HPL Blogs

Work on the foundations and footings for the new Park Library, located on Park Street, will begin next week.

That project will take about six weeks, said Mark Parrino, HPL’s Director of Facilities Operations.

Once the foundations and footings are complete – “getting out of the ground,” as Parrino described it – the steel structure of the building will be assembled.

Without any delays from weather or the Covid-19 virus, that process could begin sometime in June.

The expected opening date is scheduled for May or June of 2021.

The new 13,000 square foot facility will replace the current 2,500 square foot storefront on Park Avenue. The new library will have a walk-in café, learning lab, community room, and a shared space for stacks, reading, and teen programs.

- By Steve Scarpa, Manager, Communications and Public Relations

 

 

Hartford resident Tenaya Taylor is many different things – an artist, an activist, and a social justice advocate are just a few.

“I can’t help but to talk about injustices,” Tenaya said.

It’s only recently that Tenaya is recognizing how those things feed one another.

“I’ve been trying to consolidate all the work I’ve been doing,” Taylor said.

Taylor recently lent their talents to Hartford Public Library’s online programming, demonstrating how to make artistically crafted bookmarks. The bookmarks were certainly a lovely diversion, but Taylor was passing along something else. “I wanted to give people hope,” Taylor said.

Ever since Taylor was a child, creating has been an important part of life. Tenaya received encouragement from a teacher at a young age and while aspects of the Hartford arts scene can be elitist, street and self-taught artists welcomed Taylor among them.

Taylor wants to make art that is relatable, usable and accessible. If the work ended up in Marshall’s, Tenaya said with a laugh, that would be great. “I’m like the black Martha Stewart,” Taylor said. “I like bright sunny things.”

There was time spent in a 9 to 5 job, but that kind of work just didn’t agree with Taylor. Tenaya needed space to pursue all facets of life.

“The joy of autonomy is priceless,” Tenaya said. “I need to have busy hands.”

– By Steve Scarpa, Manager, Communications and Public Relations

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Hartford Public Library and the Hartford Public Schools continue to take tangible steps to help children’s literacy in low-income neighborhoods across Hartford. No virus can stop that effort.

Through its partnership with First Book, a nonprofit organization committed to distributing free books in low-income areas, HPL purchased over 2,000 books and gave them out at several of the Hartford Public Schools’  food distribution sites on Wednesday, April 29.

With the library closed, HPL Children’s Librarian Denise Martens’ home became the staging area for the packing of all those books. Once packed, Martens and the other children’s librarians picked the books up and brought them around the city. “We were really able to get quality books, diverse books – books kids want to read,” she said.

Hartford has many of what have been described as “book deserts” – areas where books are rare in the home and access to purchasing them is extremely limited.

A 2001 study noted that on average in a middle class community one child had access to 13 books. In poverty ridden neighborhoods similar to those found in Hartford, there was a single book for every 300 children. When the study was repeated in 2014, the results in low-income neighborhoods were even worse, with a single book being available for over 800 children, according to a 2016 article in The Atlantic.

Children make the majority of their neurological connections through the age of three. Without a rich vocabulary that can only be augmented through engagement with print, children from low-income families will face another disadvantage.

“There are all kinds of studies that show that kids who have access to books have better outcomes in school,” Martens said. “Our hope is to put books in the homes, giving kids the opportunity to be in more interactive-rich environments.”

This book distribution is part of an ongoing effort. First Books gave HPL a grant for $40,000 in the Fall of 2019 to be used for the purchase of new books. The library then partnered with nine Hartford schools located in low-income neighborhoods.

Approximately 24,000 new books were given to Hartford schoolchildren over the course of this school year. The books were chosen by both students, looking for what they might like, and teachers trying to match the texts to a child’s literacy level.

“My hope is that the project will get bigger. This is something that we will continue to pursue,” Martens said.

– By Steve Scarpa, Manager, Communications and Public Relations

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Coconut-Marinated Pork Tenderloin with Green Onion-Peanut Relish

From “Bobby Flay’s Barbeque Addiction”

By Bobby Flay

TX840 .B3 F5194 2013

By Julie Styles, Manager of Public Services, Central Branch

It’s still freezing outside. But it’s late April, so I’m ignoring that small detail. I refuse to wear socks anymore, and I stopped wearing a coat 3 weeks ago.

So when my husband asked what we should make for dinner, I shouted, “let’s grill!” He looked at me like I was crazy, but only for a second. Then his eyes lit up and looked outside. It wasn’t raining, and it was still light out. “We can do that!” I consulted one of my favorite warm-weather cookbooks–”Bobby Flay’s Barbecue Addiction,” ignoring the fact that it was 40 degrees outside.

