History

Titanic Remembrance Day – April 15 2015

/ Linda / Leave a comment

the-rms-titanicAt 11:40 PM the night of April 14, 1912 the ‘unsinkable’ RMS Titanic, while on its maiden voyage from Southhampton, England to New York City, hit an iceberg causing the ship to sink on April 15th at 2:20 AM 400 miles from the coast of Newfoundland, Canada.  This tragic event has long captured the titanic-bow-615attention of millions of people, reaching a pinnacle with the discovery of the ship’s remains on the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean in 1985 by Dr. Robert Ballard.  One thousand five hundred lives were lost, almost two-thirds of the people on board.

Some interesting facts:

  • Cost to build – $7,500,000
  • Number of passengers and crew on board that night – 2,223.  There were 13 honeymoon couples.
  • Food on board – 2200 lbs of coffee, 1000 loaves of bread, 16,000 lemons, 40 tons of potatoes, 10001364639539_titanic-sinking lbs of grapes, 36000 lbs of apples, 2500 lbs of sausages, 75000 lbs fresh meat, 40,000 eggs, 1000 bottles of wine, and 8000 cigars.
  • First class accommodations cost $4,350 (today’s value $69,900).
  • Lifeboats – could accommodate 64, was designed for 48, only 20 actually built.  These 20 could hold 1178 people total.
  • There were 6 ice warnings before collision.
  • The iceberg they hit was 100 feet tall and came from Greenland.
  • It took 160 minutes to sink.
  • It took 15 minutes for it to reach the bottom of the ocean.
  • There was a 60 minute delay between the collision and when the first lifeboat launched.
  • Musicians played for 2 hours and 5 minutes as the ship sank.
  • Two of nine dogs were rescued – a Pomeranian and a Pekinese.
  • Milton Hershey, founder of Hershey Chocolates, cancelled his reservation at the last minute due to business matters.
  • Only 306 bodies were found.

Every year in April, people take time to remember the sinking of The Titanic and the lives lost.  To learn more about this tragedy, you can browse the library’s collection of materials here. 

 

Our Patrons Pick Their Favorite Books of 2014

/ Linda / Leave a comment

IMG_6798-0For the last several years, The Department of Human Services of Cheshire has had a mitten tree in the library’s lobby, requesting the public to donate holiday gifts for needy girls and boys.  Our patrons have always been very generous and we thank you very much!

This year, after the gifts were gathered up to be delivered, we turned the mitten tree into ‘what was your favorite book of 2014′ tree.

Here’s what you said:

Children:

bestof2014kids

 

Adult:

bestof2014adult

 If you don’t see your title here, there were a few mittens that we could not decipher.

 

 

Susan’s Picks from 2014

/ Susan O. / Leave a comment

I feel terrible for only squeezing in 27 books this year, a new low for me, but considering I wrote or edited three books in between, I don’t feel so bad. I am an unforgivable nerd, wallowing in science, history, psychology, and biography to the point I read almost no fiction at all anymore. I feel bad when people ask me to recommend something and I have no clue what to offer because the last really good book I read was on the histology of Ebola, or they’re looking for romance recommendations and my idea of a great romance is the novelization of Raiders of the Lost Ark. Here are the best and worst I read this year, not counting a reread of Chris Wooding’s Retribution Falls, which I love so much I gave out ten copies at Christmas:

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Jacket.aspxThe Riddle of the Labyrinth: the Quest to Crack an Ancient Code, by Margalit Fox. Fox covers the work by Michael Ventris, who eventually untangled the mystery of the early Greek/Mycenean Linear B glyphs, but spends much of the book discussing Alice Kober’s work, so much of it uncredited yet without which Ventris would not have succeeded. When Kober – who spent the majority of her life working on the syllabary – dies just a year before the pieces fall into place, you want to cry for her. If you love a good detective novel – this is a true story that shook the history world. (I warned you about the nerdism).

