Young Adults in the 6th through 12th grade are invited to test their Trivia chops as we dive into the world of Trivia Murder Party 2! Jackbox games will require that you have access to Zoom and a separate window or mobile device. The game is trivia with a twist of mini-games and macabre humor!
The overall winner, or group of winners if needs dictate, will be entered into a drawing for a $10 Gift Card, so more than pride is on the line!
ZOOM LINK: https://zoom.us/j/97364307063
Bring your A-Game on Tuesday July 28th, from 3:00-4:00 PM!
“Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.” ~ Neil Gaiman* Coraline
The pandemic has presented us with new challenges and exacerbated old ones. Folk and fairy tales do not merely entertain us, but teach and remind us that we can conquer whatever we face and help quell our fears and anxieties. As we are faced with new obstacles we also need new fairy tales. On these summer Fridays, we will be sharing a combination of old and new folk and fairy tales to aid our community in overcoming the challenges we face today.
Young Adults in the 6th-12th grade are invited to take part in our first Summer Reading online book discussions on July 20th from 3PM-4PM.
Join Librarian Patrick as we take a look at Rick Riordan’s series of mythological book series and talk about the history behind some of them. This conversation will take place over Zoom, and a recording will be made available after the event goes live. Sign up for Summer Reading on Beanstack to be added to the e-mail list.
UPDATE: Join us today at the zoom meeting link below:
https://zoom.us/j/98046100020
Join the conversation by following us on Twitter @MaldenMALibrary or on Facebook and Instagram.
Join us Friday, June 26th at 12:15pm for the reading of a new fairy tale, “Reeling for the Empire” from Vampires in the Lemon Grove by Karen Russell. This story is not recommended for children. A link will be posted here for the Zoom meeting 15 minutes before the event.
“Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.” ~ Neil Gaiman* Coraline
The pandemic has presented us with new challenges and exacerbated old ones. Folk and fairy tales do not merely entertain us, but teach and remind us that we can conquer whatever we face and help quell our fears and anxieties. As we are faced with new obstacles we also need new fairy tales. On these summer Fridays, we will be sharing a combination of old and new folk and fairy tales to aid our community in overcoming the challenges we face today.
*Paraphrasing of G.K. Chesterton’s Red Angel: “Fairy tales, then, are not responsible for producing in children fear, or any of the shapes of fear; fairy tales do not give the child the idea of the evil or the ugly; that is in the child already, because it is in the world already. Fairy tales do not give the child his first idea of bogey. What fairy tales give the child is his first clear idea of the possible defeat of bogey. The baby has known the dragon intimately ever since he had an imagination. What the fairy tale provides for him is a St. George to kill the dragon.”
Missed the book chat? Check out what staff and patrons recommended: Recommended Books
Take a break and join Librarian Jean for a casual discussion of what everyone’s been reading and find your next great read!
This program will be conducted via Zoom. The link will be posted fifteen minutes before the event in the “Upcoming Events” listing to the right of our homepage, maldenpubliclibrary.org, and in our Events Google Calendar. This program will not be recorded.
Looking for something to do on a Saturday night? The We Are One Global Film Festival is posting new films hourly. See the latest selections from over 20 national and international film festivals including: Cannes, Tribeca, the New York Film Festival, the Tokyo Film Festival, Annecy International Animation Film Festival and more! These films are free but they are using the festival to raise money for Covid 19 relief organizations. Available now through June 7th. Stay in this weekend and watch something new!
May is Mental Health Awareness Month and in light of COVID-19, nurturing our mental health has become even more necessary. We have highlighted some of the mental health challenges that have been exacerbated by the pandemic by providing books, audiobooks, movies, websites, and hotlines. We hope these resources will increase understanding of mental health and help you cope.
A lot of creation comes from consumption of some kind; seeing, reading, listening to something inspiring primes the brain with energy for new ideas. But with everything closed and movement restricted some of the places that inspire the most are out of reach. Many museums have tried to fill that gap by making some or all of their collections available online. They are also hosting webinars, posting pictures, and even producing coloring books. Here too, the Malden Public Library is making our art collection available with a new piece of artwork every week with Monday at the Museum on Facebook. To help inspire and uplift, included below, are some links to museums offering art, culture, history and science add some richness to the stay at home creative life.
