Biblioteca Popular de Panajachel
(Updated September 2, 2001)

Many times people ask if any adults use the library. Grown people come in every day, but they are greatly outnumbered by children. There are both men and women who are in school on the weekends and at night, some in university extension courses, some in high school and junior high school, and a very few who are just learning to read. This picture was taken last Thursday because I happened to have my camera along. Down below there is a photo of a grown woman in traditional clothing who is using a computer in her studies.

This will be the last update until mid-October. Bill and I are leaving tomorrow for six weeks in the United States. When we return, we will be visited by Mary Hambridge of Minnesota, a member of the board of directors of Lake Atitlan Libraries, Inc. She is coming here to paint for about a month, and her husband, Gov, is coming for the last week or so of her stay.

(Updated August 30, 2001)

The other day I received a letter from Judy Riggle Of Oberlin, OH, who wrote: "I just returned from a Rotary/church trip with 41 others to Guatemala. We were in Panajachel, and I was able to stop only for a minute at Biblioteca Popular. . .I am enclosing (photos). . .Perhaps you could circulate these to Amigos so they have a good mental picture of the fine library they are supporting." Below is one of the photos she sent. We did get the suitcase full of books you left at the hotel for the library, Judy. Cody, the boy in the pictures in the item below, and his family left Sunday after enjoying the lake and its beauty for two weeks or more. They became borrowers from the library, with one library card signed by each of them, and came by nearly every day to take books to the house where they were staying. I believe that family would keep us hopping trying to put books on the shelves they haven't already read.

One of our mystery shipments has been identified. There was a shipment of well-selected books from Scholastic Book Club with not enough other identification of who was responsible. By email Tuesday, Jeannine Martin asked if we'd received the shipment that H.S. Moody Elementary School in Bradenton, FL,donated. Well, that completed one clue from the shipment, which was Moody Elem School. Ms Martin has now told us that the students at the school learned about the library burning on the Maya Quest program (you can read about that visit and see pictures way down the page somewhere). Her class decided to sponsor a school-wide coin drive to help the library and raised $460. Here's public notice of our thanks, and a letter will be in the mail before the weekend.

(Updated August 17)

Cody was in the third grade last year, and here is a picture of him with a poster he made for the bake sale fundraiser at his school, PS 87 in New York City (see the update for August 10 just below this). He, his brothers, and his mother and father came to Panajachel last week and visited the library Wednesday afternoon. His mother was interested in everything about the library, his younger brother looked around but was kind of bored, his father is Guatemalan and spent much of his time telling me about his childhood experiences, and Cody's older brother listened closely to what his father was saying--probably the first time he'd heard the stories and maybe even the first time he realised his father was once a boy. But Cody--Cody knows what a library is for and brought his own book. This picture proves it, and his mother says it is typical for him to have his head in a book. Hooray, I say. Anyway, the poster he made for the bake sale was all about me.

(Updated August 10, 2001)

Jessica, our granddaughter from Virginia, is home now and there's time to return to our regular life. We have had some wonderful gifts from people in the US, once again the children are leading the way. Here's a picture of a bakesale at New York city's PS 87 conducted by the 3rd Grade Dual Immersion class which brought one check for $760 and another from a parent for $25. The family of one class member is coming to Panajachel this month, any day now as a matter of fact, and they are bringing books, puzzles, games, and computer games with them.

The students of Cooper Mountain School in Beaverton, OR, learned of the fire when the school librarian checked my website during a period when she was sharing my books with students. She (Karen Wedeking) wrote: "The students wanted as many details as possible, so they were able to critically view the website. Friends that were visiting their daughter in Guatemala in March stopped by Panajachel and took pictures of the library for our students to see." My thanks to the students for sending 25 percent of the profits from the spring book fair, and for their kind words about my books. The check was for $275.

