Library Disciple

Put your mentor on your fridge (next to the artwork from school!)

The books from my library offered up some great mentors this week.. . August Wilson, Laura Hillenbrand and Louis Zamperini.  Each delivered a powerful example of how to live. By the end of Louis story tears were streaming down my face - it was that beautiful and compelling. 

But that’s the problem, it ended, like all books and I moved onto another book.  Louis’s life and lessons will start to fade away and before long I’ll forget (maybe all the inspirational characters I’ve read about are lodged somewhere in my brain but I can’t remember where).


So how can I keep the feeling of clarity and inspiration fresh in my mind and alive in my life?

• Write down quotes that hit home and sum up your feelings.  Keep them in a journal, stick them on your fridge or add them to your blog. :)  Here are a few from Louis and August:
• “When anxiety knocks at your door, don’t let it in, that is what leads to stress.”  Louis Zamperini
• “Just try to improve everyday, that is how you live as a champion.”  Louis Zamperini
• “It ain’t nothing to find no starting place in the world.  You just start from where you find yourself.” August Wilson
• “If you can’t be who you are, who can you be?  How can you know what to do?”  August Wilson

• Put up a picture of your mentor in a place you see each day.  When you walk by and see them smiling at you’ll be reminded of their lessons.  Maybe I’ll make a “Fridge of Inspiration”.  

• Watch your mentor on youtube.com,  ted.com or wherever you can find them.  Videos are a quick and dirty way to get a shot of inspiration.  I got really lucky and found a boatload (no pun intended) of Zamperini videos.  A few minutes on youtube and I’m good to go.

• Share your mentor with someone else.  If necessary bribe them to see, read or hear your mentor so you have a buddy to talk to, discuss ideas with and keep the inspiration fresh.

• My books come from the library.  And then they get returned.  Maybe I’m returning my inspiration too soon?  I decided to keep a small bookshelf of books that really inspired me next to my bed.  When I open my eyes in the morning I’ll get a quick reminder of how tackle my day.

• Join the NPR book club on Facebook.  Last winter readers commented and posted questions about Unbroken for Laura Hillenbrand. Hillenbrand posted answers and explained her writing process and shared how she uncovered so many details to make her story come to life.  You can’t do much better than a book club with author of the book!  In one post she writes, “none of us is going to be a castaway on a raft, or trapped in a POW camp, but all of us are going to come to places in our lives in which we can't see a way to push through. The greatest lesson in Louie's life is that a resilient will can carry us very far, through things that seem unsurvivable.”

Educate Yourself

photo from augustwilson.net

100 years after Andrew Carnegie educated himself at the Anderson Library in Pittsburgh, Freddy August Kittel sought refuge and knowledge at Pittsburgh’s  Wylie Avenue Branch.  Kittel’s teacher had accused him of plagiarism when he turned in his term paper about Napoleon.  This insult, heaped upon a mountain of public school disappointments, prompted him to drop out of the 10th grade.  

Luckily, Kittel was a voracious reader, he got his first library card at the age of 5, a year after his mother taught him to read.  He was reading the work of black writers like Ellison and Hughes before he was a teenager and, once school was out of the way, the library offered him the chance for unbridled reading and learning.  Kittel was particularly interested in understanding the place and history of African Americans in our country.  

At the age of 20, Kittel changed his name to one that is now familiar to readers and theater goers around the world:  August Wilson.  His insatiable thirst for reading paired with a desire to write, in order to find his place in the world, led him to a career as a two time Pulitzer Prize winning playwright.  Wilson is most famous for The Pittsburgh Cycle, a series of 10 plays set in the Hill District of Pittsburgh where Wilson grew up with his six siblings.  Each play unravels part of the black experience in Pittsburgh from 1900-1990.

He did eventually get a degree but it wasn’t from the school system (think they feel a little chagrined?) it was from the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh.  And now there is a new library in Wilson’s old neighborhood, The Hill District Branch, with its own “August Wilson Room” and a stool from Eddies, a nearby coffee shop, demolished in 2006, where Wilson used to hang out.

August Wilson didn’t remind me of Andrew Carnegie at first glance - their centuries and backgrounds are worlds apart - but they were kindred spirits when it came to educating themselves.  Carnegie, an elementary school dropout,  was working at the telegraph company in Pittsburgh when he discovered Colonel James Anderson’s library.  His love of reading and desire to learn made him a frequent customer.  He also read everything time would allow and believed that books were “treasures of knowledge”.  Carnegie would always credited the library with his success, believing that his ‘education’ though books allowed him to elevate himself.

Carnegie, like Wilson, achieved great success in his life, not because of anyone (certainly not thanks to a teacher), but because of a safe place that allowed him to read, think, learn and grow on his own.  Carnegie probably couldn’t even imagine a world where someone like August Wilson would be lauded as a gifted artist, but, thank goodness, he could imagine a place for people to discover their talents and rise to their potential.  Without his vision and his deep pockets, Freddy Kittel may have been left out in the cold.