Here’s the blog of our expedition adventures… the pics may have to come later.
Some of you may remember (or have seen in one of our photo albums) that we did the 36-library challenge back in 2018. But Rivka was too young to get her “gold library card” (the official award for visiting all 36) back then, and it felt like it was time to take up the challenge again. Raizy was away for a few days in Manchester England attending a family wedding, there was lots of rain in the forecast, so we figured it might be a good opportunity for quality family time with the younger kids especially. So off we went!
Each library does have their charm and uniqueness, and what sets it apart. From the type of architecture, to their size and vibe, its history – old buildings and new ones, their methods of sorting books and their degree of technology or lack of it, plus the personalities and styles of the librarians themselves, all feeds into and enriches the total experience. Even though we did it back in 2018, the change of route to the same spots, the passage of time, the growth of our kids, still made it fun, spontaneous and meaningful. And the roads in between! The rural roads, the scenic routes, the fun conversation in the car, the observations and lessons learned along the way, made it all very special.
One more reason this challenge appeals to us is the similarities in a sense to Chabad Houses. We all are built on the same platform, we all share Rebbe’s vision and overall mission, we draw on the same or similar (inspirational) resources, and there’s much interconnectedness between us in the Chabad network, and yet (by Rebbe’s design!) at the same time there’s so much variation and focus on local color, almost no two Chabad Houses are the same. There are big ones and small ones, home-style or center-style, each offering some of the same programs but also different ones, each according to the needs and means and spiritual and physical circumstances of the local community.
Not sure why but this year, for the 2023 UHLS Library Expedition Challenge, we started with Menands Library. It’s a small library tucked away, kind of on the end of a side-street, just off an industrial part of town. We got our maps and got the first stamp in and we were about to head out. Then we saw huge cut-out lettering all across the top of the library wall: “All Together Now!” what a message to read in a Hakhel Year (the biblical year of unity and gathering that is this Jewish year of 5783)! Then we saw the printed posters and pamphlets to learn that this was a general campaign of all 36 libraries to promote their summer reading programs. But every time we saw this wording in each library we visited, we thought of Hakhel!
To jump ahead, later in our journey we went to North Greenbush Library, the library in Wynantskill east of Troy. Most libraries “hid” the same bear-bus decal of the #Library36er but this librarian hid their library mascot – a large bright yellow and black knitted bee called “Libby” a compound name for Library-Bee. She wanted to personalize and focus the “All Together Now!” theme and make it their own. And the bee is most fitting, she explained, because bees are especially known for their working together. It’s a small library that’s one wing of a municipal complex but was quite full of patrons when we came.
From our first stop in Menands we went to Cohoes’ temporary satellite library. Their massive stone cathedral-esque library (it was once a church) is currently under long-term repair, so there’s a satellite branch in the local senior center to check-in instead. We found the hidden bus there, too, and got to hide it for the next expeditioners. From Cohoes we went to Lansingburgh Library in northern Troy. This library’s claim to fame is Herman Melville and Moby Dick, and there’s a whale icon to symbolize that. Troy has old Jewish roots, but we were still quite pleasantly surprised to find a book on display (you know, atop the shelves) about 33 Jewish women, from biblical times to the modern era. Nice to see that highlighted and promoted even in areas with little or no Jewish community.
The main library in Troy is in its downtown which is having its own revival. But the library is a step back in time, old school elegance in the heavy front door, the tiled floor, the detailed woodworking and all. The librarians shut the lights in the lobby and turned on the lights behind the large historic Tiffany painted glass to see it better. Speaking of glass, the kids enjoyed going up the old metal staircase with ornate railing to the second floor in back of the adult section to stand atop the thick opaque class tiles that serve as that sections unusual flooring. The Troy Library front door had a prominent blue plaque on the historic front door: “Door Sticks. Push Hard.” Aside for the practical, the prominence of the sign made me think of bad habits or negative grooves we get stuck in & we have to push hard to get past it. Or as they say: “When Push Comes to Shove!”
Watervliet is back again across the Hudson. The Watervliet library has a canon replica out front as a nod to the Watervliet Arsenal that is the town’s most dominant feature, but also a giant old bell inside the lobby just before the entrance, very similar to the liberty bell made years and years ago by a bell company in town.
