Polish woman caught trying to sneak into the U.S. from Canada...using a library.

The Haskell Free Library straddles the international border between the United States and Canada, with half of the building in Derby, Vermont, and half in Stanstead, Quebec. It's the only library in the world with such a distinction, which we detailed in 2017.

Visitors are allowed to enter the library from either country's entrance, but immigration officials for both the U.S. and Canada park outside their respective sides to make sure whomever enters the library in one country also exits the building in the same country.

Which brings us to this week, where a Polish woman, Julitta Jaka, was dropped off by a random car in Stanstead, walked through the library, and then tried to hail a taxi in Derby.

As Derby is a bustling town of 4,600 people, where cabs are more mirage than reality, this offered ample time for American authorities to arrest Jaka.

It turns out Jaka tried hustling across the border in Niagra Falls earlier in the week, but was simply turned away. After her library hijinks, authorities plan to deport Jaka back to Poland.

Lest you think this is an isolated incident, the Haskell Free Library is a hotbed for international fun. In 2018, a Montreal man was convicted of smuggling over 100 guns from the United States into Canada, where he used the library as his gateway.

Is Derby, VT, just baby Miami? Somewhere, Don Johnson and Philip Michael Thomas are just cracking down on criminal syndicates in the northern woods.

Smallest library in Vermont reopens after nearly 70-years.

Everybody clown car!

A small town in Vermont is reopening its library for the first time since 1948. Not just any library, but the smallest in the entire state. It measures 10ft x 17ft, and has 800 books available to loan.

Well, James Patterson is popular is seems.

The West Danville library originally opened as a gas station in the 1930s before making the natural transition into a library. ((((scratches head)))) For whatever reason, by 1948 the library closed and remained vacant until today, when it will have its grand reopening.

The 1930s: Gas stations as libraries. Naturally.

You'll never look at your local Mobil, Shell, or Exxon station the same way again now.


photos: WCAX News

The little known little library that's in two countries at once.

In the northern reaches of Vermont, snug up against the Quebec border, exists a small library that straddles the international border between Canada and the United States. It is the only library in the world to simultaneously operate in two countries.

Somehow this signage chaos makes sense.

The Haskell Free Library has two addresses, two phone numbers, and two doors of entry between Darby, VT, and Stanstead, QC. Built at the turn of the twentieth century with funds provided by Mrs. Martha Haskell and her son Col. Horace Haskell, the building was deliberately built diagonally across the border between the two nations so that the locals on both sides would have access to educational and cultural resources.

To further add to the curiosity of it all, the Haskell Free Library also has a 400-seat Opera House built on the second floor. That's correct--in a reading space that's usually meant to be quiet, there's an opera house squarely on top of it.

The reason? Instead of constantly looking for money, Martha Haskell intended for the library to be supported through the funds generated by performances at the opera house. Alas, as tastes changed and movies became favored from the 1920s onward, it turned out that the library ended up supporting the performances upstairs.

Visiting the library, one will find a line of electrical tape cutting through the floor dilineating the two countries apart. (There's also a tape line under a row of seats in the opera house.)

Of course Canada would have the more comfortable seating.

The tape is a fairly modern addition to the property. A small fire in the 1970s led to insurance claims with both Canadian and American companies. Insurance companies aren't always the most helpful sort, which led to seemingly endless bickering about which company was responsible for repairs. After repairs finally occurred, the library paid for a surveyor to accurately detail the border inside the building, and assure future insurance claims went to the correct country's company.

Visitors from both countries are allowed inside to freely roam wild across the border to check out books or watch a show. Yet, in a post-9/11 world, immigration and security forces from both countries are typically parked outside both doors to make sure the visitor that went in one nation's door also exits the very same door.

According to Matthew Farfan, President of the Board of Trustees at the library, who was interviewed by Atlas Obscura, the people operating the building aren't interested in politics or borders or security forces.

"This is a friendly institution," Farfan told the site. "We’re not in the policing business."


