The Swellesley Report

More than you really want to know about Wellesley, Mass.

Update: readers rescue almost all Wellesley library books we left at dump

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You may remember last week that Mr. and Mrs. Swellesley had hit a patch of domestic discordancy. One half of the team that brings you “more than you really want to know about Wellesley, Massachusetts” (and now more that you really want to know about us as a couple) had mistakenly dropped off 3 Wellesley Free Library books at the Recycling and Disposal Facility books area (see “Mr Swellesley leaves library books at Wellesley RDF; Mrs. Swellesley mad as all get-out”). I pleaded to the Swellesley readership to help us return books to the library and harmony to the marriage.

The call was answered, but first came the other call. The call I feared. I received an email from no less an august personage than Wellesley Free Library Director, Jamie Jurgensen. Uh oh, I’m in for it now, I thought. I wonder if there’s a ceremony for stripping a patron of library privileges? Does Madam Director wish to summons me to my excommunication? I hope she at least turns the Cutting of the Card spectacle into a fundraiser and sells tickets.

Wellesley RDF, Chelsea Sebastian
Wellesley RDF, Chelsea Sebastian

But the email was kind and understanding. “Your post made me laugh and cry at the same time,” Jurgensen wrote. “I do hope some astute and kind reader finds and returns the books. We’ll keep a look out on our end.”

Chipper and non-threatening enough, but at the bottom of the email lurked a warning: “When responding, please be advised that the Town of Wellesley has determined that email could be considered a public document.”

Yikes. If I didn’t find a way to make this right, and soon, it was clear that some other kind of shoe could yet drop. If that shoe fell on my head, I might well deserve it. You already know TMI, so I may as well go all in. You see, I am a woman with a past when it comes to library books. Returning them overdue is the least of it. Confession time: I’ve dropped books in puddles. I’ve left books in the rain. I’ve travelled from Point A, gotten off at Point B, but waved the books off to explore Point C all alone. My books have spent lovely months in the Connecticut countryside, watching from the window seat as deer move through the woods, waiting for my return. I’ve had books, swear to God, simply disappear into the ether.

I rectify the problem in the usual way. I throw money at it. Then I vow to become an upstanding library patron with a stainless record, and my vow sticks. Until next time.

Next time is here. I’ve lost three lost books all at once. That’s a record even for me. It’s fun to blame Mr. Swellesley and all, but I wouldn’t want to stand before a judge on this one. I’d probably get a tiresome lecture about how since the books were out on MY card they were MY responsibility, and they shouldn’t have been mixed up in the car with a load of recycling and a Saturday chores-addled husband.

Crowdsourcing works

I had started to abandon hope of ever finding the lost books, but then a Facebook message arrived from sharp-eyed reader Lisa Siegel. “Found your copy of Bowlaway. Should I return to library?” she asked.

“Yes, please return to library! Oh, thank you thank you, thank you! Was it at the RDF? I went yesterday but couldn’t find it…I knew it could still be there, though,” I wrote back.

“Yes, was at RDF,” she confirmed.

Yes! One down, two to go.

Shortly after, the next good-news email came in, this one about On the Same Page by N.D. Gallund. Swellesley reader Amy Haley found it at the RDF while collecting books for Women’s Lunch Place in Boston. “I went through the other books I collected,” she wrote, “but had no luck finding the other two. I’ll drop it off at the library tomorrow.”

Hooray! One more to go: Sapiens: a Brief History of Humankind, by Yuval Noah Harari. Alas, Sapiens has proven to be as elusive as Big Foot, as unlikely to reappear as Cro-Magnon man. Due on March 19, the non-fiction best-seller is a high-demand item with a public that awaits. I’ll hold out until the due date, but if it doesn’t boomerang back, I’ll pay up. Online. That way I won’t have to face the Circulation Desk librarians. I’m all confident smiles to them when I return a pile of books, but there’s always a hang-dog skulk to my posture when I check out books, knowing in my heart what might happen.

Whether or not the last book makes it back, I’m counting myself lucky. I’ve got great Swellesley readers looking out for me and a library that takes me back every time I perform checkbook penance. This time really is going to be the absolutely last time I get myself in this kind of fix.

Thank you, everyone. My spirit has been renewed.

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Mr. Swellesley leaves library books at Wellesley RDF; Mrs. Swellesley mad as all get-out

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Dump, books section
Where, oh where, are Mrs. Swellesley’s library books?

Mr. and Mrs. Swellesley are crowd sourcing their efforts to return to marital harmony. We need your help, dear readers, and you needn’t be a licensed anything to guide us back on the path to joy. Here’s the situation: a certain person who shall not be named, except in the headline of this post, on Saturday dropped a pile of books off at the RDF. This pile of books contained the following three extremely well-marked items on loan from the Wellesley Free Library:

Bowlaway, by Elizabeth McCracken

On the Same Page, by N.D. Galland (ironic title given the situation, no?)

Sapiens: a Brief History of Humankind, by Yuval Noah Harari

You ask what a certain member of our household was doing with so many books that none save the idle rich could read in the 3-week lending period set by the library?

Now you sound just like Mr. Swellesley. Stop taking his side.

If you find these books, please either return them to the library or contact us at [email protected] so that we may come fetch them.

Read the update to this post…

Not everything sparks joy in our Wellesley kitchen — Marie Kondo’s influence

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Organizational expert Marie Kondo has put me on notice, and I’m all the more joyful for it. Like the rest of America, I was aware of Kondo’s New York Times #1 bestseller The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up. Unlike the rest of America, I found her easy enough to tune out. While my friends folded their shirts into weird little tents, I moved piles of laundry from Point A to Area 5. They thanked their mismatched teaspoon sets for their service, then dropped them off at the Wellesley RDF Reusables area. I rescued those mismatched teaspoon sets from Reusables and shoved them into my utensils drawer, just in case my 1/4-teaspoon measure ever got crunched in the garbage disposal. Hey, it’s happened, and I lived in fear of a repeat.

