Today's "Practical" Adventure

Tomorrow is our biggest national holiday le quatorze juillet, the 14th of July also known abroad as Bastille Day. We don't call it Bastille Day, but when I lived in New York for some reason the French community did.

So naturally I've decided to celebrate France's abolishing feudalism by going furniture hunting. I'm a big supporter of what we call associations in French. An association is usually a charity run by regular people (sometimes by executives depending on the association's wealth and status), that somehow reaches out to the community to raise money for their cause. Emmaus is probably one of my favourites.

Emmaus was started by the Abbé Pierre in 1949. Abbé Pierre was pretty bad ass. He was a member of the French Resistance during the Nazi occupation of Paris and ran an underground that smuggled Jewish people into Switzerland after learning how to make fake papers and passports just for his new cause.

After the war Abbé Pierre went into politics, but his real accomplishment is Emmaus. Named for the village where Jesus appeared to two men who gave him shelter and hospitality after the resurrection in the Bible, Emmaus' goal was to raise money to construct housing for the homeless by selling used goods donated by the public.

"Emmaus, it's a little like the wheelbarrow, the shovels and the pickaxes coming before the banners. A sort of social fuel derived from salvaging defeating men.

Realising he'd need funds to start his association, Abbé Pierre went on a then popular game show and won 256,000 francs (about 40,000 euros if directly converted into today's money). It was because of his winnings that when the deadly winter of 1954 hit and the homeless were dying in the streets, Abbé Pierre appealed to the people in a famous speech. And the French heard him to the tune of 500 million francs in donations (Charlie Chaplin gave 2 million).

I always tell people to check out Emmaus even if they're on France on vacation before heading to the flea markets. Not only can you find the one off thing you might not find elsewhere (brainwave reading machine anyone? 10 euros), you can always find things that flea markets will sell but at a fraction of the cost. I've found real silverware, Limogues tea sets, and lots of high-quality furniture.

Most of the people who work at Emmaus are people who have been helped by the association and are paid by the association for their skills either selling, repairing, stocking, or doing administrative work. So all your money goes to help locals. And that is what an association is supposed to be about.

There's a great new boutique for Emmaus at the 104 art space in the 18e, a massive warehouse of an Emmaus at Metro Pierre et Marie Curie in Ivry, and one that is really quite full of treasures in Seine-et-Marne, except that it's not exactly easy to get there.

What have you found at Emmaus that turned out to be a treasure?

Read more >>

Causes I Care About

I care a lot about what's going on in the world, but certain things really get my blood boiling. Like cutting funding to public libraries, so when a friend sent me a link about the $40 million in proposed budget cuts, after already cutting $17 million from the budget for the New York Public Libary only a few short years ago, I got to writing.

When I was a teenager I was given an award for my volunteer work based on an essay I wrote about books. In the end my essay was given a lot of attention and I was invited to The White House to meet President George Bush and First Lady Barbara Bush. While I barely spoke to the President, I did have a lengthy discussion with the First Lady about the power books have to change lives. Maybe I was wiser than I realised at the age of 13, but this is something I still believe whole-heartedly today.

When I was down and out in New York and had very little money to pay my bills and keep a roof over my head the New York Public Library was my refuge. I was so broke back then I would walk from Brooklyn (Bed-Stuy) to Manhattan because I didn't have the money to pay my subway fare, but it didn't matter because once I saw those one or the other of those two famous lions nicknamed by former Mayor La Guardia "Patience" and "Fortitude" it felt like things weren't as bad as they actually were.

Most importantly what the New York Public Library gave to me was the possibility to have a new career. I read countless old fashion magazines, fashion books, and books on history and because of their helpful and knowledgeable staff who were always ready to point me into the right direction I learned everything I could about the history of fashion. It is the knowledge I acquired through books I borrowed from the New York Public Library that allowed me to start my own business and earned me the respect of some rather hard to please people in the industry.

I owe an enormous debt to the New York Public Library, but I am also indebted to every library I have ever stepped in. Once when leaving the Boston Public Library I overhead a young girl saying to her mother, "It's amazing Mommy they have everything!" That girl was hooked for life just like me. It made me wonder where the books she'd read in her life would take her.

This isn't just a small cut, it's massive. Ten libraries will be forced to close its doors permanently and the rest will only be able to keep their doors open four days a week. The result? 5.8 million visitors will be lost, of which 1.8 million will be children. 

Back when I lived in New York I read to and tutored children, volunteered to put books back on the shelves, and did whatever I was able to do to contribute back to the place that gave me so much. That this resource will no longer be available to New Yorkers is a catastrophe. With education budgets being simultaneously cut, it is up to every single person to find some way to give what they can to counteract the politics that are robbing children of the brightest possible future.

This isn't just happening in America either. Library budgets have been likewise cut in the United Kingdom and also here in France. Where will people go to educate themselves as educational programs become fewer and fewer and costs of secondary education become more and more solely for the rich? Even in Europe few countries offer a completely free education to their citizens aside from Denmark which has perhaps the best system, but this might be why Danish people claim to the happiest people on earth.

My library contains just 0.0002% (4,000 books) of the number of books readily available at the New York Public Library (20 million) and has cost me a small fortune to acquire. When I did so it was based on what I learned from the public libraries I love. Buy books, make them readly available, and never turn anyone away unless they stop bringing the books back. I consider it the greatest gift I give to my friends that they can stop by, have a meal, and borrow a book and I try to collect books in such a way that there is something for everyone. I even buy double copies when I find cheap ones to give away to my friends to get them started at building their own personal libraries.

A book is the greatest gift one can give because it represents something more than the tangible covers and pages. It can be a vacation, a refuge, a university, or simply give an immense amount of pleasure. It is something that can feed the spirit for a lifetime.

Please support public libraries and if you live in New York, write to Mayor Bloomberg and give him and his Executive Budget the hell they deserve. Bloomberg is one of the richest men in America and his fortune was made on the written word. If anyone should understand what a detriment it is to society to cut the funding of a public library like New York's it should be him.

You can find more information about how to write to Bloomberg or what affect the budget cuts will have on your New York Public Library here.

Fortitude.

Read more >>