Find the Future - The First 500

I've been invited to be one of 500 people to play the Find the Future game at the New York Public Library! You know the Library- it has the two big lions in front of it and was the location of the first ghost they encounter in Ghostbusters :) We're locked in overnight and hunt down 100 artifacts and write about them. A book will be compiled from the writings and published.

A friend mentioned the contest to me but I didn't really give it any thought until I started searching for the Leo Martello book, Curses in Verses. Turns out the NYPL has a copy. I was going to reserve it, and a day to myself so I could read it there. They don't really loan out rare books lol

Here's is a link to the CNN article about it.

What does this have to do with Italian pre roman religious traditions? Everything. We've lost so much of our cultural history because it was destroyed, then it wasn't safe to write down again. Libraries conserve. Libraries keep the past alive. The NYPL is more than a library, there are photos, prints, and the original Winnie the pooh stuffed animals that belonged to the real life Christopher Robin.

"The Rare Book Division houses approximately 130,000 titles, covering five centuries of printing—from the 1450s to the present—and representing Continental Europe, England, and the Americas."

There are nearly 500 books about Giordano Bruno, over 2,000 books on "Witchcraft" including the records of the Salem Witch Trials and the book written in the late 1430s, Formicarius.  It was the first printed book to discuss Witchcraft and its practitioners.

NYPL also has: Two copies of the first folio edition of William Shakespeare's Comedies, Histories and Tragedies, published in 1623, The earliest known copy of the "Nican Mopohua," a narration of the mystic appearances of Our Lady of Guadalupe in 1531, Aphra Behn's works... I could keep geeking about it but I'll stop for now.

With the Ritman Library closed and the Assembly of the Sacred Wheel working on creating the New Alexandrian Library, conservation seems to be a hot topic. We've had to rebuild over and over throughout the ages. It's time once again.

I'm ridiculously excited about this upcoming experience. Perhaps I will dress as Lara Croft...