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The Way You Make Me Feel

7/26/2014

2 Comments

 
PictureNot Harry Potter's Order of the Phoenix
"They may forget what you said -- but they will never forget how you made them feel." -- Carl W. Buehner

This quote has often been attributed to Mara Angelou, but according to Quote Investigator that's not supported by factual evidence, although it certainly feels like something she would say.

Regardless of who first said it or wrote it, I think it applies to libraries as well as people. Our sense of a library as a place—welcoming or not—our sense of a library as an entity—benevolent, embracing, dynamic—makes all the difference in the world as to whether we decide to spend any of our increasingly precious time on Earth in that place. We can talk about circulation statistics and the sheer number of things: volumes in the catalog and e-book downloads and reference requests and library cards issued and meeting rooms booked and programs sponsored and computers with Internet access and maker spaces, but I believe that it's how a patron feels when he or she is inside the library that will determine how often that patron will return.

Classic example: me and Regenstein Library (my loathing of which I detailed in an earlier post).

I freely admit that I have a love/hate relationship with the University of Chicago. I love to hate it and I hate to love anything about it.
 
(Internal argument rages:
Better angel: Oops, that just slipped out. Maybe I should delete it?


Less-than-better angel aka lil' devil: No, let it stand, let those feelings out! After all, they won't be asking you to give a book talk on that campus any time soon...)

There is, uhhmm, was my fondness for Harper Memorial Library, but now that's so over... I guess it's just some library that I used to know...

On my recent visit to the storied campus in Hyde Park, besides being confronted by the atrocities committed at the library formerly known as Harper (Prince-like symbol to follow), I also felt compelled to take a stroll across the quad to once more face my bête noire, Regenstein Library.

Face to face with the beast

It was one of the few hot and muggy days we've had this summer in the Chicago area. One of those days that brew drenching thunderstorms out of unstable air masses and sure enough, the low-hanging gray clouds let loose just as we passed Botany Pond so we dashed for shelter under Cobb Gate.
Picture
Cobb Gate - gotta love the gargoyles
We waited for the deluge to subside with two campus tour groups consisting of a U of C guide, prospective students and their parents. The guides, a male and a female, were both relentlessly perky (no, there is no other word to describe them). The high school kids somehow managed to look simultaneously eager and blasé. The parents were either the Black Hawk helicopter types who ask all the questions while their offspring shrank back in the crowd pretending not to know them or the deer-in-the-headlights, resigned-to-their-fate types. You know, the kind of parents who wear T-shirts that read "My son/daughter and my money go to..."ed
All the while, I stared in dread to the north where, across 57th Street, the hulking brute squatted, waiting. When the rain had diminished to a fine drizzle and the perkiness of the tour guides had begun to shred the nerves, we made another short dash across the street and up the long, sloping walkway to the library's entrance.

And then we were inside the beast.

Picture
The entrance to seven of Dante's Nine Circles of Hell
And all of a sudden I heard the voice of the immortal Peggy Lee warbling inside my head.
And she's not singing "Fever."

"Is that all there is?
Is that all there is?

If that's all there is my friends...."

And it has books (what a concept)...

PictureRegenstein interior (this is a color photograph)
Really. It's not a monster. It's just a library. A very large library. With over 4.5 million volumes spread across seven floors and over 570,000 square feet, employing 33 subject specialist librarians, focusing on the humanities and social sciences, with a bit of business and divinity thrown in for good measure.

Old Joe Regenstein was a life-long resident of the city of Chicago and a major industrialist who made his fortunes in the paper, plastic and chemical fields. After his death in 1957, his foundation donated $10,000,000 toward a new graduate research library.  After the groundbreaking in 1967, the library was completed and dedicated in 1970. The library actually was built on the site of the original Stagg Field, the University's athletic field from 1892 to 1967. It's also the spot where Enrico Fermi and his Big Bang Theory type buddies achieved man's first controlled, self-sustaining, nuclear chain reaction on December 2, 1942. Whence sprang the atomic bomb and the Oppenheimer quote... "I am become Death... the destroyer of worlds." And to think it all began in a squash court. (There's a classic bronze Henry Moore sculpture called—what else?—"Nuclear Energy" plunked down on the western edge of the 12-acre site. Depending on your angle of viewing, it resembles a mushroom cloud or a misshapen skull, both of which are totally apropos.)