#detroit
Detroit: An American Autopsy, by Charlie LeDuff. An incredible book about the decay of Detroit, a city so far gone America has forgotten it exists, while the people still try to survive in a place without – well, anything. No jobs, no police, no grocery stores, and most recently, no water. Made me incredibly angry to see America left to rot like this.

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WJacket.aspxho Discovered America? by Gavin Menzies. Ever read a book that makes you feel like you woke up on an alien world, that everything you were ever told about history was wrong? This book takes Thor Heyerdahl to a whole new level, pointing out overwhelming scientific evidence that Asian, African, and European peoples were routinely coming to America long before Columbus was born. Utterly fascinating. Even if Menzies is only 10% right, it still changes everything we know about history. Easy to read, and you won’t be able to put it down.

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#nkorea
Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in Northern Korea, by Barbara Demick. This book is so touching and so sad, you cannot help but be moved by people who have so little control over their lives that even their food and clothing is doled out by the government, and if they say you will starve, then you starve, because they will not give you more. People risking death to swim to China, or pay for an underground railroad to South Korea, where they have extreme culture shock that defies the propaganda they have been fed for generations. Hate the leader, but love the people. I love Gavin Menzies, but I think this gets my vote for Best Book of the Year.

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deafI Can Hear You Whisper: An Intimate Journey Through the Science of Sound and Language, by Lydia Denworth. Denworth’s youngest son is born profoundly deaf; this is her story not only of trying to decide how to educate him (as a lip-reader, a signer, or hearing w/ a cochlear implant). Interspersed with her journey is the science behind hearing and language, and the history of deafness, and it is utterly fascinating how much hearing and learning are interconnected, and why many deaf people never read beyond a fourth-grade level.

#tink

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Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, by John LeCarré. I needed to read a couple of spy novels as research for a book I was writing. Every list I looked at said this was the best. I have no doubt they are right. A spy novel that will keep you guessing until the very end, it makes James Bond look like a pampered fool. Very British, but very, very good.

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boyWorst book I read this year? There were a couple of stinkers, but I think the worst I read was The Boy Detective: A New York Childhood, by Roger Rosenblatt. I don’t care how many awards he’s gotten. I almost never abandon a book half-way through, but I just couldn’t finish this. It has a boy, and he’s in New York, but the rest is just a single run-on sentence of chapterless rambling. You know how your brain wanders foggy from topic to topic when you’re lying in bed half asleep? That’s this book. I read some clunkers, but I made it to the end of them. This one I couldn’t get past 50 pages. No, thank you.

 

What did you like/dislike this year?

Celebrate Martin Luther King, Jr. Day with Knowledge and Service

/ Sharon Tyler / Leave a comment
January 19, 2015 is Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. In 1994 Congress designated MLK day as a day of service. The MLK Day of Service is the only federal holiday observed as a national day of service. It calls for Americans to work together in order to provide solutions to our most pressing national problems. To learn more about the day check out the official website here.

The titles below include children’s books about Dr. King, fiction and nonfiction books about ordinary people who stand up for what’s right, and stories about helping others and giving back. Then there is a list of books about volunteering, to help choose what avenues we each might want to take in volunteering or service. No matter the day, helping out in the community is rewarding for the volunteer and those it helps. So even if you cannot participate on the designated day, maybe a book can help in finding something you can be passionate about or enjoy while serving the community.

People Who Made a Difference:

1. Child of the Civil Rights Movement by  Paula Young Shelton. A daughter of civil rights activist Andrew Young describes her experiences of growing up in the Deep South at the height of the movement, sharing her witness to the efforts of her father, family friend Martin Luther King, Jr. and thousands of others who participated in the historic march from Selma to Montgomery.

 

2. March On!: The Day My Brother Martin Changed the World by Christine King Farris.Having led thousands in a march for civil rights to the foot of the Lincoln Memorial on August 28, 1963, Martin Luther King, Jr. made the most of the historical moment by giving a speech that would forever inspire people to continue to fight for change in the years ahead.

