FRIENDS OF THE LARCHMONT PUBLIC LIBRARY

NEWSLETTERWinter 2010

COURTNEY’S CORNERIn a year when the taxpayer is demanding value from government, looking for the consolida-tions of services and economies of scale, the Larchmont Village Board and Mamaroneck Town Council can point with pride to the Larchmont Public Library. In 1930, their prede-cessors had the wisdom, forethought and pre-science to decide to jointly fund the Larchmont Public Library. In a conservative estimation,

this decision has saved each entity upwards of thirty million dollars over the past 80 years.

Today, the Larchmont Public Library is a thriving institution, open 337 days per year. It is the hub of the community and one of the busiest li-braries in Westchester. Fully 80% of our circulation is to Larchmont Public Library cardholders -- our Village and Town residents and taxpay-ers. Our children’s programs have become so popular that registration in many of them is restricted to Larchmont Public Library cardholders.

Of course there’s a cost to all of this activity, and to be sure that we are spending our funds wisely and carefully, we compare ourselves with the other 37 public libraries in the county. Although Larchmont ranks 17th in terms of population served, we rank 7th in the number of circulations per hour, and 8th in the number of circulations per capita — 19.3, well above Mamaroneck, Harrison, and Rye. We are 13th in total number of li-brary materials, 12th in both total receipts and total local public support, 12th in total operating expense and 12th in operating ex-pense each hour open. In the number of circulations per hour open, Larchmont ranks 7th: Larchmont circulated 105.6 items per hour open. It ranked 9th in the grand total of circulation transactions.

We have a literate, well-educated community and its members use the library often for themselves and their children. In this age of instant grati-fication and working in your pajamas, you can use your home computer and library card number to get millions of newspaper and magazine arti-cles, e-books, downloadable audio books and more. Parents can keep their kids reading with guidance from our knowledgeable Children’s Librarian, attend fun book-themed programs, and enjoy online resources for their children, even one that reads to the child or lets the child practice reading skills.

Our public library provides equal access to lifelong education for all peo-ple, regardless of age, income or any other demographic. Users have available free, one-to-one information counseling, special programs and art displays of a broad variety to feed and nourish the brain, and access to virtually every book published: if we don’t own it, we’ll borrow it from other states, other libraries, even universities.

Now that’s value!

Who and What Are the Friends of the Larchmont Public Library?

We are interested residents who contribute to the library in important ways. Government funding alone cannot finance all the cultural events that our community currently enjoys. The Friends of the Library, an independent 501c (3) not–for–profit organization, provides the money needed for programs, innova-tive new services and more. For example, the Friends’ gift for the in-progress renovation of the Children’s Room was the pacesetter for that worthwhile project.

One thing we are known for is our exceptional Sunday after-noon program series, which spans a range of topics. Our pro-grams for the 2009-2010 year have been well-attended and varied. We hosted authors speaking on topics including Wall Street, golf, Pete Seeger and unexpected pregnancies, as well as a Neil Simon theatrical production and the return of the Wa-tanabe brothers. More great programs are planned, as you willread about elsewhere in this letter. All of our programs are free and available to the general public. Please join us!

A new initiative I am pleased to announce is the Friends’ spon-sorship of a Museum Pass Program. By borrowing a pass, which can be reserved in advance from the reference desk of the Larchmont Library, you can visit one of a dozen museums in New York City, Westchester and Connecticut free of charge. Details are available in a separate article in this newsletter. Passes are available to everyone, regardless of whether you are a member of the Friends, although this program is underwritten entirely by funds from the Friends and we hope it gives you an added incentive to join us if you are not already a member.

Another innovation is now in place: you can join or donate to the Friends online through PayPal by visiting our revised web-site at www.larchmontlibrary.org/friends.html. Of course, we still welcome donations by check. And to make joining even simpler, we’ve enclosed a coupon; you can mail it back to us or drop it off at the Library’s front desk.

