Iowa-born and Boston-based Author Michelle Hoover Will Read from Her Acclaimed Second Novel, "Bottomlands," on Tuesday, May 3rd, at 6:30 PM at the South End Library

Poster design courtesy of Mary Owens

Michelle Hoover will be at the South End library on Tuesday, May 3rd, at 6:30 PM, to read from  her second novel, Bottomlands. Hoover's first, The Quickening, was set set in America’s rural heartland in the early 20th century. Bottomlands plays out in the same region, but takes place after the First World War, a time of strong anti-German sentiments. It is the story of the German-American Hess family whose four siblings struggle to survive as farmers in tough times while grieving for the loss of their mother and trying to piece together why their two teenage sisters vanished in the middle of a night. According to an interview with the author in DeadDarlings,Bottomlands takes from the shards of a legend in her own family, as did her earlier, critically acclaimed book, The Quickening. The Boston Globe review described Bottomlands as a “potent new novel” with much contemporary resonance and “enough mastery to justify comparisons to Willa Cather.” The Quickeningis based on a great-grandmother’s journal and describes an unlikely friendship between two women in a time of harsh economic realities. In addition to being shortlisted for the Flaherty-Dunnan First Novel Prize, it was a Massachusetts Book Award "Must Read" pick. Hoover is the Fannie Hurst Writer-in-Residence at Brandeis University and teaches at GrubStreet, where she leads the Novel Incubator program. She is a 2014 NEA Fellow and has been a Writer-in-Residence at Bucknell University, a MacDowell Fellow, and a winner of the PEN/New England Discovery Award. Born in Iowa, she lives in Boston.

The South End Library is fully handicapped accessible. Seating is limited. The event is free. Books will be available for purchase, signing by the author, and borrowing.

A Rescheduled, Free, Eight-week Poetry Workshop with Poet and Master Teacher Barbara Helfgott Hyatt Starts Monday, April 25 at 2:00 PM for Adults Aged 55 or Older at the South End Library

Poet Barbara Helfgott Hyatt will teach a free workshop at the South End library starting April 25.

A rescheduled poetry workshop is coming to the South End branch on Monday, April 25 at 2:00 PM, with an eight-week program taught by Barbara Helfgott Hyatt. The award-winning poet, professor and public lecturer will teach poetry to both beginning and experienced poets, aged 55 and over, on Mondays, with a final Poetry Reading event on Monday, June 20 at 2:30 PM. Sponsored by the BPL and a National Leadership Grant from the US Department of Museums and Libraries, the AARP, and other organizations interested in supporting and benefitting America’s seniors, the program is limited to 15 people, and free to all. The workshops will demonstrate participants how to review the elements of a poem, the many forms a poem can take, and the various ways of editing a poem. The students will read, write and share their poetry every week. Registration is required: contact Anne Smart at smart@bpl.org, or call 617 536-8241.

According to her web site, Helfgott Hyatt has published five poetry collections, including In Evidence: Poems of the Liberation of Nazi Concentration Camps, which was selected Booklist’s Editor’s Choice. Other collections, including The Tracks We Leave: Poems on Endangered Wildlife of North America and Rift, were widely reviewed. Her poems and essays have appeared in dozens of magazines including the New Republic, the Nation, the Hudson Review, the Massachusetts Review, Agni, Ploughshares, the Women’s Review of Books, and in over 30 anthologies. She is the recipient of two Massachusetts Artists in Poetry fellowships, the New England Poetry Club’s Gertrude Warren Prize, the Herman Melville Commemorative Poetry Prize, fellowships at Yaddo, the Wurlitzer Foundation, and Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and many other prizes and grants, including a Brother John Fellowship for Excellence in the Arts, awarded by the Boston Foundation in 2009.

Helfgott Hyett has taught English at the Teachers as Scholars program at Harvard, MIT, Trinity College, and Boston University, where she won the Sproat Award for Excellence in Teaching English. As a poet-in the-schools, she has served over 200 communities and was artist-in-residence at the MFA and the Fuller Art Museums. She is currently the director of PoemWorks, the Workshop for Publishing Poets, in Brookline, MA, which was named “One of the Best Workshops in Boston” by the Boston Globe.

"The South End Writes" Continues with Romance Novelist Saundra MacKay (April 12), Followed by Ross Terrill (4/26); Michelle Hoover (5/3); Monica Collins (5/3) and Jenna Blum (6/24)

Saundra MacKay, a long-time South End resident who describes herself as a former “fat child,” will talk about her debut romance novel, The Measure of Love on Tuesday, April 12 at 6:30 PM. A devotee of the romance novel, MacKay, who holds a gradual degree in education with an emphasis on social justice, hopes to start a conversation about the prevalence of size-intolerance as demonstrated by, among other things, the lack of full-sized heroines in romance publishing. The Measure of Love is the story of Vanessa, a career woman who finds herself in a body the voluptuous size of which she senses is not particularly valued in our slim-obsessed modern society, but who is nevertheless juggling the love interests of two very different men. Find out what the author, who grew from a plus-sized teen into a large-sized adult, has to say about what she describes as “the mystique and splendor” of the women of size of today, and feel free to weigh in with tales of your own.

