Your monthly news & updates
|
|
Dear Members,
We hope that you are all doing well, and taking good care of yourselves in this unprecedented time. On behalf of the entire Lanier Library staff, I want to say that we miss you. We are paying close attention to Governor Roy Cooper’s updates so that we will be
ready to open as soon as permitted. In the meantime, we are updating our processes so that the library is ready. We have taken this time to give the building a deep clean. Once we begin checking materials in and out, we want you to know that we will be quarantining any returned materials for 72 hours before checking them out again. Upon your return, you may notice some changes in the building to allow for greater distance between members to help ensure the safety of members and staff.
Some of you may have received email notifications that you have materials overdue. Those can be ignored. No fines will accrue while the Library is closed. If your membership has expired while we are closed, I hope you will take the time to mail in your renewal or renew online through the Library’s
Online Membership Form
Membership online. Our media acquisitions team has been meeting virtually to make sure new books and DVDs are waiting for you when we reopen. If you have driven by, you may have noticed that the grounds have received some special attention recently. Thank you to Steve King and Bob Montgomery for many hours spent spreading mulch.
Below you will read a review of a book I read in my additional time at home. I know many of you have completed some volumes recently. We would love for you to share a review of a book you would recommend. It doesn’t have to be long, just something to get people thinking of a possible book to add to their pile. Reviews can be emailed to thelanierlibrary@gmail.com and may appear in a future newsletter.
Again, please be well. Practice social distancing. Enjoy this glorious weather. Try something new, or rediscover an old hobby. We would love to hear how you are spending this time.
Best regards,
Jenny Purtill
Executive Director
|
|
Although the library has been temporarily closed due to the Cornavirus pandemic, we have been hard at work adding new materials to the shelves, disinfecting books and all surfaces and ensuring we keep in touch with you, our members. We have also put together the 2019 Annual Report for your review.
The 2019 Lanier Library Annual Report is full of good news, so we hope you click on the link below to read it. The Board and staff sincerely appreciate your support of this historic organization and hope you know what a large part of the successes in 2019 were due to you. There is much for you to be proud of.
In an effort to help keep our printing and mailing costs down, we are, once again. sending the Annual Report via this newsletter. Please take a moment to look over the report at the
2019 Annual Report link and let us know if you have any questions. If you would prefer a hard copy of the report, please let us know and we will be happy to get you one.
|
|
All programs scheduled for May have been postponed. We will alert you to new dates as we learn of them.
|
|
Another Quarantine Challenge!
|
|
Although the Cornavirus usurped National Poetry Month this year, and all of our planned events, we were able to bring some poetry fun to the community with our Lanier Library Quarantine Haiku Challenge. After notifying our members, we also published an article in the Tryon Daily Bulletin and received more than 30 entries. We have randomly selected six of the haikus for you to read below, but there were so very many good ones you should visit the website to read them all.
The Lanier Library.org
The Next Great American Novel
People's Choice Challenge
We had so much fun with the first challenge we decided to initiate a new one, and offer a prize for the winner of a People's Choice contest. This challenge is meant to tempt the writer of the next Great American Novel to begin writing. We all have at least one book inside us--our "magnum opus"--and most have vowed to write it one day. Why not now?
So, here's the challenge: give us the first sentence of your novel, and a title. ("It was a dark and stormy night" is a disqualifier.) We will publish them on our website and Facebook, and ask the public to go to the website and vote for the book they would most like to read next. The winner gets a $25 gift certificate to the Tryon restaurant of their choice. Deadline is the end of May.
The first sentence, the first step...who knows where it might lead?
|
|
During the yearlong commemoration of its 130th anniversary, Lanier Library celebrates members in this monthly column. The profiles here will introduce you to community members who carry the Lanier card, continuing a cultural tradition begun in 1890.
|
|
Celebrating Lanier Members:
Laura, Meredith, and Elizabeth Peek
“Our family membership number is 1610,” says Laura Peek without having to think about it. Her daughter, Meredith, a home-schooling 8th grader, quickly adds with a note of pride, “I also got my own card in 2018. I don’t think I would have read some of the books I love without the many here.” Daughter Elizabeth, home-schooling kindergartener, chimes in, “I learned how to read last summer and I got “Poisonous Frogs” from the library.”
Each have their favorite rooms in the library but all three like the Felburn Nature and Wildlife Collection. Elizabeth particularly likes the frogs, dinosaurs and butterflies downstairs, but also notes the M&M dispenser upstairs on the card catalog. Meredith is fond of the Young Adults section, favoring the Percy Jackson series by Rick Riordan and the wide selection of audiobooks. She listens when beading at home. Laura says, “I like the common room with the new releases, the people and chats. I actually got to chat with my favorite author, Ron Rash, at a program and was star-struck.”
Laura moved from the Asheville area about 10 years ago. “I was walking around Tryon and discovered Lanier by chance. Browsing around the rooms I felt that this was a place that had been loved for generations. I wanted my family to be part of it.” Meredith’s earliest memory of coming with her mom was being amazed at how books went on and on, aisle after aisle. Laura continues, “I came here regularly with Elizabeth while pregnant. As a toddler she liked to visit the little stone girl that’s in front of the fireplace.
