October 2, 2006


Free To The People

Pittsburghdrawing3.jpg

The main branch of the Carnegie Public Library in Pittsburgh has “Free To The People” carved in stone over the front door, and that sense of welcoming, freedom, and permanence - resources endowed for the people’s use - continues to pervade the place, even as it hosts free wifi, good coffee, graphic novels, and, as ever, excellent librarians. (One of my favorite places, in case you couldn’t tell…)

posted by Elizabeth Perry in Uncategorized 

comments

3 Responses to “Free To The People”

  1. Sheila Ryan on October 2nd, 2006 at 9:14 pm

    I liked Elizabeth’s sketch so much that I posted a link to it (as well as one to clusterflock) to the mailing list of SHARP (the Society for the History of Authorship, Reading, and Publishing).

  2. Elizabeth Perry on October 3rd, 2006 at 6:12 am

    Thanks.

    And the mysterious shape in the lower left corner is a weeping mulberry, I think. A pair of them flank the entrance. Probably should have found another angle so as to draw all three doorways, and either more or less of the tree, but there it is, as I saw it.

  3. Sheila Ryan on October 3rd, 2006 at 9:30 am

    The mysterious shape: Oh, now I see!

    At first, I read faces in it, cloud-gazing style. I thought I saw one of Maurice Sendak’s Wild Things.