What Does China Want? you may have asked yourself, watching the latest military and economic developments involving America’s second-most-important trading partner (after Canada) and not-infrequent political adversary. Renowned China specialist Ross Terrill will be at the South End library on April 26 to talk about what he calls The China Challenge, and touch upon the latest conundrums posed by the once-locked-away empire that is now deeply intertwined in the global culture. Terrill, a South End resident, is the author of innumerable articles and many books, including The Chinese Empire; Biography of Mao; China in Our Time: The Epic Saga of the People’s Republic from the Communist Victory to Tiananmen Square and Beyond; Madame Mao; and  The New Chinese Empire –winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in 2004. A Research Associate at Harvard’s Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies, Terrill was a contributing editor at The Atlantic Monthly in the 1970s, when he won the National Magazine Award for Reporting Excellence and the George Polk Memorial Award for Outstanding Magazine Reporting for writings on China. Raised in rural Australia, he also also wrote The Australians. He has visited China almost every year for many years; within China, his biography of Mao, in Chinese translation, has sold more than 1.5 million copies. Terrill has recently been visiting professor at the University of Texas, Austin, and at Monash University in Australia.

michelle hoover

Michelle Hoover’s two novels, The Quickening and Bottomlands, are both set in America’s rural heartland in the early 20th century. She will discuss them in a talk at the library on May 3. The Quickening, based on a great-grandmother’s journal, describes an unlikely friendship between two women in a time of harsh economic realities. In addition to being shortlisted for the Flaherty-Dunnan First Novel Prize, it was a Massachusetts Book Award Must Read pick. Her latest, Bottomlands, is the story of a German-American family living in Iowa after the First World War, a time of strong anti-German sentiments. Struggling to survive as farmers, they are trying to piece together why their two teenage daughters vanished in the middle of a night. Hoover is the Fannie Hurst Writer-in-Residence at Brandeis University and teaches at GrubStreet, where she leads the Novel Incubator program. She is a 2014 NEA Fellow and has been a Writer-in-Residence at Bucknell University, a MacDowell Fellow, and a winner of the PEN/New England Discovery Award. Born in Iowa, she lives in Boston.

Or is it the reverse? You can find out May 31 at the library. Monica Collins is The Dog Lady whose columndog lady, Ask Dog Lady, appears in many publications, including The South End News, Cleveland’s Plain Dealer, The Cambridge Chronicle and Salem News. A former staff writer for USA Today, TV Guide, and The Boston Herald, Collins writes on her web site that she changed her journalistic focus from TV critic to lifestyle columnist after she acquired a West Highland white terrier. She has answered pet owners’ most confounding questions involving relationships, dog park etiquette, divorce, custody complications, and whether the dog belongs in your marital (or single) bed. One reader wanted to know why an earlier advice-seeker should not have mentioned in a job interview that the garment she was wearing that day had been knit from her dog’s hair (yes, you guessed it: Too much information). With annual pet spending reaching close to $60 billion a year and American households owning almost 60 million dogs, Collins is barking down from the right tree, no doubt, and you can bark up hers at the library to receive her typically compassionate, intelligent and culturally resonant answers to your canine questions.

Jenna Blum, the acclaimed author of the award-winning New York Times bestseller, Those Who Saved Us (2004), and The Stormchasers (2010) will talk about her latest work on June 24. It is a novella called The Lucky One, published in the new anthology coming out in June, called Grand Central. A collection of stories related to the Holocaust by ten bestselling female writers, Blum’s contribution was one she had been reluctant to write as it meant returning to the subject of the Holocaust. She says on her web site that the research and writing of Those Who Saved Us, which explored how non-Jewish Germans dealt with the Holocaust, was a searing experience. But she remembered one story she had heard when she worked for the Steven Spielberg Survivors of the Shoah Foundation, where she interviewed Holocaust survivors. It had struck a cord with her, she said, and became the genesis for The Lucky One. It is set, like each of the stories in the anthology, on the same day in Grand Central Terminal right after the Second World War. Blum’s successful writing career began when she was fourteen, and her first short story won a third prize when it was published in Seventeen Magazine. Another short story, The Legacy of Frank Finklestein, won first prize two years later. Since that time, Blum’s work has been featured in Faultline, The Kenyon Review, The Bellingham Review, Glamour, Mademoiselle, and The Improper Bostonian. Blum has taught creative writing and communications writing at Boston University, was the editor at Boston University’s AGNI literary magazine for four years, and led fiction and novel workshops for Grub Street Writers in Boston since 1997.

A Book Talk by Professor Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot about "Exits: The Endings that Set us Free" Brings on Questions about Youth Violence, Parents' Fears and How to Console Grieving Children

When Professor Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot returned to the South End library for another one of her popular talks in early March, the subject was how we leave, exit, depart or retreat from our daily interactions, whether personal, professional, or merely neighborly. Author of the 2012 Exits: The Endings that Set Us Free, Lawrence-Lightfoot told her audience that she had always been curious about leave-takings, large and small. "Our culture applauds beginnings," she said , favoring a "tilt to the future" and a "readiness to seize opportunity." Exits are therefore seen as "negative spaces," as a "time to move on," often in the dark of night.

Lawrence-Lightfoot in discussion with a member of the audience

The long-time South End resident, who holds the Emily Hargroves Fisher Endowed Chair of Education at Harvard University where she has been on the faculty since 1972, finds the culture's disregard for exits "troublesome."  Especially because, she says, we have a society where leaving is so prevalent, as evidenced by a divorce rate of fifty percent, and so many immigrants who had to leave much behind. "The history of the United States is defined by  leave-takings," Lawrence-Lightfoot pointed out, "by the slaves' and native Americans' forced departures," as well as by other forces, often beyond our control, like economic crises or global and natural disasters.

