Libraries have always adapted to the changing world by expanding resources and services, even more so in these Covid times. Celebrate National Library Week, April 4 – 10! Visit your library online or in person (if allowed) to learn how you can check out books, technology, multimedia content, educational programs and so much more to help you be your best self.
Happy National Library Week!
There are those special foods that simply speak to tradition, to holiday, to holyday.
There is absolutely no reason that Mom’s mouth-watering Pecan Crisps could not be baked year round but we only have them at Christmas and only Mom takes on that loved-filled task to bake a double batch to be stored in the yellow cookie jar. The same is true when making Altar Bread using a recipe from Father Fred Devett, TOR (Franciscan Friars of the Third Order Regular.) Years ago, while in library school, baking altar bread was a biweekly task for Sunday Mass at St. Paul’s Catholic Student Center shared between my friend Hedy and me. While my grad school days are a reminiscent blur of classes, daily flavors of Babcock ice cream, and sunny afternoons on Memorial Union Terrace sitting on the iconic Sunburst chairs, this recipe holds a deep celebration of Spring.
Again, a simple recipe that could certainly be made anytime but now I only bake it for Maudy / Holy Thursday. Not quite truly unleavened as required for Pesach / Passover, while this recipe does not include yeast thus eliminating the time required for it to rise but it does include baking powder to give a little volume and lighten the texture. The blend of unbleached and whole wheat flour, baking powder, just a pinch of salt, milk, and honey combine for a sweet, dense communion bite.
Happy Spring!
It is March and we have been in pandemic quarantine for a year. For me, our world shifted on March 15. I know others may mark a slightly earlier day of that same week, but I started counting on a “Sabbath Sunday”. That first day when we stayed home with a Covid purpose, treating Sunday as if it was a snow day, without gathering at church but still creating quiet time for reflection and meditation.
Like others, I could not have envisioned I would be writing this post 365+ days later. Our Covid journey has been varied. Days when it simply felt right to be home and other times when anxiety took hold in my temporal lobe and I wondered would it ever be safe to be together. Now, with the first vaccines in our systems and second doses coming next week, I am starting to think beyond our small Kutzky Park environ, especially today when we shoulda been celebrating John and Hannah’s wedding in person rather than online. Maybe we will all gather for an anniversary party next year but, in the meantime, Lynn Ungar’s poem, written as we went into lockdown, still offers sustenance.
Pandemic What if you thought of it as the Jews consider the Sabbath— the most sacred of times? Cease from travel. Cease from buying and selling. Give up, just for now, on trying to make the world different than it is. Sing. Pray. Touch only those to whom you commit your life. Center down. And when your body has become still, reach out with your heart. Know that we are connected in ways that are terrifying and beautiful. (You could hardly deny it now.) Know that our lives are in one another’s hands. (Surely, that has come clear.) Do not reach out your hands. Reach out your heart. Reach out your words. Reach out all the tendrils of compassion that move, invisibly, where we cannot touch. Promise this world your love– for better or for worse, in sickness and in health, so long as we all shall live. –Lynn Ungar 3/11/20
I promised myself retirement would be like my favorite summer, 1976, filled with lots of reading and time with friends. That was the only summer after high school where I was not taking college classes or working or both. Nearly four years into this relaxed life, my plan is working although Covid has put the nix (at least for now) on face-to-face time with friends but I am exceeding my reading goals, albeit mostly easy titles that don’t require deep contemplation. Aiding me in the task of diversifying my reading pleasure have been three book clubs and One Book One Minnesota.
The Directors’ – My library loving, book reading, wine drinking group of retired friends who, in pre-Covid times enjoyed an outing every 2-3 months but now gather every two weeks via Zoom, decided 2021 was the right time for a book club. While our first two titles have been mysteries with earlier posts, The Thursday Murder Club and The Bookseller, we are switching genres. Next up – Cicely Tyson’s memoir, Just As I Am.
Knit Camp Reads Club – A new venture for Knit Camp knitters who want to read (or listen) together. The first selection is fiber related, Casting Off by Nicole R. Dickson, a nice tie in with the Knit Camp January workshop and group knit, Fiadh.
UU Common Read – With a focus on justice, the October through April titles have included An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz (although I admit I opted for the young people edition); Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson with a movie by the same name; and A Good Time for the Truth: Race in Minnesota – a powerful anthology written by 17 Minnesota authors of color that I blogged about in December.
With spring-like temperatures, the need for wool beanies greatly diminishes although, since this is Minnesota, the weather can quickly snap from balmy to blustery. In a December Year of Projects post, I reported the forthcoming Selwyn Beanie was in my project queue. While I waited for the pattern drop from designer Marie Greene, my early winter evening TV knitting was the matching cowl, dubbed Selwyn Petit as it was a smaller (cables only) version of the original Selwyn knit in heather gray. The Petit cowl and beanie uses a vibrant sunflower heather yarn from Kelbourne Woolens. Good for shooing away the winter blues. With cowls and beanies complete, now the challenge is determining the lucky recipients.
Like pulling weeds from one’s garden, weeding a collection is often done to make space. But unlike the in-the-dirt activity, weeding books is tough. When you pull that volume off the shelf you are not simply ridding the lettuce patch of all those pesky maple whirly-birds that seem to have taken root over night. Weeding books severs a tactile connection between the written word that once transported the reader to an imaginary realm or conveyed clear instruction or the creative content of any genre in between. There is something special about the art of book collecting. Removing titles is tough. So difficult that librarians will procrastinate for years until bulging shelves, with no room for new purchases, demand attention. So difficult that we dub the work, de-selection, since it requires as much (maybe more) discrimination then demonstrated at the time of acquisition.