But some things never change...

PictureHenry Moore, Nuclear Energy
Hmmm, maybe that's why the whole freaking place just... hums. 

Yes, the fluorescent lights still drone with an annoying vibrato (perhaps like an irradiated mosquito would sound) and the HVAC system still permeates the silence with  its heavy breathing, like a pervert on the other end of the phone line. And all that limestone fashioned to look like concrete is still a vast stretch of one shade of gray (if it was a Crayon it would be called "Depression"). And even the carpet seems like a hard surface.

But on this day... on this day something seemed... different. It felt... different. I felt... different.

Interior monologue:

Oh wait, I'm not a student there anymore...with the weight of all that entails pressing down on my head and my shoulders. No wonder I feel so... light... so free!

I'm just visiting!


And that makes all the difference in the world.

Buzzed... in a good way

So instead of picking up my backpack and trudging out after a half an hour of the ever-present buzzing—really, I swear, it's not just all in my head!—we headed upstairs (traipsing all the way) to the 4th level of hel--oops--the 4th floor where the Classics Reading Room Collection is located. This room contains both a bust of Homer (with a well-rubbed nose) and an old-school card catalog (with actual cards inside, some hand-written.) And, feeling totally giddy, we just had to document this (and our feeling of giddiness, a completely foreign emotion in this place).
Picture
In the Classics Reading Room with a Greek poet, looking up a Latin text on a card handwritten in German.
Then, feeling even more adventurous, we headed into the stacks, where we thought we heard a cricket chirping. A cricket in the stacks?!?! Life, proof of life, in the midst of that man-made monstrosity. We followed the sound, feeling like spies, weaving through the shelving units, until we came to its source.

Alas, just a HVAC fan in desperate need of some WD-40.

Picture
Conquering the beast (and feeling "radioactive")
Okay, enough fun and games. It was time to head next door to the Joe and Rika Mansueto Library, the self-described "library of the future."

But that's a topic for another blog post because...

There's always another adventure waiting on a higher shelf...

I believe the term "batshit crazy" applies here...

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Roll over, Bill Rainey and tell Regenstein the news

7/17/2014

1 Comment

 
PictureThe man (courtesy U of C archives)
An open letter to William Rainey Harper:

Dear Mr. Harper:

This letter is to inform you that you are dead. As in "stone-dead; ...as a doornail; ...as a herring; ...as mutton; stiff." Sorry, got carried away again with the Roget's. Back to the point. Yes, I know as well as you do that the physical vessel which held your prodigious intellect and passion for education (also known as your body) actually expired in 1906, and thus you have been officially deceased for over one hundred years. But your spirit, dear sir, has always lived on at that magnificent institution of which you were a founding father... the University of Chicago.

I need not remind you of your humble beginnings out of which sprang numerous and illustrious accomplishments in the world of academia. You may not have been the first man born in a log cabin to rise to a presidency, but you were the only one for whom Greek, Latin, Sanskrit, Hebrew, Aramaic, Arabic,
Syriac and Akkadian rolled trippingly off the tongue.

The genius of you...

PictureHis humble origins (Nat. Reg. Hist. Places)
You earned a PhD from Yale at the tender age of 18; you held teaching positions and professorships at Masonic College, Dennison University, Baptist Union Theological Seminary and Yale. You taught through the venerable Chautauqua Institution. And let us not forget your musical talents tinkling the ivories and leading the New Concord (Ohio) Silver Cornet Band!

However, the pinnacle of your success has to be the establishment of the university and its stunning, Gothic-inspired campus in Hyde Park on the south side of Chicago. Yes, YOU were the FIRST president of the great gray city that would soon come to be known as the "Harvard of the Midwest." (Oh, don't be offended. We who attended your fine institution as undergrads, and slogged through its rigorous curriculum (the ORIGINAL "Common Core") of humanities, mathematics, social studies and science, always referred to Harvard (and still do) as the "U of C of the East." (And the two schools are certainly NOT to be confused with Dorothy's Wicked Witches of the East and West, even though both have, at certain and sundry times, engaged in practices that one might consider, if not evil, then at least unethical, questionable and/or shady. For instance, there was that time the U of C awarded its first Albert Pick Jr. Award for Outstanding Contribution to International Understanding to Robert McNamara, Defense Secretary during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, who just happened to be the architect of the Vietnam War. (Read the original Pick Papers here.) Oh what a tempest in a teapot that decision engendered! Students actually protesting... on campus! What a concept!

