Libraries Against Drunk Driving

photo from the Buffalo News

Libraries live in constant fear of certain threats; floods, vandalism, fire, theft, tornadoes, hurricanes and, especially in 2011, budget cuts but they are usually safe from the dangers of drunk driving.  However, anything can happen in Buffalo.  

At 5 a.m. on July 11th, a drunk driver rear-ended a car in front of the Frank E. Merriweather Library crashing it through the front wall and demolishing the ventilation and cooling systems.  From the photo in the Buffalo News  it looks like the rear ended car ended up completely inside the building.

The good news is that no one in either car or in the library or on the sidewalk was hurt.  Additional good news is that the car crashed into the air conditioner and not the books.  The bad news was that the library was closed for a month during the prime summer attendance season.  But, to end on a positive note, the air conditioning is now fixed and the library is open for the last few weeks of summer.

Thanks to the press I learned that the Merriweather is not any old library branch, when it opened in 2006 it was first new branch in the Buffalo-Erie System in 20 years.  It is loved and appreciated by the members of its east side neighborhood - check out this video and feel the love - that stop by daily to use the computers, read and work.  One man said it simply, “we’re blessed to have it in our community.”

But what makes the library really different is its design.  The building is created from six interconnected circles that “suggest” a traditional African Village.  Architect  Robert Traynham Coles, also shown on the video, chose the plan to create a feeling of community where people share different spaces.  A domed skylight on one room allows sunlight to flood the space, avoiding both gloom and florescent lights.  Tile mosaics and carved doors add warmth and personality.  

I’ve seen a lot of different libraries in the last 8 months but what I like about the Merriweather is that Coles came up with a fresh, relevant design that meets the practical needs of the library while INSPIRING the community.  

Coles’s commitment to building the right library for the neighborhood jumps right out at me and reminds me of seeing Frank Lloyd Wright’s prairie style houses for the first time (Buffalo also has one on those).  Wright's new, modern style sought to complement its surrounding and completely broke with traditional materials and design.  He was not afraid to design homes that belonged where they were built.  

African American architects were rare in 1940 America when Coles fell in love with the work and pursued his education until he graduated from MIT with a Masters Degree in 1955.  He has been pushing the envelope and ignoring naysayers ever since.  He has contributing to Buffalo for more than 40 years and won the American Institute of Architects’ Whitney M. Young Jr. citation in 1981 for his contributions to social justice.

Coles’s design goal is clear in at the Merriweather:  to create buildings that provide positive influences to a community.  “I tend to look to the community to be served as opposed to building the greatest architectural monument. I am an advocate architect,” Coles said in an interview.

If I could wave my magic society wand I would turn drunk drivers into advocate architects with Coles’s commitment - imagine what a beautiful world they could make.

Library Disciple

A map of Erie and Niagara County

Remember when you were a kid and your parents told you to go "make your own fun"?
I remember looking around the same old neighborhood, kids, dogs and bikes and wondering how I was going to make 'fun'.
That’s when I first learned that fun is different from entertainment.  

Fun is a feeling you get when you’re enjoying something..  Fun happens when you play.  When you play you discover, explore and try new things.
In our neighborhood we explored other people’s yards and found blueberry bushes, we discovered how fast you could ride down the hill with someone on your handlebars (before you crashed into the telephone pole), we built forts in the woods and, on rainy days, we walked to the library.  All pretty good fun.

Rosa Brooks has a hilarious article in the Los Angeles Times called “Please, Go Outside and Play” that reminds people what it was like when we (the gray haired generation) went outside and played ALL DAY, everyday and, somehow survived the perils of our neighborhood.  She pokes fun at modern kids who are overprotected, overscheduled and undercreative.  “We’ve managed to turn childhood into a long,  hard slog” she writes.  

And then, to appease our guilty consciences, we try desperately to entertain our kids so they’ll forget about all the homework, lessons and nagging and, instead, remember the great trip to Disney or the new video game system..

