THEY ARE BACK!

Once again, Charlie Bullis's poppies are blooming.  Just in time for Memorial Day. You can see them while on your way to Bullis Park, where you go to watch youth soccer matches, hike, and fly kites.  So look for that splash of red on the west side of the road, next to the park.

Again we say thank you to Charlie Bullis for leaving us with this annual reminder of the Bullis family and of those who have died in service to our country.

And how are the Bullis poppies connected to bridges? (See last week's post.) Again, those of us who live north of the canal have to drive farther these days to see them because of a bridge closing. But it's well worth the extra effort, and we'll continue doing so. Because ... just because.

BRIDGES AND POPPIES

Two things have been on our minds this week in connection with the Bullis collection. Bridges and poppies. How are these two related? We'll tell you next week.

But first we'll focus on bridges. We volunteers who live north of the canal have to travel farther these days to get to the Bullis Room, all because of a bridge closing. So when we made the trip recently, we wondered how many books on bridges were in the collection. The answer? Lots of them. So to all you bridge enthusiasts out there (and we know there are lots of you, as well), stop by and let us show you this section. And if you are unable to pay us a visit, here are brief descriptions of five of the volumes:

1. Iron Truss Bridges for Railroads, by Wm. E. Merrill, published in 1875 by D. Van Nostrand.

2. Typical Specifications for the Fabrication and Erection of Steel Highway Bridges, (prepared by the Office of Public Roads),  published in 1913 by the United States GPO.

3.  An Essay on Bridge Building: containing analyses and comparisons of the principal plans in use: with investigations as to the best plans and proportions, and the relative merits of wood and iron for bridges, by S. Whipple, published in 1847 by H.H. Curtiss.

4. Highway Bridges and Culverts, by Charles H. Hoyt and William H. Burr, published in 1911 by Government Printing Office.

And,

5. The Principles of Construction In Arches, Piers, Buttresses, etc., being a series of experimental essays made with a view to their being useful to the practical builder,  by William Bland, published 1867 by C. Lockwood.

That's all for the "bridges part" of this post. Next week we'll focus on poppies.

MACEDON HISTORY

The Bullis family's contribution to Macedon has been - and continues to be - significant. So we're looking forward to a presentation on Macedon history, to be held in the Community Room here in the library on May 16.

Author and long-time Farmington resident Reginald W. Neale will display and discuss a series of historic photographs of Macedon. Neale is currently at work on a pictorial publication focusing on Macedon, and it is scheduled for release in August 2013. This current work is part of Arcadia Publishing's "Image of America" series, which chronicles the history of small towns across America using vintage photographs and hometown stories.

Those of us who "hang around" the Bullis Room are looking forward to Neale's presentation, and we anticipate that we will come away with a better understanding of our town. So if you're interested in Macedon history, we hope to see you on Wednesday, May 16, Macedon Public Library, 30 Main Street. The talk is facilitated by the Friends of the Macedon Public Library and is free and open to the public.

GONE WITH THE WIND

An item from a "this-date-in-history" column caught our eye this week. On May 3, 1937, Margaret Mitchell won the Pulitzer Prize for her novel Gone With the Wind. And now, 75 years later, her work still stands as one of the great pieces of American literature of all times.  There is a copy of this book in the Bullis Collection. And the collection also contains a significant number of non-fiction books on the War Between the States that Margaret Mitchell skillfully fictionalized.

So ... if you are interested in learning more about the Civil War, we invite you to stop by the Bullis Room and look at some of these books.  And we also invite you to read (or reread) two of our 2011 posts in which we recorded John Lapham Bullis's eyewitness accounts as a young recruit, taken from his letters home to his family.  (See our April 8, 2011 and April 15, 2011 posts.)

We hope you find one or more of these sources of Civil War history interesting and informative.