I mean, let's face it. The major "understanding" that whole fiasco promoted was that one should "never get involved in a land war in Asia" (props to Vizzini and William Goldman).

Spires, gargoyles and wild onions: the nexus

Picture1979 demonstration (U of C archive)
But, as is often the case with us 21st Century writers, I totally digress in my lyrical musings. Far afield. Back to the matter of your life and death...

So, yes, you built this incredible institution of research and scholarship from the ground up, raising a main quadrangle that brought the English Gothic spires of Oxford University to the shores of Lake Michigan, from which lofty heights the gargoyles could look down upon the land that, in the not-so-distant past, had been swamp marshes that stank of foul-smelling wild onions. (Some of which, by the way, still grow in the area on open land and in forest preserves.) In your spare time, you also helped found Bradley University in Peoria, Illinois. A man of such talents is often honored by the naming of things, usually buildings and streets. So it should come as no surprise to you that William Rainey Harper College in Palatine bears your name, as well as Harper High School in the West Englewood neighborhood and Harper Avenue in Hyde Park.

But of course, the most glorious and apropos monument to your illustrious self is William Rainey Harper Memorial Library located on -- where else? -- the campus of the University of Chicago.

A cathedral of knowledge...

PictureHis monument (U of C archives)
And that is where I sadly -- nay -- shockingly learned of your absolute and total death one recent Saturday morning. Yes, turn over in your grave now, just once, for soon you will be spinning, as if your casket were a centrifuge.

After your untimely physical death in 1906, the university was inspired to erect a permanent memorial to you. And what could possibly be more appropriate to honor a man of your wide-ranging scholarship than a library. The Chicago Tribune noted in 1907 that it would be "a fitting testimony to one of Chicago's most useful citizens." (Italics mine. And Bill -- may I call you Bill? -- don't be affronted by being damned by faint praise, it happens to everyone!)

Finished in 1912, the building's façade is emblazoned with stone carvings of the coats of arms of Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard, Yale, Stanford and the University of California, among others. Its two towers are fraternal twins, similar but unique. The East has Byzantine domes that echo the great Orthodox basilicas of Europe. The West brandishes the battlements of a Renaissance castle. The interior of its third floor library aspires to the heavens with its vaulted ceiling and celebrates the life of the mind with its carved printer's marks and mythological symbols.

It is a library to truly inspire... awe. (I shall refrain from employing the overused late 20th Century term which contains the root word "awe" although this is one instance where that word would certainly be used appropriately.)

May I be intimate for a moment, Bill, and reveal my soul to you? As a freshman, I was simply blown away -- pardon the colloquialism -- upon entering your memorial. Every time. I mean EVERY time. As a little girl who grew up barely a stone's throw away from what can be kindly referred to as the "industrial armpit" of the city of Chicago, I realized that by walking into your library, knowing I was a student at your university, I had truly achieved something, and been truly transported somewhere. As I said, it is a library to inspire....

And they're complaining the TRUMP sign looks tacky?

PictureWTF???!!!?? Arley who? Even the sign looks cheap!
Well, Billy, baby, I need to correct that last sentence. It was a library to inspire...

Now --- and I am mortified to have to be the one to tell you this --- now it is a.... a... reading room. In fact, it no longer even carries your hallowed name. It's officially called the...

 Arley D. Cathey Learning Center.

NO, no, no, no, no, no, no, nooooooo---ooo---ooo---o--o-o-o-o-o-o-!

Bill, sweetie, you and I both know how WRONG, WRONG, WRONG that is!  A "learning center" is what you find in an elementary school, not a world-class institution of higher learning. (Or has U of C totally started to infantilize its undergrads?)

And even in an elementary school, a "learning center" functions as a library. Because it has BOOKS! Books to read and to check out at a circulation desk...

Oh, I weep... at one time, Harper Library and the adjoining departmental libraries held 2 million volumes... now, nary a one... except for those that the students carry in... presumably to... read.