Finally, to continue to bring our community these “add-ons,” we could certainly use your time as well as your financial sup-port. There are plenty of opportunities for interested volunteers. One of our ongoing needs is for help at our programs. Or con-sider submitting your name to serve on our Board of Directors. We are currently accepting nominations for election at our May Board meeting. However we fit into your life, we want you to be a Friend! by David Kettig, President

Friday, February 19, at 2 or 3 p.m. Ages 4 & up

March

Fridays, March 5, 12 and 26 at 3:30-4:30 p.m. Ages 6-18.

Tuesday, March 2 from 3:30-4:15 p.m. Ages 5-7.

Monday, March 15 from 11:00-11:45 a.m. Ages 2-4.

Monday, March 29 at 11:00 a.m. Ages 3-5.

Wednesday, March 31 from 3:00-3:45 p.m. Ages 4-6.

Library Exhibits

FebruaryCityscapes/Innerscapes IIphotographyby Walter Kimmel

unblindedby Jessica Wasieleski

MarchThe Gazebos of Larchmontphotographyby H. David Stein

Heads on Sledswomen painted in acrylic on metal sledsby Ann Ladd Ferencz

AprilAnnual Art Show of worksby Larchmont-Mamaroneck Senior Artists

Library Programs

Meets the first Thursday evening of each month at 7 p.m.; the group decides what book to discuss for the following meeting. Copies of the book are available for participants at the library 3 weeks ahead.

There are lots of children’s programs planned each month for ages 1-10+. For a complete listing, check the library’s web site www.larchmontlibrary.org, or pick up the bi-monthly calendar.

Wednesday, February 10, 3:30-4:15 p.m . Ages 4-6.

Tuesday, February 16. Various age-groups and times.

Fridays, Feb. 5, 12 & 26, 3:30-4:30 p.m. Ages 6 & up.

Wednesday, February 17, 3:30-4:30 p.m. Ages 7-10. Mateo, 7, poses with Chewbacca after giving his best Wookie howl at the library's Star Wars Party, December 28, 2009.

LIBRARY TO OFFER MUSEUM PASSES Stuck for an idea for a family outing? Now you will be able to visit area museums free of charge! The Friends of the Larchmont Public Library is pleased to announce sponsorship of the Larchmont Public Library Museum Pass.

This program, starting mid-February 2010, will provide passes to many museums in New York City, Westchester and Connecti-cut. Admission policies vary by institution; details for each are available online. As of this writing, 12 museums are participating, including the American Museum of Natural History, the Neuberger Museum of Art, the Bruce Museum and the Guggenheim. More will be added to the list in the months ahead.

Passes will be made available to Larchmont Public Library card holders in good standing – which means no lost books or accrued fines of more than $10 on any card. The card holder must be over 18 years of age. People will be able to reserve passes on line or in per-

son up to 45 days in advance of their outing; email reminders of their date will be part of the program. This pass may not include special events at any of the participating museums. (One need not be a Friend of the Library to use the passes but of course we hope that users will join so that we are able to continue funding this program.)

Details of the Museum Pass Program will be on the website; to learn more, visit http://www.larchmontlibrary.org/museumpassesfaq.html. Also included will be links to the participating Museums’ web sites. Contact a reference librarian at the Larchmont Public Library with any questions about the program.

by Jane Axelrod, board member

DAVID CALKINS was elected to the board at the January meeting. David has lived in Larchmont since 1986 with his wife Suzanne (Scolaro), who grew up in Larchmont. They have 3 children — two in college and a third who is at the Hommocks. David owns an online/retail wine business, with a store in Bronxville and the web site WineGems.net. He is treasurer of Mamaroneck Schools Foundation and recently completed a 2-year term as treasurer of the Mamaroneck High School PTSA. For several years David was a coach in the Larchmont-Mamaroneck Little League and Basketball Associations.

WENDY RASO, elected in November, moved to Larchmont as a newly-wed in July 2000. She and her husband Michael have two young children. Wendy had been a special education teacher in the Tarrytown school district prior to the arrival of her first child. She has certifications in elementary education and special education, as well as a master’s degree in reading and literacy. The Friends board was a natural for her. She and her family have spent many afternoons at the Larchmont Library enjoying its books and programs.

