In Episode 15, I talk with Sue Dowdell, Library Director of the Springfield Town Library in Springfield, VT. The Springfield Town Library is a historic building on Main St in downtown Springfield. But don't let the historic nature of the building fool you. This library has developed new programs and ways to connect with the community that are innovative and welcoming.
Sue talked about the Sustainable Libraries Initiative and the ways the library staff have changed practices to be more sustainable and environmentally conscious. They also have programming like the new sewing program where community members are learning to sew and repurposing donated material into new items. Often these programs are in conjunction with other community services in Springfield. Many of the programs are also recorded for later viewing.
The library also has a Library of Things and you can borrow a moisture meter for your woodpile, snowshoes, a shredder and much more. In the Children's Department there are homeschool resources and also some STEM toys/games that folks can borrow. As one of the larger libraries in Vermont, this library has a great collection of books as well and Sue and I shared a couple of our favorites.
Sue shared a couple of books that were on the library's book club list. The first book is Better Living Through Birding - Notes from a Black Man in the Natural World by Christian Cooper (2023). Sue said this is a memoir that is full of heart and very accessible, even for someone who doesn't do birding or know anything about birds. Cooper is a birder who was walking in Central Park one morning in 2020 and what should have been a routine encounter with another person became a racially charged incident. The video he recorded went viral. In this book Cooper shows us how birding prepared him in many ways to navigate life as a gay, black man in American today. Sue recommends this highly.
Sue's second book, Charlotte Walsh Likes to Win by Joe Piazza (2018) made her laugh out loud at the end. In this novel, Charlotte leaves her job in Silicone Valley and moves back to her struggling town in Pennsylvania. She decides to run for senator in a race that will determine the balance of power in Congress. She's shocked at how low her opponent will go in their campaign. When the opposition uncovers a secret that could effect her campaign and her life, Charlotte has to decide how much she wants to win and at what cost.
I shared a fascinating non-fiction book, Dinosaurs at the Dinner Table - How an Eccentric Group of Victorians Discovered Prehistoric Creatures and Accidentally Upended the World by Edward Dolnick (2024). I'm halfway through this book and loving it. The book focuses on three historical figures; Mary Anning who had a sixth sense for discovering fossils in the cliffs of England, the eccentric geologist William Buckland who gave us the first scientific description of the dinosaur and who liked to "act out" how dinosaurs behaved during his lectures, and Richard Owen, the most respected and despised scientist of his generation. These were the early days of science - 1800 - 1853 and the word scientist didn't exist until 1834. It's a fascinating read.
In the podcast I promised to list the links for the Beneski Museum of Natural History. Many people don't realize the the first dinosaur fossils - a set of tracks - were discovered in western Massachusetts by a farmer. The Beneski Museum at Amherst College in Amherst, MA has a huge collection of dinosaur fossils, many brought to the museum in an ox-cart by Edward Hitchcock, a paleontologist of the Connecticut River Valley. Here's a link to a video presentation about Edward Hitchcock.
My second book is part of the long running Flavia de Luce series by Alan Bradley. Alan Bradley is one of my writing heroes and someone I look to for inspiration as he didn't get a publishing deal for a book until he was 67 years old. Google him and you can read the story (hint - many thanks go to his wife). Flavia de Luce is an 11 year old amateur sleuth who has a bike named Gladys. She is also very intelligent and curious and is a chemist. This may sound like a children's book, but it's adult fiction and probably could be read by teens and upper middle grade kids. It's also great fun on audio. I'd start with the first book, Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie as there are plot lines you'll want to follow through the series. The 11th book just came out, What Time the Sexton's Spade Doth Rust and it's a lot of fun.
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Happy Reading and have fun exploring Vermont's public libraries and/or the public libraries where you live.
Nancy
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