Picture
Before: Harper Memorial Library (with books) ---- After: Cathey Learning Center (tables, chairs, no books)
PictureEven Walt Whitman is speechless.
Yes, yes, I know it still boasts the vaulted ceiling and the chandeliers... it's beautiful and always will be... but this is about more than aesthetics, about more than skin deep... there's something vital that's missing. And that wonderful smell is gone, too. That scent that hung in the air... the tang of knowledge, with undertones of curiosity and speculation and the weight of wisdom... that smell peculiar to old books.

Harper was the small library, the quiet library, the undergraduate hangout, the peaceful place compared to hulking Regenstein across campus. And, Billy, I guess the intent was to preserve this atmosphere... at least according to the perpetrators of this crime. After all, "lighting, heating, and air conditioning" are essentials in the 21st Century... for students who are total wusses...

Oh forgive me, Billy, my snark runneth over... but you were sold out for $17 million. Butane Gas... who knew? Apparently, that sum also purchased the bragging, errr, naming rights to a residence hall and dining center...

Picture
"And I'm never goin' back to my old school..."
PictureArley D. Cathey Naming Things (Tumblr)
But, Bill darling, take heart. Apparently, I'm not the only one who has issues with this atrocity.

There's a Tumblr (it's a blog site, dearie) dedicated to lampooning this 21st Century practice for those who have the money to throw around. (You  called them tycoons and philanthropists and I'll remind you that Rockefeller gave big bucks to found the U of C and vociferously insisted that it NOT be named after him! We call them the 1% and everything seems to sport their monikers.) But to think they would sink to this... to think they would treat your memorial like some random football stadium or sporting arena!

Oh sweet, sweet Bill, I just don't know what to say...

Yours ever in library love,
Jo

Of course, the next thought in my mind was... I wonder what they've done to Regenstein?

But that's a query for another blog post because...

There's always another adventure waiting on a higher shelf...

Check out the absolutely fabulous back-up singers!

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The College Years: A Tale of Two Libraries

7/8/2014

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Libraries are the hot, burning center of any educational universe. Or they should be. Student life in elementary school should include joyous trips to the library media center (or whatever it's called at each particular school --- you name it, I've heard it: LRC (Learning Resource Center), LMC (Library Media Center), IRC (Instructional Resource Center), LLC (Library Learning Center). See what word all those appellations have in common? Yep, that's right: center with a capital "C," mind you, and that rhymes with "e" and that stands for... you get the picture.
Picture
Now granted, middle schoolers and high school students may not celebrate trips to the school library with as much enthusiasm as the wee ones, but still, they generally have a sense that it's a place to chill, eat lunch far from the madding crowd (if they have a cool librarian), Google some trivia (if they are smartphone-less), catch a quick nap (if the chairs are comfy -- or even if they're not) and generally just "be."

And by the time students get to college, the library, even more so than their dorm rooms, becomes their home away from home. (Well, at least that's what their parents hope!)

Crescat scientia; vita excolatur

The above roughly (or smoothly) translates as “Let knowledge grow from more to more; and so be human life enriched.”  It is the motto of the University of Chicago, my alma mater (though how kind and nourishing this mother was is questionable... but that's a topic for a different blog).

Considering I was the girl who wanted to go places, I didn't go too far, just to Hyde Park, still on the south side of Chicago, the location of said university. My time there was a tale of two libraries...

(William Rainey) Harper Library

PictureHarper Library exterior (in the gray of winter)
Ahhhh...

it was the best of times, the age of wisdom, the epoch of belief, the season of light and the spring of hope...

this was not just a library...

more a cathedral of knowledge, from its Gothic spires to its arched stained glass windows.

I could barely resist the urge to genuflect every time I passed through its heavy oak doors.

And then there were the gargoyles....

Truly badass gargoyles!

Oh, it had books, too. And a wonderful old smell and weight to the air inside, as if it held all the knowledge and wisdom of centuries past that scholars had struggled to bring forth with sweat and tears and migraine headaches and just taking in a deep breath would convey all that inside of me.

I didn't have to close my eyes to imagine I was somewhere else. I WAS somewhere else... a place of elegance and refinement...

And a place where EVERYONE was different... not just me.

