The Incredible Shrinking Library!

Beginnings of the New JKM Library

"Ex nihilo biblioteca fit!" This should be our new motto: "From nothing comes a library!" In today's images, you will see the beginning stages of a renovation project, which will temporarily reduce the usable space of the JKM Library--the theological library of the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago and McCormick Theological Seminary. Let us just say that the confluent universe that created the ponzi of Bernie Madoff, the collapse of Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns, and the BP Oil Spill, among other things, was the universe that has forced the enterprise of the JKM Library and its step-parents to go into redux mode, and move its operations to a highly condensed space. The move, taking place this coming August, will save a vast number of resources, while making the library more intimate and interactive with the seminary's departments.

The library presently resides in the west wing of the LSTC building, and occupies all 3-floors of that wing. The new library, which is part of a "modernization" project, will take up its functioning in the east wing of the LSTC building, on the north half of the 3rd floor, effectively reducing the operating portion of the library by 80-83.4% (if this calculation is correct: 3 full floors down to just over 1/2 of one floor of functionality). But this is not permanent. The move will both save money and afford us the opportunity to actually renovate the full library space in the west wing. The present move will keep us in this space for ~3 years. In keeping with the tradition of LSTC, some have called it JKMINEX (JKM in Exile), as with the term "SEMINEX" (or, Seminary in Exile), which was a mid-1970s break with Concordia Seminary in St. Louis, where one faction of that seminary ended up being blended into LSTC.

But this is not so much an exile, because we are neither breaking with our seminary, nor our community, but will likely be serving them more efficiently and closely, especially since our work will be more interwoven with our Language Resource and Writing Center (LRWC). The new JKM library will now be located right next to the LRWC and our services will be much more collaborative. There is a great amount of foot-traffic in the LRWC and many more student activities there, which often focus on international affairs, including the wonderfully crafted "Global Conversations" series, designed and conducted by the LRWC's director, Rob Worley. This series focuses on a broad range of global issues, which are relevant to the lives of many of the international students, but also to other students, who participate in ministry, social action, and vocational development, among other areas of interest.

In some of these photos, it may look like wholesale destruction, but the forthcoming construction, paint-jobs, and re-modeling of individual spaces should make it all look a lot better. The first photo in this essay shows the now de-constructed "Smart Classroom," which shared a common wall with another "no-so-smart" classroom. The so-called Smart Classrooms were to be the future of technology in a past generation, and served as a multi-purpose media center of sorts. And though it is sad to see it go, the next generation of technology and pedagogy has moved into the realm of mobility and mobile technologies. So, with the dismantling of this space, the question of re-conceiving of pedagogical space and techniques becomes all the more important. "Where do we put chairs, tables, and desks?" or "What color should the north and south walls be painted?" These are not just valid questions, but important ones. Because studying and learning are influenced by spaces and color schemes, just as much as sound and time of day. (Above is a photo of a cross made out of two rulers, then "painted" with markers--it had stood over the white-board in the old classroom).

More from the construction space, above and below. The former "Smart" table, which served as the focal point of that learning space, will soon be gone. These two former rooms, now one, will become the reference room (or "center"). It is the reference collection and serials ONLY, which will be moved to this new space...

Now lest we fear that reference books will not suffice..., fear not! Because the fact is that the library is technically NOT CLOSING! The wing that houses the some 400,000+ books, which most of you like to peruse and occasionally borrow, will still be open, but for a far less limited time period: something like 6 hours a week for entry and borrowing. The rest of the week, the library staff will monitor online requests for books through its online systems (OPAC) and retrieve books for patrons. Now the little detail that most of you might not know is that, as we are moving for a renovation and cost savings, the wing holding those 400,000+ books will be neither lit nor heated/cooled. This means that those of us library explorers (on staff) will be most likely searching in a dark library (this sounds like a book of some sort!)... "Adventures in a Dark Library!" As a result, our staff has been actively searching for the best head-lamp equipment (see image below). God forbid we misread a book spine and pick up the wrong book for a patron! I can just see one of us returning from a "book run" and realizing that we retrieved the wrong volume... "but I thought it said 'Martin Luther'...!?" only to discover it should have been "Martin Luther King, Jr.!" Or instead of getting the right commentary on The Book of Job, selecting a copy of The Gospel According to Steve Jobs (Apple Computer's CEO). And that's why we need the head-lamps. Yes, folks, this is a true story. I can't make this stuff up. It's like the literary critic Elizabeth Hardwick (1916-2007) once wrote: "Reading is...a moral illumination." Well, something like that.