This Winter’s Tale is Anything But Sad: The Friends of the Larch-mont Library has scheduled a lineup of programs over the next several months guaranteed to keep the doldrums at bay. Are you worried about the future of newspapers and magazines as we know and love them -- the old-fashioned ones made from trees? Ac-cording to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, more than 40,000 newspaper jobs were lost in 2009, nearly twice the 21,000 cut in 2008. Clearly, the economic model seems doomed in the face of so much free content available on the internet. Join us on Sunday, February 28 at 4:30 p.m. for a conversation on the subject with Larchmont's Peter Kaplan, former editor of The New York Observer and currently creative direc-tor of Condé Nast Traveler. Our guest on Sunday, March 7, at 3 p.m., will be Lois Sherr Dubin, author of the world’s definitive guide for bead lovers, collectors, and scholars, The History of Beads, from 100,000 B.C. to the Pre-sent. Recently updated, this bible of beads includes an eight-page gate-fold timeline, full-color maps, and dozens of photographs that guide readers through the remarkably rich history of the world’s first adorn-ment and one of the earliest media communication systems. A gradu-ate of the University of Pennsylvania, Lois has collected and re-searched beads for over 50 years. Her international expertise in this field has enabled her to travel widely and obtain beads from many countries. This program is bound to interest not only bead aficionados but history and art buffs as well. On Sunday, April 11, at 4 p.m., there will be a panel discussion on a new social movement called Aging in Place – national grassroots not-for-profit organizations that are started by community residents to

provide assistance and services, as well as social, educational and rec-reational opportunities, for those who choose to stay in their own homes and in their community as they grow older. The panel will in-clude representatives from local organizations that are actively en-gaged in developing such programs, including the Larchmont/Mamaroneck initiative, At Home on the Sound, and the countywide program, Center for Aging in Place Support. On Sunday, April 25, at 4 p.m., the Friends will host the launch of the fourth edition of The Westchester Review, a compilation of poetry, essays, and fiction by established and emerging writers who live or work in Westchester County. Publisher JoAnn Terdiman explains how the journal was born: “It occurred to me that there are so many gifted writers here in the county, and wouldn't it be something if there were a journal for the many voices of Westchester? I asked my daughter what she thought; we looked at each other and said, ‘Why not?’" Be sure to mark your calendars: This is one of our most popular events.

On a Sunday in May, date yet to be determined, we will host a pro-gram on head injuries in sports by New York Times sports writer Alan Schwarz. Programs sponsored by the Friends of the Larchmont Library are free and open to the public. All programs will be held at Larchmont Tem-ple on the corner of Willow and Larchmont avenues while the library construction continues. Please join us for refreshments one half-hour before the start of each program. Also, please note that program times vary. We look forward to seeing you!

by Jackie Paré, Program Chair

SUNDAY PROGRAMS

NEW BOARD MEMBERS FOR THE FRIENDS

When you think of nonfiction books, you think of history, biogra-phy, cookbooks, psychology and a host of other worthy informa-tional books. But today we explore the unusual and downright quirky works that, seemingly against the odds, managed to get published and find significant readerships. These books run from the unpredictable to the peculiar. What they have in common is that they all open our minds to subjects we never considered and certainly never knew we had any interest in, and impart informa-tion and entertainment in equal measure. Herewith we present an idiosyncratic selection. John McPhee The list starts with an author rather than a single book. John McPhee is Dean of the Unusual, someone who can make even mud interesting! Besides writing about geology (Assembling California), he’s written an entire book about the American shad (The Founding Fish), which focuses on the shad’s place in American history. If shad is not for you, you might enjoy his book Un-common Carriers. Here, he rides in the cabs of coal trains and 18-wheelers carrying hazardous materials, travels by canoe up canal- and commercial-lock waterways in emulation of the trip Thoreau made and recounted in A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, spends time in a ship handling school in the French Alps where skippers of huge ocean ships practice on models, travels the Illinois River on a barge-pushing tugboat and spends time at a UPS facility. The story of the people he encoun-ters – regular, real-life people, plus his own keen insights and humor makes his books winners! The Big Necessity: the Unmentionable World of Human Waste and Why it Matters, by Rose George