Picture
Harper Cathedral, oops --- Harper Library interior

(Joseph) Regenstein Library

PictureRegenstein exterior (early spring - maybe)
And then there was the other one...

the worst of times, the age of foolishness, the epoch of incredulity, the season of darkness and the winter of despair... Regenstein.

In my mind, it is no coincidence that Regenstein rhymes (sort of...) with Frankenstein. The place was a man-made monster that choked the life out of me. There were no deep breaths to take in Regenstein...

Literally...

I couldn't breath under the oppressive glare and constant hum of its fluorescent lights and ventilation system. I didn't care if it was constructed of grooved limestone. I t had the look of plug-ugly cement. I didn't care if the façade marginally resembled the fore edges of books (the sides opposite the spines). Half an hour in its cold sterile embrace and I'd be scuttling for the doors, like the cockroaches in the basement of Woodward Hall when startled by the sudden flick of a light switch.

PictureLibrary... or prison?
Luckily, unlike those locked up in the facility on the right in the image below, I was free to leave.

But the worst thing about Regenstein?




NO GARGOYLES!!!!!


I really did go looking for some piano music...

But I must confess, there is one good memory I have of an adventure in that library. I remember kissing a slender blonde boy in the stacks where the music scores were stored. No one went in there. After all, U of C was the place where fun went to die. No one had time to practice his or her instrument... or those students who were musically inclined were so incredibly bright and talented that they had every single note of every piece of music they could possibly care to play already memorized. Or so we thought.

It was a little awkward at first because he wore glasses, so he finally took them off and then forgot them on the shelf. (Did he wind up as an absent-minded professor?) Later, when we went back to retrieve them, they were GONE! To this day, I have no idea if someone else, a saxophone player, perhaps, was in there with us, sharing our little adventure. This was, of course, back in the day, before the dawn of the ubiquitous security camera. Young lovers beware!

Picture
Regenstein interior --- Oh yes, they can! (UC archive image)
Unlike Sydney Carton in A Tale of Two Cities, I survived my tale of two libraries and recently returned to my old haunts to see how the years have treated them....

but that's a tale for another post...

There's always another adventure waiting on a higher shelf...

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Chicago Public Library - South Chicago Branch

6/29/2014

3 Comments

 
PictureCourtesy http://thechicago77.com
"You can't go back home to your family, back home to your childhood, ... back home to a young man's dreams of glory and of fame ... back home to places in the country, back home to the old forms and systems of things which once seemed everlasting but which are changing all the time... back home to the escapes of Time and Memory." ---- Thomas Wolfe, in You Can't Go Home Again
 
 Chicago is a city of neighborhoods, with 77 "named" communities and dozens more enclaves within those communities. And each has a branch of the Chicago Public Library to enrich the reading lives of its residents.

The names of the branches reflect the communities they serve: Albany Park, Beverly, Edgewater, Gage Park, Logan Square...

A little history...

Picture
The library of my childhood was the South Chicago branch located at 9055 S. Houston Avenue. Then, as now, it served the communities of South Chicago and Calumet Heights. South Chicago was always the grittier of the two neighborhoods, due to its proximity to the massive South Works steel mill operated by the U.S. Steel Corporation. Calumet Heights, bounded by 87th Street on the north, the Skyway on the east, and railroad lines on the west and south along 95th Street, was always a more genteel place where office and city workers rubbed shoulders with steelworkers who had made it out of the blast furnace and ascended to low- and mid-level management positions. Pill Hill, the neighborhood west of Jeffrey Boulevard, originally named for the number of doctors who owned its spacious bi- and tri-levels, was more affluent still.

PictureOur Lady of Guadalupe
These communities were initially populated by immigrants and the children of immigrants: Poles, Italians, Irish, Yugoslavians, Mexicans. It was a predominantly Catholic area, with an amazing abundance of parishes that seeming bled into each other... and churches whose soaring spires and domes reminded their parishioners of a power higher than even the industrial gods and their temples of industry that put food on the table and clothes on the back. Saint Michael Archangel, Saints. Peter and Paul, Our Lady of Guadalupe, Saint Francis de Sales, Saint Patrick's, Immaculate Conception,, Saint Kevin's, Saint Columba, Saint Ailbe, Sacred Heart, Saint Florian's... to run through the names of all the churches was like saying the litany... A few Lutheran enclaves were tucked in between: Immanuel and Bethany, as well as a couple of synagogues: Congregations Kehilath Israel and Agudath Achim Bikur Cholem.

