Kellogg-Hubbard and the Town of Berlin

Berlin voters declined to support Kellogg-Hubbard on town meeting day, and the Times Argus has an article today on the library board's decision to start charging Berlin residents for a library card. (It must be a slow news day. The article is on the front page above the fold.)

Another Book Group Selection

Ruth's book group is currently reading Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro. Ruth and I sit across from each other and often share our book titles. Both of our groups wait until books come out in paperback. My group meets on Sunday mornings. We share breakfast, then discuss the book. What is your book group reading and what are some of their practices?

Which Books are You Reading?

My book group just read, The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl by Timothy Egan. This was not an easy read, but it was very good. It was amazing to read about the ecological destruction that occurred, dust blizzards that enveloped six states and eventually blew to New York, deaths of so many people due to dust pneumonia, eating tumbleweed...I learned so much from reading and listening to this book. Our book group agreed that this was a good book to read and discuss. We also agreed that if it were not a book group selection we would not have read it, excepting one member. The book that we are reading for this month is Barak Obama's Dreams From My Father. I've only read a few chapters at this point, but I'm impressed with "Barry's" early years. There are so many book groups in this area - tell us what you're reading!

May Gardening Galore Raffle Winner

 Andrea Gould is the winner of the KHL Gardening Galore Raffle. She won all of these great prizes:
$75 gift certificate from Boulevard Gardens
*Two Hours of Garden Consultation from Layne’s Garden Design
*$25 gift certificate from von Trapp Greenhouse
*Two Tickets to Goddard College Greatwood Gardens Tour and Tea
*Perennials for American Gardens by Ruth Rogers Clausen and Nicolas H. Ekstrom,donated by The Book Garden
*Gloves and knee pads from Gardener’s Supply
*Two 20-quart bags of manure compost and one 6-quart bag of Compost Plus from Vermont Compost
*$15 gift certificate from Highland Gardens (Vendor at Montpelier Farmers’ Market)
*Assorted seeds and Garden Frogs in Tub
We are grateful to the individuals and businesses who donated these items to the library for this raffle!

Lending to young adults

I just put in the mail a grant application to a small foundation to ask for funds to purchase books for young adults (12-16 year old). I included a chart that shows the increase in lending from Kellogg-Hubbard to young adults:



We have all grumbled a bit about the amount of noise and activity we see from young people after school at the library. But they are reading!

Founding of the Kellogg-Hubbard Library

I have never recovered from the financial strain of those years of bitter conflict, but I would not have back again one penny of that money, if I could get it, for as real men grow older they experience no joy comparable to that of founding institutions for uplifting generations which come after us, and besides, if I have anything to my credit in the bank above, I am sure that this constitutes a considerable part of it.

John W. Burgess, Reminiscences of an American Scholar, Columbia University Press, 1934, p. 277.

This is a quote from the concluding paragraph of chapter in a memoir by John Burgess, in which he tells the story of the stormy founding of the Kellogg-Hubbard Library. (Thank you Hilari for finding this wonderful work!) After reading the chapter, I’m inclined to think the library in Montpelier should be the Kellogg Library.

Follow this link for a brief history of Kellogg-Hubbard.

Fundraising report

This is the status of the Library's local fundraising:

Proud Mother

My daughter graduated from MassART on Friday! She will have an exhibit at the Library this summer. (Yes, she will be embarassed by this post)

Want to Catalog Your Books?

Have you ever wanted to catalog your personal library? Well you can with LibraryThing.com. What is LibraryThing? Here's an excerpt from their website:

LibraryThing is an online service to help people catalog their books easily. Because everyone catalogs together, you can also use LibraryThing to find people with similar libraries, get suggestions from people with your tastes and so forth.

How LibraryThing Works
LibraryThing is really two sites in one.

First, it is a powerful tool to catalog your personal library. Users add books to their catalog by entering titles, authors, or ISBN numbers. LibraryThing then searches the Library of Congress, all five national Amazon sites, and over 45 world libraries, and returns with precise book data. Users can then edit the books in their catalog, tag their books with their own subjects, and use the Library of Congress and Dewey Decimal systems to organize their collections.

LibraryThing is also an amazing social space, connecting people with similar libraries. It also makes book recommendations based on the collective intelligence of the other libraries.

Visiting this website is fun. They even have "unsuggestions" - telling people which books they wouldn't like to read based on their personal library! Click here to start your browsing.

Mother's Day Wildflowers

While walking in the woods in East Montpelier yesterday, my friend Wendy and I came across this wildflower. Using Kate Carter's book Wildflowers of Vermont we learned that it is dwarf ginseng. We didn't see this flower at all last week when we walked the same trails. It's great to see how the wildflowers and ferns change from week to week. Here are some other views in the woods.


My favorite color - spring green!


Click to enlarge each photo.




Maidenhair fern fronds against Squirrel Corn leaves.