Big Night in the Big Easy

Last night was a Big Night in the Big Easy. Leslie Burger was inaugurated as president of the American Library Association, an organization of 65,000 members. Probably because of her (and another smart, attractive, only child librarian) our other president has pledged $18 million to rebuild New Orleans’ libraries. My daughter and my mother-in-law tell me that Leslie was on the NBC Nightly News talking about how ALA is the first big conference (meaning over 20,000, like Rotary, which bailed to Chicago) to stay in New Orleans since Katrina. Friends Jay Johnston and Alice Knapp, who have been good enough to send regular dispatches this week from NO to NH, were interviewed with Leslie by NPR at Emeril’s restaurant. Leslie has built a smashing destination library in Princeton, NJ, and, as ALA Prez, has been an inspiration to our sometimes beleaguered profession wherever she speaks—Chile, Argentina, or Wallingford, Connecticut. Not only was last night a Big Night, but Leslie is a Big Deal. Since I couldn't be there for "the best party ALA has ever had," according to a late night call live from New Orleans, this morning I'm going Boswellian (and maybe just a little maudlin) to celebrate some of the little deals that I remember about my friend and president.

I met Leslie in 1976, when she arrived at the State Library in Hartford from the Bridgeport Public Library. There were a lot of us young’uns there then—Connie McCarthy and Maureen Well, with whom I’ve unexplainedly lost touch, Vince Juliano, who remains the same prince-among-men that he was then, and Dick Akeroyd, who was Leslie’s boss, and quite the young Turk before he went on to stodgy fame and fortune. We were young, and we had fun, and we believed. Leslie might have $2.50, and I might have $3.75, and then we’d find some other loose change, and then we’d go out to lunch—almost everyday. And we thought we could make things happen, and yes, we thought we could change the world.

The scholarly State Librarian, Chuck Funk, once said, when forced to undergo one of the team building activities so popular in the eighties, that the one he would want in his lifeboat was--Leslie Burger. Who wouldn’t? She saved the state $40,000 when she wrote our way out of an audit exception during the Reagan years, when Ronnie had instructed the Department of Education auditors to be “as mean as junkyard watch dogs.” Then came another State Librarian who promoted someone else over Leslie, a move I’ve never forgiven, but with which Leslie never had a quarrel nor a moment of indulgent rehash.

I remember back in the day when we were both young mothers, doing the Hanukkah candles at Leslie and Buddy’s (aka Alan Burger, her husband and boyfriend since they were 14) and Leslie’s reading the prayers straight from the Book of Jewish Observance propped open on the kitchen counter. I remember our being on the beach in Nantucket, pretending to watch our kids while listening in on the Muffies’ conversation, and Leslie making us all take the pledge to "live each day to its fullest.” I remember our collapsing in giggling hysteria when the Governor’s Conference on Libraries (which we planned with Homer Babbidge, of the Babbidge Library at UConn) was finally over. And I remember our latest (but not our last) shopping trip when we had to admit that we spend money like we had it.

Just last year we organized a visit by Connecticut librarians to Leslie’s beautiful new Princeton Public Library (after we both almost got sued by the Nassau Inn) and she toured and charmed them all, about five minutes after she had brought Buddy home from Sloane Kettering. Leslie is also a cancer survivor, something even I forget because she always looks so great, so young, so gorgeous and full of life. Leslie can build a state-of the-art library. She can get money for American libraries. She can get press coverage for librarians. She can do all the big deals, not only because she believes and because she is smart and talented, but because she knows what is important, even the little deals.

Last night was a Big Night, and Leslie Burger is a Big Deal.

Is It Just About the Coffee?

I’m here in Portsmouth, NH, (when I should be in New Orleans, but that’s another blog,) and I need the Internet. My 84 year old mother, whose ill health is the cause of this unusual midweek visit, has no Internet access, and it seems that no one else in the neighborhood does either. I’ll go downtown, where I’m sure both the public library and Starbucks will have wireless.

