Yes, Virginia…Kindness still exists

                                             by  Jennifer Nicholson  Rowan Public Library

This is my favorite time of year, with decorations, peppermint and cinnamon filling the air, music, and especially all the lights.   This is also, to many a stressful time of year, many will have simple worries of making sure they have enough gifts, to cleaning the house before guests arrive.  Yet, many will also have the worry of no gifts, and many are struggling to stay warm and feed this holiday season.

            As many worry and stress this holiday season, I am always reminded of my favorite holiday story.  This story is based on real life events, starts with a very inquisitive 8-year-old girl, Virginia O’Hanlon, who in 1897 wrote a very special letter to The New York Sun newspaper.  Her letter starts-

“Dear Editor- I am 8 years old.  Some of my little friends say there is no Santa Claus.  Papa says, ‘If you see it in The Sun it’s so.’  Please tell me the truth, is there a Santa Claus?”

           

            While the response to Virginia, by writer Francis Pharcellus Church, can be a little long, the response by Mr. Church is beautifully written.

“Virginia, your little friends are wrong.  They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age.  They do not believe expect they see… Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.  He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy.  Alas! How dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus!  It would be as dreary as if there were no Virginias.  There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence.  We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight.  The eternal light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished…Is it all real?  Ah, Virginia, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding.  No Santa Claus!  Thank God! He lives and lives forever.  A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay 10 times 10,000 years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.”

The “Yes, Virginia: There is a Santa Claus,” story, resonates the heart of this holiday season, whether you celebrate Hanukkah, Christmas, or Kwanzaa, the story carries the belief in kindness, hope, love, and joy.  This is a story to help teach children the heart of giving, and general kindness.

            In 2009 CBS created an animated version of this story; and thanks to Macy department store, the story was also part of a commercial.  “Yes, Virginia” has been retold many times, even outliving Virginia, who passed in 1971.

            As families and friends come together this season, please come to the library to check out the dvd of the animated story, but also know we have many other books that help teach kindness, and generosity. 

            How Full is your Bucket? For kids- by Tom Rath and Mary Reckmeyer, teaches children that everyone has an invisible bucket.  When we do great things for others through kindness and helpfulness, we fill each other’s buckets.  When we say or do negative things to others, we help empty each other’s buckets.  It is a simple book that explains that kindness isn’t just saying nice things, but can also be through our actions.

            Giving Thanks: more than 100 ways to say thank you- illustrated by Ellen Surrey, is a new book that shows children how to show thankfulness of others through giving and actions.

            While this is a simple example of books to teach children kindness and heart, there are many more at you local library.  Please check out our catalog and our website at rowanpubliclibrary.org.

The Friends of Rowan Public Library

by Melissa J. Oleen  Rowan Public Library

                Rowan County is blessed with a number of wonderful organizations, agencies and non-profits all seeking to assist, support and improve the quality of life in our communities in a myriad of ways.  Rowan Public Library is blessed with its own very special support group – The Friends of Rowan Public Library.  Friends of Rowan Public Library is a non-profit organization that raises money to support and enhance the programs, collections and services the Library makes available to all Rowan County citizens every day, all year long.  This is not just citizens who can physically visit a library branch. It includes over 1,300 children served at over 20 different Stories To Go and Books to Grow sites and over 150 elderly adults served at over 15 Rowan County retirement centers and lunch clubs, including the State Veteran’s Home.

                The Friends’ support allows the Library to offer not just three professional performers during summer reading but seven.  Friends’ support allows every 2^nd grader attending a public or private school in Rowan County the opportunity to hear a professional oral storyteller at beautiful Sloan Park at the annual Stories by the Millstream Festival.  Friends’ support has allowed the Library to explore the latest in cutting edge technologies and purchase new library furniture.  Through the Friends, rental copies of popular titles and movies are made available decreasing check out wait times.  Friends’ support provides increased training opportunities for Library Staff helping us serve our citizens better.

December is the month when Friends’ memberships are up for renewal.  On behalf of the Friends, I ask you to show your support for Rowan Public Library by renewing your membership.  Please consider purchasing a membership for your own friends or making a donation in honor of a loved one.  If you are not a current member, I encourage you to join.   Members receive a copy of the Friends’ monthly newsletter, entrance to the member’s only preview sale for the Friends’ Annual Book Sale, and can take advantage of Friends’ Literary Road Trips, an exciting travel program with upcoming trips to Mackinac Island, the Pacific Northwest, Austria and Germany slated for 2017.  Donations are tax deductible and listed in the monthly newsletter.  A Friends’ canvas book bag, only $10 each, make excellent gifts and are the perfect way to let someone know you purchased a Friends’ membership for them.

