10 Little Known Facts

 
Anyone curious enough to hop onto the Last Harbor Public Library Blog probably knows the basic facts about our library, the kind you'll get on any five cent tour you might take of it, or from a quick scan of its Wikipedia page. You know it's considered to be Frank Lloyd Wright's last masterpiece and that it was built by Northern Minnesota's most famous (and only) billionaire, Everett Browning. You also probably know about how he built it for his daughter (on tours I like to make the joke that the Last Harbor Public Library is thus a children's library, which is funny because our kid's section is about the size of my thumbnail). Because I have spent the last few years working here, and delving into the idiosyncrasies of this library's history, I am well acquainted with a vast array of little known facts about our famous library. When I conduct a nickel tour of this building (as I often do) I include the best of these facts. But I see no reason not to lay out these little known facts here, and save us both the trouble of a tour. If you're still smitten with the Last Harbor Library and have to come for a visit, I suggest you take the ten cent tour. If I'm your tour guide you may want to say "You'd better skip to the even littler little known facts" and I will endeavor to do so.

Ten Little Known Facts About the Last Harbor Public Library

1. There was no budget for the building of the Last Harbor Public Library. Wright was supposedly told by Browning "It's simple. Build what you need to build. I will pay for it."

2. Amelia Browning, for whom this library was built, was nine years old at the start of construction. She was considered a genius, and was said to be involved in the library's design. While this seems preposterous, seeing photos of young Ms. Browning lecturing the elderly Wright, who looks on fascinated, does a good job of changing most people's minds.

3. No material in the building of the library comes from more than 300 miles away. Funny thing is nearly all the books do.

4. The Last Harbor Public Library is a public library. There is a veritable encyclopedia of documents that gives Amelia Browning absolute control of it, but it is open to all and is supported in numerous small ways by the city of Last Harbor as a public institution.

5. Amelia Browning wrote a book of poems when she was 12 called Mr. Wright Builds a Library. It was published. It was pretty good. Our library does not carry it.

6. Frank Lloyd Wright was concerned that the library would be overcome by the overwhelming views of Lake Superior. His original design strongly limited dramatic vantages of the Lake and limited lake facing windows. In each design revision (there were 14) he added more windows facing the lake.

7. The Last Harbor Public Library only has rare books by accident. The library (read: Amelia Browning) is interested in the content of books and circulating them, not in their physical value (I believe I have heard her use the word "fetishists" in this context).

8. Though most people viewing our collection assume we must be some kind of academic library, we are actually very much a popular library. The vast majority of books in our collection were very popular at some point in the past 5,000 years, just, very, very few are so now (very, very, very, very few).

9. There is a secret room, but it's not much of a secret if I say more than that.

10. The Last Harbor Public Library has opened every single day, 365 days a year, for 17 straight years now.

Five Questions for Winter

Five Questions for Winter

I received a few sharp words from my co-workers for my recent post in which I not only suggested that no one at my library does any work, but actually demonstrated them in the act of not doing it. These sharp words stirred up several questions in my mind.

1. Why are my co-workers reading this blog when they could be reading any number of books from our thorough collection of Medieval Literature, like The Mabinogion for instance?

2. Do my co-workers not know they're not working? I could demonstrate it for them so they become more familiar with what it looks like. But not now because I am too busy writing the library blog.

3. Would they rather I lie to the public here? Lie! In a library, the repository of human knowledge and truth! I am scandalized at the mere suggestion!

4. Do they think that all this not working is some fault of their own?  There is nothing to do here! Nothing! This is due not to worker laziness. It is due to the fact the only person in all of Last Harbor, Minnesota, who would actually want to read The Mabinogion, which is the sort of thing our collection focuses on, is upstairs, so industriously refining our collection and micromanaging our library that she has time to read neither it nor this blog.

5. Are my co-workers unaware that this time belongs to them, to be enjoyed, because once the summer season arrives again they will all be fantastically overwhelmed? Have they forgotten the throngs of tourists who under no circumstances are interested in one of the greatest buildings in the world, our Frank Lloyd Wright designed masterpiece, when it is minus 20 degrees out, but are fanatically interested in it when it is a steamy, ice cream eating, 60 degrees out at the height of summer? Have they forgotten the endless tours, the convincing of people that even though we own not a single book by James Patterson, they might really like The Mabinogion (they won't), the complicated issuing of library cards to people living across the planet so that they can check out three books one time in order to never read them? Have they forgotten the mad carnival of events, shows, architectural lectures and confused tourists who descend on Last Harbor mistakenly thinking there is something of note to do here besides this library ("No, I'm sorry. I believe you're thinking of Grand Marais. No, moose rarely wander into town.")?

Yes, my co-workers have forgotten. All people who live in an extreme climate share this in common: they are incapable of remembering the other seasons or any other conditions than the current ones. It requires so much effort to contend with these conditions that there is no room for that small bit of imagination that allows one to conceptually travel in time. It is, as I mentioned, minus 20 degrees out right now (I was neither kidding nor exaggerating). For us it is like this always and ever will be. But I have now lived up here for a bit less than three years, and so still retain, barely, a bit of the ability to see in the long view. I know that if you take the average of the whole year it is merely cold here, not insanely freezing, that it is not always dark, but balanced between light and dark pretty evenly, and that though we all have nothing to do now, averaged through one of our summers, we do our share of work. And so I say to anyone contending with a bitter, shut in winter, pick up a copy of The Mabinogion, or tune your internet dial to this blog, and stay calm when the truth is spoken.