In this witty and engrossing book, Rose George “brings the topic of sewage out of the water closet.” This is the story of how we go to the toilet and how the world thinks about and copes with hu-man waste. It is the cultural, bacteriological and psychological landscape of excrement. Much of what George discovers, espe-cially in developing countries, is appalling. A total of 2.6 billion people today have no access to clean food or water and lead lives surrounded by human waste, either in the bushes outside their villages or in their city streets. More than 2 million people, mostly children, die every year of diarrhea, triggered by contaminated food or water – the equivalent of a child losing her/his life every 15 seconds. George’s book aims to get us talking about what is killing a third of the planet. She is convinced that “the toilet may be the single biggest variable in increasing human life span.” Cod: A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World, by Mark Kurlansky When Mark Kurlansky published this book, he single-handedly revived the genre of micro history by telling a riveting tale about this familiar and popular cold-water fish and the humans who, for more than a thousand years, caught it, sold it, ate it and built em-pires based on profits from trading it. Cod spans a thousand years and four continents. Kurlansky introduces the explorers, mer-chants, writers, chefs, and of course the fishermen, whose lives have interwoven with this prolific fish. He chronicles the 15th century politics of the Hanseatic League and the cod wars of the 16th and 20th centuries. He starts at nearly the end of the story – the reality of overfished waters – and its impact on a group of Canadian fishermen who are struggling at the wrong end of a

thousand-year fishing spree, but later on we learn of a time when cod was so plentiful there seemed no end in sight. Kurlansky tells of Bartholomew Gosnold, who named Cape Cod in 1602, and of Clarence Birdseye, who founded an industry on frozen cod in the 1930s. We also discover just how efficiently man can deplete nature's bounty: rather than accept the reduced cod stocks, inven-tive man found newer, more efficient ways to harvest fish and hasten the decline of the cod population. Kurlansky embellishes his story with gastronomic detail, blending in recipes and lore from the Middle Ages to the present. What’s more, he brings to life the cod itself: its personality, habits, extended family, and ultimately the tragedy of its possible extinction. Jenniemae & James, by Brooke Newman Were this forthcoming book a daughter’s memoir of her father, it would make interesting reading, the tale of a brilliant, eccentric, philandering, mathematician father and his participation in interna-tional and national events. However, Newman has instead focused on the improbable friendship between her father and the black maid who raised his two daughters and ran his household from 1948-1969. (It was not insignificant that the maid played the numbers with a religious fervor that delighted the mathematician.) She gam-bled --with phenomenal success-- on numbers that she said had occurred to her in her dreams. As James worked in his home office during the day, he learned of Jenniemae’s daily numbers betting, although she refused to admit it was gambling (“It’s the Lord’s gift,” was how she explained it). Over the years, their friendship deepened, and they managed to see each other through numerous crises – hers and his. Newman was a keen observer in what was a very tense household – softened immeasurably by Jenniemae. Readers who enjoyed the novel The Help are treated here to a real-life story about a significant relationship at a time when major world changes were occurring. Longitude, by Dava Sobel Touch a button on a hand-held GPS device today and you know within a few feet where you are (longitude and latitude) any place on earth. However, in the 18th century, there was no accurate way of determining east-west location at sea, although a dependable methodology for measuring the distance above and below the equa-tor – latitude --- was in common use. Yet without longitude, sailors out of sight of land simply had no way to determine precisely where they were. Dava Sobel tells in a very straightforward, entertaining way the very complicated story of how longitude was “found.” When, in 1707, a great prize (equivalent to about $12 million in today’s money) was offered by the English Parliament for a practi-cal method of finding longitude at sea, the race was on. This is the story of that race and of John Harrison, an obscure scientist-clockmaker, who believed that the solution lay in developing a highly accurate clock that could determine the time difference be-tween a ship at sea and a fixed location on land. He was virtually alone in his belief and opposed by many, including the scientific giant Isaac Newton, as well as Nevil Maskelyne, the royal astrono-mer, who not surprisingly was looking for a celestial solution to the problem. Eventually, two camps were formed – the clock makers and the astronomers. Sobel does a grand job in telling the story of the tussle between these two camps and the men – their lives, work and conflicts. This is a story packed with brilliant inventiveness, jealousy, skullduggery, government villainy and sheer courage.

