The Bright Lights Book Project: Building Community, One Book at a Time
Contributed by Alys Culhane
I had no idea that five years after its inception, that I’d be at the helm of a literacy-related nonprofit. The Bright Lights Book Project began when I found a handful of books in a Gaylord at VCRS, the Palmer-based recycling center. I kept a few and passed the rest on to friends.
I was soon motivated to do something about the overabundance of books in our community. Others, who also believed that books that still had a shelf life should be gotten into the hands of appreciative readers, began assisting me in this endeavor.
I would have been surprised had I then been shown a crystal ball and seen a self-image, kneeling next to a bookcase, and reading a book to a handful of rapt children. Rather, I would have been cautionary, of course wondering what might follow.
What followed were recorded as a series of images that are now on my cellphone. I recently looked at them in disbelief because I could not envision (as the following indicates) what would transpire – a community-based literacy project.
A synopsis of one afternoon’s images verifies this:
First, there is an image of my partner Pete, who, in our backyard, is cutting down a spindly spruce tree.
The next image is of Pete carrying the tree into the former banquet room of the historic Eagle Hotel.
The next image is of him setting the tree trunk in a bucket of sand.
The next image is of a child, watering the tree.
Other images, follow. There is one photo of Cathy Stone, BLBP artist in residence, cutting images out of older, no longer readable books, and another of her gluing these images onto bookmark-sized matt board. Cathy has several helpers who in subsequent photos are preparing the bookmark ornaments for hanging. And there is the image of the decorated tree, complete with a starfish ornament on the very top.
And in yet another series of photos, BLBP volunteer Annetta Goode constructs a Christmas village. And there’s one of me, grinning as I put my donkey statue (last year’s Christmas present) in the village path, crushed glass provided by VCRS
I scan through the subsequent images and do a volunteer count. On this particular day there are fifteen all total, ranging in age from one to 86 years old. Some are cleaning, some are stamping, and some are sorting books. Two are looking at books by their favorite authors. One child is reading a copy of The Snow Globe to another.
No, I could not have envisioned what the photos show, a wonderful day in which community members worked side-by-side, companionably, for several hours.
And, as I realized in looking at these photos, this was not an unusual day. The Christmas tree and decorations, well this was unusual.
In re-examining the photos, I with a start, realized that what has come to be came full circle. I’m my father’s daughter, and as such was destined to take what he envisioned a step further.
In 1974 my father opened an independent bookshop in Hillsboro, New Hampshire. He called it Country Lights; this was reminiscent of Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s City Lights bookstore in San Francisco, California.
He envisioned a bookstore in which community members would linger and talk about books. The bookstore setting, with wooden floors and bookcases encouraged this.
A word to the wise: don’t ever open a bookstore in a dying mill town. If you do this, the odds are that you, like my father, will go broke and have to close your doors. I spent two summers at his shop, talking with him about what I was reading. The community ethos, well, it never materialized.
I liked the idea of owning a bookstore. However, I knew better than to emulate my father, for the odds were that it would fail. I also eschewed competing with Fireside Books, which is a Palmer-based independent bookstore.
I also wasn’t keen on Pete’s idea, that we form a nonprofit. However, this was the right thing to do for future funding from diverse sources.
The sense of community that now goes hand-in-hand with the Bright Lights Book Project materialized in a serendipitous fashion. Volunteers spent considerable time talking with one another. And those dropping off or picking up books picked up on the good vibes and lingered.
Our hosting events such as Children read to Dogs and Elementary School field trips have added to the BLBP ambience.
In looking at the above-mentioned photos, I noted that, indeed, I had carried out my father’s unrealized legacy.
Alys Culhane is currently working on a memoir in which she uses her Make a Scene articles as triggers. It’s entitled Shelf Life: A Book about an Overabundance of Books