Scenic photos of Homer needed for 2010 Friends Membership calendar

With all the beautiful scenery that surrounds us in Homer, it’s almost impossible not to take a shot or two you are proud of. The Friends of the Homer Library is looking for 12 of them to fill our 2010 FHL Membership calendar. The calendar will be printed, bound and offered to the Friends of the Homer Library Membership at the $30 and up level for members who sign up during the months of December and January. It is also sold for $15 at the library and events such as the Nutcracker Faire.
Photos used in the calendar will be attributed to the photographer, and each participant will receive a free calendar for each photo used. Photo submissions must be received by November 20.
Call Carey at 435-3195 or email carey@friendshomerlibrary.org for more information on how to donate a photo.

Our winter 2008 Volunteer Spotlight features Nan Porter, a Homer-area writer and Homer Public Library volunteer.  Nan generously provided us with a brief essay about her experiences with the library:

Books, Libraries and Mom - by Nan Porter

           I find myself adrift in a sea of unlimited time.  Like a skiff no longer moored to the dock, I am no longer tied to house and family.  For the last twenty-six years, I was a busy stay-at-home mother absorbed with raising four active children.  They are gone now, off on their own pursuits.  My main task in this strange new season is to fill my time with something productive.  I am volunteering at the Homer Public Library for a couple hours on Friday mornings.  My sole duty is to quietly shelve books.  Putting up books has a hidden benefit; it lets me remember my mother.

My mother died in the spring of 2000 at her home in Homer.  Her death wasn’t unexpected, but the finality of her absence still throws my world off balance.  I often want to pick up the phone to tell her something, or after I’ve finished a good novel, I want run to her house and pass it on.  We usually read the same books and hashed over the plots together.  Mom and I were a two-member book club for many years.

My childhood was rich with reading material.  My parents subscribed to a variety of magazines and The Anchorage Times newspaper.  Mom also bought books through the mail: Time-Life Books, Best in Children’s Books, Reader’s Digest Condensed Books, My Book House and all the children’s classics.  Those hardbacks represented her efforts to bring culture and refinement into our 1950's Alaskan pioneer existence.  My three siblings and I grew up in Homer without the distraction of television.  In the evenings after dinner, we liked to curl up on the couch under blankets and read.  Mom loved to read aloud to us starting with nursery rhymes when we were very young.  As we grew, she read us wonderful stories like The Jungle Book and The Five Little Peppers.  I remember how her voice would get shaky during the sad parts and she’d pause to blow her nose.  We would cry too, more in sympathy with Mom’s tears than the poignancy of the story.

Homer’s first library had two small rooms with dimly lit stacks and straight-backed, wooden chairs for seating.  It was located in the middle of town on the main road.  On snowy afternoons, the library was a warm rest stop for my sister and me as we walked home from school.  The children’s section consisted mostly of the Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, the Happy Hollisters, and a wonderful set of biographies of famous men and women in U.S. history.  Bundled in our winter gear, we would browse through the books.  Soon however, blowing heat from the furnace would force us back outside, into the frozen dusk.

I don’t recall Mom ever going to the library back then.  Sometimes, she would ask me to look for a certain book or a particular author, and if it was there, to check it out for her.  She was a transplanted city girl from Duluth, Minnesota.  My dad taught her how to drive in Homer when she was in her thirties, but she was never at ease behind the wheel.  When Mom went on an outing to the grocery store or post office it required maximum effort so side trips weren’t an option.  To “be seen in public” she always changed into nicer clothes.  Then, nervously she’d drive the Bel-Aire down our steep and often slippery driveway.

Homer’s second library was built in 1979 on the same property as the old library.  It was a giant leap forward in my eyes, with its large room full of shelves and padded, upholstered seating.  It had a fancy newspaper rack that held the New York Times and The Wall Street Journal.  The new book cart was a great luxury.  Books that had been reviewed in magazines or the newspaper would magically appear there, crisp and clean in their plastic jackets.  I was often the first one to check a new book out, probably because I kept such close watch on the cart.  By that time, I had gotten married and during the 80's we had twin girls, then a boy, and then another girl.  My days were filled with a repetitious round of chores, mealtimes and errands.  Reading fiction was my escape. The library was a quiet refuge.

I became my mother’s personal librarian.  Her main focus was my dad, who had failing health and was often in pain and grouchy.  She didn’t take time to go to the library herself, but she read almost everything I checked out.  Mom read just as fast as I did and we could polish off a thick novel in a few days.  I’d bring a couple books to her house and she’d select the one she wanted to read first.  I’d take the others home to enjoy and then we’d trade.  Our conversations centered on her grandchildren and the latest book.  Mom had definite standards for acceptable literature: No science fiction, no Frank Yerby, no steamy romance novels full of sex scenes. We read so much the stories and characters blurred together and were forgotten when the cover closed.  The books served their purpose.  They transported us away from our mundane routines and more importantly, the books gave us an enduring connection.

On Friday mornings, I silently enter the stacks with a cart full of books.  Automatic sensor lights softly click on to herald my arrival in the fiction area.  I’m amazed by this new library, it’s a post-modern palace!  Inside the neat rows of books, I slowly begin to shelve.  Familiar author’s names appear before me in alphabetical order:  Aldrich, Bradford, Cather...Grisham, Helprin, Karon...Stegner, Tyler, Wodehouse.  Mom and I read them all.  The storytellers spark recollections and fragments of conversations with her.  The carpeted aisle becomes a hushed memory lane.  A title catches my eye so I open the pages and read a paragraph.  Is this check-out worthy?  Would Mom like it?   For a moment reality tilts.  And then wistfully I remember; I read alone now.