Adventures In Shelving

By William Peak

Adventures in Shelving offers a selection of William Peak’s popular library columns, originally published in The Star Democrat and reprinted here with that paper’s generous permission. At times humorous, at times wise, Peak’s writing is always thoughtful and entertaining. He gives us a living, breathing portrait of the people of Talbot County and the very special place where they come together to learn and better themselves: the Talbot County Free Library. All proceeds from the sale of Adventures in Shelving benefit the Talbot County Free Library and the people it serves.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu Publishing Services
• Release date: Sep 17, 2015
• ISBN: 9781483437491

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Copyright © 2015 Talbot County Free Library.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted by any means—whether auditory, graphic, mechanical, or electronic—without written permission of both publisher and author, except in the case of brief excerpts used in critical articles and reviews. Unauthorized reproduction of any part of this work is illegal and is punishable by law.

The staff and board of the Talbot County Free Library thank The Star Democrat—which originally published these columns—for graciously giving us permission to re-print them here. All proceeds from the sale of this book will go to support library programs.

Cover Art by Robert T. Horvath

ISBN: 978-1-4834-3750-7 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4834-3749-1 (e)

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Lulu Publishing Services rev. date: 09/16/2015

Contents

Peak’s Preface

Adventures in Shelving

The Library: Where Dreams Are Stored

For Kids of All Ages: the Library

The Library’s Secret Treasure Trove

The Library Makes Me Hungry

Summer’s Spell at the Library

Coming Soon to a Library Near You

The Books of Summer … the Library of Dreams

The Talbot County Free Cogitarium

The Library: Three Sketches from Life

Thinking Deep Thoughts About the Library

The Library’s Genius Loci

Murder Most Foul at the Library

Finding Each Other at the Library

The Ghosts of the Talbot County Free Library

The Wilds of the Talbot County Free Library

Romancing the Tome

The University of the Talbot County Free Library

Tomorrow Frequents the Library

Finding Your Story at the Library

The Library Comes Through in Thick and Thin

Small Matters at the Library

The World Visits Our Library

The Truth About Fiction at the Library

When People Gather at the Library

Learning to Listen at the Library

From Grace to Grace at the Library

Nature’s Children at the Library

Back to the Future at the Library

Playing Soccer at the Library

Telling Tales for the New Library

Old-Fashioned Virtues at the Library

Diving for Pearls at the Library

Of Mice and Men at the Library

The Easton Library Has Been Translated

Works of Consequence at the Library

Ambling Through the Easton Library

Parents Being Parents at the Library

A Child’s Summer at the Library

The Civil War Comes to the Library

An Indian Visits the Talbot County Free Library

Thinking about Labor Day at the Library

Glimpses of the Future at the Library

The Library: An American Place

A New Library Emerges From the Old

The Schools’ Library Connection

Reflections on Collections at the Library

Robert E. Lee Visits the Talbot County Free Library

Death Stalks the Library … Poetically

Back to the Future at the Library

Reading Across the Ages at the Library

Life at Child-Level in the New Easton Library

A Cellist Draws Fire at the Library

A Tale of Three Cigars at the Library

Tales from the Library’s Children’s Desk

Voices and Visions at the Library

The Library’s Prodigal Returns

The Art of Medicine at the Library

Something to Respect at the Library

Touching the Future at the Library

A User-Friendly Bard at the Library

Peregrine Lost, Peregrine Regained, at the Library

Passing the Torch at the Library

Tour Ante-Bellum Talbot County at the Library

A Fairy Tale Come True at the Library

The Library: Where the Future Begins

Meet a Natural Wonder at the Library

The Library Invites a Welsh Poet Home for Xmas

A Holocaust Survivor Visits the Library

A Farmer Pays a Visit to the Library

A Quiet Treasure Passes Through the Library

Find Your Dream Place at the Library

Humanity Celebrates a Birthday at the Library

The Library: On the Side of Angels

Prof. Plum with the Rope in the Library

Pick Your Story (Carefully) at the Library

A Tale of Two Countries at the Library

Finding Wisdom at the Library

Subversive Groups to Meet at Library!