For our next venture out on the #Library36er expedition we went south across the Hudson to the bottom of Rensselaer County. First stop was Castleton, in an old building first built for a school in 1866, just after the Civil War ended. And its pretty much the same, only that the right side of the first floor is the town library (the rest is Town Hall and such). From there we drove to Nassau, and saw the old small Nassau Synagogue, just over 100 years old, originally founded by the Baron Hirsch Jewish farmers who settled and farmed in that area. I shared with the kids my memories of Freddie Rheingold and explained how the Gross couple (Lynn Gross was a music teacher at Maimonides years ago) were from that synagogue as well.
The Nassau Free Library is just further up the same street on Route 20 and the old part of that small building dates back to the 1830’s. And the librarians were so friendly and welcoming! Like North Greenbush, they didn’t suffice with hiding the same #Library36er bear-bus decal, but a pair of “Frog and Toad” beautifully hand-knitted and lovingly worn. Another hand crafted item that caught our eye was a paper model of the library sitting atop one of the bookshelves, very well crafted, really nicely done. One more artifact from there was a worn old long wooden sign that read “Harness Maker”. Ah, what a message! Chassidus speaks of the horse-power of our animal/human souls that even the G-dly/Divine soul can not match, our mission is to harness and channel and refocus its tremendous energy in a productive, constructive and meaningful ways. May we be good harness makers!
We drove on to Stephentown, in the southeastern corner of Rensselaer County, one of the furthest libraries on this quest. Awww. it was closed by the time we got there! But it wasn’t for naught. Upon entering the town we saw a most unusual sign (in usual highway signage): “Welcome to Stephentown – the only Stephentown on Earth!” Every state of the Union has its Springfield, there are at least 5 Albany’s etc… but Stephentown seems pretty confident it is the one and only, and is quite proud of this uniqueness. You also get to see things in rural places that wouldn’t happen on our block at home: chickens and ducks running about on a lawn around a bonfire on a rainy day, with a child riding an ATV through and around all of that, with some restored (one was beautifully restored!) and unrestored vintage cars on the lot.
Must say something about the roads, if we didn’t already. Driving up and down scenic rural roads is a beautiful thing in and of itself. The bucolic scenery, the villages and town you pass through, the farms, and the barns, the twists and turns, the breathtaking vistas that appear around a bend. It was raining or drizzling on and off for most of the days we drove about, but still so beautiful!
On our way home we did make one more stop at Sand Lake Town Library. Got there on rural Route 43. We did pass a sprawling but organized car junk yard and thought how cool it might be to ask the owner if we can do some photoshoots there. Something about the cars in varying degrees of wholeness and decay, spread out among the grass…
A shorter one was one late afternoon – we did 3 libraries down the mid-section of the map: Delaware Ave Branch in Albany, RCS Library in Ravena, Coeymans, Selkirk and the Bethlehem Library on our way back up. Delaware Ave. Library (of the Albany Public Library) has kinda Frank Lloyd Wright vibes with the flat protruding roofs. It’s a nice mid-size library on what’s been dubbed “Albany’s Main Street”. When we came there was a farmers market in back closing up – just in time we bought some amazingly crunchy and sweet sugar snap peas. Then we drove down a route we probably never or seldom traveled, between the Hudson River and the 87, past some heavy duty industrial and wooded scenic areas to get down to the RCS Library. It’s a former roller skating rink, but they did a really nice job converting it, creating spaces, putting murals and images on the walls, spacious but lived in. And then worked our way back to Bethlehem, town streets, side roads, bigger county roads. Bethlehem is one of the bigger regional libraries, lots of books, really nice big spaces, well kept. But it was late by then, we just got stamped and went home.
The next day we had a goal to finish up Rensselaer County – the hardest and longest stretch because of how spread out everything is – and calibrating the timing of when various libraries are open. But our kids were eager, we dedicated time to get this done, we packed up snacks and off we went. We began the day in North Greenbush (in Wynantskill) the library we mentioned earlier above with Libby the Bee (symbolizing the “All Together Now!”) and actually quite the full house of patrons in a relatively smaller (but long) space. People were there using the two computers, browsing the stacks, sitting around or meeting up. The Poestenkill Library is just further down the road but it didn’t open until 1pm so we saved that for later.
The Brunswick Library is a small newer white house that sits in the shadow of a big green mountain. Outside they have bins to donate used clothing or drop off compost. From there we planned to drive up to Valley Falls and the Diver Library, both not far from one another in the north-western reaches of the county, but one closed between 12-1 that day and the other only opened at 1pm, so we decided to cross-over figure-8 style, instead of the planned loop, and do the Cheney Library first, all the way in Rensselaer County’s northwest corner in Hoosick Falls. And we enjoyed the scenic roads getting there.