Books in a Bag on the Street!

Finding Orphans Once Again...

Some of you reading this blog might wonder: "where is it that you live that people are just dumping books on the side of the street?" Well, Hyde Park, of course! I've never lived in a place where books could be found in such abundance, literally everywhere--and not just for sale. Those who've followed this blog for the past year have seen books in all sorts of places, including "found" and "orphaned" books. Well, the other day I was walking around the neighborhood; it was a lovely day and the annual art fair was going on. My family and I strolled quietly around the neighborhood to check out the fair and find a few yard sales to peruse. And then the inevitable happened: I sighted some books on the side of the road! Yes, like some ancillary attachment to this micro-society of the Hyde Park neighborhood, which we like to call "the University of Chicago."

Admittedly, after I opened the little plastic bag, rain-soaked from the constant showers that have plagued our late spring along with erratically cold weather, I realized that these were more toward the "trashy" side of the reading spectrum, and likely not the reading materials of a University student in the Core (curriculum)--but who knows! Somehow, I would have been horrified if the stumpy mass paperback tomes were philosophy books or history, for example. Yet, I still gawked at the bag, and pulled out my camera to share this passing experience with you all today. I do wonder how many more neighborhoods like this there are out there...I just haven't experienced them yet. Nonetheless, I look forward to finding some more abandoned treats, though fewer bags of deadened books--especially wet and sick books, malingering on the street, feigning book illness to avoid the work of being read! Poor wet books...whoever put them out as free gifts to the passing pedestrian world didn't realize the rains were coming.

As with all things, even books seem to pass in an out of this world. And now a bag of wet books is consigned to the trash. Thinking about this bag on the street and the fate of books, I was compelled to find a copy of Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, about a man who starts fires and burns books (among other things). I finally hunted the volume down in a public library last evening, some 30 blocks away. It's interesting how one thing leads to another. So I thank you, little bag of wet books, for leading me back to Ray Bradbury..., even if I'm sorry to see that a few more volumes have been lost to this world.

Happy Birthday "Books and Biblios!"

Happy 1st Birthday!

Books and Biblios Turns "One" this weekend! After one year, we're still going strong with some 80 articles or other presentations made in the first year. We hope to continue with guest writers and reporters, but also with some new video presentations. Last year we started with some discoursing on book neologisms and finding books on the street in Hyde Park. Just this week, as I was walking in the newly arrived 85-degree heat and humidity, I stumbled on my first finds of the season: a pile of books around the corner from my house. And yes, yes, I picked up a couple--just two, really! One of them was a book by Mikhail Gorbachev. A nice little historical perspective of Perestroika. But the season is just beginning, and there shall be more tales to tell soon enough! So thanks for sticking with us for the first year, and I promise many more good things to come! Hopefully, then, we can weather the years as well as our good friend Samuel Johnson, pictured above in his famed dictionary. Though, perhaps we'll fare a tad better than his yellowing book!

HAITI: Students of the Quake (A Report)

Welcome everyone! Today we're premiering a great little treat--a short film produced for this blog about students in Haiti, who survived the earthquake and are now helping to rebuild their country. Initially, our reporter Eben Brusco was given the task of asking people about books and reading in Haiti. The trip turned out to be even more rich and hopeful than imagined. In this video, we will see some of the students, who are taking a break from reading Durkheim and Chomsky, in order to help their fellow citizens. It is a side of Haiti that the media doesn't always show. We hope you enjoy.

A Visit to a Printing Museum and Library

The Pope's Latinist: An Interview!

Welcome All! Today I'm venturing into the video realm. Last month I had a chance to sit down with my old friend and Latin teacher, Reginald Foster. We had a grand old time with a little red wine and some circuitous conversations about the Latin language and history. Toward the end of my visit, I asked Foster to do a short interview, which I've recorded...and most of his response is in Latin. He's recovering well from recent health problems, or what he's called "dying twice!"...and avoiding the old cemetery in Wisconsin near Holy Hill, which we touch on briefly at the beginning of the 6-and-some-minute video. This week, Foster will receive an honorary Doctor of Laws from the University of Notre Dame. As always, he sends his best regards to his students...past, present, and future!