For Families
All the Library’s museum passes are locked up safe inside our building and all the local museums, zoos, and kid places are still closed down. But many our favorite family destinations available through our pass program are still available in some way online. Some of the museums also have daily offerings, live streams, and educational resources and not just virtual tours. So make sure to check out their web offerings to see what new events are available.
Museum of Science: MOSatHome has daily offerings, virtual tours, science activities, webinars, and even events for adults.
New England Aquarium: Virtual Visits to the Aquarium offer live webcams, daily updates, presentations, activities, and resources.
The Boston Children’s Museum: Offers a virtual tour of the museum, and the website has a number of activities and resources.
The Dr. Seuss Museum: The website has some online Seuss related activities and lots of history of Seuss and Springfield.
The Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art: Virtual tour of the museum and art and book posts and activities with videos and inspirational suggestions for a variety of ages.
The Franklin Park Zoo: Daily Facebook live offerings of content about the Zoo and its animals. Look for posts about #Zootoyou.
The Smithsonian Museums: The Smithsonian in Washington DC has loads of offerings for every type of kid. Whether live zoo cams, history activities, science and aerospace, art, coloring, music. Their virtual programming has weeks of fun online and available for free.
For Art Lovers
Before the shutdown many museums had begun making their collections available online. Quarantine has helped those virtual collections to grow in number and variety. For art lovers and people looking for inspiration for their next creative project here is a selection of both local, national, and international art museums that offer virtual access.
Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum: With a number of online offerings about the art and the history of the Gardner the museum has also included blog posts and ongoing updates to things to come at the museum. And they have taken advantage of Google Arts and Culture to add their own virtual tour of the museum. Touring the gardens is especially inspiring.
Institute of Contemporary Art: There are a number of selections from the museum’s current exhibitions posted on their website. As well as their detailed plan for Covid-19 response and the work the museum is doing as a food hub for East Boston. But for regular curated content the best place to follow the ICA is on social media. Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.
Harvard Art Museum: Online content via blog posts and art discussions. Also follow them on social media to get even more content.
Google Arts and Culture: Access to over 2500 museum tours from around the world. Famous institutions like the Guggenheim, MOMA in New York, Versailles, The Global Street Art Foundation (UK), Museo Botero (Colombia), The Hong Kong Museum of Art, and too many more to list. These tours are not just for art lovers. There are historical sites and natural history museums too.
History, Culture, Nature and Unique Museums
In addition to all of the museums listed with Google Arts and Culture there are a number of niche institutions, historical sites, natural history museums and cultural institutions that have gone online with content for interested browsers. Here are a few but if there is an institution or type of museum missing from this list head to their website and look for their online options.
As more collections have come online, and more people have time to really appreciate them, a movement to replicate some great historical works has started. The instagram @covidclassics posts photos of classic painting recreations by four bored art lovers. The Getty Art Museum has also issued a challenge to replicate classic works of art with household objects.
We challenge you to recreate a work of art with objects (and people) in your home.
? Choose your favorite artwork
? Find three things lying around your house⠀
? Recreate the artwork with those items
You can follow the submissions on their Twitter account.
In response to the Getty challenge and the spirit of art and culture online. Here is Iggy Pup trying his very hardest to be a good boy like William Wegman’s wonderful Weimaraners.
Pretty good, right? Try it at home with some found objects and a camera. Feel free to tag the Malden Public Library on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram with the final result. #Creativityinchallengingtimes.
The wartime edition of the Victory Binding of the American Woman’s Cook Book was dedicated to General Douglas MacArthur and the war effort. In it are recipes that made the best of scarce ingredients and provided tips for making a lot from a little. In that dedication to MacArthur the editors wrote:
“His heroic leadership and gallant fight against overwhelming odds should inspire every American woman to make the most of daily opportunities to support the war effort in her home and in every sphere of worthwhile war activity. there must be thousands of little ways to do a job better–thousands of opportunities to help–to create, to conserve and to serve. If every woman, every day, in everything she does, will do her utmost of accomplish the aims of our Government, then that combined effort will soon become a gigantic and valuable aid toward winning this war.”