Portsmouth is an interesting place. When I left here for Hartford some 30 years ago, (another proof that love is blind,) Portsmouth was a lot like Hartford is today—no downtown shopping, people drinking out of paper bags in broad daylight, and with not much more to recommend it than its proximity to Boston. It was a small place from which the valedictorians fled and the rest went to work at the Navy Yard or had kids with those who did. But there were those who loved it, including the local librarian, maiden lady Dorothy Vaughn. She and some friends started up a little something called Strawberry Banke, capitalizing on Portsmouth’s colonial history and its place on the river and proximity to the beach, as well as to the Boston of Kevin White. Portsmouth’s redevelopment of working class housing, unlike Hartford’s botched Front Street demolition, was the beginning of Portsmouth as a destination, a destination so pricey that I couldn’t reverse course now even if I wanted to. But enough about Portsmouth, back to the Internet—Starbucks or the library?

I made my choice. I spent two days sitting in front of Starbucks trying to make their touted tmobile wireless connection connect, even though I knew I would have to pay for it with a credit card if it ever worked. I only went to the library (whose connection worked perfectly every time) as a last resort when I became seriously email deprived. Why was I so reluctant to give up Starbucks for the library? Was it just a librarian’s aversion to a busman’s holiday? The library turned out to be perfectly fine and I spent two days working there quite happily. My reluctance to abandon Starbucks for the library, however, is a puzzlement. What does she have that I don’t have?

If anyone is comfortable in libraries and with librarians, it would be me, and I actually prefer Dunkin’ Donuts coffee. So what is it? I fear it’s the old perception vs. reality thing. Starbucks is perceived to be bright young things behind the counter, new music playing and available for sale, comfortable furniture inhabited by comfortable people, bright sunny windows looking out on the agora, and almost unlimited hours open. Whether perception is reality or not, there could be a lesson here, and it’s not just about coffee.

Tip was Right. All Politics should be Local.

There I was, in the Greenblatt's living room, listening to the kid who would be a congressman. Thirty-two year old Chris Murphy, who was just another kid from the neighborhood a few years ago, was talking about changing the world, starting with the fifth congressional district. He wasn't haranguing like sometimes even our local pols do. He was talking in a clear, earnest voice, with his Mom and Dad and grandfather looking on, to a houseful of people who are the parents and teachers of his boyhood. He was telling stories the way all politicians, even the young, are expected to--about how his first political activity was handing out leaflets--for the Republicans! (This one getting a big laugh in this room packed with the flower of the local Democratic Party.) Chris went on with his story to tell about how he saw the (Democratic) light as early as high school when he got involved with the Young Dems, led by a remarkable Wethersfield High School teacher (Physics, no less,) who is a district captain in our local party apparatus. Wethersfield is not in the fifth Congressional district; Chris was hitting up the hometown crowd for much needed money to challenge a well funded ($3 million already!) incumbent, and that was fine by us. You never saw checkbooks come out so fast. Except for one of the lawyers who thought she might be able to use some of her firm's PAC money for Chris, I'm sure most of the figures written on those checks were two rather than four.

This scene is politics at its best. A kid whose parents are not even Democrats has been working his way through the party system to get to the Greenblatt's living room, a space last used politically for the likes of Joe Lieberman, (which is so another story!) Although Chris is a comer by any standards--incredibly good-looking, smart, articulate, Williams' grad--he has not gotten, nor did he expect, a free ride to being a Congressional candidate. He didn’t even get to start his career in his hometown in the very Democratic first district, (a place where if Dracula were on the Democratic ticket, he would be elected.) Chris moved to Southington, where he won the nod to run for state rep, then state senator, and now, with Diane Farrell in the fourth and Joe Courtney in the second, the right to challenge an entrenched, well-funded incumbent for a seat in Congress.

I have always felt comfortable with local politics. We have a devoted, tenacious town chairman, a teacher and an Episcopalian. Party workers like myself, while fiercely partisan, are totally incorruptible. The party is to me like church, a place where everybody knows your name, but no one is familiar enough to breed contempt. We rarely discuss issues because we probably don’t agree on many, but we do agree on people.