Bobby Flay has produced a LOT of cookbooks, maybe too many, and we have our fair share of too many in our house, including a similar-sounding one called “Bobby Flay’s Grill It”. Like “Grill It,” this one talks about the right equipment (gas or charcoal grill?),  the right technique (direct or indirect heat?), and the right ingredients (unsalted butter, please), but “Barbecue Addiction” takes us beyond simple grilling and to a world full of smoky flavors, sauces, sides–and cocktails!

After choosing our cocktail for the evening (because, priorities), we decided to make the “Coconut-Marinated Pork Tenderloin with Green Onion-Peanut Relish.” Mainly because it sounded delicious, but really because we pretty much had all the ingredients in our kitchen already and could skip a depressing mask-and-gloves trip to the grocery store.

The pork is first marinated in a combination of coconut milk, lime juice, and some spices, including fiery hot Scotch Bonnet chilies. (And yes, we had those on hand. We’re weirdos, okay?) An easy way to deal with marinade is to use a large zip-top bag to hold everything instead of a bowl–it ensures the meat is fully immersed in the liquid, and takes up less room in the fridge. Once it’s tucked into the marinade, the pork chills in the fridge for at least 2 hours. Might as well have another cocktail!

After soaking up a ton of flavor and turning a gorgeous golden-yellow color, the pork is grilled — we have a simple Weber charcoal grill — so Eric put on his toastiest sweatshirt and headed out to the yard while I stayed inside and made the relish.

When I say “relish”, I don’t mean that vinegar-y pickle condiment you put on hot dogs. This is simply some chopped green onion, cilantro, and peanuts. And chopped peanuts make anything extra yummy. Crunch and salt? Why, yes, please. Bobby says you can pulse it all in a food processor to make it more of a chunky puree, but we stuck to the chopped version. Gotta have that crunch!

The pork grilled up beautifully tender and had a rich, slightly spicy flavor. The coconut milk and bit of curry powder gave it great depth that subtly suggested far-away lands. The relish balanced it nicely with oniony, salty, and herbaceous flavors.

While this dish would probably be served best on a backyard patio table in 80-degree weather, the Jamaican flavors and charry grilled bits were just enough to let us pretend it was summer while we ate indoors, radiators hissing, heat cranked up just enough that I didn’t miss my socks.

When the library re-opens, you can find this cookbook in the non-fiction shelves under call number TX840 .B3 F5194 2013. Until then, you’ll find the recipe here: http://bobbyflay.com/recipes/recipes/72/coconut-marinated-pork-tenderloin-with-green-onion-peanut-relish

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The coronavirus has disrupted society, making simple acts of connection difficult. That made it all the more important for the staff of Hartford Public Library’s The American Place to find a way to overcome that difficulty and continue to serve.

Julie Redding, Hartford Public Library’s Crossroads to Connectivity coordinator, is using her weekly check-ins to strengthen relationships and to make sure that the couple of hundred people served by TAP have what they need to stay on track towards their goals.

“We want to support them when their lives are upside down like everyone else,” Redding said. “It’s a little bit like casework. What can I do to help you?”

The COVID-19 outbreak presents unique challenges to immigrants and mixed-status families who are disproportionately affected by layoffs, suffer from food insecurity, more likely to lose their housing and lack access to technology.

“They are extremely vulnerable. The tools of living can be tricky for them because of their basic communications skills,” Redding said.

Despite the library’s closure, The American Place has continued to provide critical services. They’ve distributed tablets with a built in data service that doesn’t require WiFi, many times personally delivering the equipment to the people in need. They’ve moved free ESOL and citizenship classes online. Immigration attorneys continue to service families already in the citizenship process, in addition to work staff members were already doing conducting surveys and wellness checks.

“I’ve doubled and tripled contacts figuring that they need the support and pointing them towards community resources,” Redding said.

Redding’s Connection to Connectivity program was intended to be supportive, meant to supplement what was going on in classrooms and programs. With the closure of schools and universities, that has changed. “In most cases, the laptop is how they receive their instruction,” Redding said.

In addition, The American Place staff has been training educators to do their own online instruction.

For Homa Naficy, the executive director of The American Place, there was no chance that a virus would stop their good work.

“Many immigrants aspire to become American, as you have greater liberties and vaster opportunities for economic and academic growth than anywhere in the world. They will be able to afford a better life for their children. For many the path to citizenship is an arduous and daunting process. Given the sense of helplessness and fear that all of us are feeling today, if there is any way that we can offer some sense of hope and some form of care to individuals during this pandemic we should. We can all do something for each other, its recognizing what that something is,” Naficy said.

- By Steven Scarpa, Manager, Communications and Public Relations

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The blank page can be a frightening thing. Perhaps even more scary is what lands on it once you start writing.

