Richard Howe | Library Chronicles

Library Chronicles

January 8, 2026 by DickH Posted in Uncategorized Leave a Comment

Library Chronicles

By Leo Racicot

What’s your most prized possession? For me, it’s my library card.

Ever since the afternoon Sister Margaret Paul, our fourth grade teacher. walked our class down to Pollard Memorial Library, down the stairs to the Children’s Room and I discovered my delight in getting my very first library card, I’ve been hooked on libraries. A library card is a passport to worlds, a ticket to all there is to know, all you could ever wish to know.

I even remember the first book I took out. It was Conrad Richter’s Light in the Forest. I was attracted to its cover. I forget the details of the book I read last week but to this day, I remember the plot of Light in the Forest and have retained a fondness for it all these years later. Its story, set against the background of The American Revolutionary War, about a white boy kidnapped by a Native American tribe and raised to be one of them. has stayed with me, its theme about an individual caught between two worlds resonated strongly with me.

I’ve always loved to read and for twenty years whenever I worked with students, it was in the capacity of an English reading tutor/teacher. At both Saint Patrick’s School in the 1970s and Franco American School in the 1980s, I put together and taught Advanced Reading groups. At Saint Patrick’s, I loved our meeting place, a small space in the school basement next to the hall stage. At Franco, our classroom was wedged between the first and second floors, a private oasis of learning. I remember I decorated the walls with photos of authors of every kind, which the children loved and to which they’d contribute photos of their own favorite writers. But I wasn’t cut out for teaching; for one thing, like my mother, I didn’t have a strict bone in my body. In frustrating attempts at maintaining classroom discipline, I was forever saying, “Sit! Down!”. Not fun. I don’t remember having a job I could say I actually loved, in fact, until I began working at O’Leary Library at what was then the University of Lowell, in 1985. libraries, which I’d always spent most of my free time in anyway, utterly seduced me and I was to spend seventeen years of my working life in them. Mornings I literally couldn’t wait to get to work. When I moved to Cambridge in ’97, to accept a position as a private home caregiver/companion to an autistic man and his elderly mother, I found my part-time work there (weekends, Thursdays through Sundays) challenging but not sufficiently so; needing more to occupy my time, I applied to Cambridge Public Libraries, hoping my work for ULowell Libraries would give me an easy “in”. Not so. The CPL administration took a long time to hire me; they wondered why, after years of working for a university library, I’d want to work for a public library system. Later, I learned they thought I was some rich guy who wanted to go “slumming”, didn’t think I was serious about wanting to work for them. I’d also tried, unsuccessfully, to get a job with Harvard’s many libraries, most of which were a stone’s throw from where I now lived. But I’m not a typist, still type with two fingers and could never get an interview; Harvard won’t look at you unless you can type like lightning. I’d always wanted to see the magnificent Widener Library stacks but they were harder to enter than Pluto’s Gate if you weren’t Harvard-affiliated. I was about to give up on Cambridge Libraries when, after what seemed an eternity, they finally called to say “yes” to my application. CPL consists of seven libraries, a main library and six branch libraries spread throughout the city. I began my career there as a “floater”; whenever a regular staff person at any of the seven libraries was absent, on sick leave, sabbatical, or on vacation, I’d be sent in to cover their hours. To say my time as a floater for Cambridge Public Libraries was sheer delight is to miss the mark. I took buses and subways to go to work and it was an absolute joy riding to each of the different branch libraries, seeing and exploring the different neighborhoods each was located in. My favorite branch was Boudreau Library, nestled cozily in the Concord/Huron Avenue area. The late Linda Haines was Branch Head at the time. She was smart-as-a-whip, funny, quick, savvy with a heart of gold. Patrons still mention her Children’s Storytime Hour which was so popular, the kids and their mothers packed the small space such that oftentimes, we workers had to climb over them to get to our stations. I liked Linda a lot. It was Fall of the year when I began as a floater and I looked forward to riding the bus down Concord Ave, pretty as a picture with its big, old trees and colorful leaves. Poor Linda died young after a long battle with cancer. She made Boudreau a vibrant part of that community.

Boudreau wasn’t the smallest of the branches; that honor went to hobbit-sized Collins Branch. I’m a fairly big guy and just making my way around Collins to shelve and such was a challenge. Branch Head, Elaine Cory, kept a tidy ship. The Valente Branch, located in the Wellington-Harrington section of Cambridge, had more of an inner-city vibe. Eleanor Rose, a staffer, had a habit of screaming at patrons, co-workers and her boss one second then in the next second, remorseful, would suddenly throw her arms around us wailing, “Oh, honey, I’m so so so sorry I hollered at you.” The more sensible Anna Morais, who’d hailed from the Azores, would tell me to “pay no mind to that one; she’s nuttier than two fruitcakes.”