2023 is a good year to visit the Cheney Library in Hoosic Falls as it marks 100 years since the library’s opening in 1923. Same building, same windows, even the same bookshelves, standing strong and sturdy. The portraits and Mr. Cheney and his wife and their son, benefactors of the library hang to the left. There’s a big carved wooden owl (of more recent vintage) overlooking the children’s section with wise gaze peering through a monocle. There was a gaggle of librarians or library friends gathered, all very eager to tell the story and share their pride in their longstanding hometown library. The Cheney Library had nice souvenir postcards, too, celebrating their history.
From Hoosick Falls we drove back east towards Valley Falls, taking the 67 north and east through Eagle Bridge, Buskirk and Johnsville. This isn’t riding through forest on the Thruway. The road passes right through the centers of all these towns, the ups and downs, literally and figuratively, their unique charm and challenges. This not cookie-cutter territory. When we got to Valley Falls the rain had stopped, but the electricity went out. There was enough natural light in the two library rooms to get by. And the librarian took out pen and paper and did everything she had to enter by hand. This library had changed significantly since we were last there in 2018. The old one room library with its solid wood oak table had been expanded with an added back room, accessibility ramp and a communal room in the new basement. It was one of those well done old & new combinations, new and old at the same time, especially since they mirrored some of the old window design in the new side as well.
The library in Schaghticoke (that’s a hard NYS town to spell!) is pretty close to Valley Falls as rural libraries go, but it has its unique past, present and hopefully future. It’s titled the Arvilla E. Diver Memorial Library and its named for the wife of the local mortician. This couple died without children and in their will they stipulated that it be used for a town library in her memory, and that the upstairs apartment be designated for the library director and his/her family. And so it is! The library director and his wife live right upstairs. This resonates a lot with us personally, as it is often a Chabad-House-style for the Chabad family to live in/back/upstairs/next door of the Chabad House – as we do. So we felt right at home! This apparently is a great rarity as far as libraries go. Now it happens that the current library director couple are not librarians by training, but musicians! And they make music a big piece of the library’s educational component. There’s a beautiful piano in the biggest room of the library (not all that big) and they run musical programs for local students and even make CDs of their music… All very sweet things. But there’s a problem. A big problem. Just behind the library, down below, sits the reservoir called Electric Lake. And the cliff separating their home and the lake continues to erode. Another house on the same row already fell in. Engineers have been looking at the situation, they estimate the library has another 20-30 years unless something can be done. Can something be done? You look out the windows of the back room and the cliff and huge drop is pretty close.
From there we traveled down and back to the center of the county near Grafton Lake State Park (which our kids enjoyed recently on a Maimonides School trip and we’ve been there on various occasions) and just past the entrance to the park is the small basically one-room Grafton Library on the right side of the road on Route 2. Was this the smallest library we visited? Possibly. And yet, despite the location and limited shelf and display space, there was a nice Jewish holiday book right up there for all to see! It feels good to be proudly represented and especially in a community where there likely are few Jews if any.
Grafton isn’t far from Petersburgh, and now we’re traveling along on the eastern part of the county. Small house again, this one has a bigger basement with overflow stacks. They need to prioritize what goes on the shelves upstairs on the main floor. When we came they seemed to be happily engaged in this prioritization process. This place, like some of the other smaller libraries we visited, still uses the good old fashioned ink date stamper. And Petersburgh is not far from Berlin. The Berlin Library is on a small street just behind the main road. It’s newly constructed or recently renovated (was the same in 2018) with a nice wood interior and a loft section with some more shelves and seating that’s upstairs and also viewable from the main floor at the same time. They have a Puzzle Library, with a special table for Puzzle making at the Library. Not only did the Berlin librarian stamp our maps but she also hand-wrote “Berlin” under each stamp as a personal touch! And finally, we got back to Stephentown, the one and only Stephentown, during open hours. They had some nice stuffed book characters, including a super-long centipede. Most memorable was the section of paneling that had geometric colored glass inside, where Raizy and I took a picture in 2018 and it remains my Twitter profile picture! Raizy wasn’t along for this #Library36er 2023 expedition but I took another photo there anyways.
