A TAoN "Mission" Guide, in 13 Prompts
A TAoN "Mission" Guide, in 13 Prompts
TAoN No. 163: Insert your own quest!
Some time ago, musing on the appeal of the “every single X” mission — examples: crossing every single bridge in Venice, visiting every single dog run in New York, using every single subway stop in Toronto, etc.1 — I landed on the idea of visiting every public library in New Orleans.
I didn’t start immediately because I was busy with bill-paying projects, and because I’m lazy. Also, while I like libraries, what I really wanted to do was visit different parts of town, with the library serving as my exploratory MacGuffin. I’m sure the remarkable The Neighborhoods newsletter — an epic all-the-X quest visiting, researching, and splendidly photographing every neighborhood in New York; you should subscribe — influenced my thinking. But again: I’m lazy.
So I needed to come up with a kind of framework of my own — not quite a checklist, but a sort of prompt-pack that would offer some parameters to my mission.
It took a little while, but I offer those here — along with my account of road testing them by visiting the Norman Mayer Library. Obviously my goal is not to encourage anyone to follow my specific mission to a random (non-touristy) section of New Orleans. My goal was just to get out of my routine! And my hope is that this guide will inspire you to adapt these prompts, invent new ones, and start on a mission of your own.
1. Who was this library named after? I’ve written before about researching unfamiliar namesakes, which we see all the time and rarely pay attention to. I certainly had no idea who Norman Mayer was. According to the local column Ask Blake, he was a prominent businessman who at the time of his death in 1937 was “one of the longest-serving members of the New Orleans Cotton Exchange.” When his wife passed a few years later, their estate funded this library branch (opened in 1950) and a couple of other buildings. The original library building was destroyed by the Katrina levee failures, and rebuilt in 2012. There’s also a nearby street named after Mayer.
2. What does NearbyWiki have to say? You can type an address into NearbyWiki.org and it will display a map marking spots that correspond to Wikipedia entries, which can provide some basic history and geography, and sometimes note local landmarks. The library is in a section of the Gentilly neighborhood called Dillard, after Dillard University, an HBU whose roots stretch back to 1869.
3. Any known geocaches to seek out? No. Maybe next time.
4. How was the actual library? Nice! Two floors, clean and well-lit, lots of space to sit around and read, lots of computers and kid-friendly areas. (It has good reviews on Yelp.) Notable: a large “Urban Fiction” section — something I was not familiar with. Elsewhere, Mo’ Meta Blues by Questlove caught my eye, so I checked that out. Friendly staff.
Oh! And the library boasts a relatively new mural by artist Jade1991, one of two she did as part of a project called I Am New Orleans. The other one is at the community center that includes my local pool, which explains why I recognized the style. Here’s a short video showing off the library mural:
5. How about a bite? For years I have habitually populated a Google map with restaurants and other places I “want to visit,” for the slimmest (and often quickly forgotten) of reasons. In this case, there were two nearby: McKenzie’s Chicken in a Box, right across from the library, and Zimmer’s Seafood, a little under a mile away. I decided to walk to the latter.
6. Any plaques on the walk? Yes! Or rather, a “tablet,” erected in 1941 by a chapter of the Daughters of the American revolution, marking the Old Spanish Trail auto route, “the first highway” (per the plaque) connecting Florida and California, from the 1920s.
7. Notice anything that seemed out of place? One house was flying a Buffalo Bills flag.
8. What else? I wasn’t trying to document the streets I strolled along, but I took a picture of a yard Mary decorated with flowers … and then promptly noticed two more yard Marys on the same street. In a little over two miles of walking I spotted at least five. Maybe not out of place — but notable!
9. Any other surprises? Sidewalk and road construction forced me to walk through about a half-dozen lawns. I wasn’t anticipating that.
10. Hear any birds? I flicked on the Merlin Bird ID app while walking a path on the pretty St. Anthony neutral ground, and it identified: House Sparrow, Northern Cardinal, Northern Mockingbird, Tufted Titmouse, and Carolina Wren.
11. Speaking of apps, what did Pokémon Go suggest? I don’t play, but I’ve written elsewhere about using the famous phone game to find “Pokéstops” (whatever) that are also interesting landmarks. In addition to the Norman Mayer Library itself, the app pointed out that Old Spanish Trail plaque and, over at Dillard, a “mosaic fish” that looked quite promising but unfortunately was too far out of my way. My loss I’m sure!
12. Anything you had to make an effort to see? A decent-sized cemetery indicated on the map was obscured by fencing, but I got a peek through a gap in the gate:
13. What was the highlight? The Marys and the mural were close, but I’d say Zimmer’s! It was more of a take-out situation so I got a quart of gumbo to go. It came with a ziploc bag of cooked rice. I ate it when I got home: delicious!
One library down, 13 to go! The outing lasted two or three hours, I’d guess, not counting prep time and after-the-fact research, and was more interesting than a typical movie.
I’d love to hear what you’d add to the prompt pack, or about any mission(s) you devise.
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IN OTHER NEWS
“How do we deconsume in a consumerist world?” An episode of a newish podcast, Second Nature, produced and hosted by my friend from the Savannah years, Katelan Cunningham. Great stuff!
What an upside-down flag really means. The writer has a politics & design newsletter that looks interesting. (And here’s something I wrote back in 2016 about the shifting symbolism of the Gadsden flag.)
Pleasing collages by Felicia Dadak, via The Jealous Curator.
Good Ellen Langer interview on attention and health, on People I (Mostly) Admire.
OKAY THAT’S IT!
As always, I value your feedback (suggestions, critiques, positive reinforcement, constructive insults directed at me, not at anyone else, etc.), as well as your tips or stories or personal noticing rituals, things we need a word for, and of course your icebreakers: consumed@robwalker.net. Or use the comments.
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And thanks for reading …
rw
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For more examples see GoQuesting.com, whose proprietor wrote to me: “I’m a huge fan of these types of goals, especially the ones about visiting ‘all the ________,’ which I refer to as travel quests. In fact, I’ve been (slowly) building a directory of quests (more than 1500 already!) over at goquesting.com and recently started writing a book about quests.”
The mission idea is great as a date idea. One year, we visited all the coffee houses in Madison. The next summer, we went to all the county parks. Another year, we did surprise dates, where we would take turns planning a date and keeping it secret so that the other person had no idea what would happen on the date. Other years, we have selected a dating theme like movies and matching meal. We have been dating for ten years because it's fun to have a mission to accomplish together.
I love ‘yard Marys’!