Baby Boom - the movie

I don't know what made me suddenly remember that this 1987 movie, which I last saw decades ago, had a library scene, but once the realization was made I set out to find it. It is not available on either of the streaming services I subscribe to, so like any good librarian, I requested it from inter-library loan. 

Diane Keaton plays J.C. Wiatt a marketing guru who is on the verge of being named partner when she discovers that a distant (deceased) cousin has named her guardian of his baby. When the trials of motherhood begin to interfere with her work, she leaves the firm and moves to a farmhouse in Vermont.

She is about to give up on country living when she realizes that the home-made applesauce she prepares for Baby Elizabeth is a gold mine when properly marketed to Baby Boom parents.  After doing some research at the Bennington College Library she starts "Country Baby" - a mail order business for natural baby food.

I can only imagine what this film would be like if it were made today. There were no cell phones, or internet when this was produced. The few computers we saw in the movie were clunky, and had small black and white screens. The fast pace and need to have everything done yesterday would be exponentially magnified today. It made me all the more happy to work in a library where, while things sometimes get busy and deadlines do loom, I know that things will, most assuredly, slow down again once final exams are over.

Idiot America: How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free

If I had a "Bucket List" the Haskell Free Library and Opera House would be on it. The public library in Derby Line, Vermont, USA straddles the border with Stanstead, Quebec, Canada. A line down the middle of the floor of the building marks where one country ends and the other begins. There is no port of entry inside the library. Library users are free to walk back and forth between the countries any time.

Charles Pierce discusses the history of the library in Idiot America and explains that prior to 9/11 residents of Derby Line and Stanstead could freely pass between the countries even without going into the library

For decades, it was a point of civic pride for the people in both towns that they lived right atop one of the friendliest stretches of the friendliest borders in the world. People wandered down the tiny, shady backstreets of the place, passing back and forth between the two countries without ever really noticing.

After September 11, 2001, however

The border authorities in both countries acted quickly to restrict access along the side streets in Stanstead and Derby Line. As part of the plan, it was proposed that anyone parking a car outside the library on the Canadian side might well have to pass through a port of entry before walking up the front steps, which are on the American side.

In the spirit of full disclosure I must mention this bit of odd news about the Haskell Free Library and Opera House involving a case of gun smuggling that took advantage of the library's unique location. Canadian Alexis Vlachos had a friend purchase guns in the United States and leave them in the bathroom of the library to be picked up by Vlachos, who entered from the Canadian side. This story might cause some to get their xenphobic hackles up, however, as quoted by Canadian Don Browning in the article "if we live in fear we have to close up every little potential loophole, that would probably change our way of life a little bit and I don't think it's worth it".

Pierce goes on to point out that it (the 2000s) had "not been an easy decade for libraries" citing closure of the the library run by the Environmental Protection Agency by the Bush (43) Administration, and the passage of Patriot Act which allowed the FBI to look at library records without a warrant.

He further uses libraries as a metaphor describing their orderliness, and contrasts it with the disorderliness of "Idiot America" where the gut, rather than the head rules. Rather than separating Fiction and Non-Fiction (as real libraries do) in Idiot America

Fiction and nonfiction are defined by how well they sell. The best sellers are on one shelf, cheek by jowl, whether what's contained in them is true or not.

The book was published in 2009, Pierce could not have known how prescient his words were.

My husband and I listened to Pierce's book on audio during a long car drive between Massachusetts and Maryland. When I heard the piece about Derby Line I realized I would need to blog about it, and had to then request a hard copy of the book through Interlibrary loan.

She's Come Undone - by Wally Lamb

This is the second book I've selected from the Little Free Library on Washington Street in Fairhaven, Massachusetts. It turns out both were choices from Oprah's Book Club. I never participated in Oprah's book club, but back in my public library days I was always aware of what her picks were because people would start calling the library as soon as they were announced to find out if we had them. Anyway, I enjoyed both books I chose (the other was Where the Heart Is by Billie Letts).

In this coming-of-age novel young Delores Price faces a tragedy that eventually tears her family apart. After her parents divorce she is sent to live with her grandmother while her mother recuperates from a mental breakdown, and Delores' life begins a downward spiral. She is obese, and essentially friendless when she leaves for college where more torment awaits her. After several years in a psychiatric ward she tries to strike out on her own, but her pain has not been fully explored or healed.

The copyright on this book is 1992, and the story follows Delores from her childhood in the 1950s through adulthood. All the action takes place before the time of Google, indeed, personal computers were virtually unknown to the characters in this work. Of course that means that they had to go to the library to find things out. Delores is a prolific library user. This is especially evident when she mentions that her school guidance counselor, Mr. Pucci, saw her though "$230 worth of unreturned library books". She doesn't get much better at returning books as an adult.When she takes the feminist classic Our Bodies Ourselves out of the Montpelier (VT) public library she apparently ignores the overdue notices that "begin to appear" along with her bills in the mail.