While a pandemic is not quite a war and our kitchens have become a lot more gender inclusive the message of creativity, conservation, and contribution of collective effort is very applicable to our current circumstances. With social distancing and stay at home orders being the new war effort many of us find ourselves looking for ways to make do and fill our time with new and useful skills. And bread baking is both a necessary skill and one that has become emblematic of current social efforts to use our time to make and create something useful and delightful.
Library Resources
The Malden Library has a number of resources to help people learning to bake, or for those wishing to improve their baking skills. We have an extensive cookbook collection both in print and online. But while the library is currently closed there are still cookbooks available to download. And here is a handy list of bread baking books to get you through the challenging times and spark a little baking creativity.
The library also has many cookbooks in Local History that might inspire some classic baking. Included here are a few select recipes using various ingredients to offer an historical perspective on a new hobby.
And if that is not historical enough you can read a Smithsonian article about an ancient yeast starter created from 4,500 year old Egyptian pottery and ancient grains thanks to the work of amateur baker: Seamus Blackley. It is probably a level of bread most of us will only dream of baking.
Online Inspiration
For those looking for quick inspiration or in need of recipes that fit a narrowing list of available ingredients included are a few online suggestions for different types of bread. A quick search with ingredients on hand may yield suggestions for suitable recipes. It is also a good idea to check for tips and tricks for typical ingredient substitutions in recipes. What’s Cooking America has a chart that offers the most common substitutions for flours, and eggs other ingredients; it is a useful resource for more than just baking.
Sourdough
Firstly, the most popular bread baking tool right now is a good sourdough starter. With the surge in consumer demand yeast is in short supply so many bakers are making breads with different types of leavening. And while the library has books to borrow on the topic, sourdough starters are trending on most news sites and social media. First, read Sudeep Agarwala’s Washington Post article about catching your own wild yeast and building a sourdough starter. It will give you the science and the know how to bake some very delicious bread. After that check out the hashtag #quarantinystarter on instagram and twitter and the work of Andrew Janjigian. He has a simple sourdough starter published at Cooks Illustrated. This is the sort of creative baking that is backed and encouraged by biology!
Soda Bread
The next bread that new bakers may want to try is baking soda bread. Made famous by Irish Soda Bread there are a number of soda based breads that use the effervescent qualities of a baking soda based chemical reaction to make bread rise. There are several baking soda and baking powder based recipes in the historic recipes above. But there are also a few updated versions. Irish soda bread is the iconic soda bread and Forbes has a selection of recipes from Irish chef, Darina Allen. Beer bread is another variation like this recipe from New York Times. Here is another soda base recipe from Bon Appetit magazine that includes whole wheat and seeds to make a hearty dense loaf.
Flatbreads
Flatbreads are also a good alternative for those with limited ingredients and for those who are looking for quick and tasty option. And Saveur has a list of 16 recipes to try at home that will use a variety of ingredients and are easy to prepare. Fry bread is also a related and straightforward option this recipe is from the Smithsonian and includes a little historical context for the recipe and the people who created it.
Creative Distancing
As quarantine continues, and even when Massachusetts begins to open back up, it will still be important to limit contact between people for the foreseeable future. Shortages may still continue and we will have to creatively fill them. As citizens we are not being asked to buy government bonds or to enlist to help a war effort but we are making other sacrifices. We are being asked to close down, stay home, to wait to keep each other safe. And that waiting can be anxious and overwhelming. Filling the time and space that this situation creates requires a new set of skills. We have guides, fortunately, there are historical examples of how previous generations have endured creatively. There are online outlets ready to teach and guide people in need of distraction and information. And there are library resources set up and ready to inspire.
So if you need to bake some bread while you are waiting to go back to normal. If you need to learn to sew a mask for your daily walks. Or you want to start a digital paint night, poetry slam, or book discussion via video conference so you can express yourself. Or if you need to plant a Covid-19 victory garden in buckets on the the porch. Then do the things that help you endure and wait, let your creativity guide you through this challenging time.