Another Life Changed by the Library

A Christmas Wish from the Library

Dine with Lady Macbeth at the Library

Saying Good-Bye at the Library

Hear a Confession at The Library

In Praise of an Unknown Library Patron

This book is

dedicated to

the people of Talbot County

Peak’s Preface

When the library board told me they wanted to publish this collection of The Star Democrat’s library columns, I was, of course, pleased and flattered. But I was also a little concerned. Once one of my columns is written and the powers that be have signed off on it (i.e. the library’s director, its assistant director, and, most important, my wife), I tend to forget about the thing altogether and begin work immediately on the next column. I seldom re-read any of them. Would they, I now wondered, when brought together all in one place, hold up as a single work? Might not such a work’s narrative flag a bit, readers discovering that, once you’ve read one or two articles about life at the Talbot County Free Library, you already know all you need to know?

Which just goes to show that even the library guy can be blind to the power of this place he loves so.

Re-reading, for the first time in a long time, the contents of this book has reaffirmed my belief in the magic of our library, the diversity of its stories, the salt-of-the-earth goodness of its patrons. Every day something different happens here, every day someone discovers something they never knew before, every day countless personal journeys find their starting place here.

All of which is code for: I think you’re going to like this book. It says something good about our library and—more important still—it says something good about the community our library serves. We are a rich and varied people; we love our children unreservedly, we’re convinced the Eastern Shore is God’s own country, and we retain an unabashed and abiding faith in our friends and neighbors, an abiding faith in our ability, together, to build a better world.

This is the richness, the human strength and love that is celebrated in this book. You, the people of Talbot County, are its subject, for you are the lifeblood of this remarkable place we call the Talbot County Free Library. And so I thank you. It has been one of the great privileges of my life to write and work here. From the bottom of my heart, I thank you.

Bill Peak

Easton, Maryland

April 16, 2015

[This column was originally published in The Star Democrat on January 6, 2008]

Adventures in Shelving

I work at the Talbot County Free Library as a shelver. It’s my job to see that the books you return to the Library are restored quickly to their proper places on the shelves. As a shelver, I’m pretty much low-man on the totem pole. But I’m also essential. Without me, the library’s bookcases would soon be bare.

Of all the different kinds of books I work with—novels, oversize books, biographies, garden books, large-print books—I find children’s books the most difficult to shelve, so I like to begin my day with a cart full of these while I’m still feeling fresh and alert. But starting with children’s books also gives me a reason to look forward to work, because ... well ... children’s books mean the children’s section of the library.

I’ll never forget the first time I worked in the children’s section. I was busy trying to figure out where the Easy Reading books belonged when I noticed a tiny head bobbing along beside me at about knee-level. Fearful lest I tread upon a patron, I knelt down and found myself still towering over a child so small she was at the stage where she didn’t so much walk as teeter. Rocking unsteadily back and forth, clearly as surprised by my appearance as I had been by hers, she frowned and then, as if to introduce herself, held a board book up for my inspection. For the uninitiated, board books are books designed with thick cardboard pages for toddlers that really like to chew over anything they read.

Uncertain as to what was expected of a shelver in such a situation, I assumed a scholarly air, nodding to show I approved of her taste in literature. The little girl looked up at me as one might a distant, foreboding sky; then, quite suddenly, broke into a big, gummy smile. And from that point forward I knew I was going to love working in the children’s section.

Adult, non-fiction books come next. Working my way through a cart full of these, I sometimes find myself connecting unexpectedly with unknown and entirely absent patrons. Re-shelving a book called A Neiman Marcus Wedding on a Wal-Mart Budget, for instance, will make me feel big-hearted and hopeful, wishing the young couple a great day regardless of cost. While a book on some disease I’ve never heard of inevitably leaves me thinking about fate and how, even as I wander up and down the library’s aisles, somewhere out there someone in our community is struggling with something awful.

Once, I remember, very sadly, I found two books on my cart about how to deal with the death of a child. For the rest of the day I found myself anguishing over some mother and father whose names I will never know.

Thankfully though, most of the time, the books I shelve in non-fiction involve fairly innocent, everyday subjects. Still, even here, there’s the sense of a common experience, a shared humanity ... someone’s learning how to re-finish their furniture ... someone else wants to know how to train their puppy ... while still someone else is planning the perfect meal!

