Lynne Potts, Poet and History Scribe from Holyoke Street, Tells the Audience She Looked for Years for "a Place to Belong"

South End author and poet, Lynne Potts, had just published A Block in Time: History of Boston's South End through a Window on Holyoke, when she unexpectedly found herself interviewing Southenders for another book, one that became Faces of a Neighborhood: Boston's South End in the early 21st Century. "It was a curious process," explained Potts to a full room of interested listeners at the South End library in mid-September. "I only knew the people on my street, but they gave me some names and then I got some more names." Two years later, she had an amazing list of interviewees, including an octogenarian, a shop owner, a Villa Victoria resident, a concierge and an international arbitrator and mediator. "It was such an exciting range of people," Potts said. "I'd ask them, 'would you mind if I interviewed you about your life in the South End?' and most of them stayed with it." Faces includes twenty-five interviews of the Southenders about whose lives she began to speculate when walking through local streets and observed the various domestic scenes visible across the lit windows of early evening.

Potts's other explanation for the genesis of Faces was, in part, that she didn't quite know where she herself belonged in the landscape of her life, but knew that she wanted to belong somewhere. From growing up in Michigan to a marriage that took her to Berkeley, CA, then to a farm in Vermont, and next to an apartment on West Rutland Square as a divorced mother of young children, she found a home on Holyoke Street --where she still lives-- but never quite knew what emotional geography she was a part of. "I found myself talking to people who were clear about who they were, who had found themselves," she said. "My project became a series of little sagas, explanations of who they were and who they became. Almost all those I talked with identified with the South End's amazing cultural history, its architecture, its art, the way it was accepting of diverse sexual identities." The South End's demography in the 1980s was a rich brew of the Irish, Lebanese, Jews, African Americans and Greeks. Fifty-six percent was Caucasian; 16 percent African American. "We were proud that people from so many different walks of life lived in close proximity to those who were so different," Potts commented.

LLynne Potts signing books and chatting with her audience at the September 12 author event

The author, whose delicate stature belies an intensely engaged and observational presence, said she had written and published poetry for the last 15 years, after obtaining an MFA from Columbia University. She won several awards and edited poetry journals, including the Columbia Journal of Art and Literature and AGNI. Her curiosity about how a particular culture affects people's evolving personal lives plays out in her poems, too. Her interest was piqued when she came across a retrospective of the first American abstract painter, Arthur Dove, which led Potts to delve into his relationship with the American Modernist painter Helen Torr, both spouses of others at the time, but eventually married to each other. "Here were two painters, one male, the other female," notes Potts who studied Torr's letters, now archived at the Smithsonian. "It's about the tension of women wanting to do their own work, while men have ancient expectations," Potts said. "He shot ahead. He sold paintings. She sold just one or so. She did all the framing of his paintings. In the end, Torr quit painting herself, and was institutionalized. From there, she'd write letters saying things like, 'I'll try to be better, and help him more.'"

Some of Potts's poems are about the couple's life as she imagined it through the letters she'd scrutinized. She read aloud several poems from her collection Porthole View, inspired by the Dove/Torr relationship and their time spent living on a houseboat in Long Island Sound, including Gull with Telephone Wire, Flotsam and Tennis Ball over Gramercy Grass. And, at the request of a library audience hungry for stories about their beloved neighborhood,  also one chapter from Faces, the interview with Sebastian Alonso, of a Cuban-Peruvian immigrant background, who grew up on Shawmut Avenue in the 1980s and 1990s, and had been part of a gang.

On August 31, National Overdose Awareness Day, Images of Local Individuals Who Died After Overdosing Were Projected on the Exterior Walls of the South End Branch of the Boston Public Library

Images representing the urgency of the opioid crisis were projected on the walls of the South End library on the night of Thursday,  August 31

How to pay attention to those who live among us but who can be so easily marginalized? How to remember them after they're gone?  On the evening of August 31 several images of the many   who died as a result of the opioid crisis were projected on the exterior walls of the South End library. It was the day of National Overdose Awareness Day. The event was sponsored by The South End Forum; the Boston Public Health Commission's AHOPE group (which focuses on needle exchange and related programs); and the Boston Healthcare for the Homeless (BHCHP), 

Public libraries, including the South End branch, are among the locales where the social impact of homelessness and addiction plays out on a daily basis. Deploying a full-time guard at the South End library has alleviated some of the acute problems but for many marginalized people, the public library remains the refuge of last resort. It is also where more fortunate library users interact with the homeless and those in need of addiction services in an often-uneasy social dance mediated to some extent by library staff.

According to Melanie Racine, of BHCHP, the display focused on black and white photographs of local people with the person's name, age and a quote from a family member that says a little about the relative who died as a result of overdose. "We hope to communicate the message that the men and women who have died from opioid overdose were mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, daughters and sons, and each was a unique human being," wrote Racine in an email. "The event gives a literal face --in fact, many faces-- to this epidemic." 

A similar attempt to humanize a marginalized population took place in California in 2012 when both the main libraries of San Jose and San Francisco organized a powerful photo exhibit of homeless and addicted men and women who used their facilities for shelter and services. Titled Acknowledged, images and text described how easy it was to become homeless, and how hard the struggle was to overcome. One subject, a man who grew up in a middle-class family in Indiana, and had a job and a college degree, caused a car crash where someone was killed. He fell into a depression, lost his job, became homeless. It took him many years to recover. 

