Libraries are not all vanilla 

“The man who does not read has no advantage over 
the man who cannot read.” 
 Mark Twain

In the kingdom of consumption the citizen is king. A democratic monarchy: equality before consumption, fraternity in consumption, and freedom through consumption.
Raoul Vaneigem

Libraries are exciting spaces, believe it or not. I sell books to collection librarians and they are some of the most engaged, interesting and articulate individuals I work with in the publishing business. They are ardent book lovers, adamant about the knowledge, power and fun of reading and the value of free access. Librarians are excellent resource people in our culture, oft under appreciated, they have the uncanny ability to link community needs to big ideas, and can immediately put iany books or ideas that they encounter into the perspective of culture and global history. No mean feat.

There is a lot that goes in libraries besides reading dusty books. Libraries provide an alternative to corporatized culture, by providing a non-corporatized civic space. Free programming and skill building offer the chance for people to empower themselves, in a welcoming environment. A central space to  include new Canadians of all income brackets, they promote literacy, both as a value in society as well in families, by offering access to link people to books in all areas of their lives. For example, looking for a way to cook kale? Use a cookbook. Want to learn about a language? Get language CDs. Interested in building a resume or starting a club? Get a book to learn how.

Libraries also give us a space to interact with people who may not be from our own communities, or our own milieu. They have the power to democratize social relations, unlike Starbucks.

Calgary Public Library is one of the most heavily used libraries, per capita, in Canada. The new plans for Castell Central Library are going ahead, and they are seeking input from Calgarians
Go to their survey at http://calgarynewcentrallibrary.ca/

You will be asked what your priorities are for the library and what the new library can do for you.

As I filled out the survey, I imagined a beautiful and open access space, the library as civic landmark. It would centralize books, civic life, and the sharing of ideas in Calgarian consciousness via a free and open cultural space. My top priorities for this library then, in accordance with their categories on the surgery, are Arts and Culture, Lifelong Learning, Local Heritage, Civic Landmark and a Vibrant Space. I am hoping the new library will look like one of these fantastic library spaces, but this is getting my hopes up

Librarians are the keepers of our cultural knowledge. The internet is not a permanent nor neutral space. There is no accountability and it is driven by the market. Libraries are not driven by the market but are driven by larger social history both including and excluding the market.  For example, they store books that don't necessarily hit bestseller lists. And this is important because how can we know what it means to look at ourselves if we cannot see what we produced in times past? How can we know what it means to be a civic person, rather than a consumer, if we don't have any physical spaces that are about free and open access?

To me, the act of checking out books from libraries represents what Mark Kingwell calls participatory citizenship, defined as:

"...a new model of citizenship based on the act of participation itself, not on some quality or thought or right enjoyed by its possessor. This participatory citizenship doesn't simply demand action from existing citizens; it makes action at once the condition and task of citizenship." (The World We Want, p. 12)

By using libraries we are acting, and this action is a recognition of the value of the shared commons, a non commercial space for resources, ideas. It is also an act of recognizing the value of sharing our costs of housing such collections. We are recognizing the value of individual non-ownership as a conceptual space. We are recognizing the value of our shared past and the value of appointing librarians as keepers so as to make such an archive accessible and navigable in an intelligent systematic way.
Ultimately libraries are the embodiment of the value of equality and equal access, for everyone regardless of income, to the world of ideas.

If, in a kingdom of consumption, the citizen is supposedly king, then we, as kings, would all need an education to know how to rule ourselves; books are our path to such an education.
Such an education can never be had in such a kingdom where only that which gets published is that which supports the kingdom. Thus libraries and their non commercial space, as well as government grants, provide such a refuge.

An unwitting consumer without access to knowledge outside the system is not a ruler but is merely a tool- a tool of a system designed to exploit those very tools at the bottom.

Thus the library card, and its free passage to knowledge, is a shining jewel in such a kingdom and librarians become the gate keepers of our freedom.

Books and architecture

I found a gorgeous collection of images from some of the most visually and historically stunning bookstores in the world here

http://www.miragebookmark.ch/most-interesting-bookstores.htm

There is also a collection of the most interesting libraries here

http://www.miragebookmark.ch/most-interesting-libraries.htm

For Calgarians a little piece of trivia: The library shown here at the Faculty of Philology at the Free University of Berlin is designed by Norman Foster, who is also the designer of the new monstrous downtown Encana building in Calgary- called The Bow

Incorporating the historic York Hotel, The Bow is

" a 158,000-square-metre (1.7 million sq ft) office building currently under construction for the headquarters of EnCana Corporation. The skyscraper will be built in downtown Calgary, Canada. The building will be the tallest office tower in Canada outside of Toronto, a title currently held by the Petro-Canada Centre's West tower. The Bow is also considered the start of redevelopment in Downtown East Village.(from Wikipedia)

It will certainly be a well-needed change on the face of Calgary's grey concrete skyline. I think Calgary needs some esthetic architecture beyond the "function not form" mentality. Also in development in Calgary: Calatrava's new controversional pedestrian bridge over the Bow River.

Avenue Magazine did a good series of articles outlining the controversy around this development

http://www.avenuecalgary.com/articles/page/item/the-bow-river-foot-bridges

I for one think that we need this type of architecture in this city however a traffic and pedestrian bridge would be a lot more useful, as anyone who has tried to cross the Louise Bridge in rush hour can see!

Storybook Theatre: The Three Musketeers

RE: The Three Musketeers

Performed by Storybook Theatre as part of their Adventures in Theatre series 

For kids aged 6-12 to 100

Do you remember going to the theatre as a kid? I remember when my mom would take me to the Young People's Theatre in Toronto and it was an adventure. I remember none of the actual plays that I saw, but I DO remember that it was so much fun. It was truly interactive theatre. It was transporting  and transforming, and it was theatre celebrating the sheer joy of life.

Storybook Theatre in Calgary is like that. Their production of the Three Musketeers this past weekend at the Pumphouse Theatre downtown was a fantastic show. The lead male actors that played the rascally Musketeers (Porthos, Aramis and Athos) and especially the actor who played the lead d'Artagnan character (John Knight, pictured above), were natural and incredibly fun to watch. Their swordfighting skills, their group dynamics and evident mischievousness, and even the fit of their costumes contributed to theatre so believable that I was transported back to 1600s Paris and the feeling of looking into a secret world of the Kings guards. This is an amazing achievement considering that I was in a room full of cheering (and booing) kids that smelled a little like a stinky diaper. But no one cared about the smell (kind of like Paris back then). The performance of the actors was certainly beyond the scope of that stage and this little theatre-company-that-could. It was a big treat, indeed. It not only transported me to Paris it transported me into a younger version of myself for a few hours. And what a wonderful gift to the next generation of kids that will make up this community! No doubt, those kids carried the swordfights and bravery into their tufty beds and into their dreams that night. They were opened up to a world of possibility, of bravery, of honour and manhood. Now I will have to read the Dumas classics for myself and see if they hold up to this kids adaptation.