Education

Sifting for Truth in Media

/ Susan O. / Leave a comment


Feeling bombarded? Feeling like every minute of every day someone is throwing information at you, demanding your attention? Do you feel like you have to “Like” everything, or that you want to hide in a closet just to catch your breath? If it’s not a skewed news headline, it’s an unwanted advertisement. Throw in AI-generated content, and how do you even know what’s real and what’s fake anymore?

Deep breath. 

You aren’t alone.

And there are ways around it.

Cheshire Public Library recently hosted a talk by John B. Nann on exactly that – Navigating the News, and how to trust what you’re hearing and seeing is real. It doesn’t matter if you swear that headline makes total sense. It doesn’t matter if you’ve seen similar photos on the news. It doesn’t matter where you fall on the political spectrum – anyone can be easily manipulated by false or heavily biased information. Here’s an example: Would you approve of your seven year old’s school class watching a movie about a girl who kills an old woman, then joins up with a bunch of dysfunctional friends to kill again – on screen, in technicolor? 

No? Opposed to that? Angry that some people would be okay with that? 

That’s the plot of the movie The Wizard of Oz. It’s all in the wording, and you’re not alone if you fell for it.

If you’re on social media, you may have seen the Media Bias Chart. Professional media analysts have decided (in sometimes hard to read print) where a source is on the spectrum of a) fact and b) political bias. The further you get from the middle – either side – the less likely what you’re reading is actually true, and more likely you’re reading propaganda deliberately meant to upset you. Let’s face it – calm, soothing news doesn’t sell copy or clicks. Mainstream, respected media such as Time, Newsweek, Wall Street Journal, The Hill, MSN, Forbes, BBC, tend to be factual and reliable. If the headlines on your paper start with “Bigfoot Gives Birth to Alien Werewolf Baby,” you should probably consider it suspect.

Don’t feel like digging for truth? Run the idea past Snopes.com, which relentlessly searches for facts, and facts only.

If a photo looks sensationalized or “off”, do a reverse photo search (Google image search). It’s possible the photo has nothing to do with the claim, or is outdated, or happened somewhere else. Here, in a viral photo, the ship is not dumping waste into the ocean, but churning up sediment with its turbines before anchoring. Check the dates on articles – articles can sometimes reappear ten years later. Sorry, that celebrity died 8 years ago. It’s not news.

Another way to check for devious sites involves looking at the URL – the website address in the search bar. Look at the last letters. If there’s a two-letter ending after a dot, the source is questionable. Every country has a country code, or domain. You won’t see it on domestic sites, but the code for America is .us.  Russia is .ru, China is .cn, Rwanda is .rw, Moldova is .md, not to be confused with Maryland. If it’s not coming from the US, it could be a scam. The .co code is technically for Colombia, but it’s often used when companies or organizations can’t get the .com address they want. Approach these sites with an extra grain of salt.

On The Media, a podcast by WNYC, New York Public Radio 93.9 FM, lists the following points to think about:

  • Big red flags for fake news: ALL CAPS, or obviously photoshopped pics.
  • A glut of pop-ups and banner ads? Good sign the story is pure clickbait.
  • Check the domain! Fake sites often add “.co” to trusted brands to steal their luster. (Think: “abcnews.com.co”)
  • If you land on an unknown site, check its “About” page. Then, Google it with the word “fake” and see what comes up.
  • If a story offers links, follow them. Garbage leads to worse garbage. No links, quotes, or references? Another telltale sign.
  • Verify an unlikely story by finding a reputable outlet reporting the same thing.
  • Check the date. Social media often resurrects outdated stories.
  • Read past headlines. Often they bear no resemblance to what lies beneath.
  • Photos may be misidentified and dated. Use a reverse image search engine like TinEye to see where an image really comes from.
  • Gut check. If a story makes you angry, it’s probably designed that way.
  • Most importantly, if you’re not sure it’s true, don’t share it! Don’t. Share. It.

Finally, here are the resources included on the handout Mr. Nann passed out after his presentation at CPL. Stay informed!

