A Free Thinking Collection

Roger escapes from Massachusetts

I feel a little sorry for Roger Williams, he was so far ahead of his time that he must of seemed like an alien from Mars when he arrived in Boston in 1631 with his crazy ideas of separatism,  soul liberty and division of church and state.  

Williams believed that each person was responsible for their own relationship with God, could choose their own religion, or not, and live by their own conscience.  

The authorities and church leaders in Massachusetts were not impressed with his ideas and, after several warnings, the Court banished Williams from the Colony.  Williams made his way to what is now Rhode Island where he set up his own settlement and named it Providence because he felt that God had brought him there.  Soon Williams was surrounded by a community of dissenters and like minded individuals who were also "distressed of conscience".

This was the history that The Company of Redwood Library in Newport, RI had behind them (see yesterday’s post).  Religious and intellectual freedom was at the core of the city’s philosophy and the Redwood directors exemplified the ideas when they sat down to order the books that would make up the collection.  

Cheryl Helms, in her article in America’s Private Libraries, writes, “it was one of the first colonial secular organizations in which men of diverse faiths in the community - Quakers, Sabbatarians, Anglicans, Baptists, Congregationalists, Adventitsts and Jews - were able to come together across religious divides.”  

In order to appease everyone, the directors started their library collection by choosing Bibles in four different languages, the biographies of Jesus and Mahomat and the best modern sermons of the day.
They next went to the classics and ordered all the usual suspect in their original Greek and Latin and in translation (even colonial gentlemen needed books to help them get to sleep at night).

Because Newport received ships and merchants from around the globe, they included dictionaries in seven different languages and the newest books in geography, history and recent voyages.
The two most popular books in the library were “History of the Rebellion”, about the English Civil War and the “Lives of Admirals”.

My favorite part of the collection are the “useful” books and the books ordered for the educated “ladies”.   Helms write that there were books on “animal husbandry, brewing, distilling, domestic arts, bee-keeping, masonry, carpentry and shipbuilding”.  

I guess even Newport gentlemen had occasions to stop philosophizing and  get something accomplished, or at least tell someone else how to accomplish it.  The books for the gentler sex included “The Ladies Library” edited by Richard Steele and “A Treatise on Foreign Vegetables” by Ralph Thicknesse.  The ladies also had their choice of magazines:  Tatler, Spectator and Modern Gazetteer.

What wasn’t included?  Fiction and drama.  They ordered only one edition of Shakespeare’s plays and a single novel, Joseph Andrews by Henry Fielding. Novels were still a new, upcoming trend.

Helms concludes the section by reminding us that the founders “came together in tolerance, cooperation and generosity to create something greater than themselves.  They understood that the ability to read, to learn, and to have access to knowledge was essential to the betterment of themselves and to the creation of a civil society.  It is an American story, one that each of us deserves to share as apart of our heritage and identity.”

What A Colonial Gentleman Needs to Know

The Redwood Library

One thing I’ve learned about libraries and their collections is that they’re personal.  They’re not just a place for random books to sit on a shelf but a representation of the community or the people they serve.  The Redwood Library in Newport, RI is a perfect example from the very first days of libraries in North America.

I lived around the corner from the Redwood Library for almost a decade after graduating from college.  But alas, I squandered my proximity to this temple of books.  For me the years in Newport were devoted to fun, friends, sailing, marriage and travel- quintessential 20s.  By 30 I was living in nearby Portsmouth, RI but drove into Newport daily for my daughter’s preschool, across the street from the Redwood, and we often walked around Touro Park and crossed the street to admire and climb on (her, not me) the giant metal lawn sculptures at the Art Museum, next to the Redwood.

We went to the library weekly, at least,  but opted for the ‘wild toddler safe’ environment of the Newport Public Library and adjacent playground.  Bringing a preschool into the Redwood Library is like putting your grandmother’s ivory handled silver in the dishwasher.  Last week I made up for my negligence by reading up on the Redwood’s history in an article by Cheryl Helms, included in the book America’s Private Library.