Entertainment is an activity intended to be fun - you don't make it, it happens to you.
As kids we were entertained by Gilligan’s Island, occasional trips to an amusement park and walking downtown for ice cream.

Entertainment is fleeting and ends as quickly as it started.  The curtain comes up, the park closes and the ice cream melts.  When I was a kid my parents were busy working and doing grown up stuff and didn't have the time or the money to overly-entertain us and we didn't expect them to.

We have taught our 21st century kids that fun costs money, requires packing and will entertain them.  That’s why kids don’t describe the library as fun or entertaining.  Instead they use the words boring, lame or stuffy. It’s hard to have fun at the library without an imagination.

Last year a family in Buffalo bucked the trend and decided to go on a library quest.  A road trip to visit all of the 37 branches in Buffalo & Erie County Public Library System.  At each branch the mom and her two daughters (and sometime dad, dog and grandparents) took pictures, had their log book signed and checked out some books. Then they posted their pictures and a description of the library on their blog.  
The blog makes it clear that while they enjoyed all the libraries, they also made some fun in each little community they visited by checking out something new; an ice cream parlor, a nature preserve, a unique shop, a bakery or a local museum.  Nothing crazy, just a little added adventure.

What turns something so simple into fun?  
I think it’s the unknown, not knowing what you might find, how it will look or what it will taste like.

I was impressed by this mom's creativity - she took something ordinary and made her own fun for herself and her kids.
It wasn't a huge project and it didn't cost a lot of money.  The biggest cost was time.  
What could be a better use of the weekend than going to the library with my kid and having some ice cream?
In the process her kids learned how to write a blog.  They learned a little geography, some map skills, library appreciation, and, most importantly,  how to enjoy the simple pleasures that life makes available to us each day.

What are you going to do today to make your own fun?

Missing Manuscript Mystery

Mark Twain envelope from the Buffalo
Library collection

Another blizzardy day in Buffalo has dawned.  I have happily turned my computer away from the window and toward the great missing manuscript mystery of 1993.   The story begins in 1885 when James Fraser Gluck, a lawyer for the Buffalo & Erie County Library, asked Mark Twain for the original manuscript of Huckleberry Finn for the Buffalo Library.  Twain agreed, but only sent the second half  - he told Gluck he wasn’t sure what happened to the first half of the document and, according to The New York Times, he wrote, "I have hunted the house over, and that is all I can find".  He thought that it may have been lost at the printer.  While the library was thrilled to have the partial work, it was kind of like getting a cookie with a bite taken out of it, yummy but not worth much.
Decades passed while the partial manuscript sat patiently in B & E County Library archives.  And then, in 1991, in a steamer trunk in the attic of a 62 yr. old librarian in Los Angeles, the 600-page first half of the manuscript appeared!  The librarian was James Gluck’s granddaughter, she discovered the treasure while finally sorting through several trunks that were sent to her by her aunt from Upstate New York.
Turns out that Twain had found the first half of manuscript after all and sent it to Gluck who had taken it home with him - possibly to read - before handing it off the library.  When Gluck died suddenly in 1897 the document was stowed away in the trunk and ended up in the attic.   
A huge battle for the newly found manuscript ensued - everyone wanted a piece of it, especially since it included unpublished materials and had corrections written all over it in Twain’s handwriting.  Thanks to the preservation of the original letters documenting Twain’s intent to donate the text to the library, Buffalo won the right to display the physical pages and went to work creating “The Mark Twain Room” at the library to showcase their new pride and joy.  The room opened to the public in 1995 and it is especially fun to visit after learning about the reunited manuscript.  A story that I am sure Twain himself would have gotten a kick out of.
p.s. Belle da Costa Greene bought Life on the Mississippi and Pudd’nhead Wilson from Twain in 1909 for $2,500 to be included in J.P. Morgan’s collection.
p.p.s. I think I’ll go clean out my attic.