FOSEL board member Kim Clark introducing Professor Sara Lawrence Lightfoot

Lawrence-Lightfoot, the recipient of many prestigious prizes and awards and the author of ten books, said she is intrigued by the ordinary, daily exits as well as bigger ones, such as the rupture of friendships, the departure of children for college. She said when her own son, now 33 and "a strapping handsome black man" leaves the house, she tells him,  "be careful," and is holding her breath. "Will I see him again?" she always wonders, or "is it the last time?"

"Managing the big goodbyes must be relational to the small ones, so it matters how exits are practiced,"  said Lawrence-Lightfoot, who won a MacArthur Prize in 1984 and was named the Margaret Mead Fellow by the Academy of Political and Social Sciences in 2008. "So do the rituals that accompany them, how one ends and another begins. Is it a victory or a defeat, or is it both?" She emphasized the importance of revisiting  how an ending happens, what provoked it to occur at that moment, and how was it communicated and to whom? "Exits are accompanied by feelings of loss as well as liberation, and it is worthy of deep exploration," she added.

Professor Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot emphasizing a point in her latest book, "Exits: The Endings that Set Us Free"

Her children, too, became interested in the subject, she said, asking her how she said goodbye to her students at the end of the semester. Her daughter suggested she "stop sounding like a mom." Her son proposed she put her farewell in a song, advice she took: Lawrence-Lightfoot, whose  chair endowed at Harvard will be re-named the Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot Chair of Education upon her retirement, has sung farewells to her students ever since, a ritual she also engages in when giving talks and during book tours.

The author signs a book for an admiring neighbor

During the question-and-answer session, a woman in the audience stood up, saying she had six children, some in high school, whose friends recently died violent deaths from shootings and car crashes. She doesn’t know how to give advice to them, she said, tearing up. How should she talk with them about these endings? Lawrence-Lightfoot said she had no magic words but suggested it would be important to do a lot of talking about it, to go to the memorial services and be quiet so the children will talk. "They need to be part of the weeping community, and pay attention to the power of ritual, ceremony," she said. "It is horrific to see young persons die like that, but you have to let your children see that you are grieving with them."

And then Professor Lawrence-Lightfoot sang her goodbye to the audience at the South End library with the Song of Jeremiah from Iliad.She introduced it by explaining it was transformed as a negro spiritual from There’s No Balm in Gilead to There Is a Balm in Gilead: To make the wounded whole; There's power enough in heaven; To cure a sin-sick soul. 

The author's next book, Growing Each Other Up: When Our Children Become Our Teachers, will come out in the fall of this year. Lawrence-Lightfoot has agreed to return to the library to talk about it at that time.

Opening Thursday, March 31 at 6:00 PM: South End Library's First "Take-over" of its Tremont Street Windows to Connect the Library with Local Artists, Teachers and Creative Entrepreneurs

A work-n-progress. Wire Sculptor Will Corcoran contemplates next moves for the window installation of the SE branch on Tremont Street

After weeks of planning and scheming, wire sculptor Will Corcoran and FOSEL board member Karen Watson have begun to install the first South End Library Window Take-over. It is a joint project  between library staff/FOSEL  to utilize the library's prominent Tremont Street windows for eye-catching displays by local artists, creative entrepreneurs and others and make the South End community aware of its rich cultural reservoir of talent and ideas. The installations, which have to be based on a library-related theme, this time features sculptures from tales by Edgar Allen Poe and the Brothers Grimm.The first ten children under the age of fourteen who can correctly guess the tales represented by the sculptures will receive a a prize after a drawing on April 15. 

The Window Take-over installation will officially open with a reception at the library on Thursday, March 31 at 6:00 PM.Ray Brown, of WGBH TV, WCRB's classical music station, and the Ray Brown Talkin' Birds radio show, will read a few selected tales from the Poe and Grimm collections. Will Corcoran will talk about his work.

The event is free. Refreshments will be served. Information for future events and guidelines will be available at the reception. The South End library is fully handicapped accessible.

Poet and Master Teacher Barbara Helfgott Hyett Will Offer an Eight-week Poetry Workshop for Adults Aged 55 or Older on Monday Mornings at the South End Library, Starting April 4

helfgott 2

Poetry is coming to the South End branch in April, with an eight-week program taught by Barbara Helfgott Hyatt. The award-winning poet, professor and public lecturer will be at the South End library on eight Monday mornings, starting April 4, to teach poetry to both beginning and experienced poet colleagues aged 55 and over. Sponsored by the BPL and a National Leadership Grant from the US Department of Museums and Libraries, the AARP, and other organizations interested in supporting and benefitting  America's seniors, the program is limited to 15 people, and free to all. The workshops run from 11:00 AM to 1:00 PM, and will show participants how to review the elements of a poem, the many forms a poem can take, and the various ways of editing a poem. The students will read, write and share their poetry every week. According to the poet's web site, Helfgott Hyatt has published five poetry collections, including In Evidence: Poems of the Liberation of Nazi Concentration Camps, which was selected Booklist's Editor's Choice. Other collections, including The Tracks We Leave: Poems on Endangered Wildlife of North America and Rift were widely reviewed. Her poems and essays have appeared in dozens of magazines including the New Republic, the Nation, the Hudson Review, the Massachusetts Review, Agni, Ploughshares, the Women's Review of Books, and in over 30 anthologies. She is the recipient of two Massachusetts Artists Fellowships in Poetry, the New England Poetry Club's Gertrude Warren Prize, the Herman Melville Commemorative Poetry Prize, Fellowships at Yaddo, the Wurlitzer Foundation, and Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and many other prizes and grants, including a Brother John Fellowship for Excellence in the Arts, awarded by the Boston Foundation in 2009.