Photos:
Shuttershock/Erika J. Mitchell
Flickr/Chaloos

J.K. Rowling revealed the new schools of wizardry in the Harry Potter universe.

An American, Brazilian, Japanese, and African school of wizardry were revealed this weekend at the Celebration of Harry Potter at Universal Orlando Resort.

The American school is apparently called Ilvermorny, which channels a subtle vibe of Vermont. This makes sense because everyone knows Vermont is really a wonderful world of make-believe, where pickup driving men in camo live side-by-side with granola-eating, skiing yuppies.

Ilvermorny will be the centerpiece of the upcoming film Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, which I assume is a reference to neighboring Quebec. Anything speaking French is fantastic, even if it is a make-believe language of grunty, lusty laughs and nasally scoffs.



photo: J.K. Rowling/Pottermore

Where Dead Writers Reside, Part Eight: Truman Capote, Dylan Thomas, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Willa Cather,

It's October, and that requires obligatory Halloween-inspired posts. And nothing is more obligatorily macabre than looking at the tombstones of those who have died.

Every year we do this. Now through Halloween we'll occasionally post collections of tombstones to see where famous writers are hanging out today.

Today: Truman Capote, James Baldwin, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Willa Cather


Truman Capote:

I actually have 1/2 of Capote's ashes, too!

Truman Capote got by in life on three things: a unique name, drug/alcohol addiction, and verbally clawing the eyes out of almost every writer that existed during his time. (Gore Vidal was a popular target. But it was Gore Vidal after all.)

Capote had a whirlwind life. Crazy parents, an early life being neighbors with Harper Lee, vagabond teen years, time working at The New Yorker, pissing off Robert Frost*, fame and notoriety, friendships with a cast of characters (like Andy Warhol), and a liver that was a beast all kept Capote going into his 50s.

Then the liver gave out. He officially died of liver cancer at the age of 59, although a coroner's report claimed there was a fantastic concoction of drugs in his system, too, which didn't help matters.

Tombstone Notes:
Capote's life was timid compared to afterlife. Shortly after dying he was cremated, with his ashes potentially split between two individuals--Jack Dunphy and Joanne Carson (the ex-wife of Johnny Carson). Except maybe not. Dunphy claimed he received all of the ashes, not half. Carson, meanwhile, said she kept her share of ashes in an urn in the room where Capote died.

When in doubt, claim you have some of the ashes.

In 1988, Carson claimed her ashes were stolen, along with $200,000 in jewels. Capote's ashes were later returned, hidden in a coiled-up hose in the backyard of Carson's home. A year later, the ashes were nearly stolen again during a dinner party. Cremated remains = hot commodity.

After Dunphy died in 1992, he was cremated as well. It took two years, but in 1994 Dunphy's ashes were taken with his own alleged stash of leftover Capote, and both scattered in various spots of water around New York.

All we really know for certain are two things: Capote bought a crypt at Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery in Los Angeles, where maybe no one is buried, and Dunphy had a memorial stone placed at one location where someone's ashes were tossed about.



Dylan Thomas:

Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome to the stage our next literary alcoholic, Dylan Thomas!

Nothing much of note has ever really come from Wales, especially on the writing front. A Welsh person will rattle off twenty names for you, half of which sound like real names--but there's not a chance you've ever read anything by them. That is, of course, unless Dylan Thomas is mentioned.

Thomas wasn't a stellar student, and largely did nothing of note academically--yet he wrote poetry feverishly. In his teen years he gained some small popularity, and built a reputation off that. He also gained an appetite for smoking and drinking, and built a bigger reputation off those.

Writing doesn't pay terribly well, and it didn't pay much back in the 1940s and '50s. As a result, Thomas often embarked on reading tours to generate more money. It was on one of these reading tours of America that Thomas, while looking ill to everyone he encountered, went out drinking in New York City. After spending all night at the White Horse Tavern in Greenwich Village, Thomas went back to his hotel and loudly proclaimed, "I've had 18 straight whiskeys! I think that's the record!"

