I can hardly believe that it was almost seven weeks ago when I came in for my first drop-in tutoring session. It was a sunny Southern California afternoon and Pilar and I sat quietly in the empty writing lab, watching the sun move across the floor, our ears perked for the sound of footsteps on the stairs. No kids showed up that day.
Today 826LA feels like an entirely different place. The floors are a bit more scuffed, the walls slightly smudged and I think I just noticed pretzels ground into the carpet around a couple of the tutoring tables. There are four tutors in the writing lab right now assisting 6 students from two different schools. By now most of them have finished their homework and are busy working on quirky writing exercises picked at random from The Box of Mystery & Imagination. Later, they’ll type them up to go in the Illustrious 826LA Writing Gallery (a three-ring binder which includes stories about what it would be like if you woke up one day as a mouse, poems written using each letter of someone’s name and a detailed report on Bengal Tigers. Did you know that the paw height of a Bengal Tiger is 5.5 inches?).
Last week was the busiest week we’ve had yet. After a tutor orientation on April 16, I spent most of Monday adding the almost thirty new volunteers to our database. In the late afternoon, Pilar and I rushed about vacuuming popcorn out of the rugs and moving tables around for the Walter Mosley reading. That evening around sixty people crowded into the writing lab and listened raptly while Mosley fielded questions for over an hour, musing intelligently on topics such as Los Angeles, racial divides and his own writing process. I was in the hallway for most of it, trying to take pictures and craning my head around the doorway with the latecomers to see who was asking what question.
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| My view of Mosley from the hallway. |
The rest of the week was spent organizing tutors for some new projects (we’re sending a team to Ánimo Venice this week to help the ninth graders start a school newsletter), sending out press releases and fliers to local schools and media outlets and mostly getting ready for the weekend because between the Jonathan Safran Foer party, our first ever Storytime & the LA Times Book Festival, none of us were going to get a break. (Luckily I managed to fit in an episode of the OC on Thursday. Can you believe Caleb didn’t go through with the divorce?!)
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| This is not Jonathan Safran Foer. |
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| This is Jonathan Safran Foer and he's signing my book. | Volunteer Will & Animo Inglewood Teacher Melinda. | Josh Bearman & Jen Sincero prefer Red Vines to Twizzlers. |
Luckily we managed to get all the wine stains and plantains off the floor by the time kids began showing up for Saturday’s story telling. Amber, J. Ryan and Myles all read wonderful stories and then, riding high on a coffee buzz, I helped some of the youngsters glue dry pasta to paper plates in the hopes of creating something that vaguely resembled a bird. They loved it. My head throbbed. And then, before we could even pick up all the dried beans from the floor, we were off to the LA Times Book Fair where we wandered for what seemed like hours, passing out fliers, talking to vendors and waving to all the writers and volunteers and tutors we continuously bumped into.
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| It looks a little bit like a bird, right? |
On Sunday morning, after at least 3 epic dreams involving 826LA, I finally slept in. It was glorious. I can’t believe it’s been only 7 weeks since we opened. I can’t believe how consumed with this organization I’ve become. I can’t believe that we missed a spot and that my sneakers are sticking to something spilled on the floor under my desk. And I can’t believe how much I utterly love every minute of it.
