BookCrossing Wheelbarrow Madness took over local BookCrossers in San Antonio, TX on Memorial Day weekend as they braved 104 degree heat and strange looks from those unversed in the joys of BookCrossing...
First-Noel, who I met in St. Louis for the First BookCrossing Convention, along with some other faithful BookCrossers, dug on the wheelbarrow motif and hauled out a whole slew of books, some wheelbarrows, and their goodwill and did a mass BookCrossing release ala thewheelbarrow. Here are the LiveJournal entries First-Noel wrote and the link to their pictures:
May. 31st, 2004 @ 12:47 am Ok, I'm finally done registering, journaling, labeling, and releasing all the damn books for this weekends Wheelbarrow.
FYI: San Antonio Bookcrossers are meeting this Memorial Day in Espada Park. There we will have two wheelbarrows. One for kids books and one for adult books. These are free for anyone to take and all registered at bookcrossing.
Q: How many books are you freaks releasing? Well, I'm glad you asked. Currently the hunting pages count is 474. But I'm still receiving release alerts from others of our freakish clan.
Q: Well, How many did YOU release, you big shot you? Well, if you're going to be a shit about it, I don't think I should tell you. But since I'm sure others are curious I'll go ahead. I personally released 172. thankyouverymuch.
Q: Hey, how can we join in? Meet us at Espada Park. Around 1:00 PM on Memorial Day. Keep looking. When you see about 13 geeks gathered around a couple of wheelbarrows you've found us. :0)
Q: Will there be beer? hmmmmmm probably not. It's supposed to be about 103 tomorrow. Beer dehydrates. Seriously, how can you idiots drink in this type of weather?
Q: What are you wearing right now? None of your damn business you pervert.
~ First-Noel
May. 31st, 2004 @ 04:28 pm I had to leave early. Everytime I got out in the sun I got nausious and dizzy. I'm really prone to passing out in the heat. :0(
But I left a bunch of other bookcrossers there with the remainders. I was there about 3 hours and a good 1/2 of the books walked off. It was great to see all the kids that just dove in and were so happy to find something they wanted to read.
I hope I don't leave anyone out but bookcrossers that were there; Warren, BenjiWolf, Chocaholic, Flyinfox, Keyboardkid, Synergy, Morphy, PaigeTurner124, Chattergirl, Muinteoir, me (first-noel). Plus a couple of friends, husbands and kids. When I left Morphy and friend were firing up the BBQ, Paigeturner124 was still labeling books and her daughter was playing on her laptop. And of course there was a crowd around the books.
At first I thought it was going to tank becuase no one was there. The park itself was blocked off becuase of construction but a small area was still open. Then, slowly, people started showing up. And we were over run. I'm pretty sure we'll get some journals. Not many I'm sure but some. I'm keeping my fingers crosses.
BTW, check out the hunting page now. We're over 600. All those left over will be put on a new San Antonio Bookcrossers shelf (as soon as it's set up) and saved for another project.
the travels & travails of a lowly wheelbarrow filled with books
the wheelbarrow is an entity created by me, Abott, and my friend SGinger as a result of coming across, quite by accident, the website BookCrossing.com. We're doing a less-than-amateur film project with some people from our town. This is the nascent stage of our idea for our film project. I came across BookCrossing in a blog I was reading a week or so ago. The idea tickled my fancy to no end. I had been thinking of doing a film project called Why I Write in which I would interview people I knew who were writers or aspiring writers and ask them why they write. The idea was solid, and inspired almost in whole by Jonathan Franzen's book of essays How To Be Alone. The other inspiration was my grandma, who, at the age of 85, was an unpublished author who bequeathed her book into my care to hopefully one day publish. The book that grandma gave me is especially symbolic because her death on the morning of 6 August 2003 has made the idea of immortalizing her something akin to a crusade. The intent behind the original film project of Why I Write was an excuse on my part to interview & film grandma before her death. I was unable to film or interview her because the series of strokes she had before her death made understanding her speech extremely difficult.
The evolution of Why I Write into a film project based on BookCrossing came about when I realized that for me, reading has always been a primary function of my life whereas writing has always been secondary. This insight, of writing being a natural continuation of having been a reader my entire life, prompted a shift from the focus of the film being about writing and turned it into a project based first on reading. And what better way to see into the secret life and desires of readers than to hook into something like BookCrossing? Whereby a person would be inclined, whether by curiousity or a foreknowledge of BookCrossing, to pick up a book - off a park bench, in a laundromat, in a movie theater, on a coffee shop countertop? Capturing that moment on film, the release and the subsequent catch, is the idea that fired me into registering on BookCrossing and rallying my friends to get involved.
The wheelbarrow project came about after a lengthy conversation between SGinger, a friend of hers who was visiting for the day, my mother and my sister. We were trying to brainstorm ideas for release locations. I started laughing as a silly idea occurred to me. "Wouldn't it be hilarious to just fill up an old wheelbarrow with books to be released and leave it on some random streetcorner somewhere?" We all ho-ho-hoed for a bit, imagining leaving it in the Financial District in San Francisco where besuited business folk would walk around and ignore it. But then the more we talked about it, the more we realized that this could be a really great idea. A traveling BookCrossing Cross Zone, never the same location twice, but conspicuous by it's very out-of-placeness. A wheelbarrow filled with books where you least expect to find them. Hmmm. And there the idea was born for the wheelbarrow.
My grandma is undeniably the most significant person to shape my appreciation & passion for the arts & humanities, reading & writing, quirkiness & outside-the-boxness. Without grandma's influence, my world would have been considerably less colorful, the sharpness of every artistic sensibility dulled by not having had grandma's imprint, the thumbpress of her sensitivity, stamped firmly into my heart and my soul. The film project and the resulting wheelbarrow project are both labors of love influenced by the heartbreaking loss I feel at the death of a grandmother whose existence I cannot imagine no longer being a part of this world.
If you found a book that is part of the wheelbarrow project, are interested in knowing more about the wheelbarrow project, have books you'd like to donate to the wheelbarrow project, or anything else having to do with the wheelbarrow project, please feel free to email thewheelbarrowATemailDOTcom. If you have comments to add to this page that you would like to post, there is a commenting feature at the bottom of each post which can be accessed by clicking where it says empty ole wheelbarrow. If there is already a comment, it will say 1 comment in the wheelbarrow. Your comments are always welcome!
my book crossing name: thewheelbarrow
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