An individual membership is ten dollars.  Family memberships, $15.  Literary & civic organization memberships, $25.  Patron and business memberships, $100.  Checks should be made payable to Friends of Rowan Public Library.  They can be mailed to 201 West Fisher ST, Salisbury, NC 28144 or delivered to any Library location.  Credit/Debit card payments are accepted in person or by calling 704-216-8240.

Please join the Friends in helping to make special things happen at Rowan Public Library which in turn, makes things better for Rowan County.

               

City Directories as a Historical Research Tool

by Amber Covington  Rowan Public Library

Remember city directories that listed the names and occupations of everyone that lived in a house? A person could simply look up a street address by a last name and find the person they were looking for. In today’s time we have phone books and they only list home phone numbers with the person's name that is on the company’s account and their address. Therefore we do not know if we have the right person's home phone number. These also leave out many people that do not own home phones. Searching for contact information can be very challenging. As our phone needs have changed over the years, our historical and research needs have not. When looking for an individual that may have lived here in Salisbury during the 1940s, check out the city directories available at the Rowan Public Library Edith M. Clark History Room to find their home address and occupation of the time. This is an easy way to help you find out the names of businesses in town, their neighbors, and if you have the correct person. Small details such as occupation can be crucial information when searching for individuals that lived years ago.

If you ever find yourself searching for a relative or business among Main Street in Salisbury during your historical research consider using a city directory. Thumbing through a directory reveals that past lives of many and how they contributed to the makeup of Salisbury. Businesses placed advertisements throughout the directory and many times this provides a glimpse of the services they provided during a certain time frame. If you ever wonder who lived at your house in previous years search through a city directory. The lives of the people and neighbors that lived in the same house or neighborhood come alive in simple print on the pages of city directories.

Ready to begin your adventure into the past lives of Rowan County residents? Consider the city directories awaiting you in the history room.

Allegiance

by Laurie Lyda  Rowan Public Library

When it was announced that George Takei’s Broadway musical “Allegiance” would be shown on Dec. 13 at selected cinemas nationwide, I immediately purchased tickets and encouraged friends and family to do the same. For any who were unfamiliar with the historical events that inspired “Allegiance,” I shared materials from my personal library, and I also located materials that are part of Rowan Public Library’s collection.

While many know George Takei from his role as Hikaru Sulu on “Star Trek,” not as many know that he and his family, along with other Japanese immigrants and Japanese-Americans, were interned on American soil during World War II. Takei, who was born in Los Angeles, has often shared his experiences. His 1994 autobiography “To the Stars,” which is part of RPL’s collection, begins with his family’s forcible relocation and internment at Camp Rohwer. In the TED Talk, “Why I love a country that once betrayed me,” Takei shares that for his four-year-old self, “being in a barbed wire prison camp became my normality.”

As an adult, Takei has sought to remember and share stories of the interned and the consequences they suffered because of that internment. “Allegiance,” based on his family’s experiences, is a culmination of this passion. Takei, who also stars in the musical, stated in an “Entertainment Weekly” interview, “So many people around the globe have never heard about this dark part of our nation’s history, and it is an honor and privilege for me to help tell this story so that we can avoid repeating the mistakes of the past. I am deeply grateful that almost 120,000 people experienced the Broadway production during its run, an eerie reflection of the number of Japanese-Americans who were directly impacted by the events depicted in ‘Allegiance.’”

Takei is not alone in his mission to preserve and remember. Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston’s “Farewell to Manzanar” (1973) recounts her family’s internment at Manzanar Camp. Using her recollections and in-depth research, Wakatsuki Houston and her co-writer and husband James D. Houston share “a story, or a web of stories…tracing a few paths, out of the multitude of paths that led up to and away from the experience of the internment.” Yoshiko Uchida’s “Invisible Thread: An Autobiography” (1991) includes chapters about her experiences at Camp Topaz and the effects of becoming “prisoners of our own country.” (Uchida’s “Desert Exile: The Uprooting of a Japanese American Family,” which is not currently in RPL’s collection, recounts their story in more detail.)