But in Christopher Pressley’s mind, writing is an important process towards growth as a person. “You can’t judge what comes up in you. Once it starts flowing out, it’s like undamming a river. You don’t know what it built up in there,” said Pressley, a 34-year-old Hartford resident who is a social worker and writer.

He advocates journaling once a day and recently conducted an online workshop for Hartford Public Library espousing his beliefs. The writing doesn’t need to be polished or more than even a few sentences. It’s not making art, although a person could use the journal that way at some point, he said. Journaling is closer in tone and feeling towards meditation, a way of becoming deeply in touch with one’s heart and mind.

“It’s such a personal thing,” he said.

There is no one way to do it. The key, he said, it to approach the process with openness and with a belief that writing will help you.

“(People who journal successfully) identify and connect in some way. They see value from their own perspective, that it is a good thing for me to do,” Pressley said.

Pressley, a Bridgeport native, started writing in middle school and kept up with it into high school. His sister wrote poetry and that inspired him. He lost touch with writing for pleasure in college, but once he graduated the pull towards the craft returned. As he was getting his master’s degree from the University of Connecticut in social work, the impulse to write manifested in short stories and essay, a more direct mode of expression in his mind than poetry.

In his practice as a social worker, Pressley is interested in the concept of self-care and how it impacts the wider community. “Our behavior is definitely a function of the environment … if we are spending time around people who are positive, joyful, and peaceful, they are going to rub off on you. The more we develop that in our community, there more it will be reflected in all of us,” he said.

Journaling is one more tool at his disposal to help people become happier in their own lives, hopefully helping to create a better Hartford.

“If everybody in the world started doing this tomorrow there would be tremendous transformation. It is another tool to see what is going on in your mind. You can see what is going on in your life. You can make changes,” he said.

For people interested in journaling, Pressley suggests taking a look at The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron as one way to begin.

- By Steve Scarpa, Manager, Communications and Public Relations

 

 

 

 

In celebration of Earth Day on Wednesday April 22 – and in recognition of the recent trend towards the creation of “victory gardens” – Hartford Public Library would love to offer a few suggestions to get your started on your own garden.

First, a word on victory gardens. In 1917 the United States government encouraged people to grow their own fruits and vegetables to assure enough food for the soldiers fighting overseas during World War I. During World War II, over 40 percent of all fruits and vegetables were grown in what were dubbed “victory gardens.”

Today, as a way of avoiding the grocery store and assuring access to healthy food during the pandemic, people are starting their own gardens again. Just this past week, Sarah Rose of Samad Gardens Collective, offered a few tips on HPL’s virtual programming on how to get started with your seeds indoors when it is too cold to be outside.

We have a few suggestions of books from HPL’s online resources to help get you started with your own garden (and give you something to think about).

• “Small Space Container Gardens,” by Fern Richardson. You don’t need a large plot of land to get started on your own garden. Richardson walks you through how to get started using containers just a bit of space. Perfect for people who live in the city.
• “Grow Cook Eat: A Food Lover’s Guide to Vegetable Gardening, Including 50 Recipes, Plus Harvesting and Storage Tips” by Willi Galloway. A primer to get you started on growing 50 of the tastiest vegetables, herbs, and small fruits. Complete with recipes.
• “The Drunken Botanist,” by Amy Stewart. Humans do not live by vegetables alone. This New York Times bestseller tells the story of how throughout history people have found ways to turn plants into their favorite alcoholic libation. With 50 drink recipes and tips for gardeners.
• “The Omnivore Dilemma,” by Michael Pollan. In what is now a modern classic, Pollan examines the simple choices one makes every day about food, and what they mean on a global scale.

— By Steven Scarpa, Manager, Communications and Public Relations

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The Boundless partnership between Hartford Public Library and Hartford Public Schools was recently featured in the School Library Journal. We are proud to be in the company of other school districts and libraries that are strengthening partnerships to support their students and communities.

Dr. Leslie Torres-Rodriguez, superintendent of the Hartford Public Schools, offered a few words about the partnership.

“We are thankful to our partners-in-learning at the Hartford Public Library for working beside us, shoulder-to-shoulder, to increase educational access for our beautiful and capable students. Boundless provides greater access to paper books and digital resources to help our students develop that crucial, life-long love of reading.  When I was a child, the Park Street public library branch was my second home.  It was my love of reading that helped to secure my future.

Boundless benefits our students, teachers, families, and the entire school community. And it profoundly supports our literacy goals which we know are key to student success.

Supported by a Media Specialist, this is a traditional library where the past and future meet; combining all the tools our students need to thrive in the 21^st century.

We are excited about the tremendous benefits this partnership is bringing to Rawson School and we hope that this pilot program will be implemented at more schools in the future.”