It was getting later but we had to still try to finish up Rensselaer County on our way home. We drove up to Poestenkill Library, where they have us goody-bags! The rain stopped there, too, so we took an outdoor photo by their sign. And from there we went to the East Greenbush Community Library, this is one of the bigger regional libraries, newly built, large rooms and gathering spaces. There was democratic party primary voting going on when we came. And it was a milestone library, too, since we exceeded 12 libraries on the trail we earned a magnetic bumper sticker for the car. And East Greenbush was one of the libraries where you could pick up that bonus prize.
And then there was one last one in Rensselaer County – and that was Rensselaer itself! Close to the Hudson River, just down the road from the Amtrak CDTA Train Station. The kids said it looked more like a store from the outside and maybe it once was, but they did a really nice job with the interior, creating spaces within the space.
Another day, and by this day the rains mostly stopped, we made our rounds of the further libraries at the southern and western edges of Albany County. Our first stop was Colonie, the William K. Sanford Library, a big regional library where we earned our enamel pins for being the 24th library in the expedition. It was an active day at the library, kids were there with their parents, there was some buzz. But the librarian told us that the earlier evening 1400 people came through the library and outdoors for their summer reading kickoff event. We got stamped and then drove down to Voorheesville.
The Voorheesville library is alongside rail tracks and not far from a nearby converted rail trail. So they had a foam cut out train for #LIbrary36ers to stick their heads through and take pictures which we did. And they have a “Seed Library”! Drawers filled with labeled and organized bags of seeds of all types of plants, flowers, and vegetables. One of our daughters asked, “But how do you return a seed once you planted it?” (See this on “The Disintegration of the Seed” according to Chassidus). But the Librarian explained that when people grow really nice plants and it works out well, they dry some of the last seeds and label them, and bring them back to the library to share with others.
After Voorheesville we headed over to Westerlo, further back into the mountains. We went up some really nice (and some very windy) roads. As we neared Westerlo, we remembered the librarian there, and how there was a really nice small but significant collection of Jewish books there. And turned out the librarian was Jewish. We have not been back since 2018. At the end of a road we reached the library on the corner. It’s a nice old-style place, with a blue historical plaque out front. Turns out that parts of this property/joined building served as a general store going back to late 1700’s, another section was a Model T repair shop when those cars came out. They did a nice job combining them all, and keeping the old character. We came in – and the librarian remembered us at once, and our 2018 astonishment at finding such a nice collection of Jewish books way out in Westerlo! She also showed us a very long shovel, it was an ordinary (but bent) shovel with an extra long handle – maybe 10 feet long? that was used to dig telephone and utility poles.
From Westerlo we drove down and up more beautiful scenic country roads to get to Rensselaerville. It’s a really old town and the current library was already a library in 1798! Back in the days of George Washington and the Alter Rebbe! It took a hiatus from being a library from 1830s to early 1900’s, but then it found it way back and its a very cozy wooden library right there on the historic main street of town. This is btw just down the road from the Huyck Preserve where we have gone multiple times for a easier hike and gorgeous outing. We met a family leaving there, and turns out we ended up following them down and down the steep and windy County Route 6 to take us to Berne.
Berne Library was packed. The place is small but was full of children and moms. Turns out they have a high percentage of home-schoolers in that region, and the library is one of their meeting places. But what struck me most was the two boys in front of me, young kids, who put their requested items on the librarian’s check-out counter. She knew them on a first-name basis and she checked them out without a library card, putting the items on their family’s account, as if it were a tab or line of credit at a small mom n’ pop grocery store! The library is in an old church, totally redone, with lots of love from volunteers. It was in that spot for 5 years when we came last, now it is there 10 years and very lived in.
Our last stop for the day was the Altamont Library. More roads through the mountains got us back there. And we ended up right there, in front of the old train station turned Library. This move of the Altamont Library to the old unused train station happened about ten years ago. Had no idea it took close to a million dollars to make that happen! It’s a small space but very nicely done and it captures and retains all the old charm and style of a small town rail station. I once wrote an article for Chabad.org on the Previous Rebbe, Rebbe Yosef Yitzchak and train stations in Russia, titled “The Smoke of the Rebbe’s Train.”
Guilderland is where we live, so that wasn’t a trek, though it is down Western/the 20. They’ve recently renovated and expanded, added an upper level parking lot, charging stations, and a fancy machine that literally swallows up returned books and sorts them into bins by category – and you can watch it through a glass. Pretty cool. We discussed sorting as in the laws of Shabbat, the Rambam (Maimonides) categorization of Halacha into 14 books and 83 units, and in general the ideal of being organized, and knowing what belongs where and to whom.