While we were all in the living room listening to Chris' speech, some of the current WHS Young Dems were hanging in the Greenblatt's den, creating there a latter day smoke-free smoke filled room. Hanging with them were some slightly older, but still decades younger than we, workers from the Malloy campaign, (showing the kids how it is done?) This entire tableau, with the young candidate, the teenagers, the mayor, mayor's wife, state rep, would-be state senator, grandfather and the $25 checks, is what politics means to me. I'd like to think that this is what Tip O'Neill was talking about when he said that all politics is local. I know that this is all good, and who knows? The kid just might win.

In the Company of Books

Tonight I had the pleasure of the company of books and the people who write them and read them at Eastern Connecticut's kick-off for One Book One Region. This phenomenon started five years ago when Steve Slosberg challenged the folks who read his column in The Day to come up with a One Book community read like they were doing in Rhode Island (and in Chicago and Seattle.) Betty Anne Reiter and I invited people to a meeting at Groton PL to see if anyone else besides the two of us and Steve was interested in the idea. People actually showed up to the meeting, (but not as many as the hundred who showed up tonight!). We chose Pete Hamill's almost-out-of-stock Snow in August and then emailed him to see when he could come out to Eastern Connecticut to accept this honor in person. Pete said he'd be delighted. Little Brown reprinted enough copies so Jim Landherr could buy 2400 of them for all the students and faculty of Norwich Free Academy. Tara Samul got students at Mitchell College to make buttons. Betty Anne and I visited Alice Fitzpatrick at the Community Foundation who gave us a grant. The Day printed bookmarks. The Norwich Inn and the Lighthouse Inn gave us free meals for Pete and the committee. The now defunct Boats, Books and Brushes PR people designed a logo, and Bank Square Books in Mystic promoted it with a reception and book signing (as they did again tonight!) and donated 20% of the sales of Snow in August to Literacy Volunteers.

We did it! A bunch of locals who had never done such a thing before got a lot of people reading and talking about a novel. Snow in August covers a lot of ground (and caused a lot of controversy which generated a lot of anguish, but also free publicity) but it is in essence a story of the Holocaust, as are two of the three books chosen this year. (How did we end up with three books for our One Book One Region community read? Let's just admit that you can't please all of the people all of the time.)

Tonight I had the pleasure of meeting Paul Zelinsky, illustrator of the Caldecott Honor Book, Hansel and Gretel, Jane Yolen, author of Briar Rose and 289 other books, and the wonderful Louise Murphy who wrote The True Story of Hansel and Gretel and who traveled all the way from Berkeley to talk about it. When it was Louise's turn to speak, she said something both moving and unexpected. She began describing her miserable journey across country, sustained from early morning only by Southwest's salty snacks. She said, however, that when she got to Mystic she was lifted out of her depressive state, not only by the beauty of the place, but by who we are and what we are doing. She said that she noticed that people here enjoy the trappings of affluence and the comforts of living in a traditional New England community. "So why aren't you reading the DaVinci Code or doing a Jane Austen Summer?" she asked. "You could be serving lemonade and having the children dress in period costume, and make it easy for yourselves. Instead, you are reading about something difficult. You're reading books about the Holocaust." Louise went on to say that she was encouraged by the slow but steadily increasing sales of The True Story of Hansel and Gretel because maybe it means that Americans are coming to grips with the serious situation we are in with the war in Iraq and the violence and tragedy in other parts of the world.

Both Hansel and Gretel and Briar Rose are dark tales. They strike at our deepest human fear, that of abandonment, and also at our highest joy, the embrace of a loving family. Ever-present is the forest primeval that grows around Briar Rose and threatens to smother her until she is rescued by a prince, and in which Hansel and Gretel are first abandoned and then ultimately saved. In the hands of these gifted 2006 One Book One Region authors, the power of both the forest and of family love and the evil of abandonment is unforgettable, as is the pleasure of their company.