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Stratford Library Association - Stratford, CT

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During the month of September, you can show your library card and save! See the list of terrific deals available at the various businesses.

Happy Savings!

Labor Day holiday

The Stratford Library will be closed on Saturday, Sept. 5, Sunday Sept. 6, and Monday Sept. 7 in observance of Labor Day. We will reopen on Tuesday, Sept. 8 at 10 am.

(Above: the first celebration of Labor Day, in New York City)

The first Labor Day was celebrated in New York City on Sept. 5, 1882, when some 10,000 workers assembled to participate in America's first Labor Day parade. After marching from City Hall to Union Square, the workers and their families gathered in Reservoir Park for a picnic, concert and speeches. This first Labor Day celebration was initiated by Peter J. McGuire, a carpenter and labor union leader who a year earlier co-founded the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions, a precursor of the American Federation of Labor.

McGuire had proposed his idea for a holiday honoring American workers at a labor meeting in early 1882. New York's Central Labor Union quickly approved his proposal and began planning events for the second Tuesday in September. McGuire had suggested a September date in order to provide a break during the long stretch between Independence Day and Thanksgiving. While the first Labor Day was held on a Tuesday, the holiday was soon moved to the first Monday in September, the date we continue to observe.

New York's Labor Day celebrations inspired similar events across the country. Oregon became the first state to grant legal status to the holiday, in 1887; other states soon followed. In 1894 Congress passed legislation making Labor Day a national holiday.

You can watch an early motion picture by Thomas Edison of a 1904 Labor Day parade on the Library of Congress's American Memory site.

--This article originally appeared at the Library of Congress's "Wise Guide" page.

Summer Reading Program for Adults

Over 100 adults participated and over 475 books were read in our first-ever summer reading program for adults. We send hearty thanks to all the businesses and organizations helping to make possible the fabulous prize incentives.

Many participants told us that the program really did encourage them to read more this summer. Some individuals expressed their appreciation that the program allowed them to model good reading habits to their children - Mom or Dad was in a summer reading "club", too. Other people told us they were thrilled just to have a fun outlet for their steady reading habit. If you didn't join this summer, we hope you'll keep it in mind next year!

Shakespeare on a summer day

Three plugs for Shakespeare today.

First, the library just bought a set of 25 DVDs, all of Shakespeare's major works, produced by the BBC in the 1970s and 1980s. You can see Helen Mirren, Anthony Hopkins, Bob Hoskins, Sir John Gielgud, Dame Wendy Hiller, and even John Cleese in these made-for-tv movies, which were done with that expertise in the dramatic tradition that only British actors have.

Second, the Hudson Shakespeare Company will return to the Stratford Library on August 22nd with a free performance of The Merry Wives of Windsor. The 2 pm show will be outdoors, weather permitting, or indoors in the library's Lovell Room if the skies look threatening. The comedy The Merry Wives of Windsor is Shakespeare's only play to deal with his contemporaries -- the Elizabethan middle class.

And finally, if you like to go down to "the city," you might sign up for sword and unarmed combat classes, which the Hudson Shakespeare Company's fight choreographer regularly offers in New York City. Roman swords, found objects, rapiers, cudgels, broadsword, quarterstaff... you name it, Michael Hagins can teach you to wallop someone with it (theatrically, of course). The Hudson Shakespeare website can tell you more about these classes, which are recommended for general fitness as well as for aspiring actors.

The poet and the firefly

We're having a good time putting up a new poem every day in the library lobby. One of the best parts is looking at dozens of good poems looking for one really stands out, that will connect to a reader who is just glancing at the poem on the wall while waiting for the elevator. Here are two poems about fireflies that I came across today: one serious, and the other, not so much.

Fireflies in the Garden by Robert Frost Here come real stars to fill the upper skies, And here on earth come emulating flies, That though they never equal stars in size, (And they were never really stars at heart) Achieve at times a very star-like start. Only, of course, they can't sustain the part.

The Firefly by Ogden Nash The firefly's flame Is something for which science has no name I can think of nothing eerier Than flying around with an unidentified glow on a person's posteerier.

Poem of the day

The Adult Services Dept. is posting a new poem every day in the lobby during the month of August. So far, the poems have been personal favorites of one of the librarians, but we're interested in hearing from you, if you have a poem to suggest. Share your poems with us and other library devotees by sending your suggestion(s) to ask@stratfordlibrary.org.

Here's today's poem, by Nobelist Czeslaw Milosz.

Encounter We were riding through frozen fields in a wagon at dawn. A red wing rose in the darkness. And suddenly a hare ran across the road. One of us pointed to it with his hand. That was long ago. Today neither of them is alive, Not the hare, nor the man who made the gesture. O my love, where are they, where are they going The flash of a hand, streak of movement, rustle of pebbles. I ask not out of sorrow, but in wonder.