Our Very Own Home Town Holiday

Another Glorious Celebration It Shall Be!
The start of our town's annual Old Home Day Celebration is less than 10 days away and we sure are hoping you are expectant and jazzed. We sure are!

Take a spin through the Old Home Day Association's web site and learn about how you can participate in and enjoy three days of free musical entertainment, great cost-saving and freebie opportunities, PLUS the largest parade in Middlesex County!

Watch for the Old Home Day Association's 2-page informational ad in the July 3rd holiday edition of the Rivereast News Bulletin. Save some gas and plan your Home Town Holiday weekend, in your hometown.

Above logo designed by Red Barn Studios, East Hampton CT

Farmer's Cow Family-Owned Dairy Farms

Take a Deep Breath and Moooo!
While visiting the library, pick up a copy of the local calling card of The Farmer's Cow, a group of six Connecticut, family-owned dairy farms. The farms offer 'udderly' delicious products and their calling card also features a schedule of summer-through fall events sure to be fun/educational for the whole family!

Support Farmer's Cow and CT-based agriculture! All moooriffic farms are within reasonable driving distance from East Hampton: Coventry, Franklin, Hebron, Lebanon, Franklin, and Woodstock.

Summer Fun, Summer Crafts @ your library

Summer Craft Adventures
Read Your Way to Olympic Gold this summer but also take time out to explore your creative side! Summer craft programs are open to children entering grades 1-3 in fall 2008.

Tuesday, July 8th @ 2 p.m.
Let’s all celebrate the 4th of July with a homemade American flag, complete with bells to ring in the summer. After that, decorate your own summer journal to write all about your summer adventures! Register online or give us a call at 267-6621.

Farmer's Markets In Our Area

New Brochure from the CT Department of Agriculture
While visiting the library, pick up a copy of the Connecticut Farmer's Market 2008 brochure published by the CT Department of Agriculture. The brochure features information about well over 100 farmer's markets operating statewide from June through October 2008. Almost all of the markets listed in the brochure are WIC Certified; several are EBT Food Stamp Certified.

Here's a listing of farmer's markets operating in Middlesex County:
Clinton, Chamard Vineyards Farmer's Market
Deep River Farmer's Market
Durham Farmer's Market
Essex Farmer's Market
Middletown Farmer's Market

For the online crowd, you may also download the Farmer's Market brochure as well as many other useful publications by visiting the CT DOA's web site.

EHHS Summer Reading Made Easy

Summer Reading Central
The EHHS summer reading lists were recently released. One list is for 9th and 10th grade; the other for 11th & 12th.

You will find books included on the EHHS lists centrally located on center island in the middle of the library's main reading room. The library has multiple copies of each book included on each list.

For quick online browsing, click here for 9th and 10th grade selections or here for 11th and 12th grade selections. Based on your demand for listed titles, we'll add copies so speak up on the listed titles that interest you!

We'll also be here all summer long to recommend other titles. Though you're only required to read two books, we're sure we can match you up with many other great books you'll love, that will make you laugh and think, and which will make your summer all the more enjoyable!

Child Meets World

Resources for Parents
The library regularly and actively purchases books of interest to parents with children at different stages of development. A few of the latest additions to our collection are shown above.

Parenting books cover a broad spectrum of issues and approaches: maternity and birth, "boot camp" or how to, medical, educational -- all related to the long-term and healthy growth of your child. If you don't quickly find what you are looking for, please ask us -- that's why we're here.

For the web-savvy crowd, we also recommend free access to highly credible online resources found at ICONN, our state's online information portal. ICONN features access to health and wellness resources, Medline, CT Physician Profiles, CT Consumer Health information, and much, much more!

Poet of the Month

June's Featured Poet

William Carlos Williams (1883-1963) holds the distinction of probably having the greatest single influence on poets writing in the U.S., attracting a greater following than Yeats or Eliot in the latter half of the 20th Century. He was a close and accurate observer of real life who tried to make language new, disregarding rhyme and meter. A full-time practicing physician who had his feet on the ground, he often wrote of patients, and of flowers and paintings which he loved. Here’s an example of the latter:

The Dance
In Brueghel's great picture, The Kermess,
the dancers go round, they go round and
around, the squeal and the blare and the
tweedle of bagpipes, a bugle and fiddles
tipping their bellies (round as the thick‑
sided glasses whose wash they impound)
their hips and their bellies off balance
to turn them. Kicking and rolling about
the Fair Grounds, swinging their butts, those
shanks must be sound to bear up under such
rollicking measures, prance as they dance
in Brueghel's great picture, The Kermess.