Among my favorite non-fiction books are those providing prospective parents with lists of names for their child. I once watched a family of immigrants with a decidedly Incan cast to their features pore over such a book as one might some ancient, indecipherable text. And doubtless today, somewhere in Talbot County, a child of the Altiplano is walking around with a name like Herbert or Suzanne.

These then are the musings, the findings, of a shelver. For me, the Talbot County Free Library is a very special place. Within its walls, from every walk of life, we come together as equals to study, to learn and advance as our founding fathers dreamed we would, to pursue our personal and very private notions of happiness.

With your indulgence then, I will be reporting from time to time over the coming year on some of the perfectly ordinary, perfectly extraordinary things it has been my privilege to see and experience as a shelver at the Talbot County Free Library.

[Originally published in The Star Democrat on February 6, 2008]

The Library: Where Dreams Are Stored

When I’m wheeling my cart around, returning books one by one to their shelves, there are really only two places in the library where I’m liable to find my way blocked by someone sitting on the floor. The first of these, naturally enough, is the juvenile section, where day in and day out the children of Talbot County stretch out upon our industrial grade wall-to-wall as upon a magic carpet, their imaginations in thrall to Beatrix Potter or Dr. Seuss or Laura Ingalls Wilder. The other place where people sitting on the floor regularly block my way is adult fiction.

Which, when you think about it, is kind of interesting.

I mean here we are, a society of supposedly hard-headed entrepreneurs and wage-earners—all of us, according to Adam Smith, thinking of little beyond the next dollar—yet again and again when we visit the library, we lose ourselves not in the 330s (personal finance/retirement planning), nor even the 650s (salesmanship), but fiction, the part of the library where not facts but fancy rules.

And truth be told, I don’t think this is such a bad thing. Indeed, I think it probably says something good about us as a community that, for all our work-a-day pragmatism, we still like to dream, still like to settle onto the floor like children, lose ourselves (or, maybe, find ourselves) in the great stories of our time.

But it isn’t always easy to reach the place where one can sit unself-consciously on the floor, immerse one’s self in make-believe. For between the carefree innocence of childhood and the mature self-confidence of age comes the tension and uncertainty of adolescence. A wise woman once told me that adolescence is a condition that begins around eleven or twelve years of age, and ends sometimes.

Yet hope springs eternal.

Even in August.

In August it is not at all uncommon to find a high school student wandering around the fiction section with a lost look on his face and a sheet of mimeographed paper in his hand. These are the saddest of kids, the ones who have just discovered that, all evidence to the contrary notwithstanding, their parents were actually right: summer will end, school will begin again (soon!), and they have yet to find, much less read, the books on their summer reading list.

In truth, these are some of my favorite patrons. When you ask one of these young people if they need help finding anything, they are almost always refreshingly honest. They will hand you the reading list their teacher gave them last spring as a foreign tourist seeking directions might hand you a map of Easton, hopeful, helpless, utterly dependent upon you to direct them to some strange, unheard-of place called The Snows of Kilimanjaro or A Room With A View.

This past summer I had the privilege of helping a young man look for his first copy of The Grapes of Wrath. When we discovered (as is often the case with these end-of-summer read-athons) that all our copies of Steinbeck’s classic had been checked out, the boy was unconcerned. Pointing at his sheet of paper as a husband might his wife’s grocery list, he said he’d been told he only needed one of the books printed on it as that was all his teacher said they had to read this summer.

So we found the next title on the list, the young man thanked me for my help, and then, doubtless already thinking about something else—his girl maybe, or maybe a trip to the Dairy Queen—he turned and began to walk away.

And my heart sank.

Catching up with him, I said, "Listen, The Grapes of Wrath, it’s a classic. It’s … I don’t know, it’s what America’s all about. You’ve got to promise me you won’t go through life without reading it at least once."

And to give him credit, the boy smiled politely and said he would. And who knows? Maybe he will. Maybe, someday, sitting on the floor in the Talbot County Free Library, that young man will join a family of Okies as they make their way across the Depression-era west, and like them, like Rose of Sharon, discover an abiding connection with all the people of this good earth.

[Originally published in The Star Democrat on March 9, 2008]

For Kids of All Ages: the Library

When I first began working at the library, I was