A library can be a secret place or a private place. Do walk into its lair!
Nothing mattered that day—not walking the three long blocks, not getting on a gas belching bus where I was always susceptible to motion sickness—nope! I was very young and tightly held my mother’s hand to march forward. We were on our way to what I considered the grandest building in St. Louis. The Carondelet Library! And I thank Andrew ** for his creation of…
My Land of Enchantment.
It was opened in 1908 with aspirations of cloning the glories of ancient Greece in a classic Ionic style. It deserved a grand boulevard, but by the time I arrived, old buildings and old cars encroached its stately dignity. But as I said, “nothing mattered” particularly if you were surrounded by endless shelves that traveled around the Children’s Room with words and pictures. Hooray!
When I met my mother at the take-out counter, my arms were filed with books. I smiled bashfully in my tiny gold-rimmed glasses at the tall librarian in her steel-rimmed glasses who looked down to sternly say, “Three books, no more.” What, impossible! I could read them all before we arrived home—that is, if I didn’t get motion sick on the bus.
Many library years later, I made a capricious proposal to a national design organization to present a three hour lecture. There was not a glimmer of a chance that I would be chosen, but, gulp, guess what? I won a presentation place and needed a miracle. A library!
Not this library!***
My miracle turned out to be that a library was down a walkway from my husband’s office. And I could use his faculty library card because my husband was a Professor Emeritus allowing me to borrow an unlimited number of books and old magazines for over six months. Take that, steel rimmed eyeglass librarian-lady!
A runner-up miracle! Used book stores. You know, the really great ones that have an abundance of passageways with pull light chains to guide you through long shadows among silent, bools, wedged together. You slide out a book, no more silence. Explanations and thoughts unravel.
I adored the research and apparently found the rhetoric of my own lectures fascinating. I kept proposing new topics and lucky me, the brilliant head of the ASID Education Department, Barbara Henn continued scheduling me as a speaker at National Conferences.
My husband was a seasoned researcher accessing libraries around the world ferreting ancient music publications during off-shore lectures. A London bookstore purportedly had an out-of-print biography about an English decorator and I had convinced my husband I could not possibly bang out a lecture without that book.
We encountered eager-to-help Brits who kept assuring us it was only a short walk. We trooped and trudged our way across the four corners of London, but not one Brit had a clue to where my mystery bookstore was.
Finally, discovered! It was not a store, but, a stately home with unobtrusive shelves inside a lovely living room. It did have a desk with a clerk and thirteen pounds later I owned “Syrie Maugham” by Richard B. Fisher, the story of Syrie, wife of Somerset Maugham. She became famous for creating the All-White Room. And now, one of my lecture subjects.
Fisher ended his biography by saying that “Syrie Maugham brought a breath of freshness and beauty into her world, ….her drawing room appeared to guests, as they entered, as a stage on which they were to act and watch others act for them. The first impression they received from Syrie’s all-white-room must have been of light, then of elegance: then restfulness and beauty.”
Because my lectures included slide presentations, I became intrigued with using humorous quotations, you know, the same ones we keep getting in today’s emails.
or
I think Emily, my mother, would be pleased as my curiosity progressed. She started it all in that sweet Carondelet Library in St. Louis that continues today.
Today, my Retirement Realm has four libraries scattered around its kingdom. So much fun and information!
Step right in—visit those grand masters of words of vicarious pleasures. Brilliant, boring, humorous, edgy, common, words tumble and dance throughout our lives.
May they continue to take us to our LAND OF ENCHANTMENT!
Sy’s Salient Point
Kudos to that steel-rimmed eyeglass lady librarian-lady who studied library skills. She will do anything in her power to find answers to our questions.
*Wikipedia 2022 “Borge is credited with bringing Latin American literature out of academia and to a global audience.”
**nps.gov “Between 1886 and 1919, Andrew Carnegie’s donations of more than $40 million paid for 1,679 new library buildings in communities large and small across America.” The Carondelet Library is a Carnegie Library.
***Dunhuang, China
Happy 4th of July, Blaire