Central Square Library could have been used for a movie if the scene required a high-security prison. Built in the ugly Brutalist style so prevalent in the 1970s (Boston City Hall is an example of the Brutalist style), its exterior had a forbidding look to it, esp. on bad weather days. I met the wonderfully eccentric Shushie Pahigian there and Kevin Lucey who’s still a good friend. Husband-wife team, Tom and Lynn Brown were so funny, so interesting to be around. Lynn made me laugh all the time and made my work burdens light by cheerfully pitching in. I miss them. Life at CSQ was always an adventure. It had the most eccentric patrons (i.e. some genuine characters). Located in the heart of what was then one of the city’s most dangerous neighborhoods, it wasn’t uncommon to find a patron in the rest rooms who’d overdosed. or an overly ardent couple who’d decided the bathroom was the best place for them to express their ardor. We staffers saw some things! O’Connell Library was helmed by a woman named Yan Qu. Yan worked hard to make her branch a mainstay of that area. But she had a habit of going out to lunch and coming back three hours later, or not at all, leaving my co-worker, Dale Howard, and myself to run the show. Sink, or swim. Maybe she was training us to deal with any kind of situations that might arise. I did like working there. I liked all the branches, and especially Main. Had I known my stints there were being noticed by the higher-ups, I wouldn’t have worked so diligently because — in what seemed like no time, they promoted me to a permanent part- and then full-time worker. No more “floating”, which I’d loved and would come to miss. As a floater, I got to meet and know all of the 80 plus staffers who made up the CPL troops, which was nice. Working at Main, I met some wonderful, interesting people, the most memorable of whom was Priscilla Beck aka IM. Librarians, I discovered are not the benign, book nerdish folks I imagined; their personalities and pasts contain intrigue, adventure and misadventure. Take Priscilla; she’d attended Mount Holyoke College then travelled with her cats to Barcelona where she found herself living in the midst of the Franco regime. Later, her travels took her to Oregon and Baltimore where she continued her work in libraries. In 1988, on my way to see/hear writer Jan Morris speak at Cambridge Library, I stopped this lady on the street and asked if she knew where the library was. She said, “Do I?!! I work there!” and bid me follow her. That was the time Jan Morris said to me, “What joy it brought me looking out in the audience, seeing your beautifully androgynous face!” Not sure I wanted to hear that or if that’s something one stranger should say to another. When I got home, I spent hours in the mirror trying to discern what had caused Jan Morris to make that estimation of me. Anyway…years later, now co-workers at Main, Priscilla turned to me one moment out-of-the-blue and announced, with glee, “The witch-hazel is in bloom!”. I thought, “What an eccentric way to break the ice. We became instant chums and are chums to this day. Encroaching age prevents us from getting together as often as we used to, to visit museums, attend concerts, dine out. I haven’t seen her dear, dear face since 2019 but we still email each other every day or so and she has been my rock in times of upset, which have been many. Oh, let me tell you how she came to be nicknamed IM (which stands for Irreverent Mother). Priscilla always dresses conservatively, always neat-as-a-pin, which led one of the co-worker cut-ups to tease her about being an undercover nun. He was pretty irreverent himself and used to refer to her sensible shoes as “nun shoes” and would add, “In the convent, such footwear is known as ‘anti-rape shoes’ and liked to greet Priscilla with, “Well, if it isn’t Reverend Mother!’ One day, I chimed in with, “More like Irreverent Mother!” and the abbreviation, IM, stuck. And you thought library workers were stodgy stick-in-the-muds. More like dodgy rabble rousers from what I’ve observed, and I’m always gobsmacked by the depth and breadth of their knowledge, always astonishing.

Today, libraries aren’t what they once were; gone are the card catalogs, the microfilm and microfiche machines. Library work involves knowing computers inside-and-out.I know more than one librarian who’s sighed, “I’m little more than a human Google. I, myself, continue to spend a great deal of my life in them, reveling in their offerings, and am especially fond of the Interlibrary Loan services. I.L.L. Departments have procured rare texts, long out-of-print films and other items for me. I always get a kick out of it when these treasures come to Lowell from places as far-and-wide as Argentina and Japan. No matter where a rarity is, you can be sure an Interlibrary Loan Librarian will find it for you. Friends and relatives tease me that libraries are my home away from home. I’ve yet to find one I didn’t like, no matter how big or how small. In Norton, where I lived for a time, the Norton Public Library was so tiny, there wasn’t much room for more than a couple of patrons and staff at a time. Its chief was the eccentric Mitch Perlow, Mitch always wore black head-to-toe every day of the year leading townsfolk to nickname the library, “Basic Black and Perlow”. While in the area, I also did some archive work at the beautiful Wheaton College Library. Which memory makes me think of the time I was at a luncheon gathering at M.F.K. Fisher’s. Conversation turned to what each of us did for a living. When it came my turn, I said, “I work in a library.” One guest, the Anglo-Irish journalist, Elgy Gillespie, gasped, “So — you’re an ah-sha-vist!”. I had no idea what she’d said, Mary Frances, noting my confusion, said to me, “She thinks you’re an archivist, dear.” I blurted out, “Oh, God no!. I just check out and shelve books” (which wasn’t exactly true either) but we all had a good laugh.

I think of libraries, any library, as a Sanctum Sanctorum of Civility and Decorum. I honestly don’t know how I would have gotten through Life without them. Then again, I run into people who tell me they’ve never set foot in one in their life, ever. The poor fools…

Libraries mesmerize me. Whenever I travel, my first point of order is to find the local library. I love capering in them, discovering what the special treasures of each are. For. no library is like another. Each bestows upon the visitor its own particular magic. My favorite library of all time remains Dracut’s Moses Greeley Parker Library. I spent countless hours there feeding my research and reading needs. The staff is among the best I’ve encountered and the spirit of the place always cheers me the second I walk in the door.

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