Helfgott Hyett has taught English at the Teachers as Scholars program at Harvard, MIT, Trinity College, and Boston University, where she won the Sproat Award for Excellence in Teaching English. As a poet-in the-schools, she has served over 200 communities and was artist-in-residence at the MFA and the Fuller Art Museums. She is currently the director of PoemWorks, the Workshop for Publishing Poets, in Brookline, MA, which was named “One of the Best Workshops in Boston” by the Boston Globe.

Report from the The Eighth Annual Easter Egg Hunt: 1,400 Eggs Filled with Chocolate, Poems and Knock-Knock Jokes Collected by a Horde of Happy Children in Less than Three Minutes...

the 1,400 eggs awaiting the onslaught

Another Egg Hunt under the belt of the staff and Friends of the  South End library. The sun came out. The park

The hordes at the gate before the 11:00 count-down

looked great, thanks to a thorough sweeping, weeding and mulching by the Parks Department. The balloons waved in the breeze. The Easter Bunny was better than

the Easter Bunny has extra eggs for late-comers

ever. So many happy children. The first outdoor event of Spring 2016. The coffee was hot. The lemonade sweet. Baked good as delicious as ever. A plethora of selfies. Some not-so-selfies, too, as here in this post.

The FOSEL set-up crew

Author Paul McLean Will Talk about His Book "Blood Lines: Fatherhood, Faith and Love in the Time of Stem Cells," Tuesday, April 5 at 6:30 PM

What do you do when your seven-year-old daughter is diagnosed with a potentially fatal blood disease about which you know nothing and which requires making decisions that may determine her living or dying?Paul McLean, a former sportswriter at the Los Angeles Daily News, one-time arts editor at The Boston Herald and a stay-at-home father after his daughter was born, courageously fought to protect his child, preserve his sense of self even when it seemed everything changed by the day and, with his wife, made those difficult decisions. He also took meticulous notes, and wrote about his searing experience. Blood Lines: Fatherhood, Faith and Love in the Time of Stem Cells is the harrowing and honest account of who he once was --a regular guy with a regular family, and who he had to become as a result of the existential threat to his child.

McLean is the social media coordinator for the Harvard Community Ethics Committee (CEC), a former fellow in the Center for Bioethics program, a current community member of the Ethics Advisory Committee at Boston Children’s Hospital and the Research Subject Advocacy Board of Harvard Catalyst. He is also a social media contributor to The Hastings Center. He is a regular contributor to WBUR's on-line magazine, Cognoscenti.The South End Library is fully handicapped accessible. Seating is limited. The event is free. Books will be available for purchase, signing by the author, and borrow

The Easter Bunny Will Host the Eighth Annual South End Library Easter Egg Hunt at Library Park on Sunday, March 27, From 11 AM to 2 PM

The Easter Bunny is ready for you

After a one-year hiatus due to last year's snow deluge, the Eighth Annual South End Library Easter Egg Hunt is back on track for Sunday, March 27 from 11:00 AM to 2:00 PM. The Easter Bunny is practicing hugs. The 1,400 eggs have been filled with chocolate, poems and knock-knock jokes. The Parks Department and FOSEL will have scrubbed Library Park clean. Police officers from Area D4 have been asked to be there to assist with street crossing, and if previous years' experience is a guide, they will be there.  FOSEL will have created a separate area for little kids up to age four.

Ready to hunt, loaded for chocolates, poems and knock-knock jokes

Do not be late: The gates to Library Park will open after a count-down of 20 seconds at 11:00 AM SHARP. It will all be over at 11:03 AM, if past experience still holds. There will be Easter baskets for any child who for forgot to bring one. Refreshments will be served.

A Sign of the Times: Overdose Prevention Training, How to Administer Narcan, and the Details of How to Call 3-1-1 Will Be Explained at the South End Library on Tuesday, March 22, 6:30 PM

Volunteers at the Roslindale branch of the BPL practicing overdose prevention and Narcan use

The South End branch of the BPL will host an overdose  prevention seminar on Tuesday, March 22nd, at 6:30 PM. Berto Sanchez, manager of the Boston Public Health Commission's Addictions Prevention, Treatment and Recovery Support Services Services, will be there with his team to explain how to identify signs of an overdose and  how to administer Narcan. Along with the overdose prevention training, the team will address details about calling 3-1-1 for needle pick-up and any other questions that may come up.  Over the past year or two, needles have been found inside the library's restrooms, sometimes inside the pages of a book, in Library Park and in the surrounding neighborhood. Anne Smart, head librarian, who organized the seminar, has had to acquire needle-disposal boxes for the branch.

Berro Sanchez illustrates a point

Overdose prevention training began earlier this year when a member of the BPL's Roslindale library staff approached State Representative Liz Malia, who chairs the Legislature's Joint Committee on Mental Health and Substance Abuse, to see if she could help bring overdose-prevention training to the library. She could, the staff was told and, with the additional sponsorship of State Rep. Jeffrey Sanchez and Boston City Councilor Tim McCarthy, that session was held last February 11 at the Roslindale branch of the BPL, an event covered by the Roslindale Transcript.

