Over in the great city of Portland, there is an organization called the Uprise Book Project with the laudable goal of fighting poverty. Their unique approach on this matter, in my ever so humble opinion, is both innovative and audacious. Their chosen stratagem for combating poverty is not what one might expect. They are not going to write checks, instead they want to give away books. To some, this may sound a bit off, but if I may share a personal story perhaps you will see the beauty of their enterprise.
Many, many, many years ago I was a young lad growing up in northern New York. Now, you first have to understand that when I say “northern New York” this is not to be confused with Westchester County, or even Albany. We are talking a full seven hour drive due north from New York City, where if you hit Canada you have only gone about a quarter mile too far. The area where we lived was one of the poorest school districts, if not the poorest, in the entire 54,556 square mile state. We are talking about a place that didn’t boast “haves” and “have-nots.” We were really more along the lines of “have-somes” and “have-lesses.”
You have to remember back in those days there was no such thing a home computer and we didn’t even have an Atari (shocking- I know). Our telephone was rotary, had a cord and was on a party line (no, not some late-night dating phone service commercial biding you breathlessly to “call me now”, we literally shared the phone line with another household. Before you dialed you had to check to see if someone from the other family was using the line). I remember one summer that a tube blew on the television (seriously, not only were televisions the size of a dresser, they used to have these vacuum tubes inside- I can’t make this stuff up). That left us us without the benefit of the three tv stations we could tune in when the antenna was pointed in just the right direction. At the time there was a rumor of something called cable TV, but I think it was just an urban myth.
While I paint a gloomy picture, in all honesty, it was a marvelous place to grow up. I learned that you get out of things what you put into them. For example, if you wanted to be toasty warm in the winter, you better split and stack firewood in the summer and if you wanted to eat, you better help out in the garden. It was a place where a kid could play in wide open spaces, run the fields, learn the woods and grow- both physically and spiritually. Yet, it was not a place where I could have transitioned from a student to having rewarding career. Some of the best jobs in the area were working at one of the factories, of which I believe three of the four have closed since I left.
“Outside of a dog, a book is man’s best friend. Inside of a dog it’s too dark to read.”
― Groucho Marx
Unequivocally, you would not be reading these words today were it not for one defining aspect of my upbringing. My parents loved books and they encouraged me to read through both their words and by example. I was free to pull any volume from the respectable library they had amassed and even engage in pre-internet web surfing, or as it was called back then- reading the encyclopedia. Reading took me to a place beyond the farm lands, it forced me to consider ideas and concepts beyond anything I was exposed to in school. Above all, it made me thirst for more.
I remember clearly it started with a collection of Arthurian Legends, but lead through “A Wrinkle In Time” to find “The Black Cauldron” and eventually I wandered through the shadows to meet the “Nine Princes in Amber.” Yet, there was one book in particular that had a tremendous impact on me as a youth. While I was already a fairly avid reader this one title was beyond anything I had read before. I don’t recall how young I was when I took a copy of The Hobbit off the shelf and asked my Dad if I could read it. “You are a little young for it,” I remember my father saying, “But, if you want to give it a shot I want to know what you think of it if you can get through it.”
The note of challenge was clear to my pre-adolescent mind, and I was utterly powerless to resist it. I sat right down and opened the book to the first page. I read it through the day and under the covers with a flashlight into night. What started as a defiant act to prove that I could do something I wasn’t supposed to be able to do, turned into something so much more. My typical enjoyment of reading turned into a true love of the written word. I let the story draw me in and my imagination exploded with the depth of imagery Tolkien crafted. Nothing had ever touched me the way that book did.
That sly old wizard, meaning my father in this case, knew what he was doing by provoking me to take up the book. I, just like Bilbo, lived a quiet, provincial existence and I connected with him. As he left the Shire I started to wonder what would happen if I left my home as well. That this was my father’s plan all along was confirmed when during my senior year of high school my parents gave me the 50th Anniversary edition of the Hobbit. The inscription written by my father read, “To surge through the underground of life is a mighty calling.”
“The man who does not read books has no advantage over the man who can’t read them!”
Mark Twain
Through this one book, it was as if Tolkien, with his willing accomplice my father, had sent Gandalf to fetch me and I, two days after graduating high school, left home with not so much as a handkerchief in my pocket. My path has lead me through 34 states, ten of which I’ve lived in, and four foreign countries. I have been a soldier, a waiter, a cook, a Coast Guardsmen, a factory worker, a cop, a restaurant manager, unemployed, a security guard, a “Special Projects Director,” a computer tech, a pirate, a full-time-dad and through it all a writer. I have stood on the steps of the White House, fought bad guys in the dark alleys, plucked a drowning child out of a river, gone with a gun in my hand through the door on drug raids, I have had a car accident victim die in my arms, I have married the wrong woman, found myself divorced and then found the right one. Now I am focused on raising my family, but I am not done yet, because the road goes ever on.
Listing these experiences is not an act of boastful arrogance, nor do I seek to exaggerate my own self worth. In truth, doing so actually makes me feel more than a touch uncomfortable and overly exposed, but I feel it is important to illustrate all these things are the result of reading. Reading isn’t just for mousy little nerds afraid of the sun. Books can not only enlighten, educate and entertain, but but they can inspire us to rise up as well.
Which leads me back to what Uprise Books is trying to do. I won’t claim that I rose from abject poverty to the heights of success, we weren’t destitute and I am not finished working on that whole success thing. Yet, I think my story illustrates the potential inherent in the Uprise Book Project. Especially since they have a hook.
You can lead a kid to the library, but you can’t make him read, right? Well, the books that Uprise plans to give out are ones that have been banned or challenged before. What is the fastest way to get a teenager to do something? Tell them they can’t do it (see there is another reason I told you about me and The Hobbit. Which by the way, The Hobbit, as well as the Lord of the Rings, have been challenged, banned and even burned over the years).
The next Steve Jobs, Collin Powell or even Albert Einstein may be sitting in a low rent apartment in Hell’s Kitchen right now. Maybe the person who will discover how to make cold fusion work and open wormholes to distant galaxies is sitting in a run down trailer on the Pine Ridge Oglala Lakota Reservation. Imagine it was you who inspired them to rise above their poverty and realize their potential, all by helping to get the right book in their hands. It is possible.
You can help Uprise Books in their mission. At this very minute they are running a KickStarter Campaign to raise the funds needed to build the website that will make it possible for teens to get their books. I humbly ask you to consider giving what you can. Not every kid has a sly father who will set his kid on the path to something better and you might just be able to overcome that twist of fate by becoming a backer of the Uprise Book Project.
Please, go there now and give it an honest look.
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