The Last Jazz & Blues Concert of the Summer Featured Two Impromptu Musical Guests and the Start of FOSEL's Capital Campaign, "Writing the Next Chapter"

Pat Loomis, saxophone, and his 'walk-on' guest, soul singer Leon Beal, Jr. in Library Park, with Zayra Pola, on percussion, in the background

Saxophonist/vocalist Pat Loomis and his Friends, the band that performed four outstanding Jazz & Blues concerts in Library Park this summer, is aptly named for its Friends. This became apparent again on August 29 when, as has happened many times before in the seven years of the series,  two 'walk-on' musical guests added themselves to the band and electrified the already swaying crowd. Flute player Lance Martin walked into Library Park and joined the band of  Antonio Loomis, guitar; Amy Bellamy, keyboards; Aaron Bellamy, bass; Joaquin Santos, drums; and Zayra Pola, percussion.  Shortly after, classical soul singer Leon Beal, Jr. made his appearance and performed a thrilling Stand By Me.

Pat Loomis with another 'walk-on' guest, the flutist Lance Martin

Drummer Joaquin Santos

The theme of the evening was The Quiet Storm: An Evening Of Smooth, Seductive Grooves, and featured several by Stevie Wonder (Another Star; Boogie On Reggae Woman and My Cherie Amour, sung by Pat Loomis himself). The weather had turned cool and the somewhat chilled audience also heard Can't Hide Love (Earth, Wind, and Fire); Armando's Rhumba (Chick Corea); The Lady In My Life (Michael Jackson); and the final song of the final performance, Happy People (Kenny Garrett). 

Before the concert began, half a dozen FOSEL board members and BPL president David Leonard were on hand to ring in their joint fundraising project for an interior library renovation, called Writing the Next Chapter. Poster boards displayed the proposed redesign, which elicited several comments along the lines of "about time this happened."  

Proposed changes to the downstairs interior of the South End Library

Brochures detailing the renovation and how and where to donate are now available at the branch, and will be mailed in the near future to South End library supporters. 

Aidan Loomis's Musical Arrangement of his Birthday Concert Performed by Dad Pat Loomis Scored a Home Run for Refreshing Musical Eclecticism

Dancing broke out on the hot summer night

Oh, to be the child of a Jazz & Blues bandleader; to able to arrange the music of your choice for your 17th birthday party in a public park on a warm and dry summer night in the South End; and to do an excellent job of it with a refreshing selection of titles: what else is there to wish for? 

Angel Subero (trombone), Scott Aruda (trumpet) and Pat Loomis (saxophone give it their all

Aidan Loomis, the non-musician son of musical director Pat Loomis (his other son, Antonio, has been part of the band as a guitarist since he was little), selected an unexpectedly delicious play list for the August 15 concert in Library Park, ranging from I Love Lucy to Pure Imagination with in-between numbers of Sweet Georgia Brown, Just a Gigolo and I Ain't Got Nobody, Do I Do, Maybe I'm Amazed, Ain't Too Proud to Beg, Soul Man and, yes, Happy Birthday. 

Parents and children, some with their own instruments, enjoyed the concert. Steven Higgs on keyboard in the back.

Vocalist Sara Seminski performed a gorgeous rendition of Pure Imagination by songwriter Josh Groban. Pat Loomis himself sang an emotional version of the Beatles' Maybe I'm Amazed, with his wife and son moved visibly in the audience, while the powerfully voiced and athletically engaging singer Nephtaliem McCrary practically set the crowd ablaze with his interpretation of the Temptations' Ain't Too Proud to Beg. 

Benny Benson, drums; Pat Loomis, singing with Sax in hand; Scott Aruda, singing with trumpet; Christoff Glaude, bass; Antonio Loomis, guitar; Sarah Seminski and Nephtaliem McCrary, vocalists

Fine performances by instrumentalists Antonio Loomis (guitar); Scott Aruda (trumpet); Angel Subero (trombone); Steven Higgs (keyboards); Christoff Glaude (bass) and Benny Benson (drums) accompanied the singers. Saxophonist Pat Loomis and trumpeter Scott Aruda switched back and forth seamlessly from instrument to their vocal strings during several numbers. 
 

Christoffe Glaude, bass; and Antonio Loomis, guitar

The South End Knitters Strike Again with a Street Art Installation for June that Celebrates the Culture of Bikes, Books, Colors and Fiber in the Library’s Tremont Street Windows

The fabulous South End Knitters have installed their first exhibit in the Tremont Street windows of the South End library, a show that features a popular urban art form that counterveils the often harsh contours of our public streets’ furniture to give it a more welcoming, exciting and colorful profile. They are part of a legacy of guerilla, graffiti and stealth knitters that can be traced to Magda Sayeg, whose work with the group Knitta Please (founded in Houston in 2005) is credited with bringing sewing from the domestic circle to the street. 

Describing themselves as urban artists, the  South End Knitters’ vibrant fiber creations have beautified local fences, lamp and bicycle posts for years. The artful geometric patterns and  fiber-teased pom-poms covering the knitted bike frame in the library’s Tremont Street window combine with a quilt-shaped seat and fabric-patched bike lock, paying homage to what was generally considered a domestic form of art now claiming its rightful place in art on display in the public square.

Also known as yarn bombers, the  group participated in the deCordova Museum Biennial in 2012 for which the press release read, “When they secretly slip their colorful hand-sewn creations on fences, statues, street signs, hydrants, bicycles, and buses under cover of darkness, they humanize and prettify the urban realm; they decorate, swaddle, and in some cases, protect. They call attention to the forms they cover and remind us about our relationship to our surroundings in ways that seem far more innocuous and temporary than their painted graffiti counterparts.”