Macrina Bakery Cafe of Seattle, WA, has been raising funds for the library for months through a variety of activities including sale of a special pastry; Leslie Mackie and Andrew Cleary sent $2,000. We received a check from Kate Alonzo of Geneseo, NY, as a result of the MayaQuest program which you can read about way down on this page, as well as a check from Frances Seigel of Cambridge, MA, who has been supporting the library since 1993, and one from Matthias J. Reynolds of Manchester, NH. M. Martha Lengeling, directora del Centro de Idiomas, at the University of Guanajuato, Mexico, and members of her family visited Panajachel recently. They donated dollars they had with them and we sent the money with Norma Guzmán, the librarian, to the Central American book fair in Panama to buy books (they use dollars in Panama). Norma was an official delegate of the Guatemalan national library to the book fair.

Public Welfare Foundation of Washington, DC, approved a grant of $25,000 to buy books between now and the end of the year. The book catalogs suddenly changed from a wish list to a shelf list for the new library.

In addition to the mystery book shipment I wrote about in the entry of August 7, we received a 52-pound box of books from Virginia Garrard-Burnett, a professor of Latin American history in Austin, TX. The box included textbooks being discarded by her children's elementary school. Prof. Garrard-Burnett's field is Guatemalan history. The box was sent by Mbag through the US postal service and it was a good thing, because it broke open inside the bag. Books spilled out but none were lost or even damaged. South Polk Elementary school of Ft. Polk, LA, sent a box which arrived last week. And W. Love of Akron, OH, sent another in a series of small shipments of books that arrived ysterday.

(Updated August 7, 2001)

Help. The post office delivered two boxes from an Mbag today--but I don't know who sent them. The boxes were purchased from the US Postal Service and must have been packed right on the site. The shipper did not put identification inside or outside either box. The Mbag was opened by the Guatemalan postal service in the departmental headquarters and the boxes were sent here with only a notice that they be delivered to me. Please let me know if you sent those boxes, because we'd like to thank you for the nice selection. More in a couple of days because my grandaughter from Virginia, Jessica Cherry, is visiting now but is flying out of our lives Thursday.

(Updated July 22, 2001)

Big news last week. We were notified that Lake Atitlan Libraries, Inc., had been granted $25,000 by Public Welfare Foundation of Washington, DC, to buy books for rebirth of the Biblioteca Popular. Now we'll be able to come near the collection that was burned in November.

The reaction from children in the United States reported to us this past week continues to be the best news. The Library STARS at Nassau, NY, Spackenkill Elementary School decided during the winter to sponsor a read-a-thon to raise money for the Biblioteca Popular. This is a library club of 4th and 5th grade students who meet during recess to promote library activities. A flyer signed by 15 members went out to the parents and guardians of students, asking sponsorship for reading during April. This resulted in $747.56 from the read-a-thon and an additional $100 from the Friends of the Poughkeepsie Libraries. Everyone gained from this--the students there who read and the students here who will have a chance to read.

Girl Scouts Troop 1402 at Onaway School, Shaker Heights, OH, raised $96 with their read-a-thon. Here is a picture of the two 5th grade classes at Pittston Consolidated School, Pittston, ME. The student council of North Glendale Elementary School in Kirkwood, MO, raised money for the library as their annual project and sent a check for $500 the first week of June. The hard work and generosity of all these children was joined by a handsome donation from Penguin Putnam, Inc., a book publishing company. Highsmith, Inc., made a refund from an order for library supplies. The staff at Maya Quest, which you can read about below, sent a box of 39 children's books in Spanish. And we received other boxes of books from friends in the US: Mariana Tax Choldin of Champaign, IL; Perryn Rowland of Menlo Park, CA; and Plumsock Mesoamerican Studies of South Woodstock, VT.

(Updated July 6, 2001)

We were notified by Daniel Guzmán, director of the Guatemala National Library, that Biblioteca Popular de Panajachel has been granted $2,000 from the Swedish Royal Library for rebuilding the library. Sr. Guzmán also notified Norma that she has been selected as an official delegate representing Guatemala to a Central America book fair in Panama the first of August. It is gratifying to see that her work and ability is being recognized at home as well as abroad.

(Updated June 24, 2001)

At last some visible movement on the new building. For the past couple or three weeks there have been no more than a handful, sometimes three, workmen visible. They were working with reinforcement bars and trusses at the second floor level. But Saturday morning, a really big crew of maybe 50 men showed up, and they were followed by truckloads of sand and gravel, a semi-truck loaded with bags of cement, and the fire department's water tank. They began mixing concrete in a mixer (unusual for here where mostly its done by hand on the ground), and hauled it up above. They mixed and poured all day long, and by nightfall, the new library had a roof which is actually the second floor of what is proposed as a three-story building someday. The concrete will need to cure for a periiod of time, then all the forms and braces can come down. Maybe the new building will be ready this fall. We didn't get a picture because we aren't generally oriented to remember to have the camera along. But maybe someone did, and if we can find it, we'll show it here. Hooray.

The cabinetmaker also delivered the first five of the bookshelves that the citizens committee has ordered. Norma and Alicia arranged the books that had been here and there and in piles and double deep cabinets, and it's beginning to look more like a library. The new bookshelves, two meters high, have a bit of space left and Norma can begin opening some of the boxes of donated books that were stacked in the corner. The cabinetmaker promised five more bookshelves in a week, and that will really make a big difference in the temporary library. Maybe Norma can clear out all the corners and we can begin to move some boxes out of our garage.

(Updated June 11, 2001)

Today we received notice of an unusual way to raise money. The sixth grade of St. Vincent's Episcopal School of Bedford, TX, called on every student in school to give a penny for every pound the family weighs. They wrote a letter dated March 28 which said they had raised $568.61, which figures out to 56,861 pounds. But when the check came, dated May 7, it was for $771.58, that's an extra 20,297 pounds--more than 10 tons. That makes me wonder if more people stepped on the scales or if more people told the truth about their weight. Either way, thank you so much.

We also received $950 from the Glastonbury Public Schools in Glastonbury, CT. No words about who, or what school, or anything. But for several years in the mid-90's Susan Straka, the foreign language teacher in the high school, sold Guatemalan handicrafts and sent the money for the library. Maybe she's behind the mystery check.

(Updated May 28, 2001)

All that talk about doing something about the page has come to naught. My designer took sick and I haven't been able to get him to do anything at all until today. He agreed to update and change it a bit, but nothing special; I can't fire him because he's my husband, Bill.

Last week, children's book author Margarita Robleda of Mexico visited to help in the rebirth of the library. She's written 27 books for children, plays the guitar and sings in classrooms, and tells parents and teachers how things really ought to be. Margarita was a big hit in Panajachel, made appearances all day long for two days. Here she's in the temporary library.

More children have shown us the importance they place on libraries. Students in Mike Zimmerman's class in Burtonsville Elementary School in Burtonsville MD really outdid themselves. On March 13, Mr. Zimmerman wrote me an email saying, "My kids decided to do a read-a-thon to support the rebuilding. They did a good job. They made presentations to the other classes and got many (about 80) kids to participate. The money is still coming in, but so far they've raised about $1,900...The money should be in by the end of next week. I'm guessing that it will be a touch over $2,000." Well, it touched over $2,000 and then over $3,000 and the check that came to Lake Atitlan Libraries on April 23 was for $3,279.46. Some sent along handmade bookplates with their school photo. I hope this sample reproduces well so you can see their handiwork. Down below, I'll try to show the rest of them.

Four years ago two third grade classes in Griffith Elementary school in Wichita, KS, called me.We talked and I answered questions. By now all those children are in the seventh grade, but the school remembers. When they heard about the library burning, they had a penny campaign, "Lincolns for Libraries," and sent $365 for Panajachel. Students at St. Vincent Ferrer School in Madison Heights, MI, did chores at home with their parents deciding what the chore was worth--and they sent $385.82.

Twins Claire and Thea, who are 13 years old, read about the fire in the New York Times and decided they wanted to give some of the money they received at their Bat Mitzvah, and sent checks for $250 each. This is a photo taken at the dress rehearsal for the ceremony.

Another outstanding contributor was a five-year-old boy, Gabriel Scott, in Media, PA, who sent $10 cash and a handwritten note which reads: "this mony is for new books for the lbrary from GABRIEL"

My good friends around Shaker Heights, OH, keep selling Guatemalan bracelets and sent along another $1,100.

Author Norman Bridwell, whose Clifford books are the favorites of Yovany Yoc, the boy quoted at the beginning of the article in the New York Times, responded with a very nice donation. We've received a good number of boxes and packages of books, too., including Patricia Cummings of Washington, DC; Elaine Myers and Kim Perry, and her 7-year-old daughter, of Berea, OH; Warnsdorfer Elementary School in East Brunswick, NJ; Houghton Mifflin in Boston and Charlesbridge Publishing in Waltham, MA; Northwest Elementary in Howell, ME; Diana Michaels of Pleasanton, CA; Melissa Wright who works for the Mississippi Library Commission; Ardath Rodale of Rodae Publishing..

I need to tell you that we've learned the best way to send books, especially a box of books, is to use the U.S. Postal System. Ask about the M bag method of mailing. They put the box or boxes in a bag which is addressed to Lake Atitlan Libraries, Inc., Casa Ann Cameron, Panajachel, Solola, Guatemala. This is the slowest way, but it should be the least expensive. Many boxes want to come apart during shipping, but being inside the bag saves them. If you send through TransCargo in Miami, they have moved. The new address is Jerry Holmes, LAL, c/o TransCargo, 8013 NW 66th Street, Miami, FL 33166. The telephone number of TransCargo is 305-471-9843. Their charge for delivery from Miami to Panajachel can range up to $50 depending on the size of the box, and Lake Atitlan Libraries has to pay that from dollars donated by others. Jerry Holmes, incidentally, is the merchant in Panajachel who is letting us use his contract with TransCarago. Please do not send books using the Miami address which begins with"c/o El Rancho." That is a courier service we use only for important first class mail and it costs us US 40 cents per ounce. One person used the address a couple of weeks ago for a box weighing 9 pounds 6 ounces. You can figure how much I had to pay to get that box--almost as much as the books cost.

Here are two pictures taken in the past week or so in the provisional library. One is of Norma Guzman and some students around a table. The stack of boxes in the corner are those waiting for the new building and more shelf space. The second picture shows that computer use is popular with everyone--isn't the blouse of this girl beautiful? It is called a guipil, sometimes spelled huipil. Down below that are the book plates from Burtonsville, MD.

Here's the old stuff. Maybe I can get my designer to do something about all this so that it will be more attractive and informative.

Biblioteca Popular de Panajachel

(updated May 2, 2001)

I'm just going to have to do something about this page--it's getting to where I can't tell where anything is and it must really be hard on you readers. I've just put things in all sorts of order--some from oldest to newest from top to bottom, and some from newest to oldest from top to bottom. Please stick with me until I get it figured out.

Children and schools have dominated our activity recently. One boy, who I would guess is about 10 from his signature, said he read of the fire in the New York Times and donated all the books that he had grown out of--about 20 Jeffrey Bryant of Houston, Texas, said, "I know they would go to children who need them and not the attic." The Mano en Mano Club and its sponsor, Dra. Norma Guice, from Shaker Heights High School in Ohio, sold bagels and raised more than $400. The student council and students in Atkinson Academy, Atkinson, NH, baked "goodies" and sent $200. Students of Hathaway Brown School of Shaker Heights, Ohio, bought $360 worth of bracelets, the school added $500, and one staff member made a donation of $100 for a total of $960. The Earth Room and the Star Room of the third grade at Belle Sherman Elementary School in Ithaca, NY, read my books, looked at the website, and then held bake sales to raise $169.36. Corporate America joined in as well. A bookstore in Richmond, VA, Edward T. Rabbit & Co, Books for Children, is going out of business and offered the 14 Spanish language books in its inventory. Barnes & Noble in New York sent a box of books in Spanish. Random House Children's Books sent $5,000. The U.S. Embassy in Guatemala is giving $500 to the citizens committee in charge of establishing and running the new library to buy books by US authors published in Spanish. Not only that, we received books from Hawaii, California, and Pennsylvania. (For your information, the citizens committee's name is Comité Pro-Reconstrucción e Implementación de la Biblioteca Popular. I hope you don't mind if I just call it citizens committee.)

Two weeks ago we received five boxes and four envelopes of books from Canada, Spain, and the US. Near the bottom of the page is a picture of two children in a school which send 375 volumes. An update two days ago added a new picture of progress on the new building, and a series of pictures at the bottom of the page showing how a kindergarten in Brooklyn reached out to touch a kindergarten class in Panajachel.

School students from all over have been so generous of their time and efforts that it makes us almost cry with happiness. Down below you can see photos of some students, and I will tell you about more. At the Saginaw, Michigan, Arts & Sciences Academy, those who owed library fines could donate the money to the Panajachel library and have their fines erased--$150 worth (lots of late books, huh?); the student council at Warnsdorfer Elementary School in East Brunswick, NJ, decided to collect books and raise money--$411 and who knows what books to come; Jennifer Randa, a junior student at Illinois Wesleyan University, has begun reading the magazine Teaching K-8, read about the fire and sent $100 of her own money; more friends and families of students at South Side Middle School in Rockville Center, NY, (see photo below) sent an additional $55; the student council at Avon Middle School, Avon, CT; sent $100 and each one signed a card that is now on the bulletin board at the temporary library; students at Princeton High School in Princeton, NJ, bought $100 worth of Guatemalan handicrafts at their school library and the money came here; two 7-year-old girls in Berea, OH, Gabby Perry and Olivia DiBiasio, did extra chores, gave their allowances, searched cars and sofas for loose change, and drew and sold pictures--and sent $38 (Gabby is donating her own children's Spanish collection which will be shipped with help from the Kiwanis group there.); and the members of the Mano en Mano Club at Shaker Heights, OH, High School sold Guatemalan bracelets and then sold bagels to earn $430 for Panajachel. We wish we had pictures from all the schools, but this notice will have to do.

The temporary library is growing all the time. Well, the amount of stuff inside is growing, the room stays the same size. We now have six computers all repaired and some upgraded from old, slow machines to processing units of 566 MHz with 64 and 128 Mb of RAM. All of them are in use much of the time by students who take computing courses in school. Since the fire, your help through Lake Atitlán Libraries has bought $12,000 worth of books that the librarian selected because of the current need. Heavier buying will have to wait until the new building is ready--a real lack of space. Many boxes of donated books which have been shipped here have been opened, examined, some books taken out for use now, and then the boxes were put on top of other boxes awaiting the new building.

At the end of March ago the students in the junior high school where the temporary library is housed had final exams for the first trimester of the school year. It went on all week--with some classes, whose teachers must have grand ideas about how well the kids can see, seated outside on the basketball court with at least 10 feet between their desks. On Friday night there was a big party in the courtyard with very loud music, continual basketball games, barbecued foods, soft drinks and more noise that you can imagine. But inside the library there were about 15 students with heads deep in the books. Their exams were yet to come in other schools so a little noise outside didn't bother them at all.

Thank all of you so much for your help. The children, and adults, of Panajachel appreciate it more than you can imagine.
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Established in 1926, the Panajachel public library was closed for about 10 years during the Guatemala civil war and was reopened by Mayor Sergio Lavarreda in 1992. Fire destroyed it in the early morning hours of November 28. 2000.

I became interested in the library when Esquire magazine quoted the mayor as saying that first world people come to Panajachel and want services they had at home but do not contribute to the community. Most of the Gringos here grumbled that the mayor did not like them--but I felt he was correct and I needed to pay for the advantages of being here. I bought some books, presented them to the mayor, and found that he did, indeed, put them in the library. That was an important test because some of the mayors I had seen would have taken the books home.

Nancy Jewel, a Californian who lived here, Nicky Frankenthal, a New Jerseyite who visited annually, and I wrote our friends asking for donations and money began to flow. Publishers in the US responded to my pleas and sent books in Spanish and sets in English. We cleaned the library and found maybe 2,000 items including stacks of cattle grower magazines from the 'Fifties, piles of government documents printed on crumbling newsprint, fashion magazines from Argentina of the late 'Forties, a 1979 world almanac, and 20 books for children. There were copies of classic literature, most of which had been donated by the National Library in 1954. The good items were kept and the rest discarded--around 500 items remained.

I began to gripe because the woman who had been hired to keep the library open preferred to close early so she could meet her boyfriend in private, and she believed there should be two book classifications--"pedagogy" and "various works." She told me she was not in the library to clean it, but to serve the people. Consequently, the place was a mess, actually filthy. Mayor Lavarreda made me a deal--if I would serve as the unpaid supervisor of the library, I could hire and fire at will. I agreed and the attendant got a proposal from the mayor: keep the library open more hours every day at the same pay, or seek work elsewhere. She left and we hired Norma Guzmán, the most fortunate decision we made. Norma's character and capability made the new collection of thousands of books become a library loved by the people.

Donations of books, mainly from US publishers, and money from people in the US and Europe led the expansion of the library. Two rooms were added in adjacent unused space in the building, with a grant from Coca-Cola paying for the construction and furnishings. Computers and printers were donated. The collection grew to 8,002 volumes (3,000 of them were children's books in Spanish), six computers (one was away for repair) three printers, four typewriters, a large screen TV and video player with 100 tapes for children and adults, and a brand new photo copier. There were 20 cartons of books donated by Scholastic Press which had not been added to the list. All destroyed.

By noon of the day after the fire Norma had organized a telethon on the local cable TV that ran for 12 hours a day for three days. People of Panajachel gave 22,000 quetzales (a lot for a place where the average daily wage is 25 quetzales), 2,000 books (mostly texts) from their homes, small desks and chairs, stores gave goods to sell (bicycles, clothes, scooters, paintings, meals), three computers, a dozen typewriters. One major gift was a mahogany dining room table and ten chairs which is now the main table in the temporary library. Celestina, a Mayan woman. sold chicken sandwiches at the telethon site every day. "I can't read," she said. "I'm doing this for my grandchildren." People from towns across the lake gave money because they had used the library, too.

The following week, Norma had a temporary library set up and running in a classroom in the junior high. This was during the school vacation period, so she followed the normal practice of offering games and puzzles during school vacation. But students came to read as well. Donations of books continued, one large donation being from a private school in Guatemala city of older text books that had been replaced, enough of each title to have one for each of their students. Money began to flow to Lake Atitlan Libraries, Inc., the Wisconsin non-profit corporation which supports the library and others in Guatemala. In late January, a civic committee established to oversee replacing the library, and headed by Norma, reported on the television channel that Guatemalan book donations totaled 3,400 volumes, Q22,000 had been donated and Q3,000 had been spent so far on books, and people of Panajachel had pledged 5,000 concrete blocks, 75 quintales of cement, and several truckloads of sand and gravel for a new building.

The city commission promised during the November telethon to construct a new building on the old site. During the January television report to the people, the mayor said construction would begin the following Monday and it did. The building is to be 28 meters long and 13.5 meters wide and is to be strong enough so that two floors could be added in the future. He predicted it would be finished in 5 to 6 months. The citizen's committee turned the donated materials into cash for buying books by selling them to the construction company.On the last day of February, the back and one side walls had reached their final height of 4 meters. By the first of April, the walls with windows reached their height and a big sign identified the site. Now interior columns and concrete ceiling beams have been poured.

Lake Atitlan Libraries, Inc., has purchased Q30,000 worth of books so far--those that Norma knew would be needed immediately but had not been donated. The organization also bought a laser printer and an uninterruptible power source for one computer which is being used for the book list (we had a computer program for listing books with search capability before and luckily it had been backed up off site shortly before the fire). The lack of space in the temporary library has required many donated books (some shown at right) to wait their turn for classifying and "shelving," a misnomer because our stacks are actually that, books stacked in order on shelves and cabinets.

News organizations continue to tell the story of the burning and rebirth of the library. Most recent have been the School Library Journal, Teaching K-8, El Periodico of Guatemala city, and the Associated Press (in the photo at left, AP reporter Will Weissert interviews Norma Guzmán). The AP article was published in many newspapers in the U.S. the last Sunday in February. A crew from Quest, an interactive computerized learning program which travels various parts of the world showing how people live, came as a part of MayaQuest and interviewed children with lots of camera work on March 7. Part of lessons of the program will include some of the material one day in the second full week of March with children in U.S. classrooms watching. In the March 14 MayaQuest website offering there was a piece on the library and its importance to children in Panajachel.

Since school opened January 15, the temporary library is stretched every day, including Saturdays. There are now enough tables for 40 chairs (one came from Norma's house, another is used once a week as the table for basketball game officiating) and students keep the chairs filled. One of the most amazing things to see is the number of students at work on Saturday night while basketball games are just outside the door with all the noise a watching crowd can make. There are now three computers being used. One more is en route from a donor in the US and another is being repaired for installation this week. The MayaQuest crew donated one of theirs before they left. The last day of February, Norma and Alicia Anleu, one of the librarians, took one last search through the books that had been gathered from the rubble, hoping to find some that will be useful. It became apparent that books in one of the two smaller rooms were damaged less than those in the main room, such as most of a set of Encyclopedia Britannica which had been donated by a family in Guatemala. But the main room's damage was virtually total, as shown by this metal typewriter with melted keys sitting atop a computer case with its interior plastic parts all gone.

Those who wish to join in raising a new library from the ashes of the old can make US tax free donations through Lake Atitlán Libraries, Inc. Checks made to the organization can be sent to Lake Atitlán Libraries, Teresa Cameron, 449 Overlook Pass, Hudson, WI 54016.

Students at South Side Middle School in Rockville Center, NY, organized a candy sale to help rebuilding the Panajachel library. Spanish/English teacher Hildegardt Gemer, shown here with some of the students of her sixth grade Spanish class, came to Panajachel February 1 with books in Spanish , a couple boxes of the candy they sold, and a large bundle of pencils and pens collected by Mrs. Mitchell, janitress at the school. The candy sale also netted $125 for the library.

Children of the First Parish Unitarian Church in Duxbury, MA, baked cookies, brownies and sweet breads and sent $129. Here are Ember, Alexa, Elyse, Nely, Shannon, Kira, Anna, Chris, Josh, Tim, and Grady.

Lois Weinstein, executive director of the Medical Library Center of New York, brought book repair supplies including a text in Spanish on how to handle books damaged by fire and water. She also brought some children's books and a very special book made by children in Mrs. Brackman's kindergarten class in P.S. 230 in Brooklyn. Mrs. Brackman read a book to her class, then they illustrated each page in their own way. She enlarged the text and pasted it on the correct page. The back cover of the book included a picture of the class. When Mrs. Weinstein got to Panajachel, she and Norma took the book to a kindergarten class at Colegio Cominito where Norma read it to the children. The class in Panajachel promptly went to work on their impressions of illustrations for the book which was sent back to Brooklyn with a photograph of the whole class. The contact between the two classes may help relations between two nations in the future.

Two students of Etta J. Wilson Elementary School in Newark, DE, add to the list of the names of students at the school who contributed books for the library. The school raised money to buy books as well as received donations of books. The students sent letters to their parents about the project and sent copies of some of the letters in Spanish to Panajachel. With luck the letters will be answered in Spanish by children here before the end of the Delaware school year in the middle of June.

Lake Atitlan Libraries, Inc. is a real organization with a board of directors. Some members at an annual meeting: Rory Cameron, left, Louise Eidsmoe (now president), Howard Cameron, and Teresa Cameron.