The South End Library is fully handicapped accessible. Seating is limited. The event is free. We offer refreshments.

Acclaimed Harvard Sociologist and South End Resident, Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot, Will Talk about Her Most Recent Book, "Exits: The Endings That Set Us Free," Tuesday, March 8 at 6:30 PM

Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot at her home in the South End

Three years ago, when Harvard professor Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot walked the 142 steps from her home to the South End library to talk about her previous work (The Third Chapter: Passion, Risk and Adventure in the 25 Years After 50), she mentioned her next book coming out later that year, titled, Exits: The Endings That Set us Free. She described it as an exploration of the premise that our society is pre-occupied with beginnings. "We ignore the departures," she said. Looking at many kinds of exits, from the voluntary to the forced, she found that endings can be a process that unlock regenerative powers "that set us free." On Tuesday, March 3, Lawrence-Lightfoot who won a MacArthur Prize for her work in 1984, will read from Exits. The title of her new book, due out in the fall, is called Growing Each Other Up: When Our Children Become Our Teachers. You can ask her about that, too.

Lawrence-Lightfoot is the Emily Hargroves Fisher professor of Education at Harvard University, and a fellow at the Bunting Institute and at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University.  The renowned sociologist' books include, among others, Beyond Bias: Perspectives on Classrooms (1979) (with Jean Carew); The Good High School: Portraits of Character and Culture (1983), which received the 1984 Outstanding Book Award from the American Educational Research Association; Balm In Gilead: Journey of A Healer (1988), which won the 1988 Christopher Award, for literary merit and humanitarian achievement; I’ve Known Rivers: Lives of Loss and Liberation (1994); and The Third Chapter: Risk, Passion, and Adventure in the Twenty-Five Years After 50 (2009). Upon her retirement from Harvard University, the endowed chair currently held by Lawrence-Lightfoot will officially become the Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot Endowed Chair, making her the first African-American woman in Harvard’s history to have an endowed professorship named in her honor.

The South End Library is fully handicapped accessible. Seating is limited. The event is free. We offer refreshments. Books will be available for sale, signing, and borrowing from the library. 

Boston Globe Spotlight Reporter Steve Kurkjian Wants to Know "How We Can Get Boston to Feel the Loss" and "Rally the Troops" to Recover the Art Stolen From the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in 1990

"Can we get Marty Walsh in front of it? Or Cardinal O'Malley?" a frustrated Boston Globe Spotlight reporter Stephen Kurkjian asked the overflow audience that had come to listen to him talk about his almost two-decades' long investigation into the unsolved theft of 13 priceless   works of art from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. In describing his disappointment over the lack of resolution after a 26-year hunt for the art, Kurkjian wanted ideas on how to re-ignite  the public's interest. He recalled a French detective who told him that when nine priceless Impressionists paintings, including a masterpiece by Monet, were stolen in 1985 from the Marmottan Museum in Paris, it was felt as a loss for every Parisian. "We got tip after tip after tip," the detective had said. "For you," he added, referring to the Gardner's art heist, "it's a cold case." Five years after the Paris theft, the French art was recovered, in Corsica. Twenty-six years after the Isabella Stewart Gardner plunder, the question in Boston still is "where is the art work?" "We don't feel this," lamented Kurkjian. "How can we get Boston to feel it?"

Rembrandt's only known seascape, stolen from the Garner Museum

For Kurkjian, whose deeply reported Master Thieves: The Boston Gangsters Who Pulled Off the Greatest Art Heist in the World, came out last year, the loss of this art is personal. His father, an artist, was inspired by the Old Masters of the Gardner Museum. Two cousins, classical pianists, regularly performed at the Gardner's popular Sunday concert series. Kurkjian himself attended Boston Latin, across the street from the museum, and revered the extraordinary collection that resulted from the grand vision of its 19th-century founder, Isabella Stewart Gardner. "She put those pieces on the walls for us, " he said. "She filled up her houses on Beacon Street with European art, but didn't stop there. She understood civilizations survive because of their artistic achievement. She wanted to give the United States a tradition it didn't have yet. When the museum opened in 1903, it was free. She wanted to inspire America into the arts."

Former Boston Globe reporter M. E. Malone introducing the author

Kurkjian was introduced by former Boston Globe reporter M.E. Malone, who was hired by him "fresh out of college." Even as she described him as a Founding Father of the Spotlight Team, a Pulitzer-prize winner who knows Boston and what closets which skeletons are in, she assured the audience Kurkjian also applied his investigative skills to less glamorous subjects, such as when in 1982 the Registry of Motor Vehicles decided to replace free driver's license manuals with ones that cost $1. "Steve thought that was outrageous," she told the laughing audience. Kurkjian quickly discovered there were still 505,470 free manuals in the DMV's warehouse, as well as piles of them under the counters and in closets of some DMV offices. Within a short time during which DMV personnel could not find a logical explanation for the charge, the Boston Globe reported that the DMV had made free driver's license manuals available again.

Of all the accolades bestowed on Kurkjian, his father, the artist, told him that solving "Boston's last best secret" would be the crowning achievement of his career. "I thought the 25th anniversary would be the year," Kurkjian said. "There was a lot of publicity. My book came out. Ann Hawley, the Gardner museum director who labored with this loss, retired," and there was now a $5 million reward  for the recovery. In addition, a new Boston FBI prosecutor reviewed videotapes of the night before the theft, and discovered that a stranger was let into the museum 24 hours earlier, against the rules. "We hoped for an essential tip," Kurkjian said after reporting it. But none has led to the discovery of the art, yet.  "These artworks were for the haves and the have-nots," Kurkjian stressed. "Our kids haven't seen them. We have to rally the troops. How do you motivate them?"