Books and St. Joseph's Table

Welcome to a Family Tradition!

Today I want to introduce some of you to a long held tradition in some Sicilian-American families: the Feast of St. Joseph. Now, I'm not a Catholic, but this has never stopped me from entertaining or being entertained on such a holiday. St. Joseph's Day falls not far from its more popular step-sibling, St. Patrick's Day, on March 19th. There is a great and rich history behind this saintly day. According to a mix of legend and Church history, at some point during the middle ages (or simply, "A long, long time ago..."), there had been a serious drought. St. Joseph (San Giuseppe) had been asked to intercede and prevent famine, which had been caused by a harsh lack of rain and low crop yields. Those who know or who've been to southern Italy and Sicily will know then that it is a ruggedly arid place, with little or no rain most of the time.

After the people had asked St. Joseph to intercede and stop the drought, the rain finally came. The crop which had help to stave off a major famine was the fava bean. So, to this very day, when you go to a St. Joseph's day festival, you will be given a little red bag (red is the color of the day, and you will see many people wearing it!) in which you will find some fava beans and a little necklace piece with the image of a saint on it--usually the Blessed Virgin Mary (BVM). In the picture here, one will see two of these little red bags and some "Keep This Coupon" tickets, which were part of the annual raffle. In the past, we've won some sort of holiday gift: a candle with a saint on it, a basket of fruits, or some other treat. Or my all time favorite: a fine 17-inch, hand-crafted statue of the great San Giuseppe himself!

Now one question for some of you is: "so you're not Catholic--then why do you go to a Saint's Day celebration at a Catholic Church?" That's a good question. It actually starts in some way with the celebration itself. Half of my family comes from Sicily. They mostly came over in the 1950s, including my father and grandparents. This was one of the key holidays they celebrated in Sicily. So when they came to the United States, their community, which had been transplanted to northern New Jersey, started a club for their hometown in Sicily--the Santa Croce Camerina club. Every year, when I was growing up, we attended the celebrations of the St. Joseph's Table, which included a big ritual of visiting a church hall or maybe even some hall in the Santa Croce club, with a great stage--this was the bountiful table of St. Joseph. It looked like a magnificent altar, and was decorated with candles, statues, and a whole spread of baked goods, which commemorated the salvation from famine.

In New Jersey, the event was quite sizable, and the table's baked good ranged from zeppole (cream-puff treats) to spinach pies to the most gigantic homemade breads, knotted and braided into life-preserver rings, and implanted with hard-boiled eggs and parsley. I recall some of these breads being as large as the lid of a garbage can or even a circular table-top. And I always wondered "what kind of stove did they have to bake such a large loaf!" Toward the end of the event, there would always be some sort of auction or raffle--as there's been at the church in Little Italy in Chicago, Our Lady of Pompeii, where I've gone for the past few years. In New Jersey, though, it was an over-the-top event, which ended up becoming a "show-fest" of how much more money you could spend on a spinach pie than the next guy. In truth, it was not uncommon for someone to bid $100, $200, or even $500 for some baked good!

Coming from an immigrant family and culture myself, we might recognize the need and desire to make money and do better than the opportunities offered in the country of origin. My family worked in factories here in the US after they arrived. They saved their money and spent frugally. But when it came to holidays, feast days, and special occasions, it was all show and ostentation. All the stops were pulled. One could speculate with some degree of accuracy about why so many 1st, 2nd, and even 3rd generation Italians and other immigrant groups in New Jersey and greater New York area have such lavish parties, and especially weddings: it is a remnant of the old saints days. You work, work, work, and have little, but when it comes time to celebrate, you celebrate in style, to forget for a short moment in your days and lives that you're working so hard. Parties for 50th birthdays, 25th anniversaries, "Sweet 16", and weddings are extremely ornate, and cost big bucks.