Twain's Trials in Buffalo

When I hear the name Mark Twain, I think of riverboats steaming their way down the Mississippi River or classic white rocking chairs on a porch in Hartford.  Before today, I didn’t think of Buffalo, but now I know better.  The Buffalo Central Library’s Mark Twain Room has a special collection of Twain’s work and remembrances of the time he lived and worked in Buffalo from 1869-1871.  Thanks to Albert Bigelow, Paine’s biography I discovered why Twain had been in Buffalo so briefly (was it the weather?  or a bad chicken wing?).  Twain first came to Western New York in 1868 to visit his friend, Charles Langdon, actually he was looking for an excuse to see Charles’s sister, the beautiful and fair Olivia.  The Langdons lived on a farm in Elmira, about 150 miles southeast of Buffalo, and, after several blissful weeks it was clear that Twain could not go on without Olivia.  At the time Twain was a semi-vagabond, he was big on the lecture circuit, travelled around the country and the world, and still considered himself more of a journalist than a novelist.
But he happily said goodbye to those carefree days and settled down with his new wife, and soon to be editor, in a house on Delaware Avenue in the heart of Buffalo (his father-in-law purchased the house as a wedding gift for the happy couple).  Mr. Langdon also gave Twain a helping hand with the purchase of part of “The   
Buffalo Express” (“The Express” merged with “The Buffalo Courier” in 1926 and continued to be published until 1982).
Just when everything was settled bad news reared its ugly head.  Olivia’s father got sick and she went back to Elmira to be with him, after three months of suffering he died and Olivia was devastated.  Things went from bad to worse when Olivia’s friend arrived to boost her spirits and proceeded to die of typhoid fever in their previously cheerful home.  Olivia did give birth to their first son that year, but he was premature and his health hung in the balance.  Twain, who was contracted to write humor columns for the paper, and was also working on a new book, couldn’t shake off the gloom and doom of his household.  He quit the paper, even though it meant a financial loss, and the family headed first to Elmira to recover and then to Hartford, CT, where they lived for the next 20 years.   The Clemens never returned to their home in Buffalo - it was packed up without them and sold.  This is probably the reason that fans can visit Twain’s home in Hartford and not Buffalo.  I was actually going to take my own tour to check out the house until I read that it had been torn down after a fire and was now a parking lot. A fitting conclusion to Twain’s Buffalo chapter.  
While Samuel and Olivia Clemens probably wouldn’t remember Buffalo so fondly, Western New Yorkers certainly treasure the memory of their brief time in The Queen City and celebrate Twain’s legacy with an engaging exhibition at our library, recognizing another quirky story that make Buffalo an exceptional city.

Golden Oldie

So this is what I’m wondering...how does a city decide whether or not to restore an old library or build a new one?  Were some buildings built with better methods and materials  than others and therefore they last longer?  Is urban renewal at work?  Or maybe it is an operating and upkeep issue.  Once again I have far too many questions and not enough answers...

However, I was stunned when I stumbled across this picture of the old Buffalo Library (it was also located downtown at 1 Layfayette Square, the same address as the current library).  I had no idea that such a beautiful structure had existed on what is now a series of cement planter boxes and a windswept plaza.  This Gothic/Romanesque structure was designed by Cyrus Eidlitz (he also designed the famous New York Times Building, the namesake of Times Square, in 1905) and completed in 1887.  The cost was over $5 million dollars (roughly adjusted to current dollars).  The new modern library was built directly behind it in 1963 for the bargain price of $70 million dollars (adjusted to current dollars), the books were transferred to the new building and this treasure was levelled.  Seventy-six years...that’s it?  Doesn’t that  seem like the prime of life for such a substantial building?  The lions in front of the NYPL have been on guard since 1911 and they’re still going strong, The Redwood Library in Newport, RI is built around its original structure from 1750 and “The Old Library” at St. John’s College, part of the University of Cambridge, was built in the 1620s!  Even my house, which has had little TLC in the last 50 years,  is 130 years old and only falling apart in some places.
Heritage Press Magazine recounts author George Kunz’s memories of the library, “‘drafty, rambling, illogical’ but nonetheless having charm. It leaked, was hot in summer and cold in winter, and the wooden floors creaked.  When the Broadway streetcar rounded the bend on Washington Street, the huge windows in the reading room trembled and the floor shook until it passed.”  
Are these just the signs of an old building or inferior  construction?  As I search for answers I truly hope this beautiful building was not destroyed in order to provide quiet floors and geometric interiors.  While I know that Buffalo is famous for its urban renewal decisions, I find it hard to believe that they let this jewel go.
   