            Others examine the topic through a historical lens. Karen Latchana Kenney’s “Korematsu v. The United States: World War II  Japanese-American Internment Camps” (2013), part of the Landmark Supreme Court Cases series, walks readers through how legislative actions were used to inhibit the rights of Japanese-Americans. Latchana Kenney reminds us that the Korematsu decision, which expanded government powers and allowed the denial of an ethnic group’s civil liberties, “is commonly condemned as a civil rights disaster.”  In “Infamy: The Shocking Story of the Japanese American Internment in World War II” (2015), Richard Reeves uses survivor interviews, private letters and memoirs, and additional archival research to tell “an American story of enduring themes: racism and greed, injustice and denial—and then soul-searching, an apology, and the most American of coping mechanisms, moving on.”

In addition to the aforementioned print books, a search of the NC Live database (accessible via the “Online Tools” link on the RPL website) using the terms “Japanese American internment camps” yields numerous scholarly articles, news and magazine articles, and Ebooks. NC Live can be accessed from any RPL branch as well as from your home. To access off-site, you simply need your library card number and PIN (the four-digit number you selected when receiving your library card). A librarian can assist with locating online materials and/or resetting your PIN. Call 704-216-8228 or visit www.rowanpubliclibrary.org for additional help.

Tickets for the 7:30 p.m. screening of “Allegiance” on Dec. 13 can be purchased via Fathom Events website and at selected cinemas. The show includes behind-the-scenes footage and interviews, including one with Takei.

Native American History Month

by Abigail Hardison  Rowan Public Library

 

This is a busy time for many of us. Leaves need raking, food needs preparing, winter clothes need to be pulled and swapped out with our flip-flops and tank tops. Election Day, Veteran’s Day, and Thanksgiving and the impending Christmas season can take up a lot of space in our schedules and our minds. But let us take a moment and look out our windows at the majestic fall foliage and imagine what our beautiful land was like a few hundred years ago and those people who made it home first.

November is Native American History Month, and it is easy to see how it could pass unnoticed by all of us. What is now Rowan County was home in a much earlier time to native people who lived, loved, fought, farmed and raised families here. It is not impossible to imagine what their world may have looked like considering the miles of undeveloped farmland and forests still intact in much of Rowan County.

North Carolina historically has several tribes associated with it, and the Cherokee, Catawbans and the Tuscarora are the most well-known. The lesser-known tribe that populated the Pee Dee River Basin from South Carolina all the way up to the Yadkin River was the Cheraw tribe, now considered extinct, but if you find an arrowhead in your backyard, it might be from a Cheraw. All of these tribes are considered to be part of the “South Appalachian Mississippian Culture” which was a loosely interconnected trade network in the Southeast, sharing similar languages and customs.

Here at Rowan Public Library, we have a sizeable collection of materials on the local native peoples in our History Room. Anyone interested can view historical books such as “History of the Old Cheraws” by Alexander Gregg, or “Natives & Newcomers: The Way We Lived In North Carolina before 1770” by Elizabeth A. Fenn and Peter H. Wood. The Library of Congress, the National Archives, the Smithsonian, and the National Park Service are all providing exhibits and collections to celebrate our first peoples this month. More information is available at the website: nativeamericanheritagemonth.gov.

Though the legacy of our Native tribes can be hard to see at first glance, it is important to remember that for many of us, that legacy is within. Part of the reason so many of the tribes are “extinct” is because they intermarried with the incoming settlers, or with other tribes. Many of us do not know that when we celebrate and acknowledge the native tribes we are celebrating ourselves. When we eat many of the delicious foods that we know and love, such as corn, squash, blueberries and cranberries, peanuts and yes, our thanksgiving turkey, remember these are foods that were not on the dinner tables of our European ancestors across the ocean. These foods were shared with us by the first people here, and in the ensuing years they have become ours. Yes, we have heralded many a celebration with apple pies and hamburgers, but it was the squash, the corn, and the pole beans that got us through centuries of long, hungry winters. If our ancestors had not learned how to survive here from those first peoples they might not have lasted very long. Just ask the Lost Colony of Roanoke.

So as we feast this season, take a moment to consider what life would have been like, in that exact spot, three hundred years ago. Your central heat and smart phone would seem mighty strange to those Cheraws that were here back then, but the foods on your dinner plate might seem quite familiar.