Stephen Kurkjian discussing his book, Master Thieves: The Boston Gangsters Who Pulled Off the Greatest Art heist in the World.

Virginia Pye, Reading from Her Second Novel, "Dreams of the Red Phoenix," Says the Archives of Her Grandparents, Missionaries in North China, Are the Inspiration for Her Literary Work

When Virginia Pye came to the South End library last month to talk about her second novel, Dreams of the Red Phoenix, she brought along a slide show of compelling photographs of North China she had found in her grandparents' home. They date from the first decades of the 20th century, during the rise of Communism, when the Pyes were Congregational missionaries in Shanxi Province. In one of them, a tall man stands with his wife behind a small child. He happens to be Pye's grandfather, Orson. He was among the first Westerners who returned after the Boxer Rebellion, when the Chinese had tried to rid their country of Western influence. He met his wife there, Gertrude, who had come to China on her own at age 25, from Ohio, where she had studied early childhood education at Oberlin College.

Virginia Pye's grandparents as missionaries, and father, age 4, in North China in the 1920s. Courtesy Virginia Pye.

The little boy is the author's father, Lucian Pye, who later became a famous China scholar, and taught at MIT for decades. "When I wrote the novels, I kept those pictures by my side because they inspired the stories I wrote," Pye told the audience. Growing up in Belmont, MA, in the 1960s, Pye disavowed her family's missionary background, repelled by US imperialism, and opposed to the Vietnam War, which her father supported. She wrote other novels, but eventually found herself going through her grandfather's papers and discovered a more complex story than she had initially assumed. This archive became the inspiration for Pye's first novel, the highly praised River of Dust, which was chosen as an Indie Next Pick and was a finalist in the 2014 Virginia Literary Awards.

Author Virginia Pye signing her book for admirers who came to hear her talk.

He was a "beautiful writer," she said, "an erudite man who wove Shakespeare and Dickens into his reports home about his mission, as he envisioned it." Her grandfather raised funds in America to have a road built so the Red Cross could deliver food to a population starving from years of drought, Pye learned. Their young daughter died of dysentary at age six, when her father, the little boy in the picture, was four. Orson Pye himself died of tuberculosis not long after, in 1926. "Through fiction, I dealt with how my grandparents weathered one disaster after another, and had to re-examine their faith," said Pye.

Her second China novel, Dreams of the Red Phoenix --named Best Book of 2015 by the Richmond Dispatch-- was inspired by a family story: After Japan invaded China, her grandmother had fearlessly chased Japanese soldiers off her front porch in the Chinese mission compound with a broom. Widowed, Gertrude eventually returned to the United States with her teenage son in 1942, after the Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor. Unlike her husband, Gertrude did not leave a written record. But Pye was able to imagine details of those days when she came across journals by the pro-Communist US journalist Agnes Smedley, who had followed the Red Army and reported about it for English-language newspapers.

Pye, who returned with her family to the Boston area from Richmond, VA, when her husband was named executive director of the Di Cordova Museum, is currently working on the third and final novel in the China series, a personal odyssey of sorts, called Sleepwalking to China. While River of Dust and Dreams of the Red Phoenix played out against events experienced by her grandparents in North China before and after the First World War, respectively, Sleepwalking takes place during the anti-Vietnam era and the fall of Saigon, which she lived through herself. "Then I may be done with my China novels," Pye commented.

The desert-like landscape of North China in the 1920s. Courtesy Virginia Pye.

FOSEL's Annual Meeting Will Present a New Slate of Board Candidates for You --Yes You-- to Elect on Tuesday, February 2 at 6:30 PM: Meet Your Library's Advocates and Enjoy the Refreshments

Poster design by Mary Owens

On February, 9, at 6:30 PM, the Friends of the South End Library (FOSEL) will hold its Annual Meeting and present the audience with an excellent slate of candidates for its voting board. In addition, there is a separate slate of library aficionados who have agreed to be board advisors and use their skills and interests to enhance the library's role in the community. The terms are for one year, but can be renewed.  The audience elects the board, and that means you, so please come and participate. The seven candidates for the voting board each have specific expertise and abilities in the three areas that FOSEL wants to focus on for the next two years, namely library/building maintenance and renovation; library park maintenance and renovation; and programming.The board candidates, alphabetically listed, are:

Marilyn Davillier (programming), a licensed, clinical social worker who wants to start a South End Parenting Forum at the library, with her husband, Ed Tronick, a noted researcher in child development and parenting

Ed Hostetter (building/park), actively involved in the South End as a Garden Steward for Southwest Corridor Park and a GED math tutor at USES. His background includes teaching, building and psychiatric nursing. Ed looks forward to becoming involved in the library at the nearby corner on his street – with a curiosity about what meaningful contributions/services a library might deliver to our complex diverse neighborhood in these changing & challenging times

Jeanne Pelletier (building), an attorney and longtime neighborhood activist for the Hurley School, Hayes Park, the South End Historic Society, and the South End library who is currently overseeing the restoration of the historic Ayer Mansion, designed by Louis Comfort Tiffany

Michelle Laboy (park/building), an architect, planner and urban engineer who created the LightWells in Library Park; she teaches at Northeastern

Marleen Nienhuis (everything), founder of FOSEL, who has recently rejoined the board as clerk/secretary and writes the library updates for the FOSEL web site

Mari Passananti (programming), author of The Hazards of Hunting While Heartbroken and The K Street Affair. She recruits authors for The South End Writes, and writes the introductions for the speakers who come to talk at the library

Barbara Sommerfeld (everything) has been the outstanding treasurer of FOSEL and has graciously agreed to do more of the same. She has an MBA from Northeastern, worked for non-profits, and currently tutors at St. Stephens. She has lived in the South End for 45 years.

