lab or used book sale to ease the loss of their library on the most vulnerable citizens of the city, and perhaps the state, during the long days of summer.  

Meanwhile the state Office of Libraries and Information were planning a meeting to come up with solutions.  The Executive Director of the OSL, Joan Gillespie, stated the obvious,  “This is a community that desperately needs a library” and hoped that the Adams Library trustees would reopening the building.

I think there is a simple answer from a well know source that has been temporarily forgotten in our focus on budgets, pensions, lawyers and taxes:   Love your neighbor as yourself and loan them a book.

Thanks Josh

Photo by John Fischer

I wrote about Bates Hall way back in January, but that was before I actually sat in it.  You can tell a lot from a picture but its never the same as being there in person.  I hoped that going to Bates Hall would be inspirational  and I was not disappointed.  

I am not a religious person but I do believe that beauty can lift the spirit, that it can release you for a moment, to rise above common experience and ascend to a higher level.  It takes a powerful bolt of awe to create the effect, something like a mountaintop, sunset, cathedral, snowfall or ocean.  

It has to be something extraordinarily beautiful and rare that you are lucky enough to witness.  One early morning on my run I was treated to the sight of eight deer bounding through the mist and disappear into the woods and I was paralyzed with delight.
 
This beauty bolt is what struck me in Bates Hall.  I stepped through the threshold and stopped immediately so I could look up without crashing into someone.  Just the scale of the room is awesome, 50 feet high and 200 feet long, far more similar to a cathedral than to most libraries.  Even my daughter, ready to shop on Newbury Street, was impressed.  

We found an empty spot at one of the long wooden tables and sat gazing at the soaring vaulted ceiling, the elegant green reading lamps, the book lined walls and the giant windows.  What a space.  I wondered how anyone could get a thing done in here without being totally distracted.  When Joshua Bates asked that his money be used toward a reading room that was “an ornament to the city”, I’m confident that he could not even imagine a space such as this.  

Here is a copy of Bates’s original letter to the trustees from the Boston Public Library website:


October 1, 1852

Dear Sir:
I am indebted to you for a copy of the Report of the Trustees of the Public Library for the City of Boston, which I have perused with great interest, being impressed with the importance to rising and future generations of such a Library as is recommended; and while I am sure that, in a liberal and wealthy community like that of Boston, there will be no want of funds to carry out the recommendations of the Trustees, it may accelerate its accomplishment and establish the Library at once, on a scale to do credit to the City, if I am allowed to pay for the books required, which I am quite willing to do,-leaving to the City to provide the building and take care of the expenses.

The only condition that I ask is, that the building shall be such as to be an ornament to the City, that there shall be a room for one hundred to one hundred and fifty persons to sit at reading-tables, that it shall be perfectly free to all, with no other restrictions than may be necessary for the preservation of the books. What the building may cost, I am unable to estimate, but the books, counting additions during my life time, I estimate at $50,000, which I shall gladly contribute, and consider it but a small return for the many acts of confidence and kindness which I have received from my many friends in your City.

Believe me, Dear Sir, very truly yours,
Joshua Bates

Mission Accomplished.

Steepletop

It's all about having a bright, modern kitchen.

Edna St. Vincent Millay followed the path of a million authors and artists before her when she escaped the noise and confusion of NYC and headed to the solitude of the woods.  She choose the woods of New York State and a town called Austerlitz to make her home in a farmhouse on 600 acre blueberry farm.  

She named the farm Steepletop after the pink wildflowers that grew everywhere and even though she did build a secluded writing cabin, there was always a steady stream of friends pouring in and lots of parties to take advantage of her grown up playground.

Steepletop is just barely located in New York, right across the border from the Berkshires (and Edith Wharton’s home) and technically located in the Taconics.  Edna and her husband, Eugen got to work on the property right away and build a tennis court, pool (perfect for skinny dipping), outdoor bar, rose and vegetable gardens, and a barn with plans purchased from Sears. There was also a roomy guest house across the drive.

Like Edith Wharton, Edna created an “inner sanctum” that was apparently off limits to anyone but her.  She kept her own bedroom, a large bath, and a work room that led to her personal library.
She also had two pianos in the living room, one for herself and one for a guest.  

Despite Edna’s achievements as a writer, Ladies Home Journal decided to remodel Steepletop’s kitchen and use it as a feature in the magazine in 1948.  While I was researching the kitchen remodel I stumbled upon Writer’s Houses, Where Stories Live, a superb website started A.N. Devers but with entries from many authors .  

