Mercer County Library Blog

My mother did not tell stories often, so on the rare occasions that she did, we sat up and listened. One time she told us about this great-grandmother of ours who was a young widow. And like widows back in the day, she had her head shaved and she wore the pallu (the tail end of her white saree) over her head to cover the baldness. Being a penniless widow, she lived with her brother and an extended family in a small tenement room of a three-story building in Mumbai. Every day was the same, an unchanging landscape; work, work, and more work, from the crack of dawn to dusk. There was water to be filled in pots at the bottom level of the building from the collective tap and hauled all the way to the third floor at four in the morning. There was an enormous amount of food to be cooked for breakfast over a single stove and food to be packed for lunch for the men who left for work early. And after they left, there was washing clothes, cleaning floors, mending clothes, and tending to children....

National Parks Week is celebrated every year in April and this year’s week falls on April 16 through 24. While we may not spend a lot of time thinking about them, our national parks are a true treasure. I have had the pleasure of visiting a few national parks myself. In 2018, I took a trip with my family and visited the Grand Canyon in Arizona and Zion National Park in Utah. I didn’t know much about Zion before going and was amazed by its beauty. I treasure the memories from both of those parks! National parks are protected areas that are designated by acts of Congress. They are operated by the National Park Service, which is an agency of the Department of the Interior. Certain areas get chosen as national parks for a number of reasons. It could be their natural beauty (I’m looking at you, Zion!). It could also be for their unique ecosystems, wildlife, or geological features. These features can include forests, deserts, waterways, caves, and more. Some ar...

One of the best things about the end of spring and the start of summer is going on the year’s first camping trip! I love pitching a tent, cooking over a fire, and going on long hikes with just a compass and a map. The very best part, in my opinion, is being off the grid. I don’t mean completely — I like a good campsite with running water and bathrooms just as much as the next person — I’m talking about the lack of cell service. No emails from work. No stressful calls from family. No guilt about not answering that one text from three weeks ago. Just some good ol’ fashioned rest time. But rest does not mean you should be bored! Much like Netflix and YouTube TV with their download button, you can take the library with you for entertainment. Maybe, on the way there you want to play a movie for the kids but you don’t want to pay for more cellular data? Download it on Wi-Fi before you leave! Horrible at telling ghost stories but want to scare the daylights out of your friends? Download an ...

May is Asian American and Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander Heritage Month. For this month’s poetry circle presentation, I selected four distinguished and active Asian American poets to honor their contributions to the Asian American community and the poetry world. Cathy Park Hong is one of them. I use the word “active”, not only because they are all award-winning poets who teach poetry, but also because they engage conversations in their own way, while courageously voicing a wider and more intricate Asian American experience.  “Asian American”, according to the brilliant poet and essayist Cathy Park Hong(link) in her award-winning memoir Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning  (2020 National Book Critics Circle award winner, Pulitzer Prize finalist), is a term that emerged from student activists in the late 1960s, which united them against racial discrimination and in support of social injustice.  Born and raised in Koreatown, Los Angeles, from an immigrant Korea...

I was once part of a reading group that was so special, one of the participants flew from Texas to New York to participate in it. My commute across the river from Brooklyn to Manhattan was less epic, but the monthly events were also very dear to me. I had already been part of a Russian novel reading group – I’ll tell you about that another time, perhaps – and one of the participants told us about the new group he was starting called simply “Reading Short Stories.” Each month, he chose three short stories by different authors, and we met in an Italian restaurant just off the Bowery to discuss them. In my memory, it is always raining or snowing as I trek from the subway stop to the restaurant, which made the pizza oven, the brick walls, the candle light, and the group crowded around a table all the more welcoming. What made it so special? It felt like being in a secret club. It is a privilege to be in contact with people who are unlike you. We were all different ages: there were senio...

In my post about visiting coal mining areas of Pennsylvania, I briefly mentioned a non-coal mine in Ogdensburg, New Jersey – the Sterling Hill zinc mine. Many minerals in this mine and the nearby Franklin Mine area fluoresce, which adds some magic to your visit. New Jersey has quite an extensive history of mining, encompassing a few different types of materials. My most recent foray into New Jersey’s mining history was a short hike at the Mount Hope Historical Park in Rockaway Township. Along the hike are the remains of the Richard, Teabo, and Allen iron mines. Not far from the park is the Mount Hope Pond, with remains of the Elizabeth Mine along its trails. This iron mining area was the most prolific in New Jersey. Along the trail, you see huge holes – more like craters – left from the mining operations; they create a surreal landscape. (A local trail that gives you a mini-version of Mount Hope’s holes is the Rockhopper Trail in West Amwell Township. Its holes were caused by quar...