In 1749 Abraham Redwood was a successful merchant in Newport.  Thankful for all his blessings, he decided to donate 500 pounds to establish a “collection of useful books” for “propagating virtue, knowledge and useful learning” in Newport. After petitioning the Governor and establishing the Company of the Redwood Library, Redwood and eight elected directors came up with a list of books that they wanted for their new library and sent the order off to their purchasing agent in London.  They were rewarded with 751 titles (1,339 volumes of books) for their new venture.

Most colonials libraries did not begin this way.  It was more typical for library start ups to begin with a collection of pooled books from the interested parties, usually made up of educated gentlemen.  A library was cobbled together and then added to over the years.  But the Redwood Collection is fascinating because it provides us with a list of books that the 18th century directors thought were necessary for a “prosperous cosmopolitan” city such as Newport. The books were not just what they wanted to read, but what they thought should be read.  Their catalogue was the equivalent of the  “1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die”   Helms goes as far as saying that the collection represents the “cultural underpinning of our nation”.

Henry Collins, another of the library’s founders, came through with a donation of land on which the library could be built (there would be no back rooms or dusty corners for this collection).  Collins sacrificed his bowling green, a lovely flat piece of land, with a stunning view of the harbor and countryside.  Members were tapped to contribute “5,000 old tenor”, or about 250 pounds, to construct the new temple to learning.

The original collection remains on the shelf in the original Redwood Library just as it did in 1764 (tomorrow I’ll reveal the interesting titles they choose and why) which is another thing that makes the Redwood unique.  Somehow, over the centuries, the original Redwood remained in tact and in use.  These books allow us to step back in time, to a time before we were even our own country, and reflect on where we came from, what was important to us and what we believed in.  Thankfully books are included in the answers.

Whose Grand Island Is it?

Grand Island is under the 'g' in Niagara Falls

I was camped out in the Grand Island Library parking lot, trapped in my car by driving rain and cringing with each thunder clap.  There was still 45 minutes until closing time and I knew that rain of this magnitude couldn’t hold up forever.  Besides, I had a book to read, no one to pick up and a cozy, safe car.

La Grande Ile, as the French explorers called it in the 1600s, is a funny place.  It is a large island in the center of the Niagara River, but the river is so skinny on either side it looks more like a puzzle piece, slipped between the U.S. and Canada, than a separate entity.  

The highway bridges connect the island so seamlessly that you don’t feel like you’re on an island, just another stretch of highway.  The highlight of the island for most families around here is Martin’s Fantasy Island, an small but fun amusement and water park.

For the Seneca Tribe, the island was prime fishing and hunting ground, worth taking from the Attawandron Tribe that lived on the land more than 400 years ago.  After the tribe settled into a century long routine, the British usurped Grand Island as part of The Treaty of Cessation, signed with the French in 1794, at the end of the French and Indian War.

New York State purchased Grand Island from the Seneca Nation in 1815 for $1000.  As part of the deal, they agreed to an ongoing payment of $500 annually (the payment is still due, every year, by June).  The Seneca also retained the right to hunt and fish on the island.  

But in 2002 the Senecas had second thoughts, apparently it took them a while to mull over the decision and check out the fine print, and charged New York with violating the Trade and Intercourse Act of 1790 which states that all Native American land deals needed the consent of the federal government.  The ensuing drama threatened the property of 2,000 residents of the island - talk about ‘History Comes Alive’!  The 4th graders, learning about the history of New York State,  must have had an exciting social studies period that year.

A trial court rejected their claim, big surprise, on the grounds that the land was already “owned” by Great Britain, due to the 1764 Treaty.  The court claimed that the Senecas didn’t really own the land in 1815 but the agreement was worked out in order to avoid trouble.  So I want to know how exactly the French came to “own” the land and thereby concede it to the British in the first place?  

The Senecas appealed and brought their case all the way to the Supreme Court, where it was denied in 2006.   

After 10 more minutes of torrential downpour there was a pause, only for a moment, but long enough for me to slip off my flats and splash barefoot through the flooded parking lot to the safety of the vestibule.     

It was almost 5:00 and the librarians were getting nervous, what if the thunder and lightening scared us into trying to stay late?  They sent a volunteer through the shelves to remind us they were closing in 5 minutes and we would be turned out into the storm; after all rules are rules.

