{"id":2855,"date":"2016-08-25T16:12:15","date_gmt":"2016-08-25T22:12:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/libraryshenanigans.wordpress.com\/?p=2855"},"modified":"2026-02-11T23:05:42","modified_gmt":"2026-02-11T23:05:42","slug":"blueberry-shenanigans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/ccspecialcollections\/2016\/08\/25\/blueberry-shenanigans\/","title":{"rendered":"blueberry shenanigans"},"content":{"rendered":"

Guest blogger Jonathan Caws-Elwitt<\/a> supplies these excellent Susquehanna County Library Shenanigans.<\/p>\n

\"Newberry\"

Newberry the Blueberry [at right] with the author, 2007.<\/p><\/div>When my wife, Hilary Caws-Elwitt, worked for the Susquehanna County library system in Montrose, Pennsylvania, an important part of her job\u2014an important part of everybody\u2019s job\u2014was the Blueberry Festival<\/a>, the big annual fundraiser held every August.<\/p>\n

Most years, Hilary\u2019s festival duties included some time spent working the crowd in the Newberry the Blueberry costume. That was normal. But in 2006, Hilary added to her repertoire by staging another little stunt for herself.<\/p>\n

The library had been selling Blueberry Festival cookbooks, and Hilary wanted to try offering them online. As she explains, \u201cbecause the time spent would be a gamble, I \u2018bet\u2019 my boss that I would roll a blueberry down the sidewalk with my nose if we didn’t sell at least N copies (or make X dollars\u2014I don’t remember which it was).\u201d She notes that the bet was a premeditated idea, not an impulse of the moment.<\/p>\n

And though Hilary did her best to market the cookbooks, she admitted at the outset that she was \u201crooting to lose, because I thought it would be funny and possibly newsworthy\u201d to do the blueberry-rolling stunt.<\/p>\n

\"blueberry_nose\"

Hilary Caws-Elwitt rolls a blueberry down the sidewalk.<\/p><\/div>\n

Hilary continues: \u201cWe didn’t quite meet the target by the time July rolled around, so in my pitch letter to the local TV news stations [for festival coverage], I mentioned that I\u2019d be doing the stunt. At the designated time, a TV crew was indeed present.\u201d But, in terms of spectacle value, the display did not quite bear fruit. \u201cRolling the berry, even downhill, was quite challenging because it was so small, blueberries aren\u2019t very round, and the sidewalk was rough.\u201d The halting and inelegant progress of Hilary and the berry down the sidewalk didn\u2019t shape up as what we\u2019d call \u201cgood television.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, the stunt did make it onto television … and yet there was a little issue with contextualization. \u201cThe footage ended up being broadcast under a narration about the festival, which didn’t mention at all who I was or what I was doing. So there was no explanation for why this middle-aged woman was crawling around on all fours with her butt in the air.\u201d The blueberry, of course, was too small to be seen by TV viewers. \u201cLuckily I never mind making a fool of myself.\u201d<\/p>\n

by Jonathan Caws-Elwitt<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Guest blogger Jonathan Caws-Elwitt supplies these excellent Susquehanna County Library Shenanigans. When my wife, Hilary Caws-Elwitt, worked for the Susquehanna County library system in Montrose, Pennsylvania, an important part of her job\u2014an important part of everybody\u2019s job\u2014was the Blueberry Festival, the big annual fundraiser held every August. Most years, Hilary\u2019s festival duties included some time […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":413,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2855","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-shenanigans"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3q4oW-K3","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/ccspecialcollections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2855","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/ccspecialcollections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/ccspecialcollections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/ccspecialcollections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/413"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/ccspecialcollections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2855"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/ccspecialcollections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2855\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3933,"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/ccspecialcollections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2855\/revisions\/3933"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/ccspecialcollections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2855"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/ccspecialcollections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2855"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/ccspecialcollections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2855"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}