Above: The Kermess by Pieter Brueghel the Elder

Further Reading: Selected Poems, by William Carlos Williams ; edited with an introduction by Charles Tomlinson, 1985, available at our library. The Collected Stories of William Carlos Williams ; introduction by Sherwin B. Nuland, 1996, is also available at our library.

Coming in July: Rita Dove

Content developed by local resident and poet Leland Jamieson.

Booming Books

Feeling Old, Feeling New, Books to Borrow, All About You!
Those of us in the baby boom generation haven't found it easy to ignore the plethora of new books aimed at helping us feel and look younger. We don't know about you but the publishing world's opinion of us does give us pause....

This being said, however, there certainly is something for everyone looking for choices to help make our mid-life selves happier, healthier and better looking inside and out. Here's a sampling of new books on the subject.

Hostess with the Mostest

Stephenie Meyer Tackles the Adult Sci-Fi Market
Stephenie Meyer's Twilight Saga vampire series books (Twilight, New Moon, Eclipse) were all very difficult to put down. The fourth and final book in the series, Breaking Dawn, is sure to be another runaway bestseller and is due out on August 2nd. Twilight, the movie, starring Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson is also due out December 12th.

While you are waiting for the Twilight Saga's last chapter to morph into summer reader madness, try Meyer's new adult sci-fi book, The Host. The plot centers on a fairly typical sci-fi book theme: alien society takes over humankind. Yet Meyer folds in rip-roaring adventure story and (sigh) just the right amount of romance.

The Host is nothing short of another great book from the Hartford-born(!) Meyer. Enjoy.

Fill 'er Up?

Latest Fuel Economy News from the U.S. EPA
Our Consumer Reports print magazine collection -- as well as the online version available through our statewide ICONN online services portal -- have certainly been getting a workout of late. Automobile comparisons seem to be much on your minds.

We recommend another consumer tool offered by the U.S. Department of Environmental Protection. The EPA web site features a Green Vehicle Guide which may help you get a handle on how well a vehicle performs in our age of rising gas prices. Fill in and submit the form, which will deliver information about fuel economy and emissions.

A Familiar Face on TV News Shows

A National Bestseller
Fareed Zacharia's The Post-American World recently hit the New York Times Non-fiction Bestseller List. The book gives the author's take on a post 9/11 world, the rise of other nations in a global economy, and an offers an optimistic look at where our country stands in the changing international landscape.

About the Author
Zacharia has appeared as a panelist on Sunday news shows and from 2005-2007, hosted a weekly international affairs show on PBS. He now hosts a program on CNN and is an international news editor for Newsweek Magazine. Check out a clip of Charlie Rose interviewing the author or a sound clip of the author's chat with Robert Seigel on All Things Considered.

Revival Movement

East Hampton Writers Take Note!
In the late 1990's the library sponsored and published 'East Hampton Voices', a local literary magazine. We sustained our publishing effort for several years and not without recognition in the Hartford Courant and Middletown Press.

Simply put, we plan to revive our earlier efforts by launching a new magazine -- entitled '898'-- a pointer to 1898, the year our library was founded.

Click Your Pen, Use Your Pad, Move Your Mouse!
Throughout late spring and summer 2008, we'll be asking local writers to contribute their short prose or poetry for publication in our September issue of 898. Watch for ways to contribute your writings using info on this blog; posts on our My Space page; flyers posted at the library and info included in weekly library news reported in the Rivereast.

How Green is Our Valley?

Only You Can Say...
Owing to a grant from the Middlesex County Community Foundation and the efforts of the Connecticut Library Consortium, 17 Middlesex County libraries will collaborate to host a series of 'green' programs this year. Your local library, the EHPL, is one of the 17.

If you would, please take a minute or two to participate in the survey, shown right, and let all of us know about your green programming interests.

Poet of the Month

May's Featured Poet
Robert Frost (1874-1963) was born in San Francisco and lived there until 11, moving east to Massachusetts and then New Hampshire, the state where his father was born. He carefully cultivated his image as a farmer. A canny marketer, he got his first book published and reviewed in England, and afterward in the U.S., making him an instant poet on two continents. His personal life was dark (he sacrificed all relationships to his career) as are many of his poems, though these are not widely read. Here’s one:

Fire and Ice

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

Further Reading: Frost, Robert, Collected Poems of Robert Frost, 1874‑1963 (1986) and seven other volumes in our library.

Coming in June: William Carlos Williams

Content developed by local resident and poet Leland Jamieson

Town Budget Vote: Tuesday May 6th

Voting Matters
Many of you have spent more than a few moments examining town budget documents located at our main circulation desk. Thanks for your thanks on making budget information, in paper form, available for browsing.

