libraries. leadership. literature. love. life.

Brooklyn Nine-Nine || iZombie || The Good Place

Last year I reached my darkest place. I felt destroyed by the world around me because I felt I had destroyed my world.

The night before I received a note from a friend. I couldn’t bring myself to read it until the next day. I was sitting at my desk at the office, I took a deep breath, opened the envelope and began reading. 

Everything hit me at once. The pain and sorrow I was causing other people, the helplessness I felt to solve any problem, and the worthlessness I felt as a person.

I couldn’t hold the tears in. I grabbed my bag and slipped out to my car. I drove to a nearby park. I cried and I cried in my car. Then I made a decision.

I wrote this post in tears on September 10, 2015. 

The responsible person in me made myself go back to work because I still had to do my job. And I thought maybe something might change my mind.

It didn’t. Work sucked. My boyfriend called me as I was driving home. I was crying again and couldn’t really talk. He asked if I’d call him later. I didn’t answer. I couldn’t tell him. I didn’t know what to say. I cried some more and we said good-bye.

I got home, lied down, and cried so much more. Then I sat up and poured all my feelings and thoughts into this letter, still crying uncontrollably (hence the typos), in my bed that same night. 

So what happened? How did I come to type this post? Why am I typing this post?

A friend heard my cry, brought me flowers, wrote a loving note, and held me while I cried and cried and cried.

He doesn’t know he saved me. That I had taken a small handful of pills before he knocked on the door. That I would have taken several more if I was left alone. He helped me keep going and remember that one day I would remember who I am.

It has taken a year to come back to that person. And here I am, ready to accept the love of others, but most importantly, spread my love to everyone I meet.

I have started a passion project to help me return to my mission of spreading love and I’m kind of ready to share with it everyone.

—

Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl (via

bookmania

“you are enough.”

these little words, somehow they’re changing us.

“you are enough.”

W. Dale Clark Library, 215 S 15th St

Situated somewhere on the architectural map between “modernist government building” and “four-eyed Cylon face,” the main branch of the Omaha library system has two notable qualities. Firstly, it is named after the retired chairman of the Omaha National Bank and former chairman of The World-Herald board, so there’s a lesson there in the value of chairmanship in Omaha.

Secondly, it is the western terminus of Gene Leahy Mall, a project conceived of in the 1970s to revitalize Omaha’s downtown by digging a sort of lagoon in the middle of a 9.6-acre plot of downtown and then surrounding it with concrete walls; it was intended to be a sort of “living room” to Omaha, because nothing says “living room” quite like concrete walls. Despite some landscaping, the area has tended to attract mostly homeless people and callow youth, and typically feels like a sort of exercise area for an especially progressive prison. There are even a group of quarrelsome, territorial geese who occasionally act as fellow prisoners, in that they will attack you for no reason. Fortunately, there are plans to revitalize the mall, although it seems part of that plan is to replace its current asphalt paths with concrete.

The library itself is credited to two designers,  Hellmuth, Obata and Kassabaum and Latenser & Sons, Inc. It’s not clear who is responsible for what, although, based on how these things usually work in Omaha, the former, located in St. Louis,  probably did the initial design and then the city decided it was too expensive and contracted for a cheaper version from the latter, who were local. I don’t know who was responsible for the decision to build the library out of the sort of rough concrete that is sometimes used to dissuade transients, because if they lean against it the material will tear their clothes or scratch their skin. Hellmuth, Obata and Kassabaum are responsible for a lot of unusually-shaped brick and glass structures with a lot of windows, like the Air and Space Museum in Washington DC. Latenser & Sons, Inc, in the meanwhile, is responsible for many of the best and most iconic buildings in Omaha, including the Douglas County Courthouse, the Brandeis Building, and Omaha Central High School.