Navigating the News, a presentation at the Cheshire Public Library
John B. Nann, MSLS, JD, LLM, retired law librarian

Organizations and other resources

Sources used in presentation

Best Museum Passes for Families with Young Kids

/ Lauren / 1 Comment

As a parent of two young kids, my time away from work is a constant stream of requests and/or demands. The 4-year-old: refill my milk cup even though you’re currently buttering my toast and haven’t even made your coffee yet. The 20-month-old: read Trashy Town to me again. The 4-year-old: I just discovered My Little Pony and I love it, so now my name is Princess Twilight Sparkle and my brother is Spike. Spike: read! Twilight: you are no longer Momma, you’re now Princess Celestia. Can you talk like Princess Celestia? Spike: I will scream-cry if you don’t read to me in two seconds.

Sometimes you need a change of scenery in order to prevent your kids (or yourself) from scream-crying. For me, the library’s museum passes have been invaluable when it’s too wet to visit the playground at Bartlem Park or too cold for miniature horses at Brooksvale Park. Museum passes offer discounted or free admission for adults and kids to museums and educational attractions across Connecticut and beyond. You can reserve them up to 30 days in advance and print almost all of them from home anytime, requiring no special trip to the library. For added convenience, many museums will just scan the pass right from your phone. Here’s our young crew’s experience with the passes.

The Children’s Museum

Location: 180 Mohegan Drive, West Hartford

Pass perks: one free admission for every paid admission

Cost before perks: $15/person ages 2 and up, below 2 is free (price info)

We visited The Children’s Museum when Twilight was two years old and Spike was an unhatched egg. The museum accepted the digital pass that was sent to my phone via email, and soon we were in an indoor air-conditioned wonderland. The museum looks like a former school with one long hallway and branching classrooms that have been converted to different activity areas. I appreciated the easy navigation! The woods-themed dramatic play room was a hit, as was the craft room. The dinosaur room was another success.

There’s also a large collection of live animals spread across three rooms: snakes, chinchillas, box turtles, and more, all of whom came to the museum after being given up, injured, or confiscated. The museum has regular demonstrations where kids can meet some of the animals. Twilight wasn’t interested in petting the ball python, but there were so many other activities that kept her engaged that it wasn’t a loss.

KidsPlay Children’s Museum

Location: 61 Main St, Torrington

Pass perks: Half-price admission for up to 6 family members

Cost before perks: $14 for everyone age 1+, free under 12 months (price info)

KidsPlay has become our family’s favorite museum. There are so many rooms and activities here: play vehicles, a climbing wall, air play, a craft room, a music room with a piano, a grocery store, a pioneer cabin with dress-up clothing. We could not possibly visit every area in one trip! We were impressed not only with the breadth of activities, but how clean and well-maintained the space was. We loved this museum so much on our discounted visit that we got a year-long membership, so we’ve gotten to experience rotating play areas like kinetic sand and a hockey rink.

Street parking is a breeze in downtown Torrington, and there’s an off-street lot as well. The only drawback is its limited schedule. As with any museum, check the hours of operation before you visit!

Roaring Brook Nature Center

Location: 70 Gracey Road, Canton

Pass perks: one free admission for every paid admission

Cost before perks: $9 for adults, $7 for children 12 and under (price info)

Our Children’s Museum pass also grants discounted admission to Roaring Brook Nature Center (not to be confused with Roaring Brook Park, the not-for-the-faint-of-heart local trail). The nature center has an indoor section with taxidermy dioramas of our local habitats, live animals, play nooks, and a library, plus an outdoor area with rescued birds and turtles. Twilight enjoyed the scavenger hunt, singing lullabies to Tomasina the black vulture, and looking for turtles in the pond.

The highlight of the trip, though, was a hike along the trails next to the nature center. The trails are free to access and open from dawn to dusk, and a lot of it is hemlock forest (i.e., those really cool dark forests that make you feel like you’re a character in a fantasy book). The kids played Poohsticks from the bridge over the creek and explored a set of lean-tos while their bird nerd of a parent listened to warblers and nuthatches calling in the trees.

