Physically, it was small: eight inches long and six across by less than an inch thick, trim enough to fit easily into the padded envelope my father used instead of wrapping it. “A book!” I said, feeling the corners through the bubble-pop paper. A minute later, it slid out into my hands and hit me squarely in the heart. It was his treasured early edition of our favorite poet’s first collection, and it contained not only all the familiar verses, but all the memories firmly twined into them. In high school, when I was a misfit senior hiding in the library, these were the poems I used for my thesis paper. When I went to college, the note my father left on my dresser began with a quote from one of them. In the celebrations associated with every significant achievement and special day since then, one stanza or another from this collection has made an appearance. I majored in literature because of the poems printed in this book. Eventually, after a long and twisting path through poetry-less careers, they gave me the courage to found a literacy organization (whose creative writing field trips for high school students, appropriately enough, include an excerpt). And here, as the poet himself would have said, it was — not ideas about the thing, but the thing itself.

The book is small enough that its spine does not even have room enough for the title. A description of its impact on my life, though, would fill more pages than I have years left to write them in. That glittering, transcendent, heartfelt promise lies between every set of covers — the potential to show a different way, create a new world, and change the life of the reader forever — and so to give someone the gift of a printed version, to be held, read, turned to, flicked through, written in, reached for, loved, and shared, is to give them a densely packed, prettily presented, permanently flowering opportunity for wonderment. During the last six years at Open Books, I have had the delight of watching books light a fire of joy, pride, and excitement in thousands of readers of all ages, from toddlers picking out picture books to grandparents finding special copies of their favorite novels from generations ago. The specifics may be unexpected, but the ramifications ripple down the generations: for, as has been rightly observed, a book is a present you can open again and again.

This post is part of a blog series inspired by World Give Day and hosted by GiveForward. To find other posts in this series please visit www.worldgiveday.com or follow us on Twitter: @worldgiveday.

What are yours?

So, the list so far:

January – Morse code
February – Souffles
March – CPR
April – Cooking (specifics tbd)
May – Knit or crochet
June – Scooter
July – Stick shift
August – Juggling
September – Calligraphy
October – Music
November – novel (NaNoWriMo)
December – Flash

During the 14th and 15th centuries, the Valois dukes of Burgundy ruled over extensive territories in present day France, Luxembourg, Belgium, and the Netherlands from their capital in Dijon, which during their reign became a major center of artistic patronage. Their court’s sculpture workshop, presided over by Claus Sluter and his followers, produced some of the most profound and original art of the period. The tombs of the first and second Burgundian dukes, Philip the Bold and John the Fearless, are among the summits of their achievement. The ducal Tombs were conceived for the Charterhouse of Champmol, founded in 1384 by Philippe the Bold as a burial place for the new dynasty of the Valois dukes, and featured an array of stunningly lifelike mourners carved in individual attitudes of grief.

www.mourners.org

In 2010, the mourners went on a short tour while their permanent home, the Musée des Beaux Arts in Dijon, France, underwent restoration. As the coverage of that tour indicates, their number is incomplete. One mourner, separated from the company, has gone astray.

Aha! I thought. I had many theories, based on no facts whatsoever, about where that stray mourner went — and why. I ordered the gorgeous catalogue from the exhibit in New York. I had characters ready to go, conspiracies aplenty, and a general sense of excitement and impatience…

…until I discovered that someone had already written a crime novel along very similar lines.

Now what, would-be novel?

Shall I write you anyway?

I think so.

This November,  my novel will be about a group of carved statues of mourners very similar to these, and what happens when a curious researcher with an only partially hidden agenda begins to search for the one that is missing. I suspect there will be mystery in it. I am pretty sure there will be alternate history of one kind or another. It will be sad in parts, I know, and hopefully funny, and at least a little bit scandalous in at least a few places…

I hope, in short, that it will be the book I have been warming up for all these years.

And I hope that she will be in it, and that I will feel, when it is done, that she would have approved.

Like most people who love books, I love special places to read them. Like most people who want to be writers, I pretend that the proper space is all that I lack to become one. Last summer at the Big E I spent an inordinate amount of time in the impeccable shed displays, marveling at their cornices and moldings and windowboxes and weathervanes. At the time, I had no need or place for one; after all, we lived in the city. Now I have my very own Lake District with plenty of room for a shed (which, under current conditions, would have to be put on stilts and be called the Shed Aquarium) and a renewed fantasy that if I get the context right, the text will follow. Yes! I will shed my inhibitions, inhabit a shed, and finally write the book I have been waiting all this time to read!

Assuming, of course, that I can get the yard dried out first.

The  Social Enterprise conference was everything I wanted: amazing people, huge ideas, thought-provoking topics, and a chance to reflect all of them back to my beloved Open Books. I went with a host of place memories (I was based in Cambridge for many years during my first few startups), a list of nonprofit preconceptions (scale = growth, outcomes > outputs), and a set of social enterprise questions (impact measurement, strategic planning). I came back knowing that I live in the right place, that you cannot go home again, and that the track that led here is the one to follow forward.

A few especially bright points from this weekend for the map I am making:

- Whether the proper measure of success is outputs, outcomes, or impacts depends largely on the nature of the enterprise, and for certain sectors and nonprofit models, the correct answer may well be further to the left than is generally rewarded or advised.

- It makes no sense to talk about strategy until you know about purpose.

- Scaling an idea is not the same as scaling an organization.

- Be only as big as you need to be to effect the change you seek to make. Work at scale, not to it.

- You cannot buy people’s passion, creativity, and engagement. You can only buy their time.