My Fair Library

"We call them the thundering herd," says library director Jody Ford, who claims that some die-hards arrive nearly an hour before the ribbon is cut for the 10AM charge to the Book Barn. "I was nearly run over the first year that I was librarian. I was standing in the center of the driveway, and all of a sudden the staff started screaming at me to get out of the way."

What's the allure? The barn and its neighboring tables contain as many as 9,000 used books at rock-bottom prices. Though volunteers hand-sort donated books, culling what former Book Barn chair Casey Kurtti has dubbed "the Tiffany items" for individual pricing, there's always the chance of finding the one that got away. Poet Mikhail Horowitz still gloats over finding a paperback hand-inscribed to Communion author Whitley Strieber from Beat writer William S. Burroughs. As he waited on line, Horowitz found a personal letter from Burroughs, whose autograph now fetches hundreds of dollars, tucked into its pages. "I'm literally breaking out in a cold sweat - I feel like I'm smuggling hashish through the Turkish border." The book's price? Fifty cents.

In 2003, the Stone Ridge Library introduced a more reliable way to find autographed books: its new local authors table offered over a hundred signed titles by 42 area writers, including novelists Laura Shaine Cunningham, Luc Sante, and Kim Wozencraft, screenwriters Ron Nyswaner and Zachary Sklar, children's author/illustrators Barbara Bash and Jon J. Muth, sportswriter Roger Kahn and Chicago composer John Kander. "All these people live here?" gushed one awestruck customer.

They do, and so do the artists, bakers, gardeners, musicians, face-painters, raffle donors, and hundreds of volunteers who make up a typical library fair. The 58th Stone Ridge Library Fair, on June 12, will kick off the trio of fairs that has graced Ulster County summers for decades. The most venerable is the Woodstock Library Fair, founded (under the name "country fair") in 1931, is set for July 31. New Paltz's Elting Memorial Library's fair runs a close second; the library will hold its 48th library fair on July 10 and 11.

All three fairs offer a lively blend of outdoor entertainment, arts and crafts, children's activities, raffles, old and new merchandise, food booths - and, of course, books. These beloved community events are also essential fundraisers for their respective libraries. Though the Stone Ridge Library recently became tax-supported, it still needs to raise over 20 percent of its annual budget on its own. "The library fair is the major fundraiser. We couldn't operate without it," says Jody Ford.