Connecticut Science Center

Location: 250 Columbus Blvd, Hartford

Coupon perks: 15% off up to six admissions

Cost before perks: $29 for adults, $23 for ages 3-12, plus $7 per person for butterfly encounter (price info), plus $7 per vehicle for 3 hours of parking in the adjacent garage (garage information)

Twilight loves the CT Science Center. When she was two years old, we could easily spend an hour just in the water play area. (They provide smocks, but it’s still a good idea to bring backup clothes and shoes.) There’s also live animals including a sloth, a butterfly encounter, and lots of interactive science activities that get more interesting as Twilight gets older. A glass elevator lets you look out across the whole museum, and it’s roomy enough for you to indulge in repeat rides without compromising foot traffic.

This is not a reservable pass, but a coupon that you can pick up anytime and use anytime. Even with a coupon, this is admittedly a pricier outing. But if you can swing it, it’s worth a visit.

Dinosaur State Park

Location: 400 West St, Rocky Hill

Pass perks: free admission to the exhibit center for two adults and four kids age 6-12; kids 5 and under are free

Cost before perks: $6 for ages 13+, $2 for ages 6-12, free parking and trail access

The kids recently visited 200-million-year-old dilophosaurus footprints at Dinosaur State Park, where you can visit indoor exhibits for free with the CT Parks Pass. (This is a physical pass that needs to be picked up and delivered back to the library.) The footprints are housed in a geodesic dome that also includes dino dioramas, crafts, and some live reptiles and amphibians. The adults loved it, but Twilight was a little disappointed that dinosaurs were extinct and weren’t there stomping around making the footprints.

Luckily, the nature trails outside the exhibit center are perfect for small legs, and they’re free to use without the pass. We saw a big (and completely harmless) water snake sunning itself near the marsh!

Overall, there are so many activities at each place that you really can’t go wrong with borrowing a pass. And even if your museum outing is more miss than hit, hey – at least it’s a few hours in which your kids aren’t pretending they’re Keith Moon and your living room is a Holiday Inn!

Why don’t all the passes give me free admission?

We would love to offer passes that grant free admission everywhere, but the museums set the terms for their passes and decide what they’re going to make available for libraries to purchase. Sometimes that’s free admission. Sometimes that’s just a discount. It all depends on the museum, but we always get the best discount we can!

Why doesn’t the library offer passes to Beardsley Zoo, Mystic Aquarium, or the Maritime Aquarium?

Good question! Unfortunately, the aquarium passes don’t really offer a good value for most patrons. (Think a percentage off a yearly membership, or a few dollars off if you purchase add-ons beyond general admission.) Instead of disappointing our patrons, we opt to get different passes with better discounts. As for the Beardsley Zoo, they changed their ordering process a couple years ago, and it doesn’t jive with the way we make purchases. However, we’re planning to add more animal-themed passes in 2026. Stay tuned!

What about the Peabody Museum? Why doesn’t the library offer a pass?

We don’t offer a Peabody Museum pass because it’s completely free! They gave it a major overhaul recently, and it’s a gorgeous space. Fossilized skeletons and plants are on the first floor, with minerals and animal dioramas on the third floor. Human history is exhibited on the second floor.

Want to spend more time doing free stuff in New Haven? Enjoy a drive or hike to the top of East Rock Park where you can look out over the city and Long Island Sound, or walk around the grounds of Edgerton Park, which also hosts Shakespeare performances in August and the CT Folk Fest in September. Older kids and adults will enjoy free museums such as the Yale Center for British Art, the Yale Art Gallery, and the Morris Steinert Collection of Musical Instruments (when it reopens to the public). Admission to the New Haven Museum is also free when you borrow our pass!

Plant Intelligence

/ Susan O. / Leave a comment

For thousands of years, Man considered himself the only sentient being in the universe, the only one capable of higher thought, understanding, and language and communication.