(Continued on page 5)

WHO WUDDA THUNK IT?

The Man Who Ate Everything, by Jeffrey Steingarten In 1989 Steingarten left a successful law practice to become food critic of Vogue. Excruciatingly thorough and conscientious, he pre-pared himself for his new career, systematically learning to like all the foods he had previously avoided -- from clams to Greek food to Indian desserts with the consistency of face cream. He drew the line at any-thing blue. He describes the experience in this collection's first piece, before setting out on a series of culinary adventures that took him around the world. From Africa to Asia to Europe, his food expeditions for the perfect recipe or a culinary secret move relentlessly. Whether searching for Alsatian choucroute, sampling the mother of all ice creams, or deciding what to do with a Christmas fruitcake, Steingarten will garner the attention of foodies. He will go to any lengths to satisfy his curiosity about gastronomic matters. His particular mission is to confound and confuse the “health fanatics, puritans and other prejudi-cial people” who would like us to be picky and snobby about what we eat. "Salad, the Silent Killer" is a catalog of the toxins lurking in every bowl of raw vegetables, while "Fries" follows a heroic attempt to cre-ate the perfect French fry--cooked in horse fat. Whether baking sour-dough bread in his Manhattan loft or spraying miso soup across a Kyoto restaurant, Steingarten is an ideal guide to the wilder reaches of gastronomy, a cross, said one reviewer, “between M.F.K. Fisher and H.L. Mencken.” Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America, by Barbara Ehrenreich There are millions of Americans who work full-time, but at poverty-level wages. In 1998, Ehrenreich decided to see for herself whether the belief held out by promise of welfare reform — that any job equals a better life, was valid. Her goal was to discover whether anyone could survive, no less flourish on minimum wage. Moving across the country, and staying in the cheapest rooms available, she took jobs as a waitress, house cleaner, Wal-Mart salesperson and nursing-home health aide. She quickly saw that even the “lowliest” of jobs required strenuous physical and also mental effort. Her experiences are told with passion, insight and humor – and their message is very sobering: the working poor are invisible. They are not recognized as poor be-cause they have jobs. Ehrenreich, referred to by one reviewer as “our premier reporter of the underside of capitalism,” is insistent that we take a very good and long look at the ways in which we, as a country, perceive our working poor. The Professor and the Madman: a Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary, by Simon Winchester The OED is known as one of the greatest literary achievements in the history of English letters. Begun in 1857, it took 70 years to complete. Thousands of lay readers contributed to the accumulation and aggre-gation of definitions, of which there were ultimately 414,825. Inside the story of the dictionary’s creation is yet another story – the relation-ship between two men, who did not meet for 20 years, but who worked together to create the first edition of the work. James Murray was the Professor and editor of the dictionary and Dr. William Chester Minor was the Madman, convicted murderer and very significant and prolific contributor to the project. Murray did not have contact with Minor, except by mail. His offers to meet the American physician who had served in the Civil War were always politely declined. The story of these two men, their common passion and obsession and their dis-parate and uncommon lives makes a great story, well told.