He spent the next couple days still drinking, before falling even more ill. Eventually he ended up in the hospital and died within the week. Pneumonia was the official cause of death, with pressure on the brain and a fatty liver contributing.

Note to self: Quit at 17 straight whiskeys.

Tombstone Notes:
Wales isn't known for its writers, and it isn't known for stylish looking tombstones.

Thomas is buried in the over-spill graveyard of St. Martin's Church, Laugharne, Dyfed, Wales, under a simple white cross with garish writing from someone we can only assume just started out with amateur calligraphy. Although bonus point for trying to squeeze "memory" in diagonally on the cross and putting his name off-center.



Paul Laurence Dunbar:

Good news! Dunbar eschewed the trend of trying to kill himself via addiction!

The bad news? Death gets us all in the end.

Dunbar lived a short life, but a life packed with a vast amount of publications, from poetry to novels to short stories. Born of two former slaves--including a father who joined the Massachusetts 55th Infantry Regiment (the second all-black infantry in America's history, after the 54th Regiment portrayed in the movie Glory)--Dunbar had the stereotypical childhood all writers hope to have.

Unhappily married parents? Check.

Divorced parents? Check.

Dad dying while Dunbar still a kid? Check.

Off and running with the sad story, Dunbar didn't allow it to keep his ambitions down. By the age of 16, he started publishing poems. Yet, despite initial luck in being published, he still lacked fame. That is until William Dean Howells, editor of The Atlantic Monthly and author himself, gave rave reviews to the young poet.

Throughout his 20s Dunbar gained popularity, so much so that he toured Europe to read his work. But it generally went downhill after that. By the age of 27, Dunbar was diagnosed with tuberculosis and advised by doctors to go to Colorado for the dry air, and to drink whisky to alleviate his symptoms. (Oh, no...) Dunbar and his wife started to drift apart because of his dependence on alcohol (...not again!...), and they separated.

At the age of 33, his health damaged even further from his addiction to whisky (...this wasn't supposed to be about booze!...), Dunbar died, officially, from his bout of tuberculosis (...but alcohol won again).

Tombstone Notes:
Buried in his hometown of Dayton, OH, Dunbar's tombstone includes a plaque bolted to a giant, irregular boulder. On the plaque is a verse of his poetry written in what was called "Negro dialect" of the antebellum south.

The verse is about death, just to really drive the point home.



Willa Cather:

This time, I promise, a writer who didn't find friendship at the bottom of a bottle. I swear.

In fact, compared to most, Cather's life was downright homey and lovely. Born to two stable parents, her family initially lived in Virginia. Before her 10th birthday, with a father fearing tuberculosis running rampant throughout the region (hello, Paul Laurence Dunbar!), the Cathers picked up stakes and moved to Nebraska.

It's in Nebraska that young Willa Cather became affected by the sprawling land and unique personalities. As a freshman at the University of Nebraska, she intended to go into medicine and become a physician--but a publication of an essay in the Nebraska State Journal convinced Cather she could write. She'd end up graduating with a B.A. in English.

As the years passed, success found her. Short stories, magazine articles, and novels came forth, as did awards like the Pulitzer Prize. She never married, instead living with a female friend for most of her life, especially after moving to New York City.

Nothing major afflicted Cather as she aged into her 70s, although biographies note her health faded for nondescript reasons. Death isn't nondescript though, as Cather died from a cerebral hemorrhage.

Take THAT, alcohol!

Tombstone Notes:
In a great bait-and-switch, Cather was buried in Jaffrey, NH, in a plot beside her longtime friend. Why Jaffrey? Cather was one of the few people in American history who could handle stepping foot into New Hampshire often, and traveled to Jaffrey later in life to write in silence.

The tombstone includes a passage from her novel My Antonia: "...that is happiness; to be dissolved
into something complete and great."

Dissolve. Kind of ghoulish. But I guess "ashes to ashes, dust to dust"...