We now know that isn’t true. Higher primates, such as gorillas and chimps, are certainly capable of learning not only their own forms of communication, but American Sign Language as well. Dogs, it turns out, are capable of understanding human language at the level of a three year old human child, with some breeds (like German Shepherds) able to differentiate up to a thousand different words. We know that octopi can perform complex tasks (of their own planning, nonetheless), recognize people, and have a functional IQ of about 40. Dolphins and whales have complex languages and not only communicate, but show empathy.

Hence, many people choose not to eat animals, and dine only on plants.

But what about plants? What about their feelings?

Plants? What does a plant know? Corn has ears, but that doesn’t mean it’s listening.

Turns out, plants know more than you think. Plants have been caught communicating in numerous ways, understand when danger is near, and sympathize with other plants.

Yes, really.

This communication is known as phytosemiotics. One way is through chemical signals. A wounded plant will give off a volatile chemical compound (something you can smell) that other plants can sense. The receiving plant can then roll up its leaves or lean away. That wonderful fresh-cut grass smell we love in the summer? Yeah, that’s a hundred thousand blades of grass screaming in agony and warning other plants to beware that something is damaging them. Plants also communicate through ultrasonics – noises above our hearing range but which can be detected and recorded on audio equipment (ultrasonic vibration of 20–105 kHz). Some of this may be due to tiny air bubbles being released due to chemicals triggered during stress. Trees, it turns out, communicate under the soil as well, using certain types of fungi in the dirt to communicate through their roots. Are they discussing algebra? No. But they can tell each other about dangers, or fresh rain, or the pain of bark beetles, and other plants can ‘arm’ themselves accordingly. Just the sound of insects chewing can cause plants to release chemicals that deter insects (caffeine, by the way, exists in plants as a natural insect repellent).

Perhaps the Druids were on to something, thanking plants for sacrificing their leaves.

If that’s not weird enough, plants – even those without ears – apparently respond to music. Sure, houseplant lovers will tell you they’ve always known this, but numerous studies have turned up actual results. As early as 1962, studies showed that plants exposed to classical music had a 20% growth increase and a 72% increase in biomass over controls. Violins gave the best result. This was repeated by a Canadian researcher, with 66% increase in wheat yields using Bach’s violin sonatas. Duckweed, a water plant, exposed to Bandri’s Purple Butterfly, five hours a day for seven days at 60-70 decibels, showed a 10% increase in leaf growth and a slightly higher protein content compared to silent plants. Roses love violin music. Heavy metal tends to induce stress. Devendra Varol of the Institute of Integrated Study in India found that plants can not only distinguish between genres of music, but also nature sounds and traffic noises.

Oh, those poor weeds on the highway!

And while you laugh and scoff, know that in 2004 the TV show MythBusters attempted similar experiments in seven greenhouses. In their experience, Death Metal produced the best growth, second was classical, and third was positive spoken words. The silent greenhouse had the worst growth.

How can this possibly be?

The best theory is that the vibration of music may aid plants in transporting their nutrients more efficiently, shaking things through faster. 

Next time you pull a carrot, remember those mandrakes in Harry Potter shrieking piteously when pulled from the pot.

In the meantime, check out these books on the wisdom of plants, and be kind to your root-footed friends!

Finding the Mother Tree by Suzanne Simard

The Serviceberry by Robin Wall Kimmerer

Listen to the Language of Trees by Tera Kelley

Aromatherapy Garden by Kathi Keville

Secret Wisdom of Nature by Peter Wohlleben

Flora by Helen Fewster

The Light Eaters by Zoe Schlanger

I Heard There Was a Secret Chord: Music as Medicine by Daniel Levitin

Healing at the Speed of Sound by Don Campbell

How Shostakovich changed my mind by Stephen Johnson

Violin Music:

Shatter Me by Lindsey Stirling

David Garrett by David Garret

Vivaldi for Dummies

The Ultimate Most Relaxing Mozart in the Universe

The Library of Congress Needs Your Help!

