Interlude, June 6, 2025
- Mark Carl Rom
- Jun 9
- 9 min read
Days sober: 715
In my quest to visit all 373 public libraries in Massachusetts, on a cloudy and moist Friday morning I headed west to the remote and forested part of the Bay State with a map drawn to hit every library I could identify on my way out and back. Much of the time I was on very rural roads, the kinds with neither cell service nor traffic. I planned to spend two nights in Goldfinger, with no plan as to where I would stay.
I’m glad I was open to serendipity, as it tapped me on the shoulder right away. On last year’s adventure, I generally stopped only to take pictures of the library’s exterior. With more time now – I had the time last year, just chose not to take it – I thought I would conduct a more thorough visual documentation by taking interior photos of libraries housed in intriguing buildings.
After driving by the libraries in Weston, Sudbury, Maynard, and Stow, I decided to peek into the Bolton Public Library. I strolled in and began chatting with Tim, the Assistant Director, and he introduced me to Kelly, the Director. Within moments they had pulled local history books off the shelves and folders from their files in Kelly’s office, which had the nameplate “Boss Lady” on her desk.
The library was funded by a generous gift from Anna and Emma Whitney, who donated $10,000 for the construction of the beautiful Gothic building made of local Bolton stone. When Anna died, she left most of her estate to the library. At least the library thought it had. As it turns out, after the library made plans for spending that money a second, later, will written by Anna left no money to the library. Litigation ensued, of course.
More driving, more libraries, and more pictures of outers and inners: Clinton, Lancaster, Sterling, Hubbardston, Barre, Petersham, New Salem, and Shutesbury, a village of 1717 in Franklin County. It’s remote. In 2005, the Boston Globe ran a story calling Shutesbury one of America’s “Broadband Black Holes.” (ln 2017 Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker awarded Shutesbury a grant to fund high speed internet.) On a clear night one can see the stars because it’s actually dark there; Shutesbury has chosen not to install streetlights.
The town’s tiny library, all 768 square feet of it, with no running water and a large heating vent in the middle of the floor (“that spewed volcanic drafts up… and was known to melt patron's shoes if they stood in the wrong place for too long”) looks like a gingerbread house, although it bore the grand name of the M.N. Spear Memorial Library, the man who left $1571 to build a library when he died in 1902. Mary Clarke, the first part-time librarian (it was open only two hours each week), was the housekeeper of one of the town's selectmen.
It was 4.30 on a Friday afternoon, and I was surprised that the tiny library was still open. I parked my trusty steed Goldfinger by the only other car in the lot, and walked in.
Mary Anne Antonellis, the library’s director and only full-time staffer, was the driver of the other car. She was busy doing paperwork and yet graciously spoke with me almost until closing time. She’s been Director for 27 years and thought she had a few more years in her. She was justifiably proud of this library and gave me a full tour, which we could do without taking a single step. Things I saw:
A plastic container holding reading glasses, with the sign “Forget your glasses? Borrow these!” A bottle of hand sanitizer sits next to it.
A rack of personal flotation devices (aka life vests).
The coat hooks inside the front door that appeared to be original.
An antique clock on the wall, there since the library opened in 1902, that does not keep time.
When I commented on the reading glasses, Mary Anne told me about things the library (well, she) does, like providing those glasses to the forgetful. During Covid, tests were not available locally, so she would drive to Amherst, about 20 minutes away, and pick up as many of them as she could. She would then personally deliver them to those who needed them. She has three part-time staffers, and was delighted that they were “young people.”
I told Mary Anne about my book project, and she answered that she was already in a book. She pulled it, This Is What a Librarian Looks Like, from the shelf and thumbed through it to find the right pages (84-89). This is What contains many portraits of librarians; the one of Mary Anne shows her posing with a kayak paddle by the library’s two public-use computers.
Why a kayak paddle? The story goes beyond what Mary Anne had told me. In 2013 Mary Anne had heard that Redbox (you’ve seen their video rental kiosks outside of groceries and pharmacies) had a grant opportunity for turning underused outdoor spaces into ones that benefited the community. She applied for one to turn an essentially abandoned public beach on Lake Wyola – the state had opened a new beach across the lake – into a kayaking center. Redbox was on board, and gave Mary Anne/Shrutesbury enough money to buy three kayaks, a rack to store them on, and some outdoor furniture so that, as the authors of This Is put it, “people can sit by the lake and watch those responsible individuals with no library fines as well as the good sense to plan ahead [to reserve a kayak] paddle around.” The kayaks are stored at the lake and the flotation devices on the walls of the Spears library.
Before highspeed internet and cable TV came to town, the town’s residents relied heavily on the library’s DVD collection (and so good for Redbox to give a grant to a librarian who is, in some ways, a competitor). As the library has only two computer stations, three chairs, and no tables to work on, it seems that those seeking wifi just sit in their cars outside and connect to the library’s WiFi there.
The paperwork she was doing when I arrived involved the construction of a new library, about a half mile away. That this village is getting a new library is a small miracle. In 2012, the village voted on whether to raise the funds for this library and, even though Mary Anne had worked hard to persuade the townsfolk of its necessity, it failed at the ballot box by a single vote, in a contested election. This Is is worth quoting at length here:
The state of Massachusetts offered $2.1 million if the town could provide $1.4 million in matching funds, paid over twenty years. But the proposed tax burden of about eighty dollars a year per household set Shutesbury into a frenzy of acrimony and hatred that turned neighbor on neighbor in a way historically rarely seen on the same side of the Mason-Dixon Line. Residents devolved into their basest selves, and town meetings into furious internecine battles. So vituperous and contentious was the rhetoric that the elementary school principal forbade students to discuss it.
