---

Your response to last week's column asking for books for adolescent patients at Taunton State Hospital was heartwarming.

I got my first e-mail asking for the list of suggested titles at 6:25 Sunday morning, shortly after the paper was delivered.

Several people called and others e-mailed. Helen and Owen James were the first to drop off books at our South Main Street office.

Pam Middleton of Holden Street in Attleboro also e-mailed me Sunday for the book list.

`` My daughters, now in their 20s, have some books that need a good home,'' she wrote. `` Perhaps we could fulfill a need they have (at the state hospital) with the need to clean out a bit here.'' `` Thanks for sending us the list and informing us of the need,'' Pam adds.

I also heard from Eleanor Buchinski and Kathy Morton, among others.

We're trying to create a small library at Taunton State for their teenage residents, something the kids, their parents and visitors could share.

The call for books came through the United Way of Greater Attleboro-Taunton as one of its Day of Caring projects.

We accepted the challenge.

You can drop off books, new or in good condition, at the front desk of our 34 South Main St. office or get them directly to Taunton State Hospital, 60 Hod-ges Ave. Extension, Taunton, 02780.

Thanks for the papers

`` I spent nearly six weeks in Overton Beach, Nevada, as artist-in-residence at Lake Mead National Park and also visited my son who is a park ranger there. It was 120 degrees some days,'' writes Margo Lemieux of Mansfield. `` I brought back some papers from my travels.''

`` I picked up the Desert Valley Times in Mesquite, Nev., which is on the Utah border and is the nearest city to Overton.

`` Las Vegas is 80 miles from Overton. On the last page of the Las Vegas Sun is an article about the tortoise. The park is very protective of the tortoises and in parts fences have been put up to keep them from wandering into the road ... `` I picked up the Coast News during an excursion to LaCosta, Calif., to visit my sister...

`` I drove to Nevada because I wanted to bring my dog and didn't want to take her on a plane.

`` It was a mighty long drive. My AAA Triptik said, `Go to Oklahoma City. Turn left. Drive straight for 1,003 miles.'''

`` Just back from a musical elder hostel at the University of Indiana, and visiting friends near Springfield, Ill.,'' writes Ree Clark of Attleboro. `` I thought you'd be interested in the enclosed from the State Journal-Register.

`` As you'll see from my recently completed books, `Spring' and `Summer,' I took art lessons in the room where Mary Lincoln died, and where the nuns cared for her.''

Thanks for the cuddlers

Thanks for the bear dropped off anonymously for Bears on Board, a program of the Attleboro Area Council for Children that gives bears to local police officers, firefighters and ambulance crews to give to children in crises.

Our teddy bear total to date is 4,853.

By the way, time really flies. I started collecting these teddy bears on Aug. 1, 1995, almost 5,000 bears ago.

See you next week.

ORESTE P. D'ARCONTE is publisher of The Sun Chronicle. Reach him at darconte@thesunchronicle.com or at 508.236.0394.