The South End Knitters are a revolving group of fiber artists of all ages, female and male, who gather in various public spaces and informal restaurants to knit, crochet and sew. Once-upon-a-time they met at Flour Bakery + Cafe on Washington Street, but more recently they have come to the Prudential Center across from the Post Office, or b.good on Dartmouth Street on Thursdays after work.  

This installation will be up for the next few weeks. It is one of a series of Tremont Street window exhibits of the Local/Focus project sponsored by the Friends of the South End Library to visually connect the library community with local artists, non-profits and creative entrepreneurs.

Dramatic Reading by Author Stephen Kinzer Brought a 19th-century Debate about America’s Role in the World to a 21st-century Library Audience

Who knew that the mother of Boston Globe foreign-policy columnist Stephen Kinzer was an actress? The family gene revealed itself when Kinzer, the author of The True Flag: Theodore Roosevelt, Mark Twain and the birth of American Empire slipped seamlessly behind the lectern at the South End library’s community room, filled to capacity by a history-hungry audience, and  dramatically performed parts of the great debate of more than a 100 years ago about what exactly America’s role should be in the world, isolationist or imperialist.  The US government had settled the West, and the end of the Spanish-American War opened up the opportunity for the US to control territories that had once belonged to Spain, like Cuba, the Philippines, Guam and Puerto Rico. What should be done with them? And what was the mission of America?

For Kinzer, who scrolled endless hours through microfiche records of  late 19th-century newspapers and pamphlets in the Boston Public Library to research his book, the remarkable fact of what he calls  “the mother of all debates” was the sheer brilliance of the arguments by  intellectual and political leaders on all sides of the question. “All the speeches were printed in newspapers and reprinted. They were read around the world, he said. “I envy people of that era,. We don’t dare to discuss these important issues with senators today. We talk about whether we should have 8,000 or 9,000 troops in Afghanistan, but not why we are there.”

Previewing the importance of the 19th-century polemic while introducing his longtime friend whose arrival was slightly delayed, WBUR OpenSource host, Christopher Lydon, talked about his personal hero from the pacifist side of that debate, William James, brother of Henry,  “the greatest Boston brother act in history,” as he put it. Lydon, who described Kinzer as a journalist in the David Halberstram tradition for his in-depth and uncompromising reporting, had met Kinzer when the latter was New York Times bureau chief in Berlin and, later, in Turkey.  “There should be more of Henry James in your book, however,” he told Kinzer.

 Kinzer agreed, up to a point, but focussed his attention on the role of many others, like Mark Twain, who had traveled the world and developed empathy for those seeking freedom, and Theodore Roosevelt, who had traveled, too, but mostly to shoot large animals. Twain reportedly thought TR was “clearly insane;”  TR had said about Twain he’d like to “skin him alive.” Then there was William Randolph Hearst, who needed a “running story” for his newspapers to thrive: war stories about anti-colonial and anti-imperialist wars in the territories would best fit the bill. Henry Cabot Lodge, for his part, felt many nations were “unequipped to govern themselves.” In the end, President William McKinley used the Lodge rational when he asked the US Senate to ratify the Treaty of Paris. It passed. The US took control over former Spanish territories, and became an empire.

The 1899 debate preceding the ratification lasted 32 days and, as Kinzer pointed out, the very arguments first formulated then, primarily in Boston’s political circles, are the same we heard when debating Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan.  This led to a question by Lydon about whether President John Kennedy, at the midpoint between that 19th-century political fight and now,  would have stayed in Vietnam or  pulled out. Both Kinzer and Lydon agreed the Warren Commission report left out important information, but that Kennedy himself had told the editor of the Boston Globe at the time, Bob Healy, also a former Globe Washington bureau chief,  that he would pull out of Vietnam after his reelection.

Kinzer’s  hero in the fiercely debated question was the abolitionist Carl Schurz, a German immigrant who became a Civil War general, a US senator, Secretary of the Interior and a friend of Abraham Lincoln and Mark Twain. The title of Kinzer’s book, The True Flag, was taken from a speech by Schurz in which he declared “the true flag” of America was of the one of “government of, for, and by the people,” and “the flag of civilization, peace, and goodwill to all men.”

To the Galapagos: Renowned Naturalist, David Clapp, and “Talkin’ Birds” Radio Host, Ray Brown, will talk about the Galapagos, on Wednesday, May 17 at 6:30 PM

On Wednesday, May 17 at 6:30 PM, two serious birding specialists, renowned researcher, lecturer and naturalist David Clapp and Ray Brown, host of Talkin’Birds and WCRB classical music programs, will treat you to a lecture with slides about the birding environment in the Galapagos. Clapp, who has led Smithsonian Journeys trips for many years, has taught at Northeastern University and worked with conservation organizations worldwide for decades. He has been with the Massachusetts Audubon Society most of his professional career,  trained  up-and-coming naturalists, and studied many species of the avian population.

Talkin'Birds host and South End resident, Ray Brown

Brown, who joined the  WGBH many years ago, is a regular contributor  to NPR’s Weekend Edition with Scott Simon where he illuminates the audience about the latest news in the world of birding. Last year, Brown gave a very well-received presentation at the South End library about bird migration patterns, called The Magic of Migration, as part of the Local/Focus Urban Birding installation in the library’s Tremont Street windows. This year, he organized a birding tour to the Galapagos in late September with the Sunrise Birding nature company, and will have information available for anyone who might want to join to fill the last two cabins.