Megan Mayhew Bergman was lucky enough to visit Millay’s retreat last February.  She describes the property as authentic, still holding clues to Millay’s penchant for perfume, roses and gin.  The remodeled kitchen is crammed full of floral plates and knick knacks, and became a “mid-century electrified dream” thanks to the Ladies Home Journal.  There is an awesome slideshow of the ‘modern’ kitchen at www.thekitchn.com and I must admit I far prefer the before pictures.  After reading about Edna for a few days I already know she had zero interest in streamlining her domestic duties or decorating her kitchen.

Bergman also describes some of the reasons that Edna might have wanted to be far from prying eyes, including a morphine addiction, chronic pain, intestinal problems and alcoholism.  
Edna’s sister, Norma, lived in the house 25 years after Edna’s died after falling down a flight of stairs with a glass of wine in her hand.  She was only 58 years old.  

Norma appreciated Edna’s connection to Steepltop and kept the house just as it was.   An article for the AP by Michael Virtanen says that the house looks as if Edna just stepped out for a minute.

Behind the house there is a poetry trail, dotted with Millay’s poems and leading to her gravestone, next her husbands, two simple stones in the frozen earth that mark the place that she finally found peace.

Surprising Role Model

Both levels of the Camden Library

Edna St. Vincent Millay would be surprised to find that she is the literary icon of the Camden Library.  

Yes, she did grow up in Camden, attend Camden High School, get a scholarship to Vassar, thanks for her poem Renascence about Mt. Battie, the hill/mountain that provides the background for the port town , but she never returned to Camden, never went to the library and was as unconventional as the library is traditional.

My mom and I stood under the dome of the Camden Library addition, a floor build under the original library, and read the first words of Millay’s Renascence Poem about Mt. Battie, written when she was only 20 years old.

“All I could see from where I stood,
was three long mountains and a wood;
I turned and looked the other way,
And saw three islands in a bay.”

Millay, who called herself Vincent, was born in Rockland, Maine in 1892..  She lived in poverty with her single mother and two sisters on her Aunt’s property in Camden.  Vincent’s talent as a poet emerged early; she wrote and published poetry while still attending Camden High School and began collecting awards soon after. Her tuition to Vassar was picked up by an wealthy Camden admirer who heard her recite her poetry during a public reading in town.  

Millay’s relationships with other women and her refusal to follow conventions also began early and continued through her time at Vassar College, Paris and Greenwich Village.  She was an early feminist, an open bisexual and never shied away from exploring new adventures, saying what was on her mind and having a good time.

Vincent was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1923 for “The Ballad of the Harp-Weaver”.  She was the second woman to accept the award in its history.

The Camden Public Library is a study in opposition.  After a few false starts, Camden residents voted to establish a public library in 1896.  The Public Library seemed to be the real deal and the town began raising money and making independent plans for a building, the website makes it clear that Andrew Carnegie had no part in the project.  

In 1916 Mary Louis Bok donated her harbor front property to the library and in 1928 the doors to the modest, but elegant, building were opened to the public.  Vincent left for Vassar in 1917 and  hadn’t resided in Camden for a decade.

The connection to Millay came later, much.  In 1996 the library went underground to create an expansion that would leave the original building untouched.  The new subterranean floor boasts the dome inscribed with Millay’s words and a wall honoring Millay Society members (residents and businesses who contribute $1,000 or more).

The library website states that Millay’s “life and her poetry are celebrated examples of freedom and individualism. Millay was committed to intellectual pursuits and the liberation of ideas – ideals kept alive at the Camden Public Library.”  

The summary of Millay’s life is accurate, in a politically correct kind of way, and a good ideal for a library but the upstanding, good citizen aura of the library doesn’t match my impression of Millay as a rule breaking bohemian.     When Millay returned to Maine with her husband Eugen Jan Boissevain,  (the marriage was an open one and they both continued to have other relationships)  in 1933, it was to Ragged Island, a small island in Cumberland County.  They summered on the island until the end their lives.

The Bangor Daily News published an article about Millay in 2009.   “She was an unusual girl,” historian Barbara Dyer said. “She rushed impulsively into the world, as if to make her mark, and she did make her mark.”
The article explains that Millay’s mother, Cora, struggled to keep the family afloat and made up for a lack of money with an “abundance of creativity.”  
“Her mother told the girls they could leave the dishes in the sink and the beds unmade, as long as they were reading literature and playing music,” Dyer said.
Christine Buzzelle, a distant Millay relative,  is quoted as saying, “I’ve just always been fascinated by her,” Buzzelle said. “She was a wild and crazy woman.”

