Earlier this week, I read that ALL the public libraries in the city of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, will be closed effective October 2nd, because of state budget issues. Not just one branch, the entire library system. While I don’t live anywhere near Philadelphia, and while I personally prefer bookstore-cafes to libraries, I grew up haunting the public libraries in various cities, and this strikes me as deeply tragic.
The theme for this Project, then, is LIBRARIES.
This theme will remain open until October 16th or 17th. Please remember to include the option number, your name as you want it posted, and your direct link in comments.
Option One: Seven Things
A good library will never be too neat, or too dusty, because somebody will always be in it, taking books off the shelves and staying up late reading them.
~Lemony Snicket
In improvisation, one of our exercises is a game called “Seven Things,” in which we go around in a circle giving each other the challenge, “Give me seven things that [whatever].” We are not going to go around in a circle here, but if you’re drawn to lists, this prompt is for you.
Give me a list of seven things that make a library good. These can be real or imagined, physical or intangible. Have fun with it. As always, explanations are welcome, but not obligatory.
Option Two: Pick Three
The library connects us with the insight and knowledge, painfully extracted from Nature, of the greatest minds that ever were, with the best teachers, drawn from the entire planet and from all our history, to instruct us without tiring, and to inspire us to make our own contribution to the collective knowledge of the human species. I think the health of our civilization, the depth of our awareness about the underpinnings of our culture and our concern for the future can all be tested by how well we support our libraries.
~Carl Sagan
Pick at least three of the following words, and build a piece of writing around them. The form is up to you: poem, scene, flash-fic, essay, or general blog entry. (As always, you can pluralize, change tense, or alter the part of speech, if necessary.)
civilization, culture, extracted, history, insight, knowledge, support, tiring
Option Three: Can You Picture That?
Use the the following photo to inspire a piece of writing in any form (poetry, prose, whatever).
(Please remember to copy the image to your own server, and include the photo credit when it is known.)
Click for larger image.
Option Four: Poetry
The library is not a shrine for the worship of books. It is not a temple where literary incense must be burned or where one’s devotion to the bound book is expressed in ritual. A library, to modify the famous metaphor of Socrates, should be the delivery room for the birth of ideas – a place where history comes to life.
~Norman Cousins
Using the quotation above as your inspiration, write a poem (any form is fine) about devotion expressed in ritual.
Option Five: Fiction
What a place to be in is an old library! It seems as though all the souls of all the writers that have bequeathed their labours to these Bodleians were reposing here as in some dormitory, or middle state. I do not want to handle, to profane the leaves, their winding-sheets. I could as soon dislodge a shade. I seem to inhale learning, walking amid their foliage; and the odor of their old moth-scented coverings is fragrant as the first bloom of the sciential apples which grew amid the happy orchard.
~Charles Lamb
Using the above quotation as your inspiration, write a flash-fic, scene, or short story involving an old library.
Option Six: Timed Writing
Libraries are reservoirs of strength, grace and wit, reminders of order, calm and continuity, lakes of mental energy, neither warm nor cold, light nor dark…. In any library in the world, I am at home, unselfconscious, still and absorbed.
~Germaine Greer
Take nine minutes (use all nine, but don’t go over), and write on the subject of libraries.
This is a timed exercise and it’s expected that it won’t be perfect. Any format – fiction, essay, verse – is welcome.
Don’t forget to comment here with your name, the title of your piece, the selected option number, and the direct link to it.
Happy Writing, and Happy Book-browins