The last stretch of libraries was within Albany itself. (We did do the Delaware Branch in Albany earlier on). We left the closest and easiest for last.
On the Albany leg we first stopped off at Pine Hills Library, the orange building on Western Ave (that once was a Telephone building perhaps?) nicely renovated into two spacious stories. Hanging above the central staircase is a current piece of artwork titled “Harmonies in Rhapsodies” or something like that, basically thick paper 3D models of random objects: an excavator shovel, a chair, about 7-8 items in all – hanging in sequence on a clothesline. Some of the objects their harmony or tandem aspects are evident, but not sure the message of the art. Got us thinking, though! BTW, the old Pine Hills Library of my youth used to the white house (now part of St Rose College) on the corner of South Main and Madison, across the street from the CVS behind the hedges. It was a creaky wooden place, with nooks and crannies, crammed with books and nifty spots upstairs and downstairs. Very charming old place. Not far from the new one, but generations removed!
From Pine Hills on Western we went to The Bach Library branch on New Scotland Ave. This library is one of the very few to have Sunday hours, and that’s specifically to accommodate the Jewish community living in and around the New Scotland area (The Bach is two doors down from The Shteeble/Cong. Shomray Torah) who can’t use the library on Saturdays. Our school (Maimonides Hebrew Day School is only a few blocks away on Partridge Street) and the Camp Gan Israel camp sometimes comes to this branch. We know the property well. For years it was an empty lot, an open field near the Firehouse which the boys learning at the Shteeble would play football on.
Next we went downtown to the South End’s Howe Library. Beautiful old-school-style woodworking, also with decorative tile around its fireplace, with a modernized accessible entrance. Learned something really interesting this time! The Howe Library opened in 1929, on the very same day of the infamous stock market crash, that same Black Monday, October 28, 1929.
From Howe we went to the North Albany Library Branch, all the way down South Pearl Street to North Pearl Street, and deep down that way. It’s part of a big modernized school complex, has its own section. They had Times-Union newspapers of the week on display and being that this was the week of the dramatic “Changing of the Fonts” at the Times-Union Newspaper, having all the papers of the week showed good contrast. They also featured a large “Bleeker the Owl” mascot on the glass wall so we took a picture with that, and discussed the Bleeker name with the Librarians.
Down to our second to last stop! The Arbor Hill Library branch of the Albany Public Library on Henry Johnson Blvd. This is a stand-alone brand-new library, mid-size or larger with big airy window walls in front. Interestingly, this was the only library along our 2023 journey that all the librarians wore masks. Perhaps they had something going around or maybe related to the increased air alert for Canadian wildfire smoke? Whatever the reason.
Finally, last but not least: We went to the Main Library, Albany Public Library Washington Ave Branch for our 36th and final library in the #Library36er 2023 expedition! Interesting thing. Most libraries in the circuit are small and have one library desk for children and adults together. But in most of the bigger libraries that have separate desks, they designated the adult desk for the #Library36er stamping. But not Albany’s Main Library! They directed us upstairs to the Youth Services/Children’s Library – where we met two wonderful librarians. The woman’s (I don’t know her name, but her maiden name was the same as my first name, aside for one letter). She herself had done the whole library challenge, the first librarian to have told us she completed it. And she seemed quite well-versed with the various libraries and their librarians. And she even told us a proposed solution to save the Diver library on a cliff. The man librarian picked up on my fascination with meaningful messages hidden as parables in children’s books and he shared me one of his favorites, from “Frog and Toad”: where one is sad and the other just comes and sits next to him. As the librarian saw it, like the friends of Job, being there for another, fully present in times of need or distress.
Thus concluded our 2023 #Library36er journey and travels, with 36 stops crisscrossing two counties with the kids for a special memorable adventure.
One more Chabad connection (in addition to above near top of this post): Libraries host and provide and facilitate. Librarians can and do assist and guide and support. All in tremendous and abundant measure! But the goal is for the library patrons, the visitors, to take out their own books, to personalize the experience, to make the most of it on their own, at their own pace, in ways that they themselves appreciate. For a number of reasons, both theological and practical, this is the ideal at Chabad, dating back to the Alter Rebbe R’ Schneur Zalman, down to this day.