I admire the Camden Library for shining a light on  Millay’s fascinating life.  Maybe we should all, libraries included, consider Millay’s example and live louder, make more mistakes and follow our own rules.

Can you have that much fun at a library?

Those squiggles are all letters!

Herzog and De Meuron look pretty intense but I bet they were lego masters in elementary school.  You know, the kind of kids that work for days in silent concentration in the corner and eventually reveal a masterpiece that makes the rest of the class gasp in awe?  Their new library, actually it is The Information, Communication and Media Center (ICMC),  at The Technical University of Cottbus in Germany, looks like it could have been designed with legos if they came in circles and spirals.  

It is another one of those brand new fun libraries, capital FUN, that makes the rest of the libraries look uptight.  I’m not sure if it’s the seven story glass exterior wall imprinted with letters from different alphabets, the bright red, dark blue, magenta, green and yellow color scheme or the giant, colorful spiral staircase that rises through its center or the combination of all these features that create the delightful aura, I just know it’s one of those buildings that make you want to stand in the middle with your mouth open.

  

I told you it was fun!

The library cost a cool 29 million Euros to build and holds 900,000 books.  Cottbus is not far from Berlin, very close to the Poland’s border.  Herzog and DeMeuron is a Swiss architecture firm that has designed four building in the United States (there is a map on their website) but none of them bring on a smile like this library, I’ll keep my fingers crossed.

Libraries Against Drunk Driving

photo from the Buffalo News

Libraries live in constant fear of certain threats; floods, vandalism, fire, theft, tornadoes, hurricanes and, especially in 2011, budget cuts but they are usually safe from the dangers of drunk driving.  However, anything can happen in Buffalo.  

At 5 a.m. on July 11th, a drunk driver rear-ended a car in front of the Frank E. Merriweather Library crashing it through the front wall and demolishing the ventilation and cooling systems.  From the photo in the Buffalo News  it looks like the rear ended car ended up completely inside the building.

The good news is that no one in either car or in the library or on the sidewalk was hurt.  Additional good news is that the car crashed into the air conditioner and not the books.  The bad news was that the library was closed for a month during the prime summer attendance season.  But, to end on a positive note, the air conditioning is now fixed and the library is open for the last few weeks of summer.

Thanks to the press I learned that the Merriweather is not any old library branch, when it opened in 2006 it was first new branch in the Buffalo-Erie System in 20 years.  It is loved and appreciated by the members of its east side neighborhood - check out this video and feel the love - that stop by daily to use the computers, read and work.  One man said it simply, “we’re blessed to have it in our community.”

But what makes the library really different is its design.  The building is created from six interconnected circles that “suggest” a traditional African Village.  Architect  Robert Traynham Coles, also shown on the video, chose the plan to create a feeling of community where people share different spaces.  A domed skylight on one room allows sunlight to flood the space, avoiding both gloom and florescent lights.  Tile mosaics and carved doors add warmth and personality.  

I’ve seen a lot of different libraries in the last 8 months but what I like about the Merriweather is that Coles came up with a fresh, relevant design that meets the practical needs of the library while INSPIRING the community.  

Coles’s commitment to building the right library for the neighborhood jumps right out at me and reminds me of seeing Frank Lloyd Wright’s prairie style houses for the first time (Buffalo also has one on those).  Wright's new, modern style sought to complement its surrounding and completely broke with traditional materials and design.  He was not afraid to design homes that belonged where they were built.  

African American architects were rare in 1940 America when Coles fell in love with the work and pursued his education until he graduated from MIT with a Masters Degree in 1955.  He has been pushing the envelope and ignoring naysayers ever since.  He has contributing to Buffalo for more than 40 years and won the American Institute of Architects’ Whitney M. Young Jr. citation in 1981 for his contributions to social justice.

Coles’s design goal is clear in at the Merriweather:  to create buildings that provide positive influences to a community.  “I tend to look to the community to be served as opposed to building the greatest architectural monument. I am an advocate architect,” Coles said in an interview.

If I could wave my magic society wand I would turn drunk drivers into advocate architects with Coles’s commitment - imagine what a beautiful world they could make.