Brown is a longtime South End resident. His Talkin’ Birds show is now heard on 16 stations around New England, and in the larger world through streaming and podcasts.  Guests on his show include avian aficionados and birding luminaries like David Sibley, Sy Montgomery (Birdology) and Donald Kroodsman (The Singing Life of Birds) as well as experts from birding conservation organizations such as the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, the National Wildlife Federation and the American Birding Association.

The Galapagos talk is free to all. Refreshments are served.

Acclaimed Harvard Sociologist Sara Lawrence Lightfoot Will Discuss her Latest Work, "Growing Each Other Up: When Our Children Become Our Teachers," on Tuesday, April 18 at 6:30 PM

In March a year ago, the MacArthur Genius award-winning Professor of Sociology at Harvard, Sara Lawrence Lightfoot, held the crowded room spellbound when, at the end of her talk about Exits: The Endings That Set Us Free, she SANG her goodbye to the audience with the Song of Jeremiah from Iliad. Will she sing us a farewell again on Tuesday, April 18 when she is back at the South End library with her most recent book, Growing Each Other Up: When Our Children become Our Teachers?

The longtime South End resident who, by her own count lives 142 steps from the library, has made the developmental process of child-rearing in which parents are transformed by their children the subject of her latest book. It is based on many in-depth interviews across the country, and highlighted by her own experience of raising a son and a daughter. The recipient of numerous awards and honors, Lawrence Lightfoot suggests that what is generally assumed to be the one-way support system that parents provide for their offspring is more likely an exchange, wherein parents learn from their children about the future they represent, the world they experience, and how that often doesn’t quite jive with what the parents have come to believe. Keeping our hearts open, is the mantra for good inter-generational relationships, she counsels.

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. 

Jenna Blum, Best-selling Writer of Holocaust-themed Fiction (“Those Who Save Us,” “The Lucky One,” and her 2018 Novel, “The Lost Family”) to Talk on Tuesday, April 4 at 6:30 PM

Jenna Blum, the award winning author of the  New York Times bestseller, Those Who Save Us (2004), and The Stormchasers (2010), will talk about her latest work: a novella called The Lucky One,  as well as  her upcoming 2018 novel, The Lost Family. The Lucky One was published in a 2016 anthology, called Grand Central: Original Stories of Postwar Love and Reunion, a collection 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, at fourteen,  her first short story, published in Seventeen Magazine,  won the third prize.  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. The event is a reschedule from last year when the author had to cancel her booking due to a family emergency.

The South End Writes is sponsored by the Friends of the South End Library. All the events are free. Books by the speakers will be available for borrowing, sale and signing by the author. The branch is fully handicapped accessible. We serve refreshments. Seating is limited.

The Avocado-pit Self of the West Versus the Flexi Self of the East: Author Gish Jen Suggests the More Communal Approach of the East Might Benefit the West’s Lone Ranger’s View of the World

In a recent interview with Jim Braude and Margery Eagan on WGBH radio, author Gish Jen commented on efforts by the show’s previous guest, Police Commissioner Bill Evans, to attract more Asians to the Boston police force. Jen, whose humorous view of life’s perplexing questions shines through much of her work, half-jokingly confessed on the show that she briefly considered becoming a police officer (“It’s a great day job”) but quickly added that not just her editor’s apoplexy would stand in the way but also the Police Department’s physical exam, which requires applicants to scale a five-foot wall.  It would be a barrier, she said, “for those of us who are only five feet tall.” These human differences  between East and West, of size, perception and approach to the communities we live in, have been the literary domain of Jen since she first dropped out of the Stanford Business School and entered the University of Iowa’s Writers’ Workshop in the 1980s.

Now an acclaimed novelist, and the author of  The Girl at the Baggage Claim: Explaining the East West Culture Gap, Jen drew a full room of people to the library on March 28, eager to hear her take on the divergent views between East and West and the importance of the individual versus the  society he or she is a part of. Jen, the winner of numerous prestigious awards and fellowships who has written five novels and two non-fiction books on the East-West cultural divide, suggests that, in the West, the individual sees the path to achievement and success as inextricably linked to the core self, as if it were  a “sacred avocado pit” to which one must remain true; it is second in importance to the needs of community or family. It is seen as a universal value in the West, even though in most of the rest of the world a more communal view of individual achievement prevails: the idea of a “flexi-self” tends to be the norm, and the ideal place to be is part of a group which, in turn, is associated with a sense of wholeness.

Gish Jen patiently signing copies of her book for her admirers, including some who drove in from New Hampshire through pouring rain.

To illustrate her point, Jen showed two short videos,  one a monologue by a young American man talking about watching video games where the story plot celebrates male fighters surviving in a world where “everyone is screwing you,” a  profoundly anti-establishment message, Jen pointed out. The second video was produced not too long ago in reaction to an incident at Columbia University, where  a group of Chinese students found their name tags ripped off their dorm doors one morning.  Titled “Say My Name,“ each student described what their Chinese names meant in English.  “My parents had great hopes for my future,” said one student whose Chinese name translated as Brightest Star in the Night Sky.  “My name reminds me of my roots,” said another, “the place where I came from, each time I say my name.”