Muschamp, Herbert - "Landmarks are not created by architects. They are fashioned by those who encounter them after they are built. The essential feature of a landmark is not its design, but the place it holds in a city's memory. Compared to the place it occupies in social history, a landmark's artistic qualities are incidental."

Want Fries With That?

As we have previously established, hip is not a word used to describe me.  If I were hip I certainly wouldn’t be spending so much of my leisure time reading, writing and visiting the library.  However, I do like to think I am current when it comes to library affairs.  
Apparently not.  As Einstein said, “The more I learn, the more I realize I don’t know.”  Part of my ignorance comes from lack of exposure to ‘cutting edge’ big city and university libraries - too many years in small town America has left me in the dark ages (excuses, excuses).   After moving to WNY several years ago I finally embarked on a field trip to Central Library, located at 1 Layfayette Square, in downtown Buffalo.  While the imposing structure was not particularly appealing on the outside, I was thunderstruck when I cleared the security gate and found myself in a cafe (Fables, operated by the Davidson Restaurant Group).  It was a candid camera moment.  I looked around and wondered if I had come in the wrong entrance or taken a wrong turn.  Nobody else seemed alarmed or surprised by the sound of frothing milk or sizzling paninis in the library.  
“Well, I’ll be”, I said to myself.  
Myself ordered a coffee and a biscotti and sat down to enjoy the library view.
Turns out libraries all across the country have invited cafes and bistros into their hallowed midst in order to stay competitive, attract new members and appear more friendly and comfortable.  Starbucks are even ubiquitous in the library!  Change again rears its ugly but yummy head (and Carnegie is rolling over in his grave).  There is no denying that people have changed over the past 150 years, now they want it all and they want it everywhere.  It’s not enough for the library to offer new, free books, beautiful spaces and peace and quiet.  In the 21st century they need to be more than free, open, voluminous and everywhere - now they have to sell skinny caramel macchiatos.        

The Best Medicine

It’s not often that you actually crack up at the library - maybe a smile or a giggle once in a while but not actually laughter.  Last night I was hysterical.  My husband and I were on our way home from a party in Buffalo.  Because of my obsession I sometimes check out books from Buffalo if I’m looking for something in particular or I find myself with time to kill in Erie County.  The problem is returning the books.  Since I actually live about an hour outside Erie County, I have to coordinate my returns with trips to ‘the big city’.  

So, it was about midnight when we swung by the Kenmore Branch on Delaware Road (I had the address in my GPS) and I sent my husband out to drop off a handful of books (it was about 10 degrees outside).  It is important to note that it is possible that he may have had a cocktail or two too many.  I watched him as he wandered around the entrance for a minute, searching for the book drop.  The punchline arrived when he happily put my books in a large green receptacle with a flap and staggered back to the car.

The scene of the confusion

“I think you just put my books in the garbage, “ I said.  
He looked at me, “I wondered about that.”
“I think you should go fish them out now,” I said, trying not to laugh too hard, he was relatively defenseless.  

He hauled himself out of the car, stuck his arm into the trash can (by now I was laughing uncontrollably) and fished out the books - thank goodness they don’t have a “librarian-cam” - this episode would not make the “how to care for your books” list - I’d probably get my card revoked, not to mention the bill.  After more wandering I called him back in the car and we drove around to the back of the branch and found a flap that said “book drop” - AHA - just goes to show you...reading is fundamental.