Library 104: Swanton Public Library
Please send more swans.
Library 104! The Swanton Public Library was the 104th stop on my quest to read, write, and knit in all of Vermont’s public libraries.
I read: Gather by Kenneth Cadow, chapters 27-28
I wrote: a letter of recommendation
I knit: a Musselburgh Hat by Ysolda Teague in Malabrigo Arroyo, Cereza colorway.
After getting out of the car in Swanton, Mara spotted a fenced-in pond on the town green. We walked across the street to see what was going on. Inside the fence: a duck, a swan, and a replica of the library. We had questions.
Fortunately, we were going to a library. Librarians Hilarie, Jodi, and Allie had answers, and told us the swan is a descendant of a bird that was gifted to the town by the Queen of England. Some hopeful Vermonter wrote a letter stating how nice it would be for a small town named SWANton to receive a royal swan for the town’s 200th birthday, et voila.
Since the gift in 1961, two swans, Sam (as in Uncle) and Betty (as in Elizabeth II), have lived in the park. On the day of our visit, however, there was just one swan and a duck named Chad. We did confirm that the pond house is a library replica. We didn’t ask much about Chad.
The library has embraced the swan theme. If you are ever at an antique mall and spot a swan figurine, it is lost and should be returned home where it belongs: on a shelf in this library. If you are ever bored in Franklin County and need an adventure, go to this library with a friend and see who can find the most swans in ten minutes.
In addition to swans, you can find a bin with hundreds of balls of tidy yarn (minimal yarn barf), a Where the Wild Things Are mural in the children’s space, a book of Zines, a summer reading raffle, a few muppets, a lot of Barbasol, and a display about literary dogs. This is where I picked up a copy of Gather.
Hilarie, Allie, and Jodi also told us that Muppet Treasure Island camp was happening on the bottom floor, so we opted for the quiet third floor to read and get some work done. Reading Gather made me think about the harm reduction bags in the Richford library we saw earlier that day. This book’s author, a Vermont educator, centers addiction in the plot. I am a relatively new Vermonter (8 years now), and this book helps me understand the context where my students grow up. They sit in my office and tell me stories that echo the book: Vermont is a hard place to live for many people. Housing crisis. Buy out crisis. Opioid crisis. Climate crisis.
With crisis in the world, I sometimes sit across from my students in my office and wonder how they manage to focus on school. To push everything aside long enough to read a book. To put their family’s needs on hold and focus on themselves. Education can be a means of overcoming crisis, provided there is access.
I place a lot of weight on public goods like libraries and schools to carry us through social transformation. To help us think about hard questions. And to heal crisis.
Libraries also offer sanctuary from crisis. They are places to think about things that aren’t so weighty.
Like, why is there only one swan? And what’s all that Barbasol for? And who is Chad!?
I guess that’s swan way to think about libraries.