While residents may have worshipped in their own way, in their own places, they all (or presumably a good portion) went to the public library, which was built in 1941. Here was another higher power... the power of information, the power of knowledge, the power of words to transport...

Neighborhoods change...

PictureEntrance to the mill
Against the backdrop of the tumultuous times that rocked the nation between 1960 and 1980 and drove tremendous change, the two communities experienced their own upheavals, which resonated in the changing demographics of the area. In the early 1960's African-American and Latino families began to move into the neighborhoods as jobs opened in the mills and in the public sector. (Ernie Banks, Mr. Cub, apparently owned a mini-manse in Pill Hill, as well as a car dealership nearby, although I was not aware of this as a child. It seems a little unsettling that a player so associated with that North Side team should reside on the South Side, just a short car trip down the Dan Ryan from beloved Comiskey Park, where the White Sox played.)

By 1980, African-Americans made up more than 50% of the population in South Chicago and 86% of the population in Calumet Heights. The neighborhoods were indelibly altered, but unfortunately still segregated, aided by the unscrupulous real estate practice called "blockbusting" which contributed to the phenomenon known as "white flight." Any 60's dreams of a integrated community of whites, blacks and Latinos living in harmony died quickly.

The South Chicago community was particularly impacted by the decline and ultimate death and closure of the South Works mill in 1992. It has never recovered, although any number of redevelopment schemes have been batted around, including a new airport,  a plan to host the Summer Olympics and new enterprise zones.  None managed to make it off the page of the dreamer's notebooks. Another plan is on the drawing board. Perhaps it will actually come to fruition, although whether it will actually benefit current residents is a big question mark.

Calumet Heights remains a middle class neighborhood of, for the most part, well-kept houses and groomed lawns and gardens, populated by city workers, police officers, firemen, teachers and other professionals.

But libraries -- and their missions -- endure...

PictureDwarfed ...
As I noted in my previous post, I spent many mornings and afternoons at the South Chicago branch, wandering the aisles, often closing my eyes, reaching out and pulling a book off the shelf. Part of reading, a large part is the discovery: of  other people and places, and of one's own self. I was always a little girl who wanted to be somewhere else, anywhere else, to be someone else, or to find someone who was like me... or who would at least understand me... and the way I got there was through reading... and writing.,

And now, in deciding to write about the incredible power that libraries have in the lives of their patrons, I was drawn to focus first on the libraries I have known and loved. The libraries which have changed my life. And thus I found myself on a recent Saturday morning taking a trip down I-88 to the Eisenhower and then to the Dan Ryan and the Skyway (it's quite the odyssey) to again wander the aisles of the South Chicago branch to see if the magic still existed, both for me and for others.
PictureReal corner of happy and healthy?
Yes, it was smaller than I remembered. But then I was a small child when I last passed through its doors. It's a basic, high-ceilinged rectangle with the children's section on one side and the adult section on the other with the circulation desk and offices in the middle. A lower level features a small auditorium and a couple of meeting rooms. The library was completely renovated and rededicated in 1994, and apparently the remodeling made space for banks of computers and audio-visual materials. Many of the rows of shelves for print material were gone. And yet... and yet... the instant I walked in I got the feeling that this was a place of quiet refuge, a place of escape.

Yes, there were printed signs that were jarringly disconcerting... signs that certainly did not exist in my youth and that I don't see in my cushy suburban library environment:  signs posted on the security gates prohibiting gang activity and the wearing of hoodies, a sign on the circulation desk listing all manner of behaviors in which patrons may not engage:

Patrons may not:

EAT, SMOKE or SLEEP,

BATHE, SHAVE or WASH CLOTHES,

or

ENTER THE LIBRARY IF YOU HAVE NEGLECTED YOUR BODILY HYGIENE SO THAT IT GIVES OFFENCE TO AND CONSTITUTES A NUISANCE TO OTHER PATRONS...

or

BLOCK THE AISLES WITH PERSONAL POSSESSIONS...

or

ENGAGE IN ANY ILLEGAL ACTIVITY...

I understand the challenge that all public libraries, urban, suburban or rural, face in dealing with the scourge of homelessness that is truly a shame of our nation... I guess I had just never been so plainly face-to-face with it...

