In 1971, Marguerite Hart, the children’s librarian of my hometown of Troy, Michigan, wrote to dozens of politicians, writers, artists and otherwise notable individuals asking them to send in a few inspirational words for the children of Troy on the opening of its first public library. When I wrote about recalling the smell of the stacks, this was the library I was thinking of. I remember going there to binge on Matt Christopher books in elementary school, and to research class reports and use the computers later on.

97 letters came back in response to Hart’s request, and a handful of them were recently highlighted on Letters of Note, like E.B. White saying that books were people—”people who have managed to stay alive by hiding between the covers of a book”:

Or Dr. Seuss, being Dr. Seuss:

I went through all 97 letters and pulled out some other ones that caught my attention. Several referenced that other Troy, including Vincent Price:

Edward Ardizzone said he was at a loss for words, then launched into a vivid account of his childhood in a village in Suffolk:

Other responses were sent back from secretaries, expressing regret. Hitchcock was shooting a film:

And E.M. Almedingen had unfortunately passed away:

One of my favorites was from John Burns, the Governor of Hawaii, who offered some rules of etiquette:

See the entire collection on the Troy Public Library’s website.

disrupto:

We’re teaching another class at General Assembly. Our first, called “Making it in Midtown” was about pitching your startup to media companies. This next one’s called “Design for Entrepreneurs and Hackers.” Here’s a brief description of the class, which will meet once a week for four weeks (we’ll…

David Cole and I are teaching this class. We’ve got some ideas for the curriculum but are looking for feedback on which topics to cover. Let us know what you’d like to see!

One of the first CDs I ever bought was Jay-Z’s Hard Knock Life Vol. 2. It was part of one of those Columbia House/BMG deals where you got twelve discs for the price of one and had to pay four bucks “shipping and handling” for each disc. Once they roped you into the program, they’d send you a new CD every month and you’d have to either pay for it, send it back, or cancel your subscription. I didn’t get an allowance like some other kids, and as a kid without an allowance you had to go to certain lengths to keep up.

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My last semester at college, the iPod became a recurring topic of discussion in the classroom. It was 2005, and the fourth-generation model (the first with the click wheel) was rocketing up the adoption curve. A faculty member at my university was quoted in Newsweek saying it seemed like two out of three students were walking around with those white earbuds. My professors used it as an example to reinforce their lesson plans. When they asked us why it was so successful, I heard a range of different answers:

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A week ago I went to Ananda Ashram in Monroe, NY for an ‘Earth Day Weekend’. My friend Jerri helps out there, and one of the activities was a ceremony to bless the newly-planted garden. As part of the ceremony, we were handed ribbons of four different colors, corresponding to the four compass directions. We were asked to write an intent on each ribbon and then tie them to wooden loops that hung on the fence surrounding the garden.

Photo credit: Ananda Harvest

When I was in Asia for the holidays, I saw strings of pearl-like orbs floating in Singapore’s Marina Bay. One of our cab drivers explained that leading up to the new year, there were spots all over the city where you could scrawl your wishes using permanent marker onto the inflatable plastic balls.

Last fall, I was at an exhibition at the New Museum for Brazilian artist Rivane Neuenschwander. An installation on the ground floor called I Wish Your Wish featured a wall of colorful satin ribbons, each with a different wish printed on it. The wishes were written by those who visited the exhibit in a previous city, and visitors to the New Museum were asked to take a ribbon and replace it with their own written wish. A handful of these wishes would then be reprinted onto ribbons for the next city.

Photo credit: The New Museum

The installation was inspired by the wish ribbons tied to the gates of Nosso Senhor do Bonfim church in Brazil:

Photo credit: Leonardo Rivello

Though there are various superstitions around the exact protocol for making wishes using the ribbons, the general idea is that you take a ribbon, tie it around your wrist, and when the ribbon falls off by itself due to normal wear, your wish comes true. Some wish ribbons stay on for months, even years. Due to my severely inadequate knot-tying abilities, my ribbon from the Neuenschwander exhibit fell off in a matter of days. I’ve held onto it though, and it sits on top of my dresser as a reminder.

And this post wouldn’t be complete without mentioning the ema and other wishmaking devices I saw at every temple I went to in Japan.

These wishmaking gestures take internal desire—humanness in its rawest form—and externalizes it for everyone else to see. Sometimes it’s explicit, in the case of writing it down and tying it to a fence, and other times implicit, by offloading the wish psychologically into an object, like a ribbon you wear on your wrist. Private becomes public. Personal becomes anonymous. Wish becomes spectacle.

We have our own forms of wish-to-spectacle, like water fountains littered with coins. Yet I can’t help but wonder why these displays found in other cultures seem more… colorful. Maybe it’s more colorful simply because it’s unfamiliar. Colorful because it’s novel. Or maybe these rituals spring from more-collectivist cultures. Do we make resolutions instead of wishes because we have a stronger sense of individual agency? I don’t know.

What I do know is that every time I see something like this in person, I have a oh-we’re-not-alone kind of moment. Each ribbon, plaque or hole where a ribbon used to be holds a story about another real, live human being. To read these wishes one by one is to take minute-long jaunts back in time, to stand next to their authors and watch them participate in a common ritual. To see these wishes together as a whole is to experience the same stories layered on top of each other. Different people, different time, similar experience. It’s like seeing the world in 4D.

Do you know of other examples where wish becomes spectacle?