She takes advantage of the Providence (RI) Public Library's vast collection of telephone books from around the country ("thousands and thousands of pounds of tissue paper pages") to find the address of someone she's been stalking. I guess this is one library service that is no longer needed. Who uses phone books anymore? And it is so much easier to stalk people online as well.

And finally, a first. This is the first book I've blogged about a book that mentioned a hospital library.

The writing is first-rate, and despite Delores' deep cynicism she is someone the reader wants to cheer for. The book really isn't as depressing as my post might make it sound. It has some truly sweet spots.

The Borrower - by Rebecca Makkai

An unlikely "buddy" story, The Borrower tells of Lucy Hull, an "accidental" librarian, who "accidently" kidnaps ten-year old Ian Drake. Ian had run away from home and found refuge in the beloved stacks of the Hannibal, Missouri Public Library. Lucy and Ian wind up taking a road trip across the mid-west and then into New England in order to give him a break from his parents and their insistence that he attend classes with "Pastor Bob", who "helps" young boys who might be questioning their sexuality.

Lucy had previously been told by Ian's mother not to let him check out books about witchcraft, magic, the occult or anything by "Roald Dahl, Lois Lowry, Harry Potter, and similar authors". Lucy doesn't bother to point out that Harry Potter is not an author.

Although the main character is a librarian I am hard pressed to give it either a "Gold Star" or "A list" rating (see my "A Word about the Labels" note to the right). Lucy mentions several times that she doesn't really like her job except for Ian and her co-worker, Rocky. She never intended to be a librarian; it is simply what she fell in to after she graduated. Most people would not be able to get a job with the title "librarian" with those kind of non-credentials, but the library "needed a children's librarian fast after the old one was diagnosed with stage three breast cancer." And while Lucy does recognize this, she continues to make efforts not to identify herself with this boring profession, and disparage it when she can, even in her daydreams. After reading her alumnae magazine and finding out what exciting things her former classmates were doing, she imagines what it might say about her:

Lucy Hull, class of '02 courageously checked out The Pushcart War to a ten-year-old patron today, despite the preponderance therein of peashooters and the fact that the book does not in any way contain "the breath of God."
"It really wasn't a choice", said the 26-year old Hull, who has done very little with her adult life besides stamping books, re-shelving books, and reading books with funny voices. "It's basically illegal to deny a book to someone with a library card. I'm not quite sure why you're interviewing me."

Who does she think is responsible for lobbying for laws that allow anyone to check out whatever they want? I am happy to pay my American Library Association dues to help pay for such things.

Lucy berates herself on several occasions for her wardrobe. "I hated that I'd started looking like a librarian" she pouts after her co-worker Rocky points out that she is wearing a cardigan. And she has this to say about the library fundraiser she attends:

Once a year all the librarians in the county wedged themselves into high heels, tried to pull the cat hair off their sweaters with masking tapes, and smeared their lips with an awful tomato red that had gone stale in its tube, all to convince the benefit set of the greater Hannibal region that libraries do better with chairs and books and money.

I did laugh when she mentioned buying a dress at L.L. Bean that looked like something a librarian would wear. My co-workers and I will all admit to having a preponderance of clothing from that venerable retailer in Maine, along with good ol' Lands' End, of course.

When Tim her cool, gay actor landlord doesn't invite her to join in his reindeer games, she laments that he'd clearly "mistaken [her] for a librarian". He discovers he is wrong about this assessment many months later when he assists her with a scheme to communicate with young Ian without his parents knowing. "This is amazing...It's just like, amazing. I mean, we thought you were this mild-mannered librarian and everything. And there you are, all vigilante and shit..." says he.  Of course only a "fake" librarian would do these things. We real librarians would never stick our necks out for anything.

Lucy briefly dates a musician who tells her he "was a librarian once...as an undergrad, [whose] main job was to erase pencil marks from the last season's orchestra scores". Lucy, who is not a real librarian herself, doesn't bother to point out that there is a big difference between being a librarian, and working as a student employee in a library building. The irony of her dating a musician does not escape her, though. She points out that she'd "seen The Music Man enough times as a child to be wary of smiling musicians."

Additionally she mentions one of my favorite library movie scene from It's a Wonderful Life.

And there she runs in thick glasses, clutching books to her useless breasts. This nightmare Mary Bailey has ruined her eyesight from long hours reading alone in the dark.

 How strange, that this one profession should be so associated with loneliness, virginity, female desperation. The librarian with the turtleneck sweater. She's never left her hometown. She sits at the circulation desk and dreams of love.

 Not really so strange when we have Makkai still using the same stereotypes in the 21st century.

Even young Ian understands that librarians are really just a bunch of frustrated old maids. He suggests to Lucy that the library is haunted by the "ghosts of dead librarians. Not like [Lucy], but like old ladies who never got married."

The two visit a public library in small-town Vermont where they talk to a the reference librarian "blank-faced woman with dull hair" who answered her questions in a rather bored manner. They also lie to the young circulation clerk in order to check out some books without a library card.

