One Book One Community: Colum McCann’s Gift to Pittsburgh and the World

Colum McCann, March 10, 2014

photo credit: Renee Rosensteel, renee@rosensteel.com

event photos generously provided by Renee Rosensteel and Pittsburgh Arts & Lectures

Colum McCann had us at hello.

“Happy to be here with yinz!” the National Book Award winning Irish author said, greeting the delighted sold-out crowd at Carnegie Music Hall in pitch-perfect Pittsburghese.

Colum McCann visited our city on March 10 as part of Pittsburgh Arts & Lectures Ten Literary Evenings Monday Night Lecture Series, made possible by The Drue Heinz Trust. His lecture, underwritten by UPMC, also launched One Book One Community 2014, an initiative of the Allegheny County Library Association (ACLA).  (Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh is a sponsor of One Book One Community 2014.)

TransAtlantic, Colum McCann’s latest novel, is this year’s One Book One Community selection. It’s a fascinating novel about three interconnected journeys across the ocean, but also across time and history and generations.  The characters’ stories, like so many of our stories, are woven together.

“Every moment that we live in has been influenced by the past,” McCann said during his lecture. “Everything we do … matters to the future.”

He was referring to TransAtlantic. But the magic of the evening was wrapped in stories about his childhood filled with books from a journalist father who traveled to America and who returned with the best for his young son, cultivating a “love of stories.” It was about  losing faith as a writer and regaining it through the “spectacular generosity of the Rooney family” who gave him “the oomph” to continue writing by awarding him the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature in 1994.

“I wouldn’t be here without them,” he stated.

Everything we do matters to the future.

It was about Pittsburgh – our beloved Pittsburgh, a city that Colum McCann had visited for the first time this Monday.

“I felt like I was stepping through parts of Dublin, parts of New York,” he observed. Earlier in the day, he’d spoken with students from Woodland Hills High School and he was impressed with how the youth reflected on the city.  You can learn so much about a place from talking and listening to a city’s children and young people, he said.

Everything we do matters to the future.

Indeed, we live in a city of bridges. Our everyday crossings over the Allegheny, the Ohio, and the Mon may seem more insignificant than transatlantic ones – although depending on the time of day, the weather, and the particular bridge, it may feel almost as long. Our everyday lives and actions don’t always seem historical, like they matter in the lives of others.

Everything we do matters to the future.

And especially here in Pittsburgh, our big small town, we are more connected than we ever imagined.

At the end of the evening, I stood in line, juggling my three Colum McCann books to be signed, my cell phone charged for a much-hoped for photo.  I chatted with the ladies behind me, one of whom held a copy of Dancer written in an unfamiliar language.

Someone had invited her to the lecture, asking her if she had ever heard of Colum McCann. I’m reading his book now, she had said.

“I could tell him that I came all the way from Serbia to have him sign my book,” she said, and we laughed. “Because it’s kind of true.”

Someone else said hello. The ladies resumed their conversation. I didn’t have a chance to hear her story. I wish that I had.

Upon seeing the book, Colum McCann was amazed. He had never seen that edition of Dancer … until that moment, right here in Pittsburgh.

I took in the electric symbolism of the moment: transatlantic crossings, connections.  “The world grows small around us, it seems.”  That’s what Colum McCann said to a sold-out Pittsburgh crowd moments before, and watching him sign that book, I felt and saw the absolute truth of his words.

Books really do have the power to connect the world.

~ Melissa F.

One Book One Community is an initiative of the Allegheny County Library Association. For details on how you, your book club or your organization can participate, stop by your local library or visit One Book One Community.org.

More information about Pittsburgh Arts & Lectures can be found here.

Gifted: 29 Thank-Yous for Reading Eleventh Stack

Once a year, everybody in Allegheny County is invited to read and think about the same book, courtesy of the One Book, One Community initiative.  This year you’re invited to experience Cami Walker’s 29 Gifts: How A Month of Giving Can Change Your Life.  The official One Book website is filled with information that can enrich your reading experience via book club kits and discussion questions, related readings and resources on the themes of kindness and civility, and other ways to get involved, which will be updated as the official start date approaches.