I picked up my book, Americas Membership Libraries, wrapped it in the plastic bag the librarian offered and puddle hopped back to the car.

By the time I drove back across the Grand Island Bridge the storm had blown east, the sun broke through the clouds and the evening unfolded, clean and refreshed.  I looked back at the island in my rear view mirror and thought of how it must have looked centuries ago when there was no bridge, no highway and no ferris wheel.

The land is sacred. These words are at the core of your being. The land is our mother, the rivers our blood. Take our land away and we die. That is, the Indian in us dies. — Mary Brave Bird

MacBride Milks Memories

MacBride's version of Little House

I am constantly surprised by how much I don’t know.  

Just as I was getting over my surprise that Herbert Hoover was a humanitarian I discovered that Rose Wilder Lane’s agent, Roger Lea MacBride, had been a Presidential candidate for the Libertarian Party.  I knew that MacBride was the author of ‘additional’ Little House books but I was imagining a nerdy, Little House fan pining away for life on the prairie.  

I couldn’t have been more wrong.

MacBride was a Princeton and Harvard Law School graduate, an active member of the Republican party, a Presidential candidate for the Libertarian party, the co-producer of the Little House T.V. series and the heir to the Wilder fortune.  Roger MacBride was the son of Burt MacBride, Rose Wilder Lane’s editor at Reader’s Digest.    

Rose met Roger when he was still a teenager, he was taken by her stories and political theories and despite their age difference they became close friends.    Much later in her life, Rose actually admitted that she was grooming him to become a future Libertarian!  When Roger grew up and  was established, he became Rose’s attorney and business manager and remained close to Rose for the rest of her life.  

So here’s the part of the story that make me squeamish.  When Rose died in 1968, MacBride was her sole heir and gained the rights to the Little House books.  In three years he had Laura’s manuscript, The First Four Years, published and in another three years he edited her letters to Almanzo and published West From Home.  He used the royalties from the books to finance his campaign for President.  Then he decided to continue the Little House series with Rose as the main character and published EIGHT more books.  Talk about beating a dead horse...but he wasn’t done exploiting Laura yet.  

Studios had been trying to get the movie rights to the Little House story since the 1940s.  They knew a good thing when they saw it.  Laura repeatedly said no to Hollywood; she was afraid they would stray too far from the “true story”. Imagine. 

When the rights passed to Rose, she, too, refused the offers, respecting her mother’s wishes.  Roger, on the other hand, headed to Hollywood with the Little House rights in hand and made himself a millionaire.  In fact he agreed to everything and anything Little House related that came his way including a mini-series called The Young Pioneers and a spinoff entitled The Rose Years.

MacBride became a multi-millionaire and the antithesis of everything that Laura wrote about.  She must have been rolling over in her grave when Walnut Grove exploded in the last episode.  And Rose?  I bet she was pretty fired up and couldn’t wait to get her hands on MacBride in 1995 when he crossed over and joined them both in the great beyond.

The Hoover Wilder Connection

Since I was riding along with Wendy McClure’s on her quest to find ‘Laura World’ (see yesterday’s entry), I decided to find out where Laura Ingalls Wilder’s archives really were.  There’s usually a pretty interesting story behind why an author picks a library as their archive site and Laura’s was no exception.  After a quick search, I found myself at the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library in Burr Oak, Iowa.  Hhmmm.  What was the connection between Laura Ingalls and Herbert Hoover?  
Was it an Iowa connection?
nope.
Hoover left Iowa as an orphan when he was 10 years old and pretty much never looked back.  And Laura only lived in Iowa for a few years as kid.

Was Hoover a fan of the Little House books?
not that he admitted.
Hoover was working on world peace, saving war orphans from starvation, and trying to figure out what the heck happened to the U.S. economy - I can’t really see him tucking into “On The Banks of Plum Creek”.

Was Laura a Hoover fan?
not that she admitted
When Hoover was elected President in 1929 Laura Ingalls Wilder was churning out chapters about her childhood to be published as “Little House in the Big Woods” in 1932.  No doubt she was recovering from the death of her sister, Mary the year before.  And then there was bread to make, a garden to plant and cows to milk.  Any downtime was probably spent sleeping, not discussing politics..