/ Kristy / Leave a comment

I recently took a class on archives and manuscript management- as one does- and learned about a problem in the world of museums and archives. Many of them have large numbers of old documents they have scanned into their digital collections for preservation, but they’re not searchable. What do I mean by “searchable?” Let’s say you’re doing research online, looking for information on feral pigs in North America in the 19th century. Now, it turns out the Library of Congress had a bunch of letters donated to them that discuss precisely this, and you could read all about the problems Matilda had on her farm in Cheshire as she writes to Cletus in Middletown. Unfortunately, you’re not likely to find these letters by blindly sorting through the images that make up the archives’ massive collection. Those letters first need to be transcribed, where someone looks at the pictures taken of the letters and types what is written there. Once this text has been typed, the computer is able to match your search for “feral pigs, North America, 1800s” with the text that was entered via transcription.

Here’s the problem: it takes a lot of time to transcribe all those old historical records. The solution? You.

That’s right! There are all kinds of archives and other historical organizations looking for volunteers to transcribe and review old documents. What does this look like in action? Here’s an example from a transcription I did on the Library of Congress’s We the People website:

Above is an article written by Frederick Law Olmsted, the “father of landscape architecture in the United States,” best known for designing Central Park in New York City. Here, he enthuses about the “Lungs of London,” another term for London’s Royal Parks. Even within this brief two-page document, there is so much to sink your teeth into. He describes the necessity of public parks that do not exclude the working class:

Money, and their legs, will carry [genteel people] whither they will; but with the poor artisan or labouring man it is not so. He cannot afford time or means to set out with his wife and children on a Sunday voyage of discovery – and to find the shades of night, perhaps, falling around him just as he has succeeded in refreshing his eyes with a bit of anything green.

Poetic! And relevant 185 years later… When opening up a new document to transcribe, there’s no telling what you may find.

This kind of project is perfect for history buffs, puzzle hounds, those interested in volunteering their time, or anyone who has ever thought, “Gee, I bet I’d make a good code cracker.” Each organization has slightly different guidelines for transcription, so definitely peruse those before you get started. Generally, these institutions want to make it easy for volunteers to provide their help, so it doesn’t take more than a few minutes before you’re transcribing your first document.

Here are a few of my favorites:

The Library of Congress– Probably the quickest to get started, with the easiest-to-use interface. You don’t have to have an account to transcribe, but if you create one (it’s free), you can track your hours.

National Archives– Volunteers here are called “Citizen Archivists,” and have more options outside of straightforward transcription like their “Outside the Box Missions.” This one wins for coolest branding.

Historic New England– They’re focusing on transcribing the Casey Family Papers right now, and from what I can tell this is a family with decent handwriting, great for beginners.

There are also many other smaller institutions looking for transcription help, along with international archives. Try googling “archives transcription volunteers” or “digital transcription volunteers” if none of the above suggestions tickle your fancy.

Questions? Did you try it? What did you think?

Cheshire Grange Fair

/ Susan O. / Leave a comment

Did you know that the Grange has been a part of Cheshire since 1885? 

Did you know that the Grange system was founded by agricultural families in 1867, to help both the North and South recover from the terrible destruction of the Civil War? There are more than 240,000 members across the US, with more than 60 chapters in Connecticut alone.

So, outside of owning the building on Wallingford Road (where, last century, I used to take dance lessons), what exactly does the Grange do?  While there’s still some focus on agriculture, the modern Grange performs charitable community services for rural, suburban, and urban localities, and is open to everyone. Among the many community programs they run and support are Red Cross Blood Drives, quilts for AIDS babies, supporting Heifer International, gift baskets for the needy and elderly, school supplies, camperships, scholarships, equipment for police and fire departments, community education programs, and so much more. And of course, the annual Grange Fair – this year on August 21. 

See, the more people who enter – anything! – the more interesting your Grange Fair is. This is your community fair – and the more we support it, the better it is! (I’m tired of being the only entry in some categories. That’s just no fun.)

So dig through your treasures. Print that photo. Iron that placemat you made. Tuck the threads on that needlepoint you did during shutdown. Pick those tomatoes carefully. No effort is too “amateur,” so get moving and get your entry form in! 

There are a limited number of entry booklets available at the library and around town, or you can download them yourself from their website. 

Best of luck!

http://www.cheshiregrange.org/grangeagfair.asp