A fun entry for the many Coffman readers who have enjoyed Miss Benson’s Beetles includes six short (2-5 minutes) video clips featuring the author. Another visit-worthy entry is Pride and Prejudice, where the video clips range from Jane Austen’s Reading List to HM Queen Camilla Visits Jane Austen House.
The website isn’t perfect. Now and then a link doesn’t work, and it can be somewhat of a maze to navigate. However, you might find that to be one of its charms. Let it lead you down the rabbit hole and provide a mental break from our hectic lives.
Coming Soon...
...is our permanent online connection to those many books in our two-story Library. Please continue to access the catalog via this link: Coffman Library catalog. Sometime soon there will be a new link on the Library page of the 1666 website. Something New I am making a current subscription to Twin Cities Consumers’ Checkbook available in the Library to all residents. Currently, the Fall 2023/Winter 2024 and Spring-Summer 2024 issues are filed in a black folder beside the seagulls just below the clock on the Library’s lower level. It includes local ratings for car insurance, dental specialists, carpet and flooring stores, dry cleaners, tailors, auto repair shops, and lots more, with in-depth articles on all of the above. More issues to come. Books and Reading David just read The Wide Wide Sea, by Hampton Sides, about the final voyage of Captain Cook. Ship logs and journals and the extensive previous scholarship stand behind this narrative. The author gives emphasis to the scant but insightful oral histories of the Pacific Islands and Alaskan people who made dramatic and often-fatal contact with Cook and his English crews. This reads afresh with their perspective. Because I had read good reviews and wanted our library to purchase it, I dove into Doorman Wanted, by Glenn R. Miller, and read at least fifteen pages before I began to get into it. After his wealthy father’s death, our hero inherits L’Hermitage, a large New York hotel, and his own penthouse on the eighth floor. As he approaches the entrance to this building, he spies a sign, “Doorman Wanted." You guessed it. Being embarrassed at owning the hotel, he applies for the job, thinking to work his way into his REAL job as hotel owner. The story gathers depth and interest as Franklin connects with residents and passers-by who have their own stories. (He does sleep in his apartment, entering through the back door in the dead of night.) I recommend it.
The book is full of historical figures of the time—President Roosevelt, of course, but also the economist John Maynard Keynes (and his Russian ballerina wife, the lovely but shocking Lydia Lopokova) and financier J.P. Morgan. Playing master puppeteer is economist Harry Dexter White, an archrival of Keynes.
Despite being married to an economist and being pretty good at money management, I don’t really understand financial systems very well. But I loved this story and learned a lot. The book takes us into WWII from another perspective and, late in the war, leads us to historic Bretton Woods, where world leaders remake the money system so countries can survive and recover in a much-changed, post-war world economy. Wealth of Shadows is a twisting story well-told and supported by an astonishing 10-page Author Note that details what’s truth and what’s fiction chapter by chapter. Highly recommended!!! When not checked out, you'll find Wealth of Shadows in the Fiction section under Moore.
Throughout May 2021, Eileen adapted existing library operations to include the cataloging step. COVID was still raging, so planning and training had to be done while wearing masks and maintaining distances.
She cataloged the first book on June 22, 2021, and by August 30, 2024, she’d cataloged all 4,006 items on the library’s shelves. Achieving that milestone suggested that our vision of creating an online catalog for resident use might also be attainable. My enthusiasm was briefly dampened when Eileen decided that renting a residence was a better fit for her than owning one. She moved from Coffman on August 8 but not before assuring us that she’d help train her successor. What good fortune to have Margaret Green waiting in the wings. Much of Margaret’s career had been in educational administration, but before that she had been a cataloger for five years at Harvard’s Widener Library. With some training from Eileen, Margaret was ready to solo. And the good news just keeps on coming. Just days ago, I watched while Eileen migrated our library’s inventory into an online catalog platform. A week later, Library Committee members and residents were test-driving our catalog from their own computers. Library Committee members miss our friend Eileen Smith’s presence at Coffman every day. Always a pleasure to know and work with, she remains extraordinarily generous with her time. I know she’s as pleased with the outcome of this project as we are. |
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