“With books in every room of our home, Lanier is a literary second home for us.”
|
|
Here are the links to our lists of book orders and newest acquisitions. Feel free to contact the library to put your name on the hold list for these books. You can call us or log in through the catalogue on the website using your library card number for PIN. And, as always, let us know if there is a book or DVD you think would enhance the collection.
|
|
Reviews
Finding Dorothy
by Elizabeth Letts
One bright side effect of the current stay at home order for me is finding more moments to read the many books on my to-be-read list. I always enjoy picking up a book that has been recommended without knowing anything about it. Having missed my last book club meeting when friends selected the next read, I opened Elizabeth Letts’ historical fiction book,
Finding Dorothy, not knowing that I was diving into a story about one of my childhood favorite books, The Wizard of Oz.
Maybe many of you can recall watching the annual television airing of the movie version of The Wizard of Oz. I remember leaving the room during the terrifying scene with the flying monkeys and learning to sing “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” with Ms. Caldwell, the music teacher at Fernbank Elementary. But I remember loving the book version even more, as well as delving more deeply into Oz by reading the rest of the series that takes place in the magical world.
What I knew nothing about until reading this book was how the life adventures of L. Frank Baum and his family led to the creation of Oz or how the movie studio adapted the book into a beloved film. While this book is historical fiction, Elizabeth Letts meticulously researched the life story of Frank Baum and his wife Maud as well as the story of the making of the movie.
Maud Baum shines as the primary narrator who forces her way onto the movie set to protect the integrity of the story on behalf of her husband who died long before the movie adaptation of his book. Some chapters take place on the movie set, while others flash back to the previous century and Maud’s life as the daughter of a well-known suffragist. As the book progresses, readers follow Maud and her family from the campus of Cornell University to the plains of North Dakota and on to Chicago just after the Great Fire.
Finding Dorothy is a wonderful story to get lost in during this time of quarantine.
Submitted by Jenny Purtill
|
|
Quarantine Haiku Challenge
|
|
Here is a sample of some of the haikus we received in April. To read them all, visit the Lanier Library website
Quarantine Haiku
|
|
Grandparents in Quarantine
|
|
Board member Tom Ervin recommends coloring books of animals that can be downloaded for coloring by kids as you read to them about the animals.
"I thought this was an interesting interactive online possibility" he sugggests.
|
Video chatting with your grandchildren can also give your children a break. Here is a link to activities that will be enjoyable for all!
|
|
For many of us the hardest part of our "Stay at Home" experience is not being able to be with our grandchildren. But we are learning the benefits of screen time, whether Facetime or Zoom. Libraries are notorious for all kinds of resources so we thought we would provide some interactive experiences for you to share with your grandchildren. For parents who are home with the children 24/7 now, we hope these might provide some fun for you as well.
|
Library Executive Director Jenny Purtill has begun an online Storytime for kids. In this first video she reads one of her favorite books "The Day the Crayons Quit" by Drew Daywalt
. Jenny is accompanied in the reading by her faithful companion Belle, who will be our token
"Pet @ Lanier"
guest this month.
|
|
Genealogy of a Giraffe
Bob of Lanier
|
|
With each of four legs anchored by 50-pounds of concrete, Bob the Giraffe has presided near the top of the Chestnut Street hill since 2015, the 125th Anniversary year of Lanier Library. Handcrafted of plywood layers by Karl Schwartz, Bob is short of nature’s typical 18-foot height but tall enough to command attention, especially with a color design not found in any of the nine natural patterns of Africa.
Karl, a retired computer programmer on such projects as NASA shuttle missions, explains that his father was a carpenter and the art of woodworking is in his DNA. Building and painting Bob was the whimsy of an artist not the science of a naturalist or programmer.
Karl created black-rimmed spectacles for his Giraffa Camelopardalis that would be reading outside the library. Bob, however, was only coincidental to the library’s anniversary. He was actually created as an auction item in the 100th Anniversary Event of Tryon Toymakers and Woodcarvers that just happened to be the same year.
|
|
Bob’s ancestry goes back to a vintage handmade toy with a birth date unrecorded in the years since Eleanor Vance and Charlotte Yale found their shop in 1915. The 14-inch high carving was unnoted in history until discovered online by Harry Goodheart, owner of Tryon Fine Books.
Local artist and art teacher, Christine Mariotti, knew that Harry had added the articulated critter to his eclectic collection. As the art director and toy curator for the 100th Anniversary, she asked to emulate the basic design for a giraffe as one of several large wood pieces. Seven of those figures are currently with Julia Calhoun, today’s Toymakers owner. She paints and sells what Karl still cuts, often based on original patterns.
Karl recalls that a pharmacist won the giraffe auction and donated it to Lanier. “The name Bob is just a name,” he says and denies any rumors of an acronym such as Binge On Books.
|
|
Ancestry for Bob can be traced back to a nameless handmade toy now in Harry Goodheart’s eclectic collection of whatever strikes his fancy.
|
|
Lanier Library | 828-859-9535| thelanierlibrary@gmail.com
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