And yet... and yet... the friendly welcome of an older gentleman, a staff member who greeted me with a smile and a nod and the calm, soothing green interior of the library drew me in, the stacks beckoning, as they always have to girl who wants to be somewhere else...

Serendipity ... an unexpected discovery occurring by design...

Torn between investigating the children's and the adults' sections first, I veered left and headed past the small Young Adult and Spanish language areas into the adult section, pausing just long enough to cast a quizzical eye at the two posters adorning the end caps of the YA shelves. Two teenagers expounded on the joys of reading... two very pale teenagers. Why not faces with skin tones that resemble those of the patrons, I thought? Perhaps a minor quibble... I shook it off and moved on. In two steps I was in the adult section. And with limited space, the nonfiction shelves blend into the fiction without a zone of demarcation. The shelves contained a balanced mix of new material and old. I imagine with the limited shelf spaces the librarians must weed aggressively.

All right, then, it was time to close my eyes...

Picture
Classic: drift down aisle, close eyes, let fingers trail over spines, pull one out... and wind up with Jane Eyre!
A steady influx of patrons quietly filled the space, some alighting at the reading tables with their finds, some utilizing the computer stations, others, like me, wandering the aisles, turning the corner into the audio-visual section or pausing at the magazine racks, where the latest issues awaited.

I made my way over the children's area, noting that the security guard was eyeing me and my notebook with less-than-casual speculation. I didn't remember the big fish that hung on the wall. Sure enough, it was installed after the renovation.

Picture
Big Fish (yes, that is its title) by Eleanor Clough - materials: recycled metal and plywood, 8 feet 1998
The artist, who is known for her work employing found and recycled materials, used tuna fish can tops for the scales and cut tin for the head and fins. Although all the scales are made from the same material, subtle difference in color give the work a shimmer affect that is very similar to the iridescence of actual fish scales.

The library contains other works of art, including this mosaic by Mirtes Zwierzynski:
Picture
Emboldened... and knowing that I probably only had a few minutes to spare before the security guard accosted me (for being... what? A stranger in a strange land? For looking at the posted signage a bit too closely? Did she think I was an investigative reporter uncovering the scoop that the air conditioning system was obviously not working?)... I approached a patron and explained I was writing a story about libraries and would she be willing to tell me why she came this morning -- or any other day. What drew her to the library?

"It's a quiet, calm place. Usually cool in the summer. Air must not be working today. I like to read the magazines. I can't afford to buy them. Here, they're free." She gestured to a tween-age boy focusing intently on a computer screen on the other side of the carrel. "And my son likes to use the computers.

And this from another patron, a gentleman seated at a table near one of the portable air conditioning units, immersed in a new crime novel, The Ways of the Dead by Neely Tucker: "Free books. A clean, quiet place to read them. It's close to where I stay. Short walk."

And then the librarian was bearing down on me, with a semi-nervous smile on her face and a hearty "How can I help you?" She seemed to find it hard to believe that this was my childhood haunt... "How long ago was that?" she asked incredulously. When I explained my mission -- to celebrate the wonders of libraries -- she relaxed a bit and when she realized I hadn't been in the library since the renovation, enlightened me to the addition of an elevator.

Taking photographs aroused a similar flurry of questions and admonishments... What organization are you affiliated with? No photographing of patrons... oh, you want to shoot the artwork? That's okay... but no patrons.

I got the sense that these library workers were not accustomed to the notion that someone who is not a regular patron, someone who is an outsider, a stranger, might come to the library to look for things to praise, to celebrate... is this a City of Chicago thing? Are they always looking over their shoulders, worried that the bosses are sending in spies to appraise their work habits and upkeep of the property?

They can certainly rest easy... I can recognize a haven when I see it... in the relaxed faces of their patrons, the ease of the shoulders, the lack of tension along the brow and the jaw, the focus they exhibit... and in the words they use to describe this special place... quiet, calm, clean... free.

A library should be what its patrons need it to be... and the South Chicago branch delivers.

There's always another adventure waiting on a higher shelf...