Zero: the Biography of a Dangerous Idea, by Charles Seife This is a book about mathematics aimed at amateurs. Its intention is to tell the historical tale of mathematics through the number zero. It suc-ceeds admirably. Science journalist Charles Seife follows this inno-cent-looking number from its birth as an Eastern philosophical con-cept to its struggle for acceptance in Europe, its rise and transcendence in the West, and its ever-present threat to modern physics, along the way showing the novice the cultural, philosophical and scientific sig-nificance of mathematical ideas and their development. Said one re-viewer, “Zero describes with good humor and wonder how one digit has bedeviled and fascinated thinkers from ancient Athens to Los Ala-mos. Charles Seife maintains that the concept of nothingness and its show-off twin, infinity, have repeatedly revolutionized the foundations of civilization and philosophical thought. If you're already a fan of mathematics or science, you will enjoy this book; if you're not, you will be by the time you finish it.” Zero has pitted East against West and faith against reason. Its importance persists in the dark core of a black hole and the brilliant flash of the Big Bang. Today, zero lies at the heart of one of the biggest scientific controversies of all time: the quest for a theory of everything. Read on!

by Teddi Becker and Diane Courtney

(Continued from page 4)

ECO-BAGS ARE IN, PLASTICS ARE OUT! We all know that plastic bags are bad for the environment. It takes nearly 450,000 gallons of oil to produce 100 million nondegradable plastic bags, and the world uses between 4 and 5 trillion plastic bags annually. In addition:

Plastics don't biodegrade; they merely break up into smaller pieces of plastic and become plastic dusts. Plastic degradation at sea takes between 45-1,000 years. Plastics bags have been found in the stomachs of animals whose habitats vary from sea to desert, from camels and birds to turtles and porpoises. Ingestion of plastic bags can result in blockages, starvation and death. Recycling plastic bags is not economically viable.

Therefore, the library’s current supply of plastic bags will NOT be replaced, but the Friends will soon offer Eco-bags for $2 each. In the interim, and moving forward, please bring your own bag to carry away books, DVDs, CDs etc. Also available are a limited number of heavy-duty -- you won’t ever need another -- canvas bags for sale at $20 each. Both styles will be available at the circu-lation desk.

COME ONE! COME ALL! TO HEAR THE WRITTEN WORD! Books and poetry come alive at the Fifth Annual READ-IN. To celebrate National Library Week, the Friends is hosting READ-IN on Saturday, April 10 from 11:00 a.m. until 2:00 p.m. Public officials, local authors and members of the community will read aloud from their favorite selections, or from pieces they have au-thored, to celebrate reading and love of the written word. Anyone can sign up to participate by contacting Jane Axelrod at: Janeax-elrod4@hotmail.com ; or at 914-834-7677. Of course, you can just drop in and listen to the readings. The program, which is free and open to the public, will take place at the library. For additional information please phone 914-834-2281.

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Larchmont Library Hours Mon & Thurs 9 to 9 Tues & Wed 9 to 6 Fri & Sat 9 to 5 Sunday noon to 5*

*September through May

914-834-2281www.larchmontlibrary.org

Jane Axelrod Fred Baron, Asst. Newsletter EditorTeddi Becker, Newsletter EditorElinor Berlin, Membership VPDavid Calkins Sheri Devereux, Communications VPLeah Epstein Elinor Fredston Stanley Futterman Melissa Gaynor Sue Hertz

David Kettig, PresidentHarriet Kline, SecretaryGerald Kolbert Robert Leopold, Finance ChairJackie Paré, Programs VPWendy Raso Hayden Smith Michele Steichen H. David Willey, TreasurerMelissa Young Ellen Zuckert

Newsletter of the Friends of the Larchmont Public Library Board of Directors

Diane Courtney, Library Director

Now is the time to join or renew your membership in the Friends. Enclosed is a check for $______________

You can also join the Friends at our web site: www.larchmontlibrary.org/friends.html

$25 Individual $50 Family $50 Business Member

$100 Book Lover $200 Book Collector $500 Bibliophile

$1,000 Life Member Other

Name________________________________________________________________________________

Address______________________________________________________________________________

E-mail address (important!)__________________________________________________________ ____

I enclose a Matching Gifts form I am interested in being considered for nomination to the Friends Board of Directors

Return to: Friends of the Larchmont Library, 121 Larchmont Avenue, Larchmont NY 10538

121 Larchmont Avenue, Larchmont, New York 10538 Non- Profit Org. ECRWSS

U.S. POSTAGE PAID

White Plains, NY 10610

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postal patronlarchmont, n.Y. 10538