With the advent of Kondo’s Netflix series, Tidying Up with Marie Kondo, the Japanese neatness guru has got me facing down my fears. All the teaspoons, plastic lids, and ratty dishtowels in the world aren’t going to prepare me for some end-of-world scenario or keep me solvent if the world banking system collapses. I’ve just got to live in the world as it’s presented to me at this moment and hang onto only those possessions that, as Kondo says, “spark joy.” Her message is simple: if a material object doesn’t spark joy, you should thank it for its service and let it go.

So far, my kitchen spices drawer is the most joyful place in the house. Goodbye curry, so long poppyseeds, I never loved you anyway, paprika, but thanks ever so for your service.

Marie Kondo, Wellesley inspiration
These are the spices that no longer spark joy. There they are, lined up on the kitchen windowsill for their photo-op. Next, I dumped the contents into my RDF Food Waste Program bin. After that, I tossed the containers into recycling. Thanks for your service, all.

 

The truth has set me free. I’m never going to learn how to cook with the many spices I’ve impulse-bought and then ignored. The fact is, my family didn’t really like the recipe for curry chicken, or the way the aroma hung about the house for a couple days after. “Can’t you just go to Singh’s when you’re in the mood for Indian?” my husband asked.

As for the poppy seeds, I stirred them into the lemon loaf recipe exactly once. My family objected to the extra flossing the black specks caused, and everyone voted for going back to the regular lemon loaf, no poppy seeds, thank you very much.

The nutmeg had expired in 2015, meaning it was originally ground at least a couple years before that. I do use nutmeg on the regular, but at 1/8 teaspoon per scatter in the buttermilk crumb muffins batter or as part of the apple crisp, I should stay vigilant and replace it yearly. Same with the paprika, which in theory gets sprinkled onto the devilled eggs except for the times it doesn’t, like when I hosted Bunco last month. Everyone devoured the devilled eggs sans paprika. Paprika, you may have lost a job.

Why, oh why, did I buy another container of red pepper flakes when I already had one? Because, as Marie Kondo would gently note, I didn’t know I already had a full container because my spices drawer was crammed too full.

Marie Kondo, Wellesley inspiration
My minimalist spices drawer. I’m so proud of my de-cluttering efforts that I’m going to swap out the Amazon cardboard-box drawer liner for something swanky from The Container Store. Marie says there’s nothing wrong with that as long as I honor my new possession by taking care of it properly.

 

I know what you’re thinking. It’s amateur hour in the Brown house and this spices drawer example proves we don’t know what real clutter is. I know because I’m Facebook friends with so many of you, and you are posting really impressive pictures of your own de-cluttering progress. I’ve seen pictures of beds piled with clothes, scarves, shoes, belts, linens, toys, books, and more. At least I think those were beds under there. Send some of your pictures to [email protected] and I’ll add them to this post.

All this talk of spice drawers is actually a huge smokescreen. My true hoarding secret? Well, I can’t even speak it aloud. The picture below says it all. Go ahead and judge me. I deserve it.

Marie Kondo, Wellesley tidy
If your email is lost somewhere in there, 1,019 apologies.

 

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Recycling in crisis — a talk with Wellesley RDF Supt. Jeff Azano-Brown

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Wellesley RDF Superintendent Jeff Azano-Brown at the Food Waste Drop Off area, located between two of the trash compactors.

Don’t miss this opportunity to talk with Wellesley Recycling and Disposal Facility Superintendent Jeff Azano-Brown about what is new at the RDF including its new Food Waste Drop-Off Pilot Program. Learn about the RDF’s business initiatives and how China’s refusal to accept plastic recyclables has affected Wellesley’s recycling program. All are welcome; please feel free to bring a guest. Co-sponsored by the League of Women Voters of Wellesley and the Unitarian Universalist Society of Wellesley Hills.

WHEN: Thursday, January 31, 2019; 7pm – 8:30pm

WHERE: Unitarian Universalist chapel, 309 Washington St.

Food waste pilot program not wasted on Wellesley residents

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From the RDF:

All Wellesley residents can now drop off food waste and help produce local renewable energy.

The Food Waste Drop Off initiative at the Wellesley Recycling and Disposal Facility (RDF) is now a permanent town program and is recruiting new participants.

Wellesley’s Food Waste Drop Off was introduced by the Wellesley 3R (Reduce Reuse Recycle) Working Group as a pilot project in October 2017 as a way to reduce the amount of trash going to landfills and improve the environment. Food scraps dropped off at the RDF were sent to an anaerobic digester and converted into electricity.

Wellesley RDF Superintendent Jeff Azano-Brown at the Food Waste Drop Off area, located between two of the trash compactors.

Initially 300 households signed up to participate; the pilot was well-received and an additional 300 households joined in the spring of 2018.

By December 2018, participants were instrumental in diverting 70 tons of food waste from the RDF and generating approximately 20,000 kilowatt hours of electricity, contributing to the success of the program and proving its value.

Information for interested participants can be found on the Food Waste Program flyer and on the on the Recycling and Disposal Facility webpages.

The Wellesley 3R Working Group is made up of the Department of Public Works, the Natural Resources Commission and the Sustainable Energy Committee.

MORE: Our interview with RDF Superintendent Jeff Azano-Brown