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June in the library was busy with our 66th birthday and volunteer celebration on the 27th. Our board worked hard on this event that honored our volunteers.
We put out a request for volunteers this year and we were richly rewarded. We have 14 volunteers! They provide vital behind-the-scenes services, including the following: story hours, story walks, shelving, weeding, sorting of book donations, book repairs, landscaping, trash removal, minor maintenance, event support, sanding and shoveling, book covering, book reviews and recommendations, hosting book clubs and games, special projects and recycling.
Now it is July and the harbor is alive with boats arriving at Watson’s or unloading at the five wharves. If you sit in our backyard, you can watch the activity while you read, dine or just hang out.
This month’s popular reads at our library are “Theo of Golden,” “The Measure,” “Buckeye,” “Wreck,” “Yesteryear,” “Mona’s Eyes,” “The Calamity Club” and “Whistler.” Check one out or put it on hold!
Summer is also a time to pick up that book you have meant to read or maybe one you read long ago that you keep thinking about. The library can help you locate those books from all the little libraries around the state. We share more than 50 books a month with other small libraries outside the Minerva catalog system, as well as 20 or more within that system.
What am I reading this month? Because of America’s 250th, I am reading “All We Say,” by Ben Rhodes. This book considers what it means to be an American through 15 speeches by Americans from the past 250 years.
I am also revisiting Louise Dickinson Rich’s “The Coast of Maine: An Informal History and Guide” and Edward Rowe Snow’s “The Romance of Casco Bay,” with its series of stories about sea battles and pirate treasure.
Another summer read will be “The Maine Islands,” by Dorothy Simpson. It is here you learn of Pond Island: “All Harpswell is influenced by the goings-on at Pond Island. … The islands and the Neck positively reverberated to spirit-rappings; tables tipped and walked.” But none, to date, have found its treasure.
Finally, I am taking time to read from the Maine Historical Society’s Maine History journals, each of which focuses on a different aspect of the state’s history. I’m on 2013’s Volume 47. It’s fascinating, and I can read 20 pages as I sit in the backyard enjoying “the little library with the big view.”
As I sit here in the present day, it is easy to step back to the 1770s as the tide keeps coming in and going out, the osprey and eagles return to the water’s edge, and people keep rhythm with this place on the New Meadows.
“Library Connections” is a monthly column that rotates among the three libraries that serve Harpswell: Cundy’s Harbor, Orr’s Island, and Curtis Memorial. Heather Logan is the director of the Cundy’s Harbor Library.