Hartford resident Blessings Divine was out at dinner one evening with friends and the talk turned serious – the state of the world, how things were going, the kind of deep conversation that can happen when people of different backgrounds come together.

They then turned to Blessings and asked him a light question about some song lyrics.

It was that moment where Blessings realized it wasn’t enough to just be an entertainer.

Blessings, a 27-year-old Hartford hip hop artist, will bring his positive brand of hip hop to Hartford Public Library’s “Friday Jams” this week on Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram. “Positivity is the absolute core of everything in my life,” he said, noting that his first name is an acronym for “Bringing Life Equality So Self Is Naturally God’s Standard.”

Divine combines rapping with what he calls “a psychology seminar.” He keeps his concerts fun because in that way he’s able to introduce some serious things for people to consider.

“There is no special circumstance to define anything. It’s just you. You are the thing you need to make your life better,” he said. “You can find yourself and learn who you are. You can let that light inside you reach everyone outside of you.”

The quest for radical self-invention is mirrored in his own life. Blessings is, in many ways, a Renaissance man – he’s a dancer and visual artist. He teaches martial arts. He is a serious writer and poet. When you combine all of that, he considers himself a lyricist. “When you put (poetry and music) together, it’s kind of like rapping,” he said. “That’s where I found my medicine to be the most potent.”

Divine performs, collaborates with other musicians, and gives talks all around the city and the region. He was scheduled to open for legendary rapper Big Daddy Kane at the 15th International Trinity Hip Hop Festival at the end of March, a concert cancelled in the wake of the coronavirus.

That hasn’t stopped him from continuing to create and trying to remind people that they are not stuck, that with knowledge, will, and persistence, they can have the life they’ve always dreamed of.

“I’m on a mission to heal as many people as I can,” Divine said.

To check out Blessings Divine’s music, visit his website http://blessingsdivine.com/

- By Steven Scarpa, Manager, Communications and Public Relations

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Hartford Public Library has deployed its small fleet of 3D printers into the fight against the spread of coronavirus.

Four of the organization’s six machines were taken from the Downtown Library and placed in the homes of staff members who are working diligently to make mask adaptors for UConn Health. The other two printers will be retrieved from HPL’s neighborhood libraries and pressed into service as well.

The mask adaptor is a plastic frame that fits around the nose and mouth, allowing UConn Health to adapt its current stock of masks to be more effective in preventing the virus.

Keith Petit, property administration manager for the UConn Health office of logistics management, said that they have a stock of masks that were purchased for a previous outbreak which have technically expired. However, the N95 Filters themselves do not expire, just the elastic on them. So there is an opportunity to save the masks.

“Because the elastic gets brittle with age it won’t give a good seal to your face, so they are worthless. By putting an adapter over your face with a new elastic band they become useful again. This is how we were able to repurpose old masks. We also modified the adapter to have spikes, which allows us to use alternate materials like surgical wrap which has filtration qualities similar or exceeding to N95,” Petit wrote in a recent e-mail.

         

HPL President and CEO Bridget Quinn-Carey knew that other libraries around the country were assisting health care providers by creating masks and other equipment. When UConn Health reached out for assistance, she didn’t hesitate to say yes.

“With the library closed, it feels like we’re not able to be on the front lines as we often are during a crisis — when there is a storm or other disaster libraries are often the ONLY public places open for people to gather, charge devices, get information or supplies. It feels so strange not being open and unable to directly help people — doing this is something we can do to proactively help,” Quinn-Carey said.

Little coaxing was needed to find staff members who were eager to help.

“Our colleagues were just as eager to say yes and get this underway as I was — we have an amazing team. It says so much about them that they were willing to gather and pick up the printers and set them up at their homes — talk about working remotely,” Quinn-Carey said.

The printing process is time consuming. It takes about a half hour to print a single mask. Once printed, librarians will drop the masks off at the Downtown Library, careful to take all necessary social distancing precautions, and the masks will be brought to UConn Health.

Marie Jarry, director of public services, said the library is working through its stock of filament – the tough fiber used in 3D printing – and will make as many masks as possible. She expects that the current allotment of filament will make upward of 100 adaptors.

When the filament is depleted, Jarry said the library will go out and buy more raw material. “We have a good amount in stock and we are going to be purchasing more,” she said.

With 3D printers now pushed into action, Jarry is considering another library resource; its stock of sewing machines. “I am going to see if we have anyone willing to sew the cloth masks that people are asking for,” Jarry said.

The virus is expected to hit its peak in Hartford County sometime in May. The pressure on healthcare providers isn’t expected to let up anytime soon. In the meantime, in this one particular way, Hartford Public Library will be there to help.

“As long as they keep asking, we’ll keep making them,” Jarry said.

- By Steven Scarpa, Manager, Communications and Public Relations

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