It wasn’t looking good for the Elizabeth Taber Library Annual Book Sale coming up next week when, on Friday, July 15, staff discovered water pouring down from the ceiling of the basement room where donated books were being stored for the annual fundraiser.

The library staff at first thought it was a burst pipe raining water down onto a section of books donated from the community to the library but, come to find out, it was a clog in the sewer line that had water backed up and spilling out all over the books, as well as toilets overflowing.

The library closed early on Friday, and it remained closed on Saturday as well as on Monday so that town facilities workers could dig up the front lawn of the library to fix the clog.

“Thankfully, it wasn’t as bad as we originally thought,” said Library Director Libby O’Neill. “We acted quickly and brought the books outside. Some of them we were able to dry off. Somewhere between one hundred and two hundred books were lost.”

Luckily, said O’Neill, the library receives book donations throughout the entire year, so a good number of books are still available to be sold at the Annual Book Sale, the library’s largest fundraiser of the year, going on at the Marion Music Hall on July 29.

O’Neill wasted no time getting the word out that the library needed more book donations to make up for the loss, and the community responded by replacing the lost books twofold.

“The community has done a great job hearing our message,” said O’Neill. “We have so many book donations coming in from the community, and we are so grateful for that.”

Marion Facilities Manager Shaun Cormier said the library, much like the other historic buildings in town, still has the old clay pipes and sewer lines underground. When the Sewer Department on Monday began snaking the backed-up pipe from the street, they found the clog was located right between the two locust trees on the property. The root system damaged the pipe and one of the two trees had to be cut down.

The old sewer line was replaced with an updated PVC pipe.

As for the book donations, O’Neill said that this year, thanks to the generosity of the community, the book sale might have more books available for sale than the previous year, despite this “little set-back,” as O’Neill put it.

By Jean Perry

Local police, clergy, and members of the Tri-Town community gathered this morning, Saturday, July 23, at ORR Junior High School to come together in peace and unity during an ecumenical service to honor those in uniform, those officers who have recently been assassinated in Dallas and Baton Rouge, and to pray for an end to racism and for the protection of police officers.

In 1988, Kathleen Renzi and Roni King, wives of Lions Club members, wanted to help the organization, but women weren’t allowed to be members. The two decided to sell lemonade during community events, giving a portion of the proceeds to the Lions Club and other charitable organizations. For decades they sold lemonade at Harbor Days. In more recent years, their wooden stirring spoon has been passed down to their daughters Catherine Renzi and Kathy King. “We thought about not doing it this year,” said Renzi, “but the Lions said it wouldn’t be Harbor Days without the lemonade.” Photo by Marilou Newell

Once in a while you’re out in nature approaching a bend in a hiking path, reaching the top of a mountain, or, in this case, meandering along the beach, and you come across something that draws your eye in. Someone has taken stones and carefully stacked them one on top of each other, perfectly balanced and oftentimes appearing to defy gravity itself.

The rocks, although perfectly natural and at home in the setting, are far from natural in their formation.

Just when you thought you were the only one out there, with the rest of the world forgotten about for the time being, feeling alone and at one with your aloneness, someone has left behind a sign of having passed that way before, of having existed momentarily in the place at which you find yourself, and is in a way saying to you, “Hi. I was here.”

For centuries, humans have been stacking rocks all over the world as ways to mark a significant place, a gravesite, the location of a battle in history, or as trail blazes to guide others along as they hike. This human-made stacking of rocks is commonly known as a cairn, from the Scottish Gaelic word càrn.

I come across a few of these now and again as one who spends a lot of time exploring the outdoors and traveling about to hike new hills and discover forest trails I’ve never been down before. Every now and then, they start cropping up along a stretch of beach at the Nasketucket Bay State Reservation as they have been over the past few days. Some have gotten a bit creative, too, incorporating driftwood and seashells along with the usual rock tower formations.

One late afternoon last week, I was walking along quietly deep in thought when from afar I spotted a group of them and it yanked me out from my flow of inner consciousness back to the beach where I stood.

I walked up and pondered the cairns, appreciating the transience of this temporary art installation and wondered about the people and the reasons why they would build them.

Some people wish upon the rocks as they balance them up, wishes that are likely the same or similar to the wishes we all secretly have. Wishes that may or may not come true before or after the sea swallows them up and the rocks tumble down.

The cairns could be a way of connecting with others on a spiritual level, leaving behind a sculpture of peace and tranquility, which seems to me the silent language of the cairn and how I usually feel when I look at it.

Not all people feel that way when coming across a cairn, however. Actually, there are a lot of people, including conservationists, telling people to please just stop it already with the cairn building. The old hiker’s adage of “leave no trace” echoes out from cairn to cairn, and some areas in the world, notably Iceland, have essentially been invaded by cairns created and left by tourists oblivious to the effects of leaving behind stacks of stones everywhere. In some areas, cairns are cropping up uncontrollably and are even threatening the very ecosystem and habitat of local wildlife.

At the Nasketucket Bay State Reservation beach, though, they seem right at home. I imagine some young people stopping to stack rocks together for a while, testing their balancing abilities and starting over again with the occasional mishap when that final rock on top doesn’t quite make it so they exchange it for another that might do the trick.

I think about my life and the symbolic cairns that mark the different paths I’ve taken, and I think about the metaphorical cairns I may have built along the way that perhaps have guided others who came after me. And I ponder the mystery of it all and the messages left by the people who balanced the rocks on the mountains, the deep forest trails, and the beaches for me to see that seem to say, “I was here before you, I passed this way too, and you are not alone.”

By Jean Perry