Other examples of the East-West divide include the true story behind the title of Jen's book where the proverbial girl at the baggage claim, who turned out to be the sister of a young Chinese woman accepted at Milton Academy, showed up to take her place at the school, instead. The incident led to accusations of fraud and caused changes in admissions rules at secondary schools. While Jen did not endorse the practice of attending a school impersonating a sibling, she explained that in Eastern cultures it is ok to help a family member because it benefits the group, even though it is seen as clumsy and wrong in the West, where individual achievement is preeminent.  The extreme focus on personal success has other negative consequences, Jen suggested, including for the American unemployed, for example, who believe not having a job is “their fault.” In Israel, she said, which is a more communally oriented society,  being unemployed is blamed on “the system.”

Herself the daughter of Chinese immigrants, Jen said she noticed that in the world of sports, winners of  Olympic medals from the West tend to describe their individual achievements as “showing what I could do,” while  non-Western winners generally make a point of thanking their coaches, friends and family, emphasizing, “I didn’t do it alone.” Jen, whose first book about the East-West cultural divide, Tiger Writing: Art Culture and the Independent Self, is based on the prestigious Massey Lectures she gave at Harvard University in 2012, made a point of complimenting New England Patriot football quarterback Tom Brady for consistently crediting his team for his achievements, even as it earned him the accusation of practicing ‘false modesty.’ “No false modesty,” she said, “He’s just Asian.”

Jen's earlier novels, Typical American, Who Is Irish?, The Love Wife, Mona in the Promised Land and World and Town (winner of the 2011 Massachusetts Book Prize) were widely praised for their often hilarious but also profound and warm descriptions of Chinese-American families adjusting to suburban life and the racial and religious divides they navigate. A contributor to The New Yorker and The Atlantic Monthly, Jen’s work has been included in The Best American Short Stories of 1988, 1995 and 2013, as well as The Best American Short Stories of the Century, edited by John Updike. Nominated for a National Book Critics’ Circle Award and an International IMPAC Dublin Book Award, Jen was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2009. She has been awarded a Lannan Literary Award for Fiction, a Guggenheim fellowship, a Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study fellowship, and numerous other awards. In 2003, an American Academy of Arts and Letters jury comprised of John Updike, Cynthia Ozick, Don DeLillo, and Joyce Carol Oates granted her a five-year Mildred and Harold Strauss Living award.

Suspense Writer Wendy Walker Will Be at the SE Library on Tuesday, February 7, to Read from Her Debut Thriller, “All Is Not Forgotten”

Wendy Walker’s first suspense novel, All Is Not Forgotten, is set in the small town of Fairview, CT, one of those irresistible locations for writers to explore because it seems so perfect but really isn’t. No one better to delve into this than an author who is a suburban dweller with a growing family herself, and who also happens to be a family-law attorney, likely to know some of the real-life complications simmering underneath the American suburban dream. William Landay (Defending Jacob), another attorney-turned-suspense-author who read for South End Writes in 2014, said Walker has “a polished writing style in a novel that blends suspense and rich family drama,” so chances are good you will have an enjoyable few hours with this psychological thriller, wondering whodunnit and why.

The plot revolves around a family whose secrets and unresolved tensions become sharply articulated and inflamed when a crisis  occurs, in this case, an attack on the teenage daughter during one of those parties with too much liquor, testosterone and drugs. She is given a drug to reduce the trauma, but it leaves her with feelings of anger and despair over the assault that the memory-altering drug does not alleviate. Worse, she can no longer remember the facts of the assault, which also prevents the attacker from being found. As the plot twists and turns to an unexpected conclusion, the parents are divided over what matters most, revenge, justice or…staying in tune with their town’s country club mores. Walker published two novels with St. Martin’s Press and is currently writing her second thriller. She will be introduced by her colleague an FOSEL advisory-board member, Mari Passananti.

The South End Writes is sponsored by the Friends of the South End Library. All the events are free. Books by the speakers will be available for borrowing, sale and signing by the author. The branch is fully handicapped accessible. We serve refreshments. Seating is limited. Below are listed upcoming authors, whose bios will be more detailed as the dates of the talks approach.

Annual Meeting Tuesday, January 31 at 6:30 PM

You're Invited to the Annual Meeting of the Friends of the South End Library Tuesday, January 31 at 6:30 PM: Meet Your Neighbors, Participate in the Board's Election, Get an Update on Programming and Library/Park Renovation, Bring Your Ideas, and Enjoy the Delicious Refreshments

2017 Ann Mtg

Snow or not, the Annual Meeting of the Friends of the South End Library (FOSEL) will take place tomorrow night, Tuesday, January 31 in the community room of the library. Members of FOSEL will have the chance to elect to a one-year term a slate of candidates that includes current directors Marilyn Davillier, Jeanne Pelletier, and Michelle Laboy; new directors Maura Harrington and Jon Santiago, as well as Kim Clark, a current advisory-board member who has agreed to serve on the voting board. Current officers Marleen Nienhuis (president), Ed Hostetter (clerk) and Barbara Sommerfeld (treasurer) are serving a two-year term to end in 2018. The slate of Advisory Board members includes Adam Castigliani, Susanna Coit, Liane Crawford, Don Haber, Stephen Fox, Jacqueline McRath, Mary Owens, Mari Passananti, Lois Russell, Licia Sky,, Anne Smart and Karen Watson. More detailed bios are available at the meeting. In addition, there will be updates on our finances, our programs (The South End Writes, Local/Focus, Summer Jazz Concerts and the Play Reading Book Club with Arts/Emerson). Your suggestions and ideas will be warmly received.

The library is fully handicapped accessible. We serve refreshments. 