The advisory-board members, alphabetically listed, are:

Adam Castiglioni (programming), who was the clerk/secretary for six years, during which time he recruited several speakers and used social media to publicize FOSEL events

Kim Clark (everything), an avid library user whose specialty is marketing and promotion for business and non-profits

Susanna Coit (programming) is in her final semester of the archives program at Simmons' School of Library and Information Science. She studied Afro-American Studies and Special Education at Smith College. She wants to encourage the relationship between the South End Library and the community through social media and events/programming. As a frequent user of library resources, Susanna is looking forward to supporting the South End Library's role and efforts in the neighborhood, where she has lived since 2008.

Marian Ellwood (programming/building), a scientist specializing in regulatory affairs, who loves the library

Stephen Fox (building/park), the chair of the South End Forum who has been a longtime advocate for the South End library and its park

Jacqueline McRath (programming), who has written about the arts for the Bay State Banner. She is an advocate for African-American artists and poets,  chairs the Teresa India-Young Scholarship Committee for fiber arts, and organizes fiber-arts exhibits at USES, like the current one, on exhibit till the end of February.

Mary Owens (programming), the graphic designer who has created all the beautiful posters for the South End Writes author series at the library, as well as the designs for the FOSEL tote bags, and the library signage on Tremont Street

Curtis Seborowski (building), who has been president of FOSEL since October 2014, and spearheaded the project for new library signage

Lois Russell (programming), a former journalist, is a fiber artist and basket maker whose sculptural work appears in national exhibitions and publications.  The former president of the National Basketry Organization, she currently serves on the boards of the Craft Emergency Relief Fund, the Society of Arts and Crafts in Boston and Planned Parenthood of Massachusetts. She is a graduate of Simmons College and Stanford University. Lois is interested in developing arts and public-health programming for the library, in collaboration with other board members.

Licia Sky (programming), a singer-songwriter who professionally runs experiential-movement workshops and would like to start poetry open-mic readings at the library

Anne Smart has worked for the BPL for 25 years and has been the head librarian at the South End branch for 20 years. She holds a Masters of Library Science from the University of North Texas, and grew up on the South Shore.

Karen Watson (building) is currently working on a project to develop exciting window installations at the library that tap into the South End library's creative community with library-themed displays.

Happy New Year: If You Missed the Annual Holiday Jazz Concert Between-the-Stacks This Year, Here's the Reason Not to Do That Next Time

Dave Fox, Tia Fuller, Pat Loomis, Christoff Glaude

Every year, the South End Library's Holiday Party and Jazz Concert features terrific music by Pat Loomis and his Friends, a home-cooked dinner prepared by chef John Hampton, and desserts brought by volunteers who love to bake. The audience sits at long tables between the stacks listening and eating, while regular library users who just happened to come in to pick up or drop off books are drawn in and stand around, tapping their feet, arms filled with books.

the appreciative audience

This year's line-up of musicians was as good as ever: Pat Loomis on the alto-sax; Antonio Shiell Loomis on guitar; Amy Bellamy, piano; Christoff Glaude on bass; Dave Fox, drums; and special guest, Tia Fuller, on alto-sax.

David Fox; Tia Fuller; Christoff Glaude; Antonio Shiell Loomis; Pat Loomis and Amy Bellamy

Fuller is is Mack Avenue Records recording artist.  She is a Down Beat poll winner, who played with Beyonce and Esperalda Spalding.

At the South End Library Next Friday, December 20, from 10 AM till Noon: How to Enroll for Health Insurance Under the Affordable Care Act

The wonderful staff from the Boston Public Health Commission (BPHC) will come to the South End Library next Friday, December 20, to answer any questions you might have about the Affordable Care Act as it will apply in Massachusetts. Not only that, the multilingual staff  will help you enroll. For free, if necessary, or at a low cost, if you qualify. The public forum is free to all. For additional information, call the BPHC at 617 534-5050.

A Reminder to Donate a Little or a Lot to the Best Institution in Your Neighborhood: the South End Branch of the Boston Public Library

Fosel appeal 2

A few weeks ago, the Friends of the South End Library (FOSEL) sent out a mailing to local residents asking for financial support. Your response has been heart-warming and is much appreciated. Just in case you were not on the current list, and feel rejected or left behind, here is a copy of the appeal letter for you to ponder and respond to. The funds we collect from you will help FOSEL to pay for its programs as well as  physical improvements in the library itself. These range far and wide, from the flowering perennial gardens around the trees on Tremont Street facing the library to the reupholstery and refurbishing of the branch's seating area and library counter. The programs include our authors' series, soon entering its fourth year, The South End Writes, which brings South End and not-so-South End luminaries to your library. Last summer, we drew on South End's local jazz-and-blues heritage to bring fabulous bands to Library Park; this will continue next summer. Thanks to FOSEL, the library is now fully handicapped accessible.