Ultimately, Lucy gives up her life in Hannibal, Missouri for a job in Chicago at the college library where "the borrowers already know what they're looking for" and all she does in stamp out books. Really? As a college librarian I can assure readers of this blog that not all of our users know what they want already. We have enough trouble convincing people our jobs are still relevant without the Rebecca Makkai's of the world making up this kind of stuff. I mean, I've been known to make some profession-deprecating remarks myself, but sheesh!

Testimony - by Anita Shreve

First, a word to the wise: People who send their kids to New England boarding schools should probably not read novels about New England boarding schools. This is especially true if the novel is about a sex scandal. Just saying.

When Mike Bordwin, Headmaster of Avery Academy in Vermont, is presented with a videotape showing  three members of the school's Varsity basketball team, and one freshman girl having sex, he acts swiftly to keep the tape from going public, in the hopes of handling the situation "internally". His plan falls apart when the girl's parents call the police. Testimony, tells the story of what happened before and after the making of the videotape, and the resulting loss of life, derailed careers, and ruined marriages.  Told from a variety of viewpoints; including those in the tape, their parents, friends, as well as other other members of the school and local communities, some players, like Mike Bordwin, appear again, and again; others, like Daryl a townie who supplied the students with alcohol, only get a chapter or two. One character who we only learn about through others is the basketball coach, who, not surprisingly, is fired after the tape becomes public. Not because he had anything to do with it, but rather because in situations like these, there must be a scapegoat. The story did leave me wondering, once again, why institutions (schools and churches particularly) think they can (or should) handle these crimes on their own.

Libraries are scattered in several places throughout this work - as part of a pastiche making up the town, or school, or as places inside of homes. The most significant role a library plays, however, is as a workplace for Rob Leicht, one of the basketball players seen in the tape. After his expulsion, and loss of scholarship at Brown University, he moves with his mother to a town near Boston, where he gets a part-time job in the library. This is not really seen as any kind of salvation, just a place where he works, and can get books to read in his "generous spare time". It is all portrayed as a bit sad, actually.

Although there is some reflection, there is little in the way of redemption here. It is more a story of people trying to put their broken lives back together with pieces that no longer fit.

In One Person - by John Irving

A bit of metafiction at the end of Irving's latest novel, about a bisexual writer named Bill Abbott, provides a synopsis of what Irving manages to do with this work. Here, Abbott is talking to the son of a former classmate who points out that his (Abbott's) writing makes

"all these sexual extremes seem normal....You create these characters who are so sexually 'different' as you might call them...and you expect us to sympathize with them, or feel sorry for them, or something."

"Yes, that's more or less what I do"

Irving's cast of quirky characters includes a transgender librarian, one of young Billy Abbott's first crushes and also his first sex partner. Billy's definition of sex, however, is rather Clinton-esque. He points out over and over again that what he and Miss Frost did was not what most would consider sex, as there was "no penetration". (One has to wonder about the choice of the first name of the character.)

Miss Frost, is not the only librarian in this book. The other is the unnamed librarian at Bill Abbott's boarding school, Favorite River Academy.

the academy librarian was one of Favorite River's fussy old bachelors; everyone thought that such older, unmarried males on the...faculty were what we called at the time "nonpracticing homosexuals." Who knew if they were or weren't "practicing," or if they were or were not homosexuals? All we'd observed was that they lived alone, and the way they ate and spoke - hence we imagined that they were unnaturally effeminate.

There are so many eccentric characters in this work that to examine each one would probably require a dissertation, but I do feel the need to mention Bill's cross-dressing Grandfather, and the not-so-subtle allusion made to "The Lumber Jack Song". Grandpa Harry runs a saw mill, and is pointedly called a "lumber man" in the story.

Fans of Irving's work will not be disappointed. For those who have not read any of his other novels this is as good a place as any to start.

The Town that Food Saved - by Ben Hewitt

is Bridgewater's One Book One Community Read for the Spring 2012. It is the story of Harwick, Vermont and the "agrepreneurs" (Hewitt's term) who lead the town's successful local food movement.

The author does not live in Harwick, but lives near it, in Cabot - a mere seven miles away as the crow flies, according to How Far is It? He demonstrates his understaning of the value of a public library by mentioning the Cabot Public Library twice on the same page. He explains that his town has "a fantastic hardware store, a wonderful library, a garage, a post office, a diner, and a well-stocked village grocery, but not much more" so he and his family venture into Hardwick for things such as sporting goods, tractor supplies, and medicine, "and every so often, [to] buy a book at the Galaxy Bookshop, thought mostly...visit the Cabot library for...literary excursions."

Hewitt will be speaking at Bridgewater State University on April 24 at 7:30 in the Horace Mann Auditorium. For more information, and to find out about other "One Book" programs visit the One Book One Community webpage.

The Town that Food Saved: How One Community Found Vitality in Local Food