Even though their life spans almost overlapped, 1870ish to 1960ish, the Hoover-Wilder connection wasn’t a Laura connection at all - it was a link to her daughter, Rose.

Rose Wilder was her mother’s opposite.   The Hoover Library describes her as “an author, journalist, world traveler, and Libertarian spokeswoman.”  But her life story is just as much a study in breaking boundaries,  risk taking and being true to yourself.  Rose began her career as a telegrapher for Western Union.  She moved from Kansas City to Missouri and then on to California where she eventually became a newspaper reporter.  She was married briefly and unhappily to Claire Gillette Lane, during which time she had a miscarriage.

Rose worked as a publicist for the American Red Cross during WWI, traveled across Europe and even lived in Albania for a while.  You certainly can’t get much farther away from log cabins and prairie dresses than Albania.

Rose found her greatest success as a journalist and an author of magazine articles and books.  In 1920 she wrote a series of articles with Charles K. Field, the editor of Sunset magazine, about the life of Herbert Hoover.  The articles were pulled together and published as the book, The Making of Herbert Hoover.    In retrospect, it seems like they were a little premature in their analysis but Hoover was already an well-known humanitarian by 1920 (see previous post).

Herbert Hoover and Rose did not work together on the biography, in fact, Rose heard that Hoover tried to “suppress” the book because of the dialogue she included. There are letters to Rose from Hoover’s relatives from that time period but Rose never spoke with Hoover.

When Laura Ingalls Wilder died in 1957 her papers went to Rose.  When Rose died in 1968 both of their   files went to Roger MacBride, Rose’s attorney, business manager and friend.  It was Roger who donated them to the Hoover Library in 1980, 12 years after Rose’s death.  The files include 30 feet of correspondence, diaries, book drafts, and other writings “rich in personal perspective and introspection”.

In the late 1930's Rose and Hoover did become friends and enjoyed a friendship that continued for three decades.  

So, in the end, neither Rose nor Laura picked Hoover’s library as the resting place for the papers that defined their lives, that choice was made by the mysterious Roger Lea MacBride and that story is for tomorrow.

Don't Go There

The Little House cover I remember

Great books create worlds that seem so real you could step right into them.  But you can’t really, they are made of words and imagination not bricks and mortar.  Even if they are real locations, zip codes you can punch into the GPS, they are not the same place as the book world.  While I would love to rock on the front porch with Atticus in Maycomb, Alabama, sit by the roaring fire with Hermione in the Gryffindor common room or drink coffee with Blomkvist on Hedeby Island,  I know I can only go there by passing through the pages of a book.

While some settings are actual locations, they don’t have book magic, the secret ingredient that the author adds to create the book world.  Wendy McClure discovered this bittersweet reality in her book The Wilder Life.  For a woman of ‘a certain age’, the Little House books, by Laura Ingalls Wilder, bring back vivid memories of visiting a secret book world, discovering a beloved series and escaping into the idealized universe of a story.  

Wendy McClure becomes obsessed with trying to find “Laura World”, and her book retells her quest to discover Laura’s life by experimenting with pioneer living and visiting the settings of the Little House books.  
In an interview with Gretchen Rubin (author of the Happiness Project) Wendy says that her fixation on the books came in part because Laura’s “point of view is at once so subtle and vivid that it feels like I’m in Laura Ingalls’s head, looking with her eyes. I learned so much about how to see from these books, which in turn helped me learn to observe and think like a writer.”

As a book, The Wilder Life is great fun to read - a lot like Julie and Julia by Julie Powell, an obsession based memoir that lets you ride along on someone else’s wacky pilgrimage as they try to make meaning in their otherwise ordinary life.  But learning the differences between the real Laura Ingalls and the fictionalized stories is a little depressing.  And visiting Little House tourist attractions and gift shops chips away at the book magic, like a bad movie adaptation.

A beloved book world is a place that must be protected, at all costs, in your imagination.  The only way to go there is to open the book and read your way there.  Trying to physically go there risks destroying the magic - and besides, opening the book is a lot easier on the wallet than driving across the country, or flying to Hogwarts in a convertible.

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?