14 September 2008; Opening Postponed

Due to circumstances beyond my control, the reopening party for the Reanimation Library has been postponed. We will celebrate the reopening of the Library and the opening of the Proteus Gowanus 2008-2009 show, "Mend", on Friday, October 17th from 6-9 PM. Please join us. My apologies for any inconvenience that this may have caused. As always, the Library is currently available by appointment, but it will resume regular hours starting on Saturday, October 18th.

Hope to see you on the 17th.

1 September 2008

The Library's summer hiatus is rapidly coming to an end and beginning on September 20th, it will resume its regular hours.

While there was relatively little activity at the Library over the past few months, I spent much of that time traveling and, as is usually the case when I leave New York, I have acquired many new treats for the collection. In July, Rachel and I took the train up to Woodstock, VT, where we stayed with her old friend (and graphic novelist extraordinaire) Jason Lutes, his partner Becca, and their amazing 2 year old daughter, Clementine. On the first day there, we hit the 4th of July parade in Hartland, where I was introduced to the director of the Norwich Public Library, Lucinda Walker. She invited me to look through their discards and also tipped me off to the book exchange at the Norwhich town dump. I got a bunch of goodies from those two spots in addition to a handful of books that I bought at the Hartland Public Library sale that was happening on the 4th. Vermont was very good to the Library.

This little pond sure looks nice, doesn't it? I neglected to swim in it, however, after learning that it was the home to a snapping turtle. I just can't justify giving that sort of opportunity to a frightening, prehistoric beast.

In July, Denise Iris posted her Reanimation Library minimental. She describes minimentals as "short web films about the wondrous adventures of daily living." A few years ago, she filmed some footage at the Library and this is the result of that night. Its pretty exciting for me to see this as I have been a fan of minimentals since I first learned about them almost 5 years ago, and its extra exciting because it was filmed before the Library had moved out of my apartment, so it has some serious archival value.

In the beginning of August, we went up to Rockport, MA for a wedding and family reunion. We found a great book/antique store in Gloucester where I probably spent more than I should have, but scored some great finds, including a gorgeously illustrated textbook called Functional Neuroanatomy and a totally insane new age book called Atomic Suicide. In addition to these, Rachel's cousin, Katharine Schmitt, had set aside a bunch of books that her family was getting rid of. She clearly understood what I collect, as many of them were quite good.

The day after we got back from Rockport, we flew to Berlin to spend a week visiting our friends Christian Hawkey and Uljana Wolf and to see the city. On our first morning, we fought jet lag by hitting up the flea market at Mauerpark in Prenzlauer Berg. It was about a 5 minute walk from their apartment and just the sort of place that would make you lose your mind, even if you weren't operating on zero sleep. It was full of every imaginable type of junk and, of course, lots of books. We did manage to find one amazing book, called Yaya: Die alte asiatische Kunst, Schmerzen wirksam zu bekämpfen, a weird combination of softcore pornography and acupressure charts. Highly appealing.

The following day, we went on a massive walk through the city and at the start of it, we saw this amazing building from halfway down the block and immediately began talking about how it would make the perfect home for the Reanimation Library, especially after a thorough exterior cleaning. Once we were in front of it, we saw that it was, in fact, a library (called @hugo-Jugendmedienetage in der Hugo-Heimann-Bibliothek) and we knew right then that the Germans were better than us. We sat down on the sidewalk in front of the orange library with the funny name and wept bitter, defeated, American tears. Ah, Berlin.

One of my most exciting Reanimation Library-related discoveries to come from our time in Berlin happened at the city's natural history museum, the Museum für Naturkunde. For some time, I have been perplexed by an image in Albert B. Farnham's Home Taxidermy for Pleasure and Profit entitled "AN EARLY DAY SPECIMEN." My question has always been "of what?" I mean, what is that creature? A hellcat? And why is its head so giant? But after viewing an exhibit on the history of taxidermy, and seeing the early day specimen on the right, I'm somehow more willing to live with the ambiguity of it. Taxidermy clearly has a ton of potential.

I would also just like to point out the following totally non-library related fact: Berlin has outdoor ping pong tables. Lots of them. Genius, right? Why does this overlooked sport need to be confined to the indoors? Why not introduce the variable of wind? Despite the fact that we only played for an hour or so, and that our games were infused with the strong odor of human urine, and that I didn't take a single contest from Christian, I was nonetheless smitten with the outdoor version of this game.

After Berlin, I was back in Brooklyn for about three days, during which I spent most of my time at the Library, getting things cleaned and readied for the fall season. Then, the following Thursday, I flew to Chicago to join Rachel, who was there on a work trip. The highlight of the trip was a visit to the Chicago Underground Library and a chance to meet its founder, Nell Taylor, who gave us a fantastic, in-depth tour of her library. Not only was it exciting to see and hear about what she's working on in Chicago, but it is always a pleasure to meet like-minded individuals in the library community. While there isn't a lot of overlap in terms of what our two libraries collect, there is a lot of overlap in terms of the spirit in which they exist in the world. As usual when I encounter other cool, engaging projects like the Chicago Underground Library, I get re-excited about the Reanimation Library, so many thanks to Nell for her hospitality and for building such an inspiring library.