*Capote vs. Frost:
Capote, while young, largely unknown, and still working at The New Yorker, went to Vermont for vacation--yet he was violently ill with flu. Frost, while old, largely famous worldwide, and still writing poetry, went to the hotel where Capote was staying to give a reading.

Knowing he was from The New Yorker, the hotel manager convinced Capote to attend Frost's reading, which he did. After a short while, and feeling sickly, Capote stood up and started to leave the room. Frost, indignant, allegedly threw a book of poetry at Capote as he exited.

The next day, Frost contacted the editors at The New Yorker and asked, "Who the hell is this Truman Capote, anyway?"

Capote, later in life, described Frost as "the meanest man who ever drew breath, an old fake dragging around with a shaggy head of hair and followed by pathetic old ladies from the Middle West."

Admittedly, Frost did have one hell of a head of hair.

Cow poetry is happening in Vermont this weekend.

Currently in the process of making cheese and ice cream.

Cows pretty much represent everything there is to Vermont. Between Ben & Jerry's ice cream and Cabot cheese, if cows didn't exist, Vermont wouldn't exist.

Since cows are the backbone of sustenance for Vermont's belly, they're now sustenance for Vermont's mind. At this weekend's Slow Living Expo (this is a real thing) in Brattleboro, VT, cows grazing on the local common will have words placed upon them. As they meander aimlessly, local citizens are asked to write (presumably slowly) the poetry they see form.

This is the creative lovechild of Kristen Fledderjohn, a graduate student and intern at the School for International Training, who tells the Brattleboro Reformer newspaper, "There are real live animals. The idea is to think about refrigerator magnet poetry then think about alphabet soup and how all the words are formed out of the letters then mix that with cows."

In case cow poetry isn't your thing, the Slow Living Expo will also have a celebrity cow milking contest, as well as a cow beauty contest where one lucky heifer will be named Miss Vermoont.

And here you thought Iowa had a stranglehold on all things slow.

The 25 Coldest Colleges in North America

The polar vortex that's gripped North America has led to lists like this, as reported by College Prowler.

The website based their rankings on average high and low temperatures during the winter and summer, average precipitation amounts during those two seasons, as well as student reviews on the weather. Because why use science to back up a list when you can ask Johnny, an incoming freshman poli-sci major, his take how chilly he feels?

The result? Ten of the twenty-five colleges exist in Minnesota, six in Wisconsin, and three in Vermont. Somehow, no school from Alaska made the cut--this, despite the University of Alaska Fairbanks being home to regular everyday winter high temperatures in the -15°F to -40°F range.

Once those students thaw out around July, we can ask them for their take.



photo: The Geophysical Institute at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Looks balmy to me!

Vermont Public Radio is trying to kill its listeners apparently.

A lab in New Hampshire began testing the mugs Vermont Public Radio sent to listeners after an alarm was raised to their safety.

Of the 34 mugs VPR sent out to listeners during the previous decade, 11 contained lead--one of which was found to have unacceptable levels.

When they say their fundraising was "killer," they weren't kidding.






34 mugs in a decade? Good God, they need to be careful. At any given moment they might have three or four people listening at the same time--and who knows what kind of chaos might ensue.

Travel & Leisure wants you to know what towns to avoid.

College towns are great if you're a college student. They're not so great if you're just a local who lives there.

I was once a local who lived in such a town, born and raised. It's great when tens of thousands of people under the age of 25 congregate in one location and spend the next four years devaluing local property values. Shirtless, listening to Linkin Park on 40,000 watt speakers at 2am, where every weeknight becomes Keg Stand Night--all because mom and dad begged them to attend college somewhere 2,000 miles away.

Yeah. College towns are precious when you're a local. Downright dreamy.

So, good news! Travel & Leisure has a list of the "best" college towns--from Oxford, MS, to Burlington, VT--where I can only surmise the locals sob quietly to themselves whenever September rolls around.