Cast your vote on the budget tomorrow, May 6th. Polling place is located at the East Hampton High School. Polls are open from 6 a.m. to 8 p.m.

If your are reading this post, you may link to the town budget, last updated on April 23, 2008.

Wikipedia vs. Databases

What's a Wiki?

From the Hawaiian, wiki wiki means quick; a wiki is a web site that is easy to update quickly. The largest and most visible wiki on the web is Wikipedia which is an open source encyclopedia. Anyone can write or edit a Wikipedia entry. Anyone can edit, change or revert the article to its previous version. Sound messy? Well it is messy at times and it's not always apparent if the people who contribute to Wikipedia know of what they speak. Simply put, you take your chances using Wikipedia but it's not a bad place to get a quickie-wiki overview on a particular topic. Just be sure to check the facts using more than one reliable source.

Databases: Trustworthy, Kid Safe, Free, 24/7

Your state tax dollars support ICONN, which includes a collection of databases for children and adults. Databases feature articles from magazines, journals and newswire services; health and science information; national newspaper archives; history and genealogy resources... and much, much more. Moreover, the only thing you need to access this wealth of high-quality and reliable information is your public library card. It takes about 5 wiki wiki minutes to get one of these.

National Poetry Month: Poet of the Week

Emily Dickinson
Emily Dickinson (1830-1886), a contemporary of Walt Whitman, was not an admirer of his work. She liked short lines and deep thought. She was so shy and lived such an isolated life in her father’s house that the reader wonders how she could come up with anything to write about. The answer is she went into her heart and her imagination. The two short poems that follow shows us an extraordinary wisdom she found there:

288 (I'm nobody! Who are you?)

I'm nobody! Who are you?
Are you nobody, too?
Then there's a pair of us — don't tell!
They'd banish us, you know.

How dreary to be somebody!
How public, like a frog
To tell your name the livelong day
To an admiring bog!

435 (Much Madness is divinest Sense)

Much Madness is divinest Sense—
To a discerning Eye—
Much Sense—the starkest Madness—
'Tis the Majority
In this, as All, prevail—
Assent—and you are sane—
Demur—you're straightway dangerous—
And handled with a Chain—

Further Reading: Alfred Habegger’s My wars are laid away in books : the life of Emily Dickinson; Helen Vendler’s Poets thinking : Pope, Whitman, Dickinson, Yeats -- both in our library.

Coming next: Robert Frost

Content developed by local resident and poet Leland Jamieson

Someone Had to Write It...

Local Author S. Perry Mallory
S. (Shane) Perry Mallory, an East Hampton resident, recently released his book The Divorce Manual for Men. Not a pretty subject and let's hope you never need the book. But if you do, this is a sensitively-written manual.

Jacket Notes
"While divorce is undoubtedly a difficult process, by following what is outlined here, you can possibly minimize any negative impact it will have on all parties involved, save some money, and still learn to enjoy life."

This is definitely not a women-bashing book. Rather the book advocates men taking responsibility and making good decisions in the interest of everyone involved, particularly children. The book is based on countless discussions with professionals in the field and 'Average Joe' men who have have made it through a trying time.

"Third Rock from the Sun"

Earth Day
The first Earth Day was held in 1970 and was celebrated by a reported 20 million Americans. Today, Earth Day is celebrated annually and worldwide.

To mark Earth Day in our little corner of the planet, click here for an abbreviated list of new titles in our "going green" book collection. Start small. It can make all the difference in the world.

National Poetry Month: Poet of the Week

James Dickey
James Dickey (1923-1997) was born in Atlanta, Georgia, and is widely known as the author of the novel Deliverance. Less well known is his poetry, driven also by a surreal and archetypal sense of violence rather than by graceful subtlety or wit. (He served in both WWII and the Korean War, and was no stranger to violence.) In this, one of his few shorter poems, the reader can feel it just beneath the surface:

A Morning

A dog surroundingly howls.
Painfully he is changing
His voice from a voice for the moon

To the voice he has for the sun.
I stoop, and my hands are shining;
I have picked up a piece of the sea

To feel how a tall girl has swum
Yesterday in it too deeply,
And, below the light, has become

More naked than Eve in the garden.
I drop her strange body on the cobbles.
My hands are shining with fever,

And I understand
The long, changing word of the dog
With the moon dying out in his voice,

And the pain when the sun came up
For the first time on angel‑shut gates,
In its rays set closer than teeth.

Further Reading: To the white sea / James Dickey. ; 1993. ; Houghton Mifflin, and Deliverance /James Dickey. ; 1970. ; Houghton Mifflin. Both novels are available at our library.

Coming next week: Emily Dickinson

Content developed by local resident and poet Leland Jamieson