MORRISVILLE LIBRARY NEWS December 14, 2001
by Mary Brown
Happy Holidays to all our wonderful patrons, volunteers, donors,
"adoptive parents" and everyone who has helped this
year to make the library the wonderful community resource it
is.
This Saturday, December 22nd, will be our final holiday event,
with the Christmas Crafts Workshop for school-age children with
Traci Schuster and Michele Niles. This fun-filled session will
be held from 10:30-11:30 in the library's program room.
Don't forget, in the midst of the holiday activity, that the
library will be closed from Dec. 24th until Jan. 2nd, due to
severe budget constraints. Since we need to conserve money, the
board thought that closing down during the holiday week would
help us conserve energy and operating costs. We apologize for
any inconvenience this may cause to our patrons and community,
but due to increasing costs, and no increase in funding, we have
to cut even more corners. Hopefully, with the help of our community,
the library will not have to resort to closing to cut costs in
the future, and a more workable budget will be voted upon in
2002. The library will reopen at 1 p.m. on January 2nd.
The second annual Holiday Silent Auction to benefit the library
was a big success! Many thanks to all the generous donors and
bidders, and thanks to Barb Fogg for organizing this great fund-raiser.
This year, we had more than forty donors and more than fifty
bidders, a nice increase over last year's numbers. Barb will
be tallying the bids and we'll report the final results of the
auction in next week's column.
Thanks go out this week for several Christmas gifts to the library.
Bob H. added to the holiday atmosphere of the library with a
beautiful poinsettia plant. Several patrons "played Santa"
by adopting or donating new books. Barb Richmond adopted two
political books: The Final Days: A Behind the Scenes Look at
the Last, Desperate Abuses of Power by the Clinton White House
and Hell to Pay: The Unfolding Story of Hillary Rodham Clinton,
both by the late Barbara Olsen, who was killed on September 11th
on the plane that crashed into the Pentagon. The Final Days a
razor-sharp expose of the Clintons' excesses in their final days
of office, details outrageous pardons to political cronies and
friends, the looting of the White House, executive orders that
were sheer abuses of presidential power, the presidential library
that is becoming a massive "shrine", and other critical
views about the former residents of the White House. Hell to
Pay traces the biographies of the Clintons, contending that Hillary
is someone with dangerously liberal, even radical, political
beliefs. Linda Puddington adopted Murder She Wrote: Murder in
a Minor Key by Jessica Fletcher and Donald Bain; in this one,
Jessica gets an insider's view of the New Orleans Jazz Festival
from arts critic, Wayne Copely. But when Copely turns up dead
next to the grave of an old voodoo queen, Jessica must go into
her signature, detective action.
Also adopted by a local Santa this week was Anita Diamante's
Good Harbor, a novel, set in Massachusett's Cape Ann, that tracks
the developing friendship of 59-year-old Kathleen, a librarian,
and 40-year-old Joyce, a romance novelist. Far different from
Diamante's dramatic The Red Tent, this one is a warm and relaxing
"read." Finally, we received a nice donation of Anne
Frank: Beyond the Diary by Ruud Van Der Rol, a photobiography
for readers in Grades 5-12, which sets the diary in a larger
context, fleshing out the family history and briefly explaining
Hitler's rise to power and the events of World War II. Added
details include black-and-white photographs, maps, a chronology,
and notes on the different versions of Anne's diary.
If you enjoy local history or Civil War history, click on the
"Local History" link on the library's website. You
will discover "Morrisville in the Civil War Years,"
"The Gerrit Smith Collection," and Sue Greenhagen's
site for Civil War documents. The Gerrit Smith Collection provides
digitized (thanks to a MidYork grant) versions of primary Gerrit
Smith documents actually held at our library: "The Macedon
Convention", "The One Test of Character", "The
Homestead Bill". "The President's Message", "Letter
to Rev. Smylie", "Temperance" and "War".
All of these can be downloaded and printed. History researchers,
I'm sure, will consider this a gold mine!
Feel free to stop in this week to stock up on books or leave
off a "gift" book donation; we'll be open till the
22nd. And finally, Merry Christmas to all, from Traci, Barb and
the Morrisville Library!
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