3. Through My Eyes by Ruby Bridges. Provides the first-hand factual account of the six-year-old student who made history by having been one of the first black children to attend an all-white, segregated school in the 1960s.

4.Sit-in: How Four Friends Stood Up by Sitting Down by Andrea Davis Pinkney. A picture book celebration of the
50th anniversary of the momentous Woolworth’s lunch counter sit-in, when four college students staged a peaceful protest that became a defining moment in the struggle for racial equality and the growing Civil Rights Movement.

More books on civil rights and how individuals affect change include:The Story of Ruby Bridges by Robert Coles,  I Am Rosa Parks by Rosa Parks, Heroes for Civil Rightsby David A. Adler, Ida B. Wells: Mother of the Civil Rights Movement by Dennis Brindell Fradin and Judith Bloom Fradin, Freedom Riders: John Lewis and Jim Zwerg on the Front Lines of the Civil Rights Movementby Ann Bausum, My Country, ’tis of Thee: How One Song Reveals the History of Civil Rights by Claire Rudolf Murphy, Miles to Go for Freedom: Segregation and Civil Rights in the Jim Crow Yearsby Linda Barrett, The Girl From the Tar Paper School: Barbara Rose Johns and the Advent of the Civil Rights Movement by Teri Kanefield, and Free at Last?: The Civil Rights Movement and the People Who Made Itby Fred Powledge. 

Inspiration to Serve:

1. 50 Ways to Save our Children: Small, Medium & Big Ways You Can Change a Child’s Lifeby Cheryl Saban.Describes how to make a difference in a child’s life, including collecting toys for homeless shelters, donating books to schools and libraries, volunteer work, charitable donations, and starting a scholarship fund.

2. Teens With The Courage to Give: Young People who Triumphed over Tragedy and Volunteered to Make a Difference by Jackie Waldman. Thirty young people tell their stories of overcoming hardship to become volunteers in this inspiring look at a national trend among teenagers.

3. Our Day to End Poverty: 24 Ways You Can Make a Difference by Shannon Daley-Harris and Jeffrey Keenan, with Karen Speerstra.Imagine ending poverty at home and around the globe in our own lifetimes. Imagine your actions combining with others; actions to make poverty history. With originality and imagination, this book invites us to look at our very ordinary days, from waking up in the morning to going to bed in the evening, and to begin to think about poverty in new and creative ways. “Our Day to End Poverty” is organized into 24 “hour/chapter” segments.  Each chapter connects with your day, from breakfast to bedtime, relating these steps to ending poverty to our daily routines. Some times a problem gets to be so big, we feel there is nothing we can do about it. “Our Day to End Poverty” reminds us that if we all do just a little, a lot can get done.

  4. Giving: How Each of us Can Change the World by Bill Clinton. Compiling anecdotes about the diverse charitable efforts of the famous and non-so-famous, the former president looks at the positive influence of such work in every corner of the world and examines the profound benefits of working for the good of others for all humankind.
Looking for more inspiration? Try checking out The Promise of a Pencil: How an Ordinary Person Can Create Extraordinary Change by Adam Braun, Give a Little: How Your Small Donations Can Transform Our World by Wendy Smith, Immersion Travel USA: The Best and Most Meaningful Volunteering, Living, and Learning Excursions by Sheryl Kayne, Green Volunteers: The World Guide to Voluntary Work in Nature Conservation edited by Fabio Asuneda, Volunteering: The Ultimate Teen Guide by Kathlyn Gay, In a Heartbeat: Sharing the Power of Cheerful Giving by Leigh Anne and Sean Tuohy with Sally Jenkins, The Busy Family’s Guide to Volunteering: Do Good, Have Fun, Make a Difference as a Family! by Jenny Friedman, Volunteer Vacations: Short-term Adventures that will Benefit You and Others by Bill McMillon, Doug Cutchins, and Anne Geissinger, or Volunteering: A How-to Guide by Audrey Borus.

