Time Traveler

Imagine what our ancestors might have thought if someone told them that all they had to do to get to California was get in a huge aluminum cylinder with fixed wings and strap themselves in. No wagon train, no endless weeks on the trail, no horses or oxen…just noise and an invisible power propelling them down a cement runway until the earth seems to fall away and they are rising higher and higher…they level off and the plane seems to stop! I don't have to imagine this scenario. It's how I feel every time I have to fly. But we do what we have to do, in order to do what we need or want to do, in the time we have to do it in.
Now, returning to my home place and a lifestyle that straddles past and future, projects planned and books piled, I am ready to face winter. I would recommend a newer novel, New York, by Edward Rutherfurd and Fall of Giants by Ken Follett, and, though I haven't read it yet, The Autobiography of Mark Twain, edited by a team led by Harriet Elinor Smith. How fitting that this author with his extensive imagination would pen his autobiography with instructions that it wasn't to be published until a hundred years after his death. The first of three volumes is 700 pages and covers the years 1870 – 1906. What an end to our celebration of Mark Twain's visit to Fort Plain. Well, almost end….
On Wednesday, December 8^th at 2:20 and again on Tuesday the 21^st at 6:00, the Fort Plain Free Library will host a Gilded Gimcrack workshop. Each participant will create a beaded ornament cover reminiscent of The Gilded Age, a phrase coined by Mark Twain to describe a time and way of life. This program is free and open to the public. Each class is limited to ten participants so those who would like to be guaranteed a place may want to pre-register at the library. A refreshment featuring Mark Twain's favorite dessert will be served.
There are new offerings almost daily in the book sale as well as some remaining needlework books. In a tight economy, a gently used book would make a great Christmas gift as well as some handmade gift or baked offering. The library's collection will give you thousands of ideas.
For further information on any of these programs or publications, please call the library at (518) 993-4646.