The South End Library/ArtsEmerson's Play-reading Book Group Resumes Saturday, January 28 at 10:30 AM; Includes Tickets to the Acclaimed Play "Beauty Queen of Leenane." Free to All

The Beauty Queen of Leenane

The Play-reading Book Club sponsored by ArtsEmerson and the South End library will resume this Saturday, January 28, at 10:30 AM at the South End branch when a group of local library patrons and ArtsEmerson organizers will begin to read and discuss the script of award-winning play by Irish playwright Martin McDonagh, Beauty Queen of Leenane. The Friends of the South End Library (FOSEL) is funding the three-play program, which promotes access to the theatre and community building, free to all. There are five sessions, including attending the play itself on February 8, and a final get-together on February during which the participants share their experiences with friends and family on Thursday, February 16. ( An article by theatre critic Hilton Als about playwright McDonagh and The Beauty Queen of Leenane appears in their week's The New Yorker.) The first play in the series was Mala, by acclaimed local playwright Melinda Lopez; the final play in the program will be 17 Border Crossings by Thaddeus Phillips, for which the play-reading sessions take place during April; going to the play will be on April 19 at 5:30 PM..

17 Border Crossings

If you would like to participate in the Play-reading Book Club for The Beauty Queen of Leenane starting this Saturday, January 28 at 10:30 AM, please get in touch with Anne Smart at the South End library at 617 536-8241, or by email at asmart@bpl.org. You can also contact Akiba Abaka at ArtsEmerson at 617 824-3071, or by email at akiba@artsemerson.org. Tickets to the play are at a vastly reduced $15. However, if you can't afford it, the tickets will be complimentary.

Celebrated Author Junot Diaz, Drawing a Record Crowd, Praises Libraries, Cajoles the Audience to Become Actively Engaged Citizens, and Reads a Vivid Passage from "This Is How You Lose Her"

The audience coming to hear Junot Diaz, the award-winning writer of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Drown and This Is How You Lose Her, had filled every seat 45 minutes before the program started, yet more people kept streaming through the South End library's Tremont Street doors. The South End Writes author series fielded large crowds before,  (Jack Beattie, Jamaica Kincaid, Chris Kimbal, Police Officer John Sacco, Dennis Lehane, Joanne Chang, Edith Pearlman, Bessel Van Der Kolk and Steve Kurkjian) but this January 10 event felt different. More as if a prophet had arrived who also happened to be a literary icon, someone who might speak to the sense of political  foreboding many in the audience expressed, days removed from a controversial new President's inauguration. "Are you worried?" asked Diaz, holding a cup of coffee mid-drink, scanning the audience that stood layers deep in the stairwell, moving into the middle of the community room so all could hear him. Many affirmative sounds and groans ensued.

Author Junot Diaz talking about the importance of libraries at the beginning of his talk on January 10/17

Before launching into audience existential anxiety, Diaz eloquently expressed his deep gratitude for libraries. "I am a creature of the library," he said. It gives you access to everything poverty strips you of. Poverty is profoundly undemocratic. It narrows your world. The library's ethos is fundamentally democratic, fundamentally contemplative, a place that itself is concerned with citizenship and civic good--everything that poverty tends to strip from people's minds," he suggested. "I wonder if it had not been for libraries, would there have been anything left from the childhoods some of us have had?" Diaz, who reportedly often walked four miles to his public library to borrow books when he was growing up in a poor immigrant family in New Jersey, emphasized that "we are born in these places and certainly the part of me that led me here to this moment was born in my public library under the tutelage of my librarian."

Junot Diaz reading a passage from Nilda, a story in the collection This Is How You Lose Her

Introduced by author and poet Pablo Medina (Cubob City Blues), Diaz was described as one of the very few writers who use a particular voice to distinguish themselves from everyone else, much like Mark Twain, Toni Morrison and Faulkner did. “He opened a voice and way of life that had not been explored before and brought Latino life into the mainstream,” Medina said. Diaz, winner of numerous awards and honors including the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award and a MacArthur Genius Fellowship, commented that the strange thing about being known as a writer in any way is that you are "standing in for better artists who haven't been given the acclaim they deserve," and thanked Medina and his contemporaries for the enormous influence and genius he received from them.

Junot Diaz receives the traditional FOSEL gift of a FOSEL library bag and copies of his event poster

Turning back to the moment of political gloom, Diaz asked what people in the audience themselves were doing about it. “I wanna know what are you gonna do,” said Diaz, who is active in the Dominican American community.“I’ve been doing my community work forever. If you feel you've been hit by a Mac truck, you can appreciate the life that many of us artists have been reporting, and the diabolical forces in American society that have plagued us and made us miserable for so long." He said he is “intentionally activist"  and not interested in his work as an artist taking the place of his civic responsibility. "Being an artist doesn’t excuse you from your civic responsibility,“ he said, observing that artists are "more inclined to the febrile excuse of ‘my art is my politics.' Investment bankers," he added, "not so much. You see them volunteering in soup kitchens."

South End library's head librarian, Anne Smart, with author Junot Diaz, who described himself as a great admirer of librarians

Answering several questions about his writing, Diaz, who is the Rudge and Nancy Allen Professor of Writing at MIT, described himself as a very slow writer, very 'avoidant,' 'wildly rewarded,' and having come of age reading giants of African-American literature like Alice Walker, Gloria Naylor, Toni Morrison, and Ishmael Reed as well as Sandra Cisneros, Scott Momaday, Oscar Hijuelos, Ralph Ellison, and James Baldwin. Families are great inspiration "for the spectrum of behavior,” he said but cautioned that stories have minds of their own. “You can have wild ideas about stories,” he said, “but the stories themselves have other ideas. They happen at the levels of the unconscious. The story is the boss. It is an enormous amount of work to decipher what the unconscious wants. Every draft brings you closer and closer to the mysterious story. Every version sucks."

