A Garden Poem to Share

In honor of Poetry month and the coming of spring, our Secret Gardens chairperson offers the following:

"I may not know much about poetry, but I know when something moves me. I read this poem for the first time when it appeared in The New Yorker in May of 1987, and reading it every spring since still gives me a chill. If you're a gardener, you'll know what I mean. And even if you're not--my God, how can the last line not give you goosebumps?"
 - Bruce

An American Naturalist Writes to a Londoner, 1758
Brendan Galvin

Now I will tell you my manner
of gardening here, which progresses
not by calendar but by natural signals.
On a clear March night, I sight down
the Dipper’s bowl, for a backward
question mark—tail of the rising Lion—
and then may be found slapping mud
from the plot into balls, squeezing
to test for water content, this before
even a single mallard clack from
the creek, and pumpkins seem the wreckage
of last year’s quarter-moons.
Then the whole plot is already staked
in my head, minus slugs, borers,
hornworms, loopers, beetles, and all
that plague I forget each year
until they descend like a host of
savages to be bought off
only by a feast of this or that leaf,
and dug out of vines and stems
where they poke without welcome.
Asparagus I intercrop with parsley,
since I have discovered they agree
with one another. The latter
is said to go to the Devil and back
nine times ere it breaks the soil,
but I have found it mild
and without evil influence. Beans
I keep far from onions they can’t
abide, and basil, which breeds
a merry heart, I grow along borders
with umbelliferous dill, whose leaves
are agreeable with fish, though of
a strength not to everyone’s taste.
These strong-scented herbs, with chives
and mint, may keep a barrier against
insects, though my studies here
need more attention. Native squashes
and gourds are set when the dogwood
flowers, and tomatoes during
the mayfly hatch. This conveys somewhat
my manner of gardening. I would
continue but that in the mere telling
I grow fatigued, and must ask myself why,
yearly, I engage in it with such ardor,
since I am without family. For the surety
of plenty? Or the images such growth
alone provides? Or because I do better
with vegetable kind than human
(no easy admission), and have come to
myself more than once knocking upon
and addressing a blue squash
of five-stone weight and pebbled like
the back of an alligator? By the time
of the Perseids, when my turnips go in
for autumn, I am as weary as some
old king fighting his battle with the sea,
down on hands and knees in that
riptide of beans and cabbage splashes,
a spume of chickweed flying over
my shoulders, wishing I had never listened
for spring peepers chiming their long,
ghostly sleigh rides through the dark.

- Poem included with the author's permission.

 ...that in just one day Massachusetts residents:

make 93,000 visits to their libraries,

check out 159,456 items,

and spend over 2,343 hours accessing online library resources?


And that State funding is at a level that dates back to the 1990's?

We learned these amazing facts, and more, at the Annual Legislative Breakfast held earlier this month at the Robbins Library in Arlington. Representatives from the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners, the Massachusetts Library System, and the Minuteman Library Network were present to share information with members of our State Legislature, library administrators, and members of local Friends groups.

Greg Pronevitz, Executive Director of the Massachusetts Library System, noted that one challenge for libraries today is that patrons want more online content including access to encyclopedias and journals. Susan McAlister, Executive Director of the Minuteman Library Network, which had a server upgrade in January, said that libraries are both adopting and adapting new technologies. Starting in March, borrowers can opt to receive library notices via text message. The AirPAC interface search method can bring the library catalogue to users via cell phones. Encore, a Google-like interface, can search broadly, then refine the search to find both books and journals. It is available in Spanish, Chinese, and Russian as well as English.

Robert Maier, Director of the Board of Library Commissioners presented the Board's FY2012 Legislative Agenda, explaining the current levels of funding and the importance of supporting the requested 2013 levels. You can get the details at the MBLC web site.

There are always great things happening at the library! For more information on how you can get involved with the Friends and help to support our Cambridge libraries click here.

What's All The Fuss About?

Did you know that our main branch has received the Boston Society of Architects' 2010 Harleston Parker Medal for the “Single Most Beautiful Building” erected in the metropolitan Boston area in the past 10 years. The award will be presented at a ceremony on May 23rd. Earlier this year the City of Cambridge announced that Cambridge Public Library had also received an Annual Design Review Award from ARCHITECT Magazine, one of the country’s two leading national architectural magazines. In fact, the renovated main branch has received a grand total of 9 awards since reopening in November of 2009.

What did all of these prestigious organizations find so remarkable about our building? Find out for yourself by signing up for a tour of the library. Tours are given every Saturday morning at 10 AM. They are free, but we ask that you register by noon of the day before your tour. That way your cheerful, well-informed docent will know how many tour-ists to expect. It's easy to do. Just email us at cpldocents@gmail.com and give us the date on which you would like to take a tour and the number in your party. Then meet your docent just inside the main entrance at 10 AM. You'll learn about the “green” aspects of our new building as well as the art and architecture of both the stone and the glass sides of the building. By the time your tour is over, it will be easy to see what all the fuss has been about!

Check back with us after the 23rd to read more about the Harleston Parker ceremony.  There are always great things happening at the library! For more information on how you can get involved with the Friends of the Cambridge Public Library click here.

Calling All Photographers!

We are pleased to announce our first annual photography contest:  “The Cambridge Public Library: A Place For All Seasons.”  Photographers of all ages are invited to depict any part of the Cambridge Public Library system: buildings (interiors and exteriors), objects, and people, any time of day or night, in sunshine or inclement weather throughout the calendar year.

Photographs will be judged primarily on how effectively they portray the theme, “A Place for All Seasons.”  It is our hope that the collected works will represent each one of the libraries and all four seasons of the calendar year.

All appropriate entries will be posted on the library’s Flickr website.  The first-place winner will receive a $100 bookstore gift card; second-place winner will receive a $50 gift card, and third-place winner a $25 gift card.

To read more about the rules and how to enter, click here , and on the sidebar on the left choose "Photo Contest."

There are always great things happening at the library!  For more information on how you can get involved with the Friends of the Cambridge Public Library, click here.