Family Event Sums Up WestportREADS 2010

What does a baseball card collector, a chef, a computer programming language, and a collection of memoirs have in common? 

They all integrate math and memory – and were part of Saturday's final program celebrating the themes in the January 2010 WestportREADS book selection, The Housekeeper and the Professor.   The book, by Yoko Ogawa, centers on the relationship between a brilliant math professor with no short-term memory, his conscientious housekeeper and her 10-year-old son who are bound by an interest in mathematics and baseball.

Master baseball card collectors, Andy Iversen and John Andersen, were on hand to swap collecting stories, discuss the all-important player "stats," and share a small part of their rare baseball card collections with fans.  Iversen began collecting when his son and John Andersen were young children and continued to build his collection long after his now college-age son lost interest.    He estimates his collection is now worth into the six-figure range and sees collecting as a "natural fit" for sports fans.  He specializes in Yankees cards, and has a number of rare and signed Derek Jeter cards.  

Chef and cookbook author, Leticia Schwartz, demonstrated how she uses math to keep ratios and portions in her recipes in balance.  Her cookbook, The Brazilian Kitchen, will be released in the United States in two weeks through a publisher based in the United Kingdom.   

"My book was published in the UK where they use metric measurements.  It had to be re-formulated for the US market because our measurements are different." Leticia explained as library patrons eagerly devoured samples of her melt-in-your-mouth chocolate truffles.  

Bill Derry, Coordinator of Information and Technology Literacy for Westport Public Schools introduced SCRATCH, a new programming language used to create interactive stories, animation, and games.   In addition to being fun, SCRATCH helps to develop mathematical, computational, creative and critical thinking skills.  SCRATCH was developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and can be downloaded free from http://scratch.mit.edu/ .  SCRATCH is exactly the same on a MAC or PC.

Westport resident and freelance NPR contributor, Alison Freeland worked with library employee Jana Lewis to record the memories of residents young and old.   Freeland interviewed volunteers about their lives, drawing out personal histories, cherished memories, and philosophies.

"It's been amazing." Freeland said. "It's almost as if we're behind a screen looking at a slice of their lives.  At first people are a bit nervous, but as they start to talk they become more comfortable.  Towards the end, we're really going deep.  We've heard all kinds of things."  

The stories will be posted on the Westport Library's Web site as a podcast within the next few weeks.  

In the Children's Library, a variety of games and puzzles were set up to challenge young minds and get them thinking – using math to create memories of a fun day at the library – and ultimately meeting the main goal of the WestportREADS program; building connections with each other and the community.