With that, he picked up a copy of This Is How You Lose Her, and read a richly descriptive passage from the story Nilda.  When he was done, he patiently listened to, and talked with, his admirers waiting in a long line to be photographed with him and, with a cursive flair, signed all of their books. Within days, he and four other authors --Zadie Smith, Dave Eggers, Colson Whitehead and Barbara Kingsolver-- would have lunch with then-President Obama, who admired them and described the writers as having helped him shape his presidency.

Junot Diaz surrounded by admirers after his reading

South End Library's 2016 Holiday Party

South End Library's Holiday Party Offered Home-cooked Dinner by John Hampton, Great Jazz Holiday Music by Pat Loomis and Friends and a Long Line of Celebrants Who Came to Enjoy Food, Friends, Music and Cheer

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Each year, the lines are longer, the holiday meal more tasty, and the music better than ever. That's the story of the annual holiday party sponsored by the staff of the South End library to celebrate religious and secular good cheer between the book stacks, with the long library tables pushed aside to accommodate the musicians and instruments of Pat Loomis and his Friends, instead lined up to offer a delicious array of Southern-style dishes. “Next year, it’ll have to be someone else,” announced John Hampton, the husband of library staffer Carol Glass who has valiantly manned the stove for many years to produce the feast. His health is not what it used to be, so this year’s meal for the library’s party was his last. A long line of expectant diners stretched all the way into the Children’s Department, and included several reporters for local papers.

Pat Loomis (from the back) watching drummer Zeke Martin throw himself into it

Chef John Hampton's last supper prepared for the SE library's holiday party

Loomis's band outperformed itself with what otherwise would have been old standards of the holiday season but, instead, offered the appreciative audience their fine jazz and blues versions of it. Drummer Zeke Martin did a spectacular job, as did Loomis himself on the alto-sax, his son Antonio on guitar and Daniel Day on bass.

Happy holidays to all.

Mayor Marty Walsh, at the Library for a Neighborhood Meeting, Expresses Support for the Renovation of Both the South End Branch Library and Library Park to Improve the Cramped Space

Mayor Marty Walsh at a recent event. Boston Herald.

Mayor Marty Walsh, in a meeting held at the South End library on December 8, responded positively to efforts by the library's Friends' group to renovate and redesign the branch library and its adjacent Library Park, which is used extensively for children's programming and the popular summer Jazz & Blues concerts by Pat Loomis and his Friends. The meeting, the third annual "conversation with the Mayor" on a number of topics sponsored by  the South End Forum, brought Mayor Walsh in direct visual contact with the cramped condition of the branch, where as little as 4,000 square feet is divided between children and adults, many of them homeless, a number of them suffering from mental health and addiction problems. "I saw it," the Mayor said when the Friends of the South End Library (FOSEL) pointed out the difficulty for the staff to manage the adult population seated in close proximity to the children's room. The South End's teenage patrons, moreover, have no space available to them at all at this branch.

Homeless library patrons and their possessions make an already cramped seating area seem even smaller; creating storage during library visits would help the homeless and preserve room for other patrons

As mayor, Walsh has been very supportive of the long-neglected Boston Public Library system, and was one of the state's Boston  legislators who in 2010 halted the attempted  closing of up to a third of BPL branches proposed by his predecessor, Mayor Thomas Menino. After his election, Walsh funded the massive, more than $80-million renovation of the Copley Library's Johnson building, then in its planning stage. The building, redesigned by William Rawn Associates (who also renovated the outstanding Cambridge Public Library) reopened to rave reviews last summer. The Walsh administration also put in place a more than $90-  million five-year capital plan to bring BPL's branch libraries into the 21st Century. As a result, for example, the Jamaica Plain branch library will reopen this spring with a $10-million overhaul, including a new wing; other branches, including those at Adams Street, Dudley, Parker Hill and Roslindale have substantial capital projects and/or renovation plans underway, as well. Recently added to the list by BPL President David Leonard were long-overdue projects related to library services in Chinatown and Uphams Corner.

But, as FOSEL pointed out at the South End Forum meeting, the South End library is not yet on the current list  for capital improvements. "You will be," Mayor Walsh said, adding he would bring it up with BPL's David Leonard, with whom FOSEL has been in discussion about the South End library's urgent needs since earlier this year. In addition, Mayor Walsh promised he would bring up Library Park's planned redesign with Parks Department Commissioner, Christopher Cook, especially important in the effort to resolve the sticky question as to who actually "owns" Library Park, the BPL or the Parks Department. In the past, the lack of clarity about ownership has been one of the factors that led to the lack of capital investment or repair of the small but prominently located park.

Library Park during one of the Pat Loomis Jazz and Blues concerts, Summer 2016

Under the current plan proposed by FOSEL, an immediate reconfiguration of the ground floor would open up the adult area by moving bookcases to the side; situate  computers at the back wall with a library-wide electrical grid upgrade to replace the warren of electrical extension cords; turn the area underneath the stairs into a space for teenagers; and create more diversified seating arrangements for all library patrons. Subsequent renovation phases would build on the immediate reconfiguration, as part of a capital plan that would be subject to public hearings and suggestions. Library Park's redesign would also require a public process, with the aim of uniting the library's functions with park usage.

