ClaireMarrieHawkenProjects2021

I chose to volunteer at Loganberry in order to do all of the things I was unable to do this previous year. I got to talk to and meet real people, in real life and not over zoom, be in a calm environment, and have a positive impact. I think almost all aspects of my project went well. I accomplished all of my goals; I learned about how the business is run, got to meet new people, volunteer, and take a step away from the stress of senior year. Elisabeth, my mentor, was wonderfully kind, helpful, and patient. She always made sure I had tasks to work on, but that I was also not overburdened. We had interesting conversations, and she patiently listened to and answered my questions. I was very engaged in my project. I learned about how bookstores are run, from working at the counter, using their computer system, opening new orders, sorting through inventory, presentation of products, budget management, and marketing. I also got a behind-the-scenes peek at book publishing and learned about the...

  The second larger project I worked on was an interview of an author. June is national cancer survivor month. In honor, Loganberry interviewed three authors who are all cancer survivors who wrote books about their experience. Miesha, the staff member in charge of the event asked if I wanted to interview one of the authors because she was very busy. I interviewed a woman named Christine Shields Corrigan about her memoir, Again: Surviving Cancer Twice with Love and Lists. She was diagnosed with breast cancer when she was 49, and she had Hodgkin’s Lymphoma when she was a teenager. Her book is about her experience battling cancer as an adult, through surgery and chemotherapy, and it also reflects on her experience having cancer as a teenager. The book also includes after each chapter, a short section of advice relevant to the topic of the chapter, for people who are going through cancer treatment themselves. I interviewed her on Monday the seventh, and I think the livestream is on Log...

  In my third week at Loganberry, I worked on two major (as in larger and more time-consuming than the other tasks I was doing around the store, but neither were actually that large) projects. The first major project I worked on was a book club meeting with a staff member named Miranda. Miranda recently graduated from Case Western with a degree in psychology, and she works at Loganberry managing their young adult (YA) and African American sections, and she also maintains the Loganberry social media pages. As a part of YA, she runs a book club called not YA average book club (a pun), for high school students. The book club meets once a month and has a good handful of regular participants considering that it was started recently. The book for May was Legendborn , a novel by Tracy Deon. Legendborn, which is “a modern day twist on Arthurian legend", and “it follows a Black teenage girl who discovers a secret historically white magic society while attending a UNC-Chapel Hill residentia...

  In the second week, I worked on a few projects. I helped to make gifts for Literary Cleveland, an event/organization that Loganberry is a part of that supports local authors. I spent a surprisingly long amount of time assembling small, pink, floral gift boxes. Insides was a Loganberry pen, a Loganberry pencil, and a tiny Loganberry business card with a picture of Otis on the front. Otis is Harriet Logan’s, the founder and owner of the store, cat, who just turned thirteen years old. His face is on a substantial amount of the Loganberry marketing materials because pre-covid, and when he was a bit younger, Harriet would bring him into the store. I tied a tiny pink bow around the boxes out of ribbon so that they stayed together. Though there were only 100 boxes, it took me a very long time to tie them all! I also assembled a similar gift of a pen and a pencil in a purple Loganberry bag, with the Otis business card tied on with curled ribbon. I made 37 of this version of the gift, and...

  In the second week of my senior project, I continued to open and price new boxes of books every day, but I also worked on a variety of other projects and learned more interesting things about the store. While sorting and placing books back on the shelves in Lit Arts, I found a book that had a note tucked in the cover. The note was written to someone with an illegible name, and it was basically a birthday card. It was also from 1937, and the paper was crumbling. This was quite an interesting find, and I could not believe that no one had taken out this piece of paper in the past 84 years. I found out, however, 1937 actually is not old at all in the context of Loganberry’s inventory. The Sanctuary is a room towards the back of the store where especially old and valuable books and boxed sets are stored. Loganberry specializes in cultivating a collection of vintage and first edition picture books, but there are also old plays, classics like the Aeneid and Dicken’s work, and historical...