The Rural We: Christine Jones
The Hudson Literary Fund board president talks about the recent "Got Desks?" giveaway.
As president of the Hudson Literacy Fund, Christine Jones has been actively involved in getting books to students in the Hudson City School District. But responding to current challenges, she and Fund board members instituted the “Got Desks?” initiative, a plan that distributed 100 folding desks last weekend to students learning from home. “Ordinarily at this time of year the Hudson Literacy Fund would be fully engaged in our in-school programs,” Jones says, “but with the pandemic, everything has changed, so our organization is adapting.”
I’m from Madison, Wisconsin, and worked in advertising in New York for 40 years. My husband and I bought a farm in Ghent and would come up on weekends with our daughter. He attended cooking school and bought the Red Barn Restaurant, which he ran for 15 years. It gave me a tremendous network in Columbia County and the Berkshires. We moved up here 10 years ago full time. It’s a very gratifying place to be.
I worked at the Hudson Farmers Market when we had the restaurant, and started the Hudson Indoor Winter Market. Along the way I met Susan Simon, cookbook author and travel writer, and we hooked up with Lisa Dolan as mentors in the Hudson school system. Lisa told us that the Hudson Children’s Book Festival wasn’t working well, because parents couldn’t afford to buy the books for their kids. We held a cocktail party, raised some money, and were able to give parents book vouchers for the kids. It changed attendance at the book fair — now whole families show up, and kids get to choose a book they want. They also have the opportunity to engage with authors and writers.
Hudson Literacy Fund Board at “Got Desks?” giveaway; Christine Jones, Ann Israel, Wendy Schmalz, Anna Skoda, Laura Backlund, Lisa Dolan, Marlena Peduzzi, Dr. Maria Suttmeier
Half of our board members are teachers and librarians, and at the September board meeting, Lisa Dolan talked about how virtual learning was a whole new world for parents having to teach at home. For many, English is not their first language. She was seeing kids really struggling to focus, and their computers were sliding around on pillows or an ice chest. That struck a chord in the board members. We thought, “we should jump on this.”
Wendy Schmalz, a board member, started a desk committee. She found a folding desk and got a good price from the Staples in Hudson. The Berkshire Taconic Foundation gave us a grant of $1,000, and we received some help from the Fund for Columbia County. The rest came from our treasury.
The board also learned that kids were having a hard time focusing. Some live in households with intergenerational families and there’s noise in the house. We thought earbuds would be a tremendous addition to the desks.
Teachers in virtual classes distributed a signup form so that any student who was learning virtually who needed a desk could request one. Last weekend our group distributed the desks and earbuds at the Montgomery C. Smith Elementary School front lawn. It was really fun. Staples had also given us $500 in art supplies, which we gave out along with the desks and earbuds, plus some books we had from the Hudson Children’s Book Festival. If more than this group of students need desks, we plan to have a fundraiser so we can continue in our mission to encourage and bolster Hudson students’ belief in their ability to read, write and fully express themselves.