The South End Library's Holiday Party Is Upon Us with Jazz & Blues Band Pat Loomis and his Friends, and a Home-cooked Meal by Staff: Tuesday, December 13 at 6:30 PM, Welcome to All

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It's that time of year again for a home-cooked meal, a fine jazz & blues interpretation of holiday music by Pat Loomis and his Friends, all of it taking place between the book stacks of the South End library on Tuesday, December 13 at 6:30 PM. As always, John Hampton, husband of library staffer Carol Glass, will prepare the delicious Southern-style meal of chicken and trimmings, and volunteers plan to bring home-made desserts. (More desserts are always welcome.) Pat Loomis will play the alto-sax. His son, Antonio Loomis, will be on the guitar, while Daniel Day mans the bass and the fabulous Zeke Martin will ply his drums.

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The event is free and open to all. The South End library is fully handicapped accessible.

Dina Vargo, Author of "Wild Women of Boston: Mettle and Moxie in the Hub," Will Describe a Parade of Reformers, Socialites, Criminals and Madams on Tuesday, December 6, at 6:30 PM

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Dina Vargo writes in her introduction to Wild Women of Boston that filling two or three volumes with the stories of Boston's female firebrands is "almost a no-brainer." A tour guide for the Boston By Foot, Vargo became interested in off-beat walking tours that revealed a hidden history of people and places which led her to the stories about women not so well known but revolutionary in their own right. An African-American abolitionist, Sarah Parker, refused to give up a seat in a play about a hundred years before Rosa Parks did. Harriet Hemenway and Minna Hall handed the Audubon Society leadership to men so as to not cross prevailing boundaries of female comity, but at the same time brought the fashion industry to its knees when they led a boycott against plumage in ladies clothing.  And then there was Rachel Wall, a pirate, and  Ann Hibbing, who dared to take on a contractor who she felt charged her too much. Both Wall and Hibbing were hanged. Fargo will tell you all about it, and more. Her books will be available for sale and signing. The South End Writes is sponsored by the Friends of the South End Library. All the events are free. Books by the speakers will be available for borrowing, sale and signing by the author. The branch is fully handicapped accessible. We serve refreshments. Seating is limited.

This will be the final author talk of the 2016-17 season. 

Gordon Hamersley Tells His Admirers Cambridge May Offer the Best Food Nowadays and Young Chefs May Be Opening Up Restaurants "Way Sooner Than They Should"

Gordon Hamersley who, with his wife Fiona, put the South End on the map as a culinary destination at the dawn of the good-local-food revolution of the 1980s, told a packed room at the library that his many awards, honors and citations notwithstanding, the life of a celebrity chef was not for him. The tall, lean and voluble chef who now writes regularly about food for the Boston Globe, said that after more than two decades of a highly successful run of Hamersley's Bistro, where his wife created a fabulous wine list, they found themselves thinking about the next phase of their lives. They liked to do "other things," Hamersley said, like tying flies for trout fishing, training dogs, hunting grouse and woodcock, walking in the woods, writing, being a family. They had always agreed to wait for the other to be on the same page for any momentous decision about the Bistro. "Are you ready?" they asked each other one day in August 2014. "Totally," they both said. From that moment until they closed the restaurant, two months later, they were sold out each night. It had been their best year ever, financially. "But my kid still refers to me as 'my absentee father,'" joked Hamersley.

Gordon Hamersley signing copies of his (out-of-print) book, Bistro Cooking at Home.

Gordon Hamersley describing hosting President Obama at Hamersley's Bistro while his friend, Ron Geddes, listens

The financial pitfalls of opening a restaurant are many, and Hamersley credits the "Scottish blood" that runs in the veins of his wife, who also was  his business partner, for avoiding them. "Today, the South End is full," said Hamersley. "The best food by young chefs now is found in Cambridge." He cited Giulia's, run by another husband-and-wife team, Michael Pagliarini and Pamela Ralston, as a good example. Responding to complaints from a library audience member about so many mediocre meals served in newly opened restaurants nowadays, Hamersley commented that today's chefs start their own place as soon as they can, perhaps too soon. "I had ten years of experience before I opened Hamersley's, he said. "I am a big believer in experience. How many roast chickens I have done: I know how to mingle the flavors because of that experience. The culinary schools are remiss by not allowing for that. You have to teach cooking as you teach law: it requires experience. A culinary school can’t mimick the experience of a Saturday night at Hamersley’s when a cook doesn’t do so well at four but somehow by seven is on top of his game.”

Longtime South End realtor, Ron Geddes,  introduced Gordon Hamersley for his talk  about his experience as a restaurateur

Those hectic but exhilarating Saturday nights at the Bistro is what he still misses, Hamersley says, but other than that he has no regrets. He never took the awards and honors he received too seriously, and dismissed the authority bestowed on him by some in the media to comment on a variety of subjects merely because he was an award- winning chef. "What do I know about the meal tax?" he asked, "or what the best knife is?" Hamersley's philosophy was to prepare good-quality but simple food in a casual setting, which was different from the traditional chef’s role in the 1980s where the chef always stayed in the back. Hamersley was enthralled by the South End’s diversity. “I stood on Tremont Street and watched what was going on, felt the vibe, and decided I was going to be comfortable for us there,” he said. “We wanted the restaurant to be a reflection of us, Fiona and I, as if you would ‘come into our house,’” he added. Their approach to running a restaurant was based on the old European chef’s notion that they were part of the community. “This is what we wanted it to be,” Hamersley said. “We fulfilled our dream.”