"What a bunch of dopes!" said one commentator on the news website MassLive.com, encapsulating what many people believed about libraries. "They most [sic] live in the Fifties...Or are they ignorant of the digital revolution! Ebooks [sic] Readers don't need a shelf!! Maybe they wanted a meeting place for yoga and basket weaving. Put up a tent!"?
The library does indeed offer yoga classes, as well as live animal programs, science demonstrations, picnics, book clubs, and nature walks led by botanists. [Note: Mary Anne told me that, pre-Covid, the yoga classes would be held in a musty basement of another building and would be held three times a week because the space was so limited in that building and there was absolutely no room in the library. During Covid, the yoga classes went virtual, along with everything else.] The proposed library space would also have included a public meeting room, which the town lacks; the fractious assemblies discussing the new library had to be held in-the school gymnasium.
Whether or not the town would borrow the $1.4 million, build a library, and raise everyone's taxes hinged on a single vote held in January 2012. With 74 percent of the eligible voters coming out to cast a ballot (16.5 percent higher than the percentage of Americans who cast a vote in the presidential election that same year), the result was an unbelievable and excruciating tie: 522-522, with a single uncounted provisional ballot cast by a voter without ID.
Citizens retreated to their corners, licked their wounds, and sharpened their spears. When the provisional ballot was authenticated and opened, library supporters let out a cheer: The library had won by a single vote, 523-522. Opponents immediately filed a lawsuit challenging the legitimacy of eight ballots; library supporters filed a countersuit, challenging three ballots of their own. After a flurry of legal activity that kept local journalists furiously turning pencils into sawdust for months, judges finally threw out two of the yes votes, making the vote 521-522 against the library with no time left for an appeal.
Kayak lovers scrambled to raise the money themselves, with the help of a viral video that was shared by some high-profile bibliophiles, including novelist Cory Doctorow and comedian Paula Poundstone, but it was too late. As the deadline approached, the proposal for a new library was DOA.
When the dust cleared, library supporters wiped up the blood, counted their blessings, and planned for the long game. The money they raised independently is in the bank, and the town has appropriated twenty-five thousand dollars a year for them every year since to save for a new building. There's also a new round of grant funding applications coming up in a few years, and they'll give it another shot.
The story might not yet be over, yet the finish looks promising. Mary Anne told me that a fundraising effort has raised some $750,000 in donations and pledges, a huge amount for an area that is not Berkshire rich. Mary Anne applied for a multi-million dollar state grant, and got it. A foundation is chipping in a goodly sum. Now, she is working hard to ensure every aspect of the construction is done according to the plans, and this requires a lot of paperwork. She said he expects the library to open by November, 2025. I hope to be there.
I was reluctant to leave the library because it and Mary Anne were so delightful, yet closing time was approaching and earlier I had received flash flood warnings for the area. Shortly after getting into my car, the hells opened up and the flood crashed down. Whether it was the weather or not I lost cell phone service and therefore my GPS. The intersections had street signs, which were of no use to me. I knew that if I drove north and west I would eventually come across either an Interstate or a town, so that’s what I did, in one of the few times that the compass on my rearview mirror gave me useful information.
I arrived in Greenfield, a town that was not on my itinerary, before 6 p.m. Magpie Pizza was just down the street and it had good reviews, so I slipped in. Every table was full so, gulp, I sat at the bar. I was relieved to see that the bar menu had a healthy list of mocktails, and I ordered the (non-alcoholic) Lime Rickey.
My recovery group does not prohibit its participants from going into bars. It simply suggests that you go into them if you have a specific reason for doing so: for example, that a reception you need to attend is held there. Hunger was my reason, so I took a seat.
A family of four was sitting at the corner – the boy was still wearing his baseball uniform, after a practice or game that most likely got rained out – and we exchanged pleasantries. The woman was eating a small pizza and it looked yummy. I ordered a margherita pizza and, when it came, it was huge. (I learned that gluten-free pizzas are small; gluten-rich pizzas are large.) About the time I took my first bite, having nursed my Rickey while the cheese cooled, Sharon sat down next to me. Knowing that I couldn’t eat the whole thing, and that I didn’t have a cooler in my car, I offered her half, which she gratefully accepted. We chatted a bit (“Where are you traveling?” “What brought you to Greenfield?”) before I learned that she was a poet.
I learned this because she invited me to a poetry reading at Looky Here, “a thrift store for art supplies, an art gallery, a workshop space, a community risograph print shop, and an artbook press,” at 7 p.m. So I went. I seemed to fit in ok, as I do have an earring, some tattoos, and my new Shutesbury baseball cap. The guy I sat next to was, you know, just a local guy who had come back home after teaching architecture history in Paris for two decades. Four poets read, and I’m guessing I enjoyed their poems much more in this setting than if I had simply read them. The final poet, who reminded me of my niece Zoë, read her “Stay” which lists all the reasons why her friend should not commit suicide. It was beautiful.
This was a day for me full of wonder and joy, far beyond what I had expected, if I had expectations. Thank you, serendipity.
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