I have a small but growing collection of knitting books, a mix of instructional titles and pattern collections authored by well-respected designers. For a number of years, they were stashed on the floor under a Hutton Sculpture bench in our TV room. Not the best location but handy until the quantity outgrew the space available – but where to move them? Our first thought was to buy more shelving but space is at a premium in our 96-year old house with less than 1,000 square feet which generated today’s task – weeding books.
We each contributed to the newly freed shelf space. Gone are eight management titles that I will not re-read in retirement and nine, four-ring Porsche binders. We sold our white 1987 Porsche 944S in 2003 but kept the repair manuals as a visual reminder of the time spent at driver education events when we focused on corner apexes, acceleration points, and tach readings. Photos, trophies and the infrequent scent of brake dust will have to suffice. We even created enough space for new acquisitions as the inches of items weeded exceeded the number of inches needed. Happy reading!
I am old enough that while working my first library job librarians were still debating the efficacy of Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys mysteries. At the time, there were two distinct camps: Those that felt children should only read “quality” literature and those that believed that any reading was good. This dichotomy played out in library selection meetings and at library conferences around the country as the debate waged over spending precious tax dollars for what, by some, were deemed titles just slightly above pulp fiction. (Note: The distinction that books by Carolyn Keene were not pulp was based solely on the hard covers of this series versus the paperbacks of such authors as Philip K. Dick or Edgar Rice Burroughs. Remember – At the time, a similar debate waged over the merits of paperbacks, perceived as ephemeral and not worthy of being in a library collection, regardless of the author!)
I definitely fell into the latter category; after all, I had loved Nancy Drew mysteries. My childhood friend, Julie B., introduced me to this strong female heroine and her two best friends and ever faithful sleuthing partners, Beth and George, when she lent me her copy of The Hidden Staircase. I thought Julie was immensely lucky as she owned a wonderful collection of 10-13 titles which she began lending to me. Her collection consisted of early titles in the series, so, with my allowance and every birthday and Christmas, I acquired the later books in the series. Our goal was to own every Nancy Drew title, that by combining her early titles and my later ones, our collection would meet in the middle.
There are those avid readers who pride themselves on never re-reading a title and those that re-visit well loved books time and again. On this topic I fall in the middle as I generally don’t re-read books simply because, in the words of Frank Zappa, “So many books, so little time.” But I do remember the first book I ever re-read. It was a sunny day during summer vacation and I read The Clue in the Old Stagecoach three times, cover-to-cover. The magic of the words transported me into Nancy’s search for hidden treasure. Having just re-read The Bookseller for The Directors’ Book Club, my list of re-read titles (not inlcuding library storytime favorites) is now a dozen plus a few:
Continuing her quest to encourage kids (and adults too) to explore and enjoy healthy food, Michelle Obama is launching a new adventure with her puppet friends Waffles + Mochi. They will travel the world to find just the right ingredients and, along their way, meet new friends that viewers will certainly recognize — Chef José Andrés, Common, Jack Black and more. Just a quick view of the promotional trailer will have you smiling and looking forward to meeting Waffles + Mochi on the March 16 Netflix debut.
February 20, a year ago, was the last time I had lunch with the friends I dub my Art Group. We were in that in-between time. Corona virus was already in our vocabulary. We had made the definitional change from epidemic to pandemic. We had friends or family in parts of the world or on either coast that we were worried about but, in our small corner of Minnesota, Covid-19 still felt distant. We were still a month away from our first statewide lockdown. That day, as always, the food and libations were delicious and the company even better but little did we know as we set a March date for our next Ladies Night Out Lunch that it would simply slip by in a flurry of social distancing, masks and sanitizing wipes.
Over the years, I have self-described as the voyeur among this talented group of women all of whom were or still are SEMVA artists. Despite being the odd duck without any artistic training (although I did get A-s in my art appreciation college classes) I was always enthralled by the intriguing discussions about gouache and pastels, resists and French dyes, plein air and pallet knives. When I was still working, it was such a treat not to talk about library politics and, believe me, librarianship can be filled with intrigue. In my retirement world, lunch with my Art Group was always inspirational and nudged me to explore new fibers and different knitting patterns. Plus, what is not to like (and certainly miss!) when people appreciate the newest project off my needles.
While missing my lunch companions, I enjoyed a touch of Covid humor shared by a friend. This math word-problem is a spot on description for the year just ending and how 2021 is shaping up:
If you’re going down a river at 2 MPH and your canoe loses a wheel, how much pancake mix would you need to re-shingle your roof?
A well written mystery, with a story that evolves from an interest in antique books, to the kidnapping of a bouquiniste (a bookseller with a stall along the Seine), plus historic WWII intrigue, and, of course, murder. There is even a little love interest scribed by Mark Pryor in The Bookseller, the first title in the Hugo Marston series.
After enjoying our first book club title, The Directors – a library loving, book reading, wine drinking group of retired friends – moved literary settings from the English countryside to Paris for our second book club choice. The Bookseller introduced us to Hugo Marston, a former FBI profiler now head of embassy security in Paris. The tall Texan, who is fluent in French, loves well brewed coffee and walking Paris streets, possesses a strong sense of justice but will diplomatically step out of the limelight and let the French police claim the glory after catching the bad guys. The Directors all agreed we will be exploring the other titles in Pryor’s Hugo Marston series.
Happy reading!
Knit+ Librarian 