The Eleventh Stack blog team has decided to participate in this countywide celebration of goodwill and bonhomie by giving away a gift every weekday for the next 29 days, starting tomorrow, February 1, 2o11.  At the end of each blog post, you will be prompted to leave a comment that reflects on that day’s essay.  A random winner will be chosen each day, and if it’s you, you’ll receive an e-mail with details on when/where to stop by and choose your prize.

Yes, I did say choose.  The blog team has assembled a prize closet of cool stuff for you to pick from, which includes:

• copies of popular books, DVDs, and books on CD
• $5.00 Crazy Mocha gift cards (good at any CM location)
• $10.00 pre-paid fine cards (good at Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh locations)
• handmade items crafted by library workers and library supporters
• fashionable black and gold “Pittsburgh Protect Your Library” tote bags
• other whimsical surprises as we think of them

We’re even assembling a special prize package for the person who wins on day 29, just in case “the good stuff” is already gone. (It’s all good stuff, but who likes to choose last?  Nobody–that’s who.)

The only things we ask of you in return are:

• Be an Allegheny County resident.  We love our expatriate readers, but postage is a wee bit dear these days.
• Include your e-mail address with your blog comment. (Otherwise, how can we tell you you’re a winner?)
• Add the e-mail address eleventhstack at carnegielibrary dot org to your list of approved senders. (So any mail from us doesn’t end up in your spam folder.)
• Tell us what’s on your mind when you comment!  Responses like “Awesome, dude” make us feel warm and fuzzy, but don’t really help us become better writers.

On an even warmer, fuzzier note,  February 2011  marks the third full year the Eleventh Stack team has been blogging for the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh.  When we started the project, we had no idea whether or not this method of communication would be a good way to reach out to our community.   Over 170,000 visits and 9,400 click-throughs to the catalog later–not to mention the lovely, thoughtful comments you’ve made–we can tell that you really, really like us.

 Of course, that makes us want to work even harder to demonstrate–via our sometimes serious, sometimes silly, but always heartfelt, essays–just how much the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh has to offer.  Your attention to, and continued support of, CLP is a great gift.  Please stick around and allow us to continue to give back in our quirky, writerly fashion.

Leigh Anne
who would take you all out for milk and cookies, except that it’s been done

It’s a Beautiful Day

 Fred Rogers would have been eighty years old last week. Pittsburgh’s “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” Days celebrates his legacy, especially what it means to be a caring neighbor.  

Pittsburgh is a city of neighborhoods. With 88 geographically distinct domaines, how could it be otherwise? (And to know that it’s the topography and/or geography that is responsible for the burgh’s hoods, just think of how many named areas there are in Pittsburgh that have one of these words in them: Wood, Woods, Land, Field, Glen, Park, Vale, and – Pittsburgh’s favorite – Hill.)

But to me Pittsburgh is a city of neighbors. My sense of Pittsburgh hospitality began the day my husband and I pulled our rental truck up to the curb, unfolded our cramped limbs and unlocked the door of our rental house. Strangers who lived nearby offered to help move heavy furniture and feed us dinner. By the time we’d unloaded our possessions we were too tired for dinner, but that night as we fell asleep we knew the names of our four nearest neighbors and wondered if we’d landed in Mister Rogers’ actual neighborhood.

The neighborhood’s real life cast of characters included a chatty corner crossing guard, the reliable postal deliverer (“Hi, I’m Bill and I’ll be bringing your mail!”), and the furnace repair man who, at his second house call, nodded at my husband and punched me on the arm with a “how yinz doin’?”

My goal as librarian at CLP is to be another purveyor of this Pittsburgh hospitality. I like to think of myself as one of Mister Rogers’ neighbors.

The First Floor – New and Featured Department will remember Mr. Rogers  by hosting two events in April.

I’m Proud of You: My Friendship with Fred Rogers , by Tim Madigan, is this year’s One Book One Community  program selection. A discussion focusing on this book will be held on the First Floor, Tuesday, April 22, 1:00 – 2:00 PM, with a second session from 6:00 – 7:00 PM.

Saturday, April 26, 2:00 – 5:00 PM, join us on the First Floor for Celebrate Oakland!: A One Book One Community Event. Find out what makes Oakland so special in “Something About Oakland,” a documentary film by Rick Sebak. It’s part of the Pittsburgh History Series  produced for WQED. Afterwards, meet Mr. Sebak and enjoy a neighborhood open house with light refreshments.

Please won’t you be my neighbor?

–Julie