A distant cousin, who was married not too long ago, had a wedding that cost ~$200 a plate. Most people I know can't afford this. But the murmuring family members all spoke about how much more they did than another cousin...whose wedding might have cost a mere $150 a plate! So it is with examples like this that we see the contrasts and perhaps paradoxes of envy and awe, desire and disregard. Each immigrant family is made to be in awe of such materiality, made to be surprised, but with such they are also reminded of their own short-comings and lack of wealth; or at least, comparable wealth. But this should not derail or downplay the value of the St. Joseph's Table. Even though many in my family no longer attend their annual saints day celebration, because of this ostentation (partly, because one extremely wealthy patron buys up most of the goods and ultimately turns off the rest of the community), I still find some renewed interest in its culturality.

My brother and I used to joke about an incident we witnessed at one San Giuseppe event many years ago, in New Jersey. Part of the St. Joseph's day celebration includes the parading of the statue of St. Joseph from the local Catholic church to the assembly hall where the Table is located. On one such occasion, the procession was led by a Gucci-wearing priest named Gino, whose charm and style seemed to outweigh his spiritual direction. Following him and his attendants was an octet of burly Sicilian men, clean shaven, in grey and black double-breasted suits. The eight of them were carrying this massive 6-foot statue of St. Joseph on some beams across their shoulders. They walked haltingly and with some trouble. The statue must have been extremely heavy, as the veins of these men were popping along bright red and perspiration-beading foreheads.

As they went to maneuver into the assembly area where the St. Joseph's Table was, they could not open the double door. One, two, three of them stopped and bent over to unlock the clamp at the base of the door. Only after a few minutes did someone realize that there was a lock at the top of the door that needed to be undone! At which point, my brother turned to me and joked "How many Sicilians does it take to open a door?" The answer was: "Eight...and one St. Joseph." So, that was the image I had always emblazoned in my mind for this holiday. In Chicago...it was a bit different. A few years after I'd first come to Chicago, I'd somehow come across some information about a St. Joseph's Table and celebration. It was at a church in the old Little Italy, just off Taylor Street. So, I found the church and attended the mass, before queuing up in line for the buffet-style luncheon. At the end of the service, there was a procession of congregants to the assembly hall where the table was. But unlike the bulky middle-aged Sicilians carrying a 2-ton statue of St. Joseph, it was a line of 4 or 5 young girls dressed finely in deep red sweaters, no older than 10 or 11, carrying several little statuettes of St. Joseph! What a surprise! And what a difference!

At first I thought, "I'm being cheated of the real experience of the day!" But the fact is, it was simply another version of St. Joseph's day and his bountiful table. I'd been used to a family and community tradition, where the entirety of that community back in New Jersey was actually from Sicily. People were still speaking in dialect at functions held at the club there. The culture of Sicily was still very alive. Here in Chicago, it's hard to say if anyone was Sicilian, though many were certainly Italian. Several were of southern Italian stock, but very few spoke any Italic language or dialect, at least that I discerned. Last year I met an old Italian man from Calabria. He spoke Italian, and only Italian! No English. So I practiced a little and spoke to him in Italian. In the handful of years I've now attended, it seems as if the community is largely Italian-American, but maybe 3rd or 4th generation, with a few exceptions. The church seems to also be diversifying and has a community of Filipino and Hispanic families, among others. So, this year, I made a few more friends. My family and I got to the event on time, but had to wait in line for an hour. But that was okay, because the church folks brought out slices of freshly baked pizza and plastic cups full of rosé wine. I sipped the sweet wine in the cool air, talked to people, and looked at the pigeons congregating around the front of the church. Inside, I went down the line of the buffet collecting a pile of home-cooked white fish, spaghetti, greens and potatoes, and the necessary hard roll. It was loud and chaotic, but fun and enjoyable. We ate some sweet Sicilian treats, had some coffee, and talked the afternoon away, while the auction went on. We didn't win anything this year. And that was fine too. It was simply pleasant to partake in an event like this again.

Quietly, in the back corner of the hall, where the St. Joseph's Table was set up, there was a counter and display case full of books: yes! Books and St. Joseph. Most were about saints and such. There were a whole bunch about Padre Pio on the other side, which I didn't photograph. I don't think anyone was reading this day. They...we were all too consumed with the treats, the wine, and of course, the music. And that's how the afternoon ended, with kids, adults, and the old folks dancing to the classy tunes of 1950s and 60s Italo-Americana. Who doesn't love that! Well, nothing says tradition like an old Italian crooner, belting out the best in the Italian-American vocal medley to the delight of a young child in the shadow of fava beans, sugar cookies, and St. Joseph. God bless 'em all!