New improvement projects and programs are in the planning stage, awaiting additional funds to make them come true. This is where we turn to you. Please send your donation to the address listed on the letter to the left. Or use our PayPal account. All contributions are fully tax-deductible in the year they are made. All the money will come back to you in programs, events, and a refurbished and welcoming library and park. Every donation of $50 or more will entitle you to one of FOSEL's beautiful book bags. You can pick up the red or the green one with a receipt for your contribution at the branch. FOSEL thanks you for your continued generosity.

FOSEL Holds its Winter Public Meeting on Wednesday, December 4, at 6:30 PM at the South End Library: Bring Your Ideas and Suggestions

New York Times Bestselling Novelist, J. Courtney Sullivan, Will Read from Her Latest Book, "The Engagements," at the South End Library, Tuesday, December 3, at 6:30 PM

J Courtney Fitzg

Right after the Thanksgiving holiday, on Tuesday, December 3, TheSouth End Writes will host  the last author of the year 2013, J. Courtney Sullivan. The bestselling novelist's previous novel, Maine (2011), was named the Time Magazine Best Book of the Year as well as a Washington Post Notable Book. The writer's 2009 novel, Commencements, about four Smith College dorm mates together at a wedding for the first time four years after graduation, was described by the New York Times as that year's most inviting summer novel.

Sullivan will read from her new work of fiction, The Engagements, at the South End Library. Spanning almost a hundred years, the novel describes four marriages, each one vastly different from the other, but likely engagingly recognizable to most observers of, or participants in, the marital dance. Her writing has also appeared in The New York Times Book Review, The Chicago Tribune,New York Magazine, Elle, Glamour, Allure, Men’s Vogue, and the New York Observer, among others. She is a contributor to the essay anthology The Secret Currency of Love and co-editor of Click: When We Knew We Were Feminists. She lives in Brooklyn, New York. The author will be introduced by novelist and South End resident Sue Miller, who invited Sullivan to speak at The South End Writes.

The event is sponsored by FOSEL and, thanks to your contributions, free. We offer refreshments. The author’s books will be available for purchase and borrowing. The library is fully handicapped accessible thanks to FOSEL’s fundraising. The library is located on Tremont Street between West Newton Street and Rutland Square. Seating is limited so come  early. 

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Distinguished Biographer Megan Marshall Shines a Light on Margaret Fuller's 19th-century Struggle for Professional Success but Sara DiVello's Career Memoir Presents a 21st-Century Twist on it

The inclusive embrace of public libraries as a venue for all voices was on full display this month when, in less than a week's time, two authors who could not have been more different talked about the working lives of women, albeit two centuries apart. On November 13, acclaimed biographer Megan Marshall, (her 2005 biography of  the Peabody Sisters was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize) read from her most recent work, Margaret Fuller: A New American Life.  It describes the epic struggle the brilliant 19th-century author and women's rights advocate waged to find her place among professional equals who, in those days, were mostly men.

The despairing question Fuller asked of herself in the 1830s, how to ply her talents despite the severe restrictions her gender imposed, was answered by biographer Marshall's cheerful recounting of what the highly educated Fuller accomplished before her untimely death at forty in 1850: supporting herself and her family financially after her father's death by teaching and writing; editing the prestigious Transcendentalist magazine The Dial; organizing subscription-based consciousness-raising workshops for women called 'Conversations'; publishing the influential book, Woman in the Nineteenth Century, and being the first female correspondent for The New York Tribune. The paper's editor sent Fuller to Italy where she covered the Italian revolution and the 1849 siege of Rome. After having found the institution of marriage lacking, moreover, Fuller married for love rather than financial security: to an impoverished Italian count, years younger than she, with whom she had a child out of wedlock. Marshall, who in the 1980s used to live around the corner from the South End branch at Rutland Square, while doing research at the Massachusetts Historical Society, called Fuller's life 'cinematic.'

Back to the 21st century where writer and yoga teacher Sara DiVello, who presented for South End Writes a week later, did not have to face the despair Fuller did about where or whether she could find work.  Home schooled, from a family without means, DiVello put herself through college by working five days a week. She did well the thirteen years she spent in the male-dominated corporate world, she told a packed library audience, except for one thing: her female bosses. One of them, 'Vomiting Vicky' was eventually replaced by an even worse supervisor, at which point DiVello quit to become a yoga teacher. But the author of the career memoir, Where in the Om Am I?, found that, in the yoga world, bullying, cliques and mean-spirited tactics by her female colleagues thrived, just as they did in the financial services industry she had left behind. In a lament that echoes a March 2013  Wall Street Journal article about 'queen bee bosses,' DeVello told her listeners she believed that "one of the reasons women make 70 cents for each dollar men earn is because women don't support one another,"  The Worcester Street resident clarified in a subsequent conversation that other factors matter, too, for example, that women don't ask for the same dollar as men, as well as their child-bearing and child-rearing dilemmas.

"Among girls and women there's a sense of false scarcity," DiVello elaborated. They are programmed to want to have the prettiest face, the best boyfriend --preferably the one and only captain of the football team-- and hang on to the few high-powered jobs occupied by women, she added. The evening ended with DiVello demonstrating simple yoga exercises for the audience, many of whom munched on her delicious cookies. "I am Italian," the yoga teacher said, "which means I'm compelled to feed you."