Three Holidays to Celebrate, Three Shows to Binge Watch

/ Lauren / Leave a comment

There are sparkly decorations everywhere, peppermint mochas are appearing at the coffee shop, and your mailbox is crammed with ads for door-buster sales. Yep, it’s the season for the gift-giving celebrations of Christmas and Hanukkah! But you don’t have to belong to any religion to have some fun this season. Here are a few cultural holidays that anyone can enjoy, along with television series to watch for hours on end while you’re off from work and school.

December 23

Festivus

Way back in December of 1997, millions of Seinfeld fans tuned in to watch the episode “The Strike” and were introduced to Festivus, a made-up holiday celebrated by Frank Costanza as a rebellion against the commercialism of Christmas. Fast forward to the present, and lots of people have taken to celebrating Festivus in their homes, dorms, and workplaces. The common rituals of Festivus are as follows:

1) Displaying the Festivus Pole – an unadorned aluminum pole. (You can actually buy these online!)
2) A celebratory Dinner – make anything you like, as long as it’s celebratory.
3) Airing of Grievances – this takes place immediately after dinner is served. Participants take turns complaining about how everyone has disappointed them in the past year.
4) Feats of Strength – after dinner, the head of the household selects a person to challenge to a wrestling match. Festivus officially ends when the head of the household is pinned.

Fun fact: Festivus actually goes back to 1966 when Seinfeld writer Dan O’Keefe’s father first instituted the tradition to celebrate an anniversary, and the family continued to celebrate it whenever Papa O’Keefe felt like it. Instead of an aluminum pole they had a clock in a bag, and they shared a Pepperidge Farm cake decorated with M&Ms

Binge Watch: Seinfeld. What else?

December 26

Boxing Day

Maybe you’ve seen Boxing Day on your wall calendar and had no idea what it was. Let’s Return Unwanted Gifts Day? A fisticuffs tournament over the last piece of pie? Nope! It’s a holiday in Great Britain and almost every place the British settled, except for the U.S. Nobody is sure where the name originated, though some believe it comes from the alms boxes set up in churches during the Advent season (which were then broken open and distributed on the 26th), or from the gift boxes presented to servants who had to work on Christmas but had the following day off.

Whatever purpose it once had, Boxing Day is now a relaxing day off to visit relatives, sit around and eat leftovers, and watch soccer. Among the wealthy, fox hunting used to be a popular Boxing Day activity before the practice was banned in 2004. Those with disposable income now hunt for bargains instead – it has become a huge shopping day, comparable to our Black Friday.

Binge Watch: If you’re not going to tune in to one of 10 Premier League games, pick up a Blu-Ray of The Paradise, a BBC series following a shop girl in Britain’s first department store.

December 26-January 1

Kwanzaa

Born out of the Black nationalist movement, Kwanzaa is a relatively young holiday, created in 1966 by Black Studies professor and activist Maulana Karenga as a way for African American to celebrate their heritage and connect to their community. It fuses elements from numerous African cultures – the term Kwanzaa derives from the Swahili phrase “matunda ya Kwanza” or “first fruits of the harvest,” and draws from the harvest celebrations of the Ashanti, Yoruba, Ibo, and other West African tribes (from which most African Americans have descended). There’s feasting and singing, of course, but the most important part of Kwanzaa is celebration of the seven principles – things like creativity and self-determination – that are represented by lighting one candle each night of the holiday.

Kwanzaa reached its height in the 1980s and 1990s, and about 2% of the U.S. population celebrates the holiday today. However, Americans of any heritage can set out a kinara on the mantle and celebrate our country’s diverse history.

Binge Watch: Roots, Alex Haley’s award-winning exploration of his family’s background.

 

Which holidays are you celebrating this year?