(Post script 7/8/2014 - The 4th of July weekend in the city of Chicago was horrendous in its violence. Some of it took place in the South Chicago neighborhood where this library branch is located. One young man was shot and killed in the 8700 block of South Houston at 10:20 am on Saturday, just a week after my visit. That's just three blocks from the library. Late Sunday night, just blocks to the north, a gun battle broke out in which three other people were wounded.)
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Libraryland

6/18/2014

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I'm going to tell you about a place, a very special place... so just forget your everyday life, forget your problems and worries, your mortgage, bills and loans, the laundry, the weeds growing in your lawn... and come with me... to the place that takes you... to somewhere else, wherever you want to go... a place called Libraryland.

Michael Gorman wrote eloquently about the mission of libraries in his book, Our Enduring Values. He noted that libraries are "the focal point of a community, ... the place remembered fondly by children when grown, the solace of the lonely and the lost, the place in which all are welcome, and a source of power through knowledge." In my life, libraries have been all those things and more...

I guess it all started when I was three...

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I could blame my father, for letting me sit on his knee and read the comics -- what he called "the funnies" -- every morning.

I could blame my mother for buying Funk & Wagnall's encyclopedias and National Geographic magazines and even -- the Horror! -- Reader's Digests!

I could blame my kindergarten teacher, Miss Garfield, for letting me read aloud to the rest of the class. I remember the experience of it to this day. It was my first favorite:

The Little Engine That Could!

You know: "I think I can, I think I can, I think I can..."

Wow, what a rush! All those little faces focused on me... no, not on me. They were focused on the book I was holding, on the story I was telling... on the words I was reading...

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And that's how I got hooked... soon I ran through the stash of books at home and the stuff at school and the Scholastic Book Fair wasn't coming around for another year and I was getting pretty desperate... reading the backs of cereal boxes... the horoscopes, Dear Abby and Ann Landers and EVEN -- yes -- the WANT ADS!

Until my older brother -- you know, it's always those older brothers with their superior knowledge of the mean streets and back alleys who know just the place to go -- well, he turned me on to a place where I could get all the stuff I wanted... for FREE!

Yeah, that's how they sink their claws in and indoctrinate you into the life -- by giving it to you for free...

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Christopher Lasch, the American historian, wrote that the family in a "haven in a heartless world." I believe that quote applies to libraries as well. Growing up on the south side of Chicago, where the smell of beached alewives mingled with the sulfur fumes of the coke ovens, I spent hours at this branch of the public library at 9055 South Houston Avenue.
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I wandered the aisles, running my fingers over the spines of books. I would close my eyes and stop at random to pull one off the shelf. I'd crack it open, begin to read and I'd slip away to an entirely different world. Reading took me to so many incredible places: to the wide-open, untamed prairies with Laura Ingalls Wilder; to the Island of the Blue Dolphins, to Belmont Park in New York City, where I came racing out of the far turn and down the homestretch with Walter Farley's Black Stallion. Reading took me into the dark, dark places where the original vampire, Dracula, lurked.

I found many a wonderful read with this wandering serendipity... but other times I needed guidance, times when I was looking for... something, anything that would transport me through time and space to anywhere but where I was. Although I didn't yet know the title or the author or even necessarily the subject matter... I just knew I wanted a book that would take me somewhere... and I would turn to a librarian to help me find it.
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And when the children's section couldn't satisfy my craving, I started poking around the adult section. A librarian once asked my mom if I could read "those book." (Obviously referring to the ones with the questionable themes and content for one so young -- in other words, the ones with sex scenes.) Mom, ever the enabler and totally misunderstanding the question, informed the woman that I had the reading level of a high school student and was perfectly capable of reading those books.

Reading great literature -- and copious amounts of good literature -- and even reading the literary equivalent of bubblegum -- made me a stronger reader, a critical thinker and it also helped form me as a writer... because when I didn't find the story I wanted to read, I started writing them myself...

(Sections of this post first appeared in remarks Joanne gave at the Soon to Be Famous Illinois Author award presentation and were previously published in the ILA Reporter.)

There's always another adventure waiting on a higher shelf...

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    Author

    Joanne Zienty is, in no particular order, a reader, a writer, a teacher and a librarian who resides in the western suburbs of Chicago. She's been a library aficionado since early childhood.

    She was recently named the winner of the first Soon to be Famous Illinois Author Project sponsored by RAILS (Reaching Across Illinois Library System) and the Illinois Library Association.

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