Mark Carl Rom’s latest installment to Profiles from America’s Public Libraries: Finding the Women Who Make Them. is ready below! You can find all of Rom’s submissions to News & Notes at: https://lhrt.news/profiles-from-americas-libraries-finding-the-women-who-make-them/
S. Fannie Botkin and the Gothenburg, Nebraska, Carnegie Library
“In 1934, one of her jokes appeared in the Times:
Little Peggy was playing on the floor with her dolls one day. Looking up at her
mother, who was sewing nearby, Peggy said ‘Mother, there are three kinds of
berries I like.’
Mother: ‘What are they?’
You can guess the punchline: ‘Strawberries, raspberries, and liberries.’
By the late 1930s, S. Fannie’s jokes, generally involving library or grammar-related word
play, appeared along with other locals in the weekly column ‘